Equip Your Team. Lead the AI Conversation.
Mike Burnard brings theology, ministry experience, and hands-on AI expertise to churches and mission-driven organizations across Canada. His sessions leave your team with a framework, a direction, or a decision they'd been putting off.
Not another AI enthusiast.
Mike Burnard is a Creative Systems Designer with an MA in Christian Leadership. Before focusing on the church sector, he served as AI Solutions Lead for a major broadcasting corporation — giving him direct experience with enterprise AI implementation before most organizations had a policy in place.
His sessions run as working conversations. Mike draws out what your team is thinking about AI and equips leaders to respond with structure and confidence. For most groups, that format is more productive than a scripted keynote.
Three conversations every ministry needs to have.
AI Governance for Ministry Organizations
Every person on your staff is making decisions about AI, with or without your guidance. This session gives senior leaders a practical framework for where AI belongs in your organization, who holds accountability, and how to document a position that reflects your theology rather than one borrowed from the tech industry. Senior leaders with a governance framework spend their time directing AI, not managing the fallout from decisions they didn't make.
AI in Practice: Tools for Ministry Teams
AI training built for corporate environments rarely maps onto ministry work. This session evaluates which tools are worth using, how to think through adoption decisions, and what good integration looks like inside a church or mission-driven organization. No vendor pitches. Your team leaves with a framework they can put to work the following week.
Volunteer Culture by Design
Growing a volunteer team from 30 to over 120 takes three years and a specific kind of culture underneath it. Drawing on that experience and the diagnostic framework built from it, this session gives ministry leaders a practical system for assessing their volunteer culture and rebuilding it on foundations that hold. Applicable to any volunteer-dependent ministry context.
What a session with Mike looks like.
Mike facilitates real dialogue. He draws out what your team has been thinking about AI, including the questions they haven't raised with leadership yet. Groups leave having said things out loud they hadn't put into words before. That's where the clarity starts.
Mike prepares sessions around your organization's situation. The questions your team is wrestling with become the entry point, not a generic slide deck from the conference circuit. That preparation is part of what you're booking.
Every session is structured to leave your team with something concrete — a framework, a documented starting point, a decision that was avoided until now. If nothing has changed the week after, the session didn't do its job.
Mike has led rooms of eight and halls of several hundred. He adjusts the format to what the context requires. The substance stays consistent.
Who books these sessions —
and what to expect.
Senior leaders who need more than a motivating hour.
These sessions are built for senior pastors, executive pastors, worship directors, and denominational leaders who need their teams to leave with something they can act on. Also well-suited for conference organizers and denominational retreats where AI or leadership culture is on the agenda.
Flexible format. Consistent standard.
Mike scopes every engagement to your context. The format is flexible. The preparation behind it isn't.
Start with
a conversation.
If you're planning a conference, staff day, leadership retreat, or denominational gathering and want a speaker who prepares for your specific context, reach out. The first call is 30 minutes. You'll know by the end whether it makes sense.