Meyu Changkiri
It was past eleven at night when I recorded the bass part of a hymn alone, in a quiet room, with my phone propped against a stack of books. I was trying to keep my voice steady enough so that the other three singers, each in their own home elsewhere, would not have to redo their recordings because of me. That was in 2020, and none of us had planned to become a choir this way.
This reflection began as a talk I delivered at the North East India Christian Council Youth Assembly seminar at Union Christian College, Barapani, in 2022, on the theme Youth and Media. Revisiting it now, I find that the questions we were asking then have only grown more urgent and universal. They are no longer concerns for the young alone, but for all of us.
We can reach someone on the other side of the world in seconds, yet sometimes struggle to give our full attention to the person sitting beside us. That contradiction sits at the heart of how technology is reshaping our lives - not just what it can do, but how it is changing the way we live.
At a recent media conference, a pastor who spoke made a remark that has stayed with me: “Old doesn’t mean that it is holy, nor is new evil.” A tool is not good or bad simply because it is old or new; what matters is how we use it. My own conviction, even before that conference, has been that moving with the times is not a bad thing. We are called to be where people are, just as Christ always was. Another speaker added a necessary caution: methods change, but the Message does not. The danger is that we begin to treasure our tools themselves, until the church risks becoming a museum.
I learned this during the pandemic. Media technology had never been central to my theological training, but when COVID-19 came and churches could no longer gather, I enrolled in online courses in video production and filmmaking. It was not to become a media professional, but to continue doing what I had been called to do as a shepherd: feed the sheep. This meant many late nights after a full day of pastoral ministry. Looking back, every hour was worth it - worth burning the midnight oil.
We began intentional, interactive Bible studies over WhatsApp, dividing the congregation into three groups, each led by a member of the pastoral team, myself included. We sent the Bible passages to be studied in advance. During each study, after providing the background to the text, the facilitator would raise questions, and members would share their reflections. The discussion would conclude with a summary and a closing prayer. In my group, members joined from communities across different regions of the country, including friends from outside the congregation. People who would probably never have shared a room were now studying Scripture together.
We also recorded a complete devotional service each week. For the hymns, four of us, under the name ABAS Virtual Choir, recorded our respective parts on our mobile phones, in our own homes, often late at night to avoid background noise. There were many rounds of recording and re-recording before we were satisfied. We then sent our recordings to Onen Aier through WhatsApp, Telegram or WeTransfer. This was harder than it sounds. With no conductor, each of us had to follow the musical notes carefully, because a mistake could no longer be hidden once the individual parts were combined. That first stretch was a real struggle. Gradually, with much practice, we found our footing.
Onen Aier's contribution involved a sacrifice of a different order. He alone had training in sound and recording; the rest of us, all young parents juggling our children's online classes, were not trained in this area, and our recordings would sometimes arrive late. Onen would simply wait, gathering our hymns along with every other element of that week's liturgy before compiling everything into one service by Saturday evening. More than once, when a singer fell ill, he recorded the missing part himself. He sacrificed his sleep for this, without complaint, week after week. We did not miss a single Sunday, and a great deal of the credit belongs to him.
There were nights during that first year when I did not know whether any of it was making a difference. A service recorded in pieces, in separate rooms, sometimes felt like a poor substitute for a congregation gathered together, singing and praying in the same breath. I had no answer to that doubt then. I only knew that we could not simply stop.
When the lockdown ended, I faced a real question: should this continue, or was it time to step back?
I had started a YouTube channel under my own name in 2011, initially to preserve family memories for future generations. I saw it as a way of keeping those memories accessible over time. But the lockdown opened my eyes to its wider potential and deepened my involvement with the channel. I began paying closer attention to its analytics and discovered that my content was reaching countries I might never visit and people I might never meet in my lifetime. I decided to continue my online presence.
That decision has been confirmed many times since. Bedridden elderly members have told me that the online service is the only way left for them to worship with the church to which they have belonged for decades. Former members call, sometimes after years of silence, to say how blessed they feel to remain connected through a screen. When I travel, strangers introduce themselves as regular viewers and simply say thank you. I would not have reached any of them without technology and media, and that reach may be the truest measure of whether it was worth doing.
A similar question arose within the church I served. After the pandemic, some members felt that the online ministry should end, fearing that people would stay home rather than gather for worship. It was an understandable concern, born out of a desire to preserve the genuine Christian community. We found a way forward together: a small Media Team that records and shares the service afterward for those who cannot attend and those who join from elsewhere. Gathered worship remains at the centre; the online ministry simply extends its reach.
Today, India has 886 million active internet users, more than half of them in rural areas (IAMAI–Kantar, 2024), while YouTube receives an average of over 20 million new video uploads daily (YouTube, April 2025). There is no shortage of content; the question is whether any of it gives someone a reason to pause. Some have shared that a message of hope, encountered at just the right moment, carried them through their darkest hour.
Artificial intelligence multiplies all this. One person can now produce hundreds of posts a day or simply provide an idea and have AI help develop content that might once have taken considerable time and resources to create. Even voices within the technology industry itself are counselling caution. In September 2026, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, wrote: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.” His words remind us that speed is not the same as wisdom.
Similar concerns are reflected in the work of Google DeepMind. In an article titled Steering the Machine: Safeguards in the AI Era, Manish Gupta highlights the importance of building safety into AI development from the outset, rather than treating it as an afterthought. This includes rigorous testing, protecting privacy, monitoring potential biases and improving the reliability of AI-generated information even after systems are released. The underlying principle is important: technological progress must go hand in hand with safeguards, accountability and human oversight.
There is also a growing recognition that responsible AI requires more than technical innovation. Developers must ensure baseline safety, while those who deploy AI must put appropriate safeguards in place for their particular contexts. As AI becomes increasingly capable of acting independently, human oversight and stronger controls become even more important. Equally, AI must be developed with an understanding of local realities, languages and community needs. In a region as diverse as North East India, this is particularly significant. Technology will serve us better when it reflects the people it is intended to serve.
It is natural to feel unsettled by what is new. Many were alarmed when ChatGPT was launched in 2022, much as people were when social media first appeared. We are social beings, and we will continue finding new ways to connect. I do not suggest that AI is inherently good, or that everything it produces can be trusted. As one speaker put it, it is a tool, not a calling. It can help us record, create and learn faster, but it cannot replace character, wisdom or our own encounter with God.
The future will not belong to those with the best AI, but to those with the best reasons. Only a person can tell what the Gospel has meant in their own life. AI can help carry that story further, but it cannot live that experience, nor can it become the witness. That is why we are called to redeem the time, ensuring that what we make and share is worth someone's pause.
This is a concern close to my heart. Many of us are still finding where to begin online, and that is understandable. Our responsibilities are already heavy. But young people carry an exposure to and fluency with digital media that many of us have not always had the opportunity to develop. I keep wondering what would happen if we gave them not just a seat on a committee, but real responsibility - trust, training and room to lead. Older members bring experience; younger members bring fluency in newer tools. I believe this partnership will carry us forward, provided we hold fast to Scripture.
Access, however, remains unequal. Connectivity, devices and content in familiar languages vary widely, especially in a region as diverse as ours. Expanding access must be part of how we think about the future, not an afterthought.
Technology will keep changing in ways we cannot yet imagine. We cannot control every development, but we can decide how we respond to it. What the pandemic taught me is that the purpose was never the technology itself. It was people - their lives, their faith, their need for connection and care. The challenge is not simply to keep up with new tools, but to use them wisely, so that as our tools advance, our humanity grows with them.
I look to that future with hope.
