Center for Faith & WorkCenter for Faith & Work
FUTURE OF FAITH_
05Breakout sessions

Breakout Speakers

Saturday afternoon, two breakout sessions. Choose the track that speaks to your work, your questions, or your doubts.

  • Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

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    Associate Professor of Art, Covenant College Author, Redeeming Vision

    Elissa Weichbrodt (PhD, Washington University in St. Louis) is associate professor of art and art history at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. As a biracial Japanese-white woman, she has navigated the joys and tensions of a hybrid identity. Weichbrodt has published on topics ranging from contemporary Black photographers to the patronage of Hawaiian landscape paintings to documentary photographs of Japanese Americans during World War II. She also enjoys writing for general audiences on the intersection of art history, politics, and pop culture.

  • Bijan Mirtolooi

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    Senior Pastor, Redeemer West Side

    Bijan serves as the Senior Pastor at Redeemer West Side. Before returning to Redeemer, he served as lead pastor for Reality Church London. While in London, he also served as the Faith and Work Catalyst for The London Project. He holds degrees from Fuller, Princeton, and Westminster seminaries. Bijan loves being a part of the Upper West Side community of Manhattan with his wife, Michelle, and their two children.

  • Judy Cha

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    Executive Director, Redeemer Counseling Services Author, Who You Are

    Judy has been at Redeemer Counseling since 1998. She holds a Master of Arts and Religion in counseling from Westminster Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Eastern University. She has also received additional training in marriage and family therapy at the Philadelphia Child and Family Therapy Training Center. She is a bilingual counselor (Korean) and a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of New York. Judy specializes in the areas of relationships, self-image and multicultural issues. She has led seminars and workshops related to marriage, parenting and self-image. Judy is married to Peter Cha. She enjoys playing cello and piano and spending time with her two daughters.

  • Paul Taylor

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    Co-founder, Bay Area Center for Faith, Work & Tech Director, Transforming the Bay with Christ

    Paul serves as the Director of Unify for Transforming the Bay with Christ, where he helps churches all over the Bay Area work together for the good of their cities. He was a Teaching Pastor at Peninsula Bible Church for 19 years, is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry in Faith, Work, Economics, and Vocation, and has a forthcoming book with InterVarsity Press on what it means to be human in an age of AI.

Breakout tracks

Five tracks, two sessions

  • Track A

    Discovering Your AI-Proof Calling

    As AI reshapes jobs, skills, and expectations, how do we think about calling without tying our identity to tasks that may change or disappear? This session will explore work, vocation, and human distinctiveness, helping us ask what is worth cultivating, what should remain deeply human, and how to pursue faithful work amid technological change.

  • Track B

    Can a Machine Keep Us Company?

    AI companions and emotionally responsive chatbots are becoming more capable of simulating empathy, friendship, and care. This session will explore loneliness, artificial intimacy, and the difference between simulated connection and embodied relationship, and ask what kinds of relationships are necessary for genuine human flourishing.

  • Track C

    What Happens to Creativity When Machines Generate?

    AI is changing not only how artists create, but how all of us make, imagine, and experience the creativity of others. This session will explore how AI might expand or diminish our capacity to create, whether it inevitably borrows at the expense of human makers, and whether engaging it wisely might actually deepen our appreciation for distinctly human creativity. Together, we’ll ask what a Christian vision of making, beauty, and human creativity can offer in an age of AI.

  • Track D

    Embodied Practices: Spiritual Formation for the AI Age

    AI can pull us toward speed, disembodiment, frictionless relationships, and constant optimization. This practical session will explore how embodied Christian practices can help us resist those pressures, recover a fuller vision of what it means to be human, and become people more rooted in God, one another, and the world around us.

  • Track E

    AI from the Inside: What Christian Practitioners Are Seeing

    What does AI look like from inside the companies, products, and institutions actually building and deploying it? Christian practitioners will reflect on the promise, pressures, tradeoffs, and concerns they are seeing firsthand, and discuss how faith shapes decisions about what to build, where to set limits, and what love of neighbor requires.

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