What happens when artificial intelligence (AI) enters the church? Can it impact different aspects of ministry, and is it a potential friend or foe? Join us in this thought-provoking episode as we explore these questions and discuss how God's plans are much bigger than ours, and how He can redirect our paths through the decisions we make.
We dive deep into the implications of AI in ministry, focusing on potential dangers such as automation-spurred job loss, privacy concerns, bad data, socioeconomic inequality, and market manipulation. Moreover, we touch on the spiritual consequences of using technology to become more like God and consider how AI can be utilized within the church for purposes such as glorifying Him, marketing, and branding.
Finally, let's contemplate the potential uses and dangers of AI in pastoral care, including the possibility of using AI to retrieve relevant Bible verses and provide insights while eliminating the personalization of pastoring and care. We also discuss the importance of not replacing the gift of the Holy Spirit with AI machines and how AI can be used as a tool to help build sermon outlines or provoke thought, but should only be used as a starting point and not the sole source of content.
What happens when artificial intelligence (AI) enters the church? Can it impact different aspects of ministry, and is it a potential friend or foe? Join us in this thought-provoking episode as we explore these questions and discuss how God's plans are much bigger than ours, and how He can redirect our paths through the decisions we make.
We dive deep into the implications of AI in ministry, focusing on potential dangers such as automation-spurred job loss, privacy concerns, bad data, socioeconomic inequality, and market manipulation. Moreover, we touch on the spiritual consequences of using technology to become more like God and consider how AI can be utilized within the church for purposes such as glorifying Him, marketing, and branding.
Finally, let's contemplate the potential uses and dangers of AI in pastoral care, including the possibility of using AI to retrieve relevant Bible verses and provide insights while eliminating the personalization of pastoring and care. We also discuss the importance of not replacing the gift of the Holy Spirit with AI machines and how AI can be used as a tool to help build sermon outlines or provoke thought, but should only be used as a starting point and not the sole source of content.
Artificial intelligence What is it and should it be used within church? Let's talk about it. Hey, it's the next pastor to pastor podcast with myself, pastor Jason from Crosspoint Church in North Carolina and Pastor Seth from Reliant Church. What's up family? Yeah, and Pondhurst, north Carolina. Look, we are excited to be here for another episode of pastor to pastor. And look, today we're going to be talking about artificial intelligence and what role does it have within the church, if any? we're going to dive into that. But you know how we get started, man, tell me how the family's going.
Speaker 2:Man, everything is going good. Levi's summer is panning out to be exactly what he wanted to be.
Speaker 2:I mean Saturday. Friday he had a dinner supportment. We went to the arcade best day ever, according to him, okay. And then Saturday we went to. You know, i remember you caught last last episode I talked about. He had two things he wanted to do in the summertime Pool and barbecue. Pool and barbecue grill out. Yeah, we did that Saturday, as some friends of ours church had a graduation party and my goodness, it's just happening exactly how he wanted to happen. That's why there's power in your tongue, You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:That's right life and death.
Speaker 2:I said listen now, you can't. You can't get too used to this.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But man, life is good, family is good. I have no complaints, brother. How about you guys?
Speaker 1:Great, Hey, another week closer to graduation, In fact, yeah, if this is going to air Monday, you know, Friday Colby graduates. Saturday we're having his party. Sunday we're honoring the seniors. So busy, busy week. We've been excited about having this, this upcoming graduation and graduation party, looking forward to sending Colby into that next chapter of his life well and celebrating his accomplishments so far. So, so far man, so good. We're looking forward. The kids are looking forward to their summer break, and I'm kind of looking forward to it too, because it's nice when you can take some time off and actually spend time with them without them actually missing school. So I'm actually looking forward to summer as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i love it, dude, I love it.
Speaker 1:So it's Sunday. We had services today. Tell me what it was like at Relying. What's your preach done?
Speaker 2:Man. We had a fantastic Sunday, but I did not preach One of our discipleship director, danny Rebels. He preached for the first time ever and, man, he did a fantastic job Initial sermon. That's right. The initiation.
Speaker 2:See if you good nothing. I'm just kidding Now. He did a fantastic job, man. He preached on the road of Damascus when we're still in this journey series and man. Some of his key points that he brought out was of how God took his passion to kill Christians and put a new purpose to it, changed the zeal and you know he was one of the greatest you know apostles and scripture and stuff, and he really built the church and made it really what it is today. So he talked about that a little bit. And then he talked about of how, no matter how bad your past is, how God can give you a new purpose and a new plan and it was great.
Speaker 2:You know that story of Saul becoming Paul always thinks about how God showed up when I was on my way to do some bad things. You know, he ever made a bad decision. And God's like I'm talking about more than just typing something up on social media and Holy Spirit's like no, i need to delete that.
Speaker 2:But I mean like, ain't you glad you didn't marry the person that you thought you wanted to marry, or you didn't take the job that you thought you should have took?
Speaker 2:You know, the list goes on to where you're like okay, thank you God for redirecting that path. And so we kind of took that turn this Sunday today and just kind of get some gratitude in that God's kind of stopped you making some pretty dumb decisions down the road. So it was a great day, man We had. We prayed and anointed over a new kid director who we're so excited about that, and you know, the day was really cool because we also had a guy at our church first time ever. He did communion for us And the one things that my pastor taught me and I want to encourage all leaders to do this, to understand that we don't build platforms for us, for ourselves, we build platforms for others, and at Relyon that's what we're trying to do is pull the gifts out of people absolutely and let them use it for the kingdom of God. So it was a fantastic Sunday and I can't wait to hear how was yours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was great man. Look, we had a last Sunday. The Lord gave me a message. It was a really, really strong message And I preach what I feel like to preach. I'm not always one where I can look at a calendar and just lay out for the next four months What I. Maybe God does that with some people, but he don't do it with me yet. I wish you would. Sometimes, because I'm like Lord, i'd love to know what I'm preaching three weeks from now, but he knows you'd forget. Probably right. But I preached on.
Speaker 1:We started a new series on renew and renewing our minds. Scripture tells us to renew our mind. I talked about the process of sanctification, how it's. We believe that it's an instantaneous work of grace where God puts the law on your heart. But the sanctification process is also a process that works out and I don't believe we'll actually be completed until we reach glory in full, like God will put it on your heart. We're not supposed to sin. He'll tell us what we can and can't do, but there's a renewing of our mind that has to happen.
Speaker 1:We have to unlearn a lot of different things And we have to unlearn bitterness. We have to unlearn unforgiveness. We have to unlearn a whole lot of different things that we have learned. We spent most of our life learning when we were in the world and we talked about last last podcast right being coming out of the world. So we have there's a lot of things we have to unlearn that the world says that we need to learn what God says, and so that's what I talked about today And I said one of the things that we we don't do so well, we, we haven't learned what true love is yet.
Speaker 1:Like, true love is not the conditional word or love where the world says if you do for me, then I'll do for you. Like God, even while we were yet sinners, he came and died for us. He loved us, god, so loved the world. So his love wasn't preconditioned to, to something we did or didn't do. Right, i talked about it being an early Christian, that I felt like if I didn't pray, like God didn't love me. Or if I felt like if I didn't read the word, god didn't love me. Or if I felt like I wasn't doing something, if I was doing something that wasn't right, that God didn't love me.
Speaker 1:But I talked about just nothing you can do to change God's love for you. That's right. Nothing, i don't care what you've done, i don't care where you've been, i don't care where you're headed Doesn't matter. You can't do anything to change God's love. God loves you. He loved you while you were wrong. It's like I talked about Matthew and I said I love my kids before they were born and they did absolutely nothing to earn my love. I just loved them. And then when they showed up, they got to enjoy that love because they were my sons. And so I talked about, really, that that's kind of how God looks at us, that he loved us And so it was great man. We talked about that. We're in this process, or this series now, of renewal renewing our minds, unlearning some things and changing the way that we look at things, from the way the world sees it to the way God sees it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and if we could get this, just think how beautiful it would be for sons and daughters to really see ourselves as sons and daughters. First off, i think we have that identity problem, and when we have a lack of true identity, we fail to see what true love is from the father And really knowing that we never earned it in the first place. He's always loved us man. I love that. We need that reminder consistently in our lives that believers that that song and I couldn't earn it, i don't deserve it.
Speaker 2:I talked about reckless love Give yourself the way And you know it's a. it's a reckless love, because nobody else would have loved you the way Christ does.
Speaker 1:That's what's reckless about it? Yeah?
Speaker 2:because people would say you have to earn love. So we look at it as reckless because we don't earn it, we never earned it, we never deserved it. I love that. That's great message, man, and some awesome, awesome, awesome. I know your people were equipped, so let's shift here for a minute. So, let's talk about some artificial intelligence?
Speaker 1:Let me ask you that. Well, let's get into a little bit about what it is first, but but ultimately we want to get to its role in ministry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:That's where we want to be at with it. There's a lot Look, there's stuff all over the internet that you can go and research. There's a whole lot of warnings. There's a whole lot of to do about artificial intelligence because it's the new technology, it's the new internet, it's the new social media, it's the next technology. But let's talk about real quick what it is.
Speaker 1:So artificial intelligence is machine learning that can reason and learn on its own. It's been given information currently. Now, i'm not an expert in artificial intelligence, so if I'm a little wrong, hey, you know, put some in the comments, send us a message, let us know so we can make sure everybody's got the right information. And we, we obviously try to give you the good information. But so it has currently been governed by allowing it to have certain amount of information not full reign yet on the amount of information that it has And it's playing and so it's learning. It's pulling from research papers, it's pulling from other internet, it's pulling from all kinds of different places to. If you give it, if you give it a question or if you're trying to learn something, it, like it, will give you information that you're looking for, like on the spot, super fast, very accurate, up to date information that you're trying to pull together.
Speaker 1:So there are some concerns about it. I know I got just a few things here that there are concerns about artificial intelligence, and just in our short time in research and artificial intelligence, you can see where it would be. It would cause a problems in some people's lives. I mean there's like automation spurred job loss. So because artificial intelligence can take over roles of many assistants and a lot of different things it can, it will actually probably end up being the downfall of a lot of different job professions, and so there's a lot of privacy concerns when it comes to that. There's bad data concerns because it's not perfect. It's not even close to perfect yet, but it is extremely. It is extremely proficient currently and it's going to be even better with the more information that it gets fed.
Speaker 1:There's socioeconomic and inequality let me get that right And ultimately what it means is that people with money are going to make it more money because the people with access to the tools can utilize the tools for their gain. And then there's market manipulation And, of course, always there's. I don't care what country you live in. They're trying to figure out some way to weaponize everything. So then there's the weapons automation part of it, and when we were talking about this earlier at Pastor Seth, my thought was man, i was just taking back to the garden.
Speaker 1:I was just sitting here thinking I was taking back to the garden, where technology is nothing more but man's quest to be better, faster, smarter in the whole nine, right? Yes, sir, we get to a place where I get concerned because it's just like God. What more could you possibly want than being in a garden that God handpicked, made you and puts you in the most, the best place on earth, with the best food, the best groceries and I like groceries he put the best trees, the best fruit, the water. He had it all right there in the garden for Adam and Eve. And along came Satan, along came the serpent and said but there's more. He was like the ShamWow guy, right, he's like, but there's more. And so he's like, you can't eat of the tree, right? Well, it's because God's trying to hold something back for you, from you. And so, in their quest to be like God, they end up falling, falling from grace in terms of like falling into sin, i should say Knowing all things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, knowing all things right, And so this, to me, is really an extension. Technology is an extension of man's quest for faster, better, stronger, more God-like.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so that's what concerns me. But when it comes to ministry, i don't know. this thing really, for me is I don't know how you feel about it it's another tool. I think it's something we can use. It's something that kind of help speed up some processes. It can do some things, and I think it has a role in ministry, but there are some concerns in ministry as well. So what have you found for you know, some of the things that we can do and can a church benefit from it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, now I think the church can absolutely benefit. Professor Jason, if you don't have any discipline to know when to say no, when?
Speaker 2:to stop, i would say don't dabble. You ever heard that word? Don't dabble in it, because it can take you down a trail to where this is where we've got to draw the line, to where we are being led by AI and not the spirit anymore, and so I think that the church can absolutely use it. We used to say that social media we can't use social media because that's the world, but now it's the most efficient way to get the word out about Jesus.
Speaker 1:You can look at it. I can ask you this now some of the motor saints would say we're compromising.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. Well, all you do is you're taking something the enemy meant for evil and you're making it good.
Speaker 1:All right, all right.
Speaker 2:And so when you look at social media social media, you make it what you want it to be. Yeah, And so if I want to use my social media to glorify God, let's just go ahead and make the enemy mad and let's glorify.
Speaker 2:God in platforms he thought we were going to distort for his will. You even look at marketing and branding. The church shouldn't market, the church shouldn't brand. Well, now, the most proficient churches are marketing and branding and getting more people to know Christ. So I think sometimes we look at AI and realize, nah, there's no way we could use AI, because this is what the world, this is the world's culture. But can we turn something evil and make it good to benefit the kingdom of God? And I think that answer is yes, okay.
Speaker 2:And so there's a couple of things that what we found that we could do as a body of Christ to utilize AI and the chat GPT and number one is is, if you have live stream, you can use what they call chat bots. Now, these chat bots, they help engage with your live streams. They can generate questions, they can engage with your congregates and all that kind of stuff And just keep that engagement happening to where people are online engaging with something. And it helps to streamline your communication, your church communication. For example, if you're still using bulletins, you can put in the information and it will create the bulletin for you and make it printable. You can organize your announcements, put all the information in.
Speaker 1:Believe this or not. Man, you may remember this, we were doing the interview of a pastor Man. We've done a lot of stuff together.
Speaker 2:if you think about it, we have. you've been a blessed man. Well hey.
Speaker 1:But not as blessed as be.
Speaker 2:You're just getting right, oh my God.
Speaker 1:But we were interviewing this pastor one time, if you remember, and he was talking about how he was taking over for another pastor And he said that he started coming out with these bulletins years ago. Obviously, he was taking over a long time ago. He was telling us about it. He said I started coming out with bulletins to hand people And he said that pastor said we ain't doing bulletin, you shouldn't be doing a bulletin. And he's like and the next thing you know, when the pastors the pastors were placing him is coming in to listen to him preach He's like I think I can get one of them, bulletins for everybody else. So even at one point bulletins were forbidden fruit right. They were like oh no, don't do a bulletin. So it's crazy how that mindset really kind of changes. And I think you're right, it's got a lot to do with just seeing the availability, how we can use technology To to glorify God and to bring benefit to our brothers and sisters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And if you're a bulletin church and hey, this is this way can really simplify Your process, for that as well, you can. You can create media agendas. You just put into information. It creates it for you. It can help help you create. This is the cool part That's adjacent is it can create text like text message devotionals for you that You just put in some of the Bible verses, stuff, and it'll help create some material for you that you can overlook before you send it. It's pretty much helping you with time management. Yeah, you're looking at it. They help you with some time management. It'll help with your social media presence. You know, if you're anything like Pastor Jason and my myself right now, we run our social media and We we run out of time absolutely and so this chat, gbt and AI can help Utilize what we, the information we give it, and create social media posts for us.
Speaker 2:Of course we. You can look at them first and you got to cure it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got to definitely store it it well and look at it, only to post whatever you want to do. It wants to do itself, but you manage it and it creates those posts. You can actually upload your sermon, pastor Jason, and it would create a quote out of it and in a graphic form for you to post Wow, i did not know that, yeah, yeah, so social media in a do script. So, for example, if you uploaded your video right into the chat, gpt or AI, right, you uploaded your video into it, it can create a 60 second video script for you on one of your main points Wow. So it's where you don't have to try to figure out k houses it and create a script for you. Of course, again, you've got to manage it, make sure it's putting stuff in there That's accurate, but it helps you create that outline to rest easier for you and saves a lot of time for you to make posts and Engage with people online so it automates.
Speaker 1:It can automate a Lot of the things that you would have. You would normally spend hours and hours putting together. Yeah, can automate for you and and produce something Professional level at a much more rapid-paced and you can produce it. I don't know about you, but my language.
Speaker 1:Well, i don't know about you, but my language ain't always the most perfect is right, and so anytime I can, i can use something. It's just for me. Anytime I can use something to kind of help word something better, definitely is there some tools that I would definitely be interested in using yeah.
Speaker 2:And what makes it more interesting to me is you look, i bet we could pull a hundred pastors and I'd say 99 of them would say they struggle with time management.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and that they're overloaded, and this can help especially smaller churches who don't have so many people who are graphic design savvy or social media savvy. They're ruining it all by themselves. It saves so much time. Did you know? this is one cool thing if your church does fundraisers, you can put information in it and it creates Fundraising language and materials for you. It will create the graphic, the brochure, the poster, whatever it is you want to do. It will put that information into a graphic for you to post it. Wow, it's crazy. And so there's a lot of great things that it can, it can do for you. I There, i've got a couple things that we could talk about. I want to make sure that you're you're clear on moving on, but there's a couple things we talk about that we should not use this stuff for their industry.
Speaker 1:There is I was just sitting here thinking about with that next topic, that next level. There's a lot of great things that it can be used for. A lot of a lot of ways are stewarded to use it to benefit Time management, stuff like that. But you're absolutely right. Headed into this next topic, some concerns using artificial intelligence Within the ministry world. Go ahead, go right into it.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that they say is that it can strengthen your, your pastoral care.
Speaker 1:Now this is that. It's not what we're saying. No no this is what the article we were reading. One of the articles we were reading was talking about. Like it can help. It can help with your pastoral kid.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, that's right because we have to be very, very. It's got to be a line professor. They have to draw a line to where I'm not being led by an artificial intelligence, but I'm actually being led by the spirit. That's right and some of us. This would cause us to be lazy.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, We're not Exactly.
Speaker 2:We're not spending time with the Lord, We're not spending time in prayer because we don't need to hear from the Lord, no more.
Speaker 2:We just need to hear from a yeah okay, we just put in a script and say type of message for us and let's do that, and so it's. One of the things is it says that they can strengthen your pastoral care, and What what it's saying is Is saying that the AI can retrieve relevant Bible verses and provide insights based on scripture teachings, taking the time to use it as a research assistant. This way it can help pastoral care in more empathetic empathetic in the actual interaction. So what he's saying is, if somebody in your congregation is going through something, you can search a scripture and it can give you pretty much what to say to that person. It eliminates the, the Eximity, the personalization of pastoring in that actual care, and so what's happening is you're eliminating your ability to hear from the Lord on What that person needs and you're letting AI teach you how to pastor ship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's that's. You can't be an under shepherd if your shepherd ain't God man.
Speaker 2:The thought that people would do this if you got licensed. You need your license gone.
Speaker 1:If you got a church.
Speaker 2:You need to church, but it's exactly, but it's man-made.
Speaker 1:It's it's a man-made tool. That's the same thing. So, while you know we talked about all the things that it could be used for for good, there's also the other side of it that could be used for for laziness, for sloth on this and for evil. Because, you know, not only will it do those those awesome things we talked about, it'll also build you a website if you tell it to write the code for you. You can also use it to make malicious code, to build malicious code so that it will damage other people's websites. So there's a lot of negativity, but you've absolutely got to be. It's just about stewardship. It's how you steward it, how you use it, how you Yeah, how you use it for your ministry. Look, i don't. Is there an issue with it when it comes to analyzing attendance over the last year, showing you peaks and valleys, is there?
Speaker 1:an issue with using it there? I don't think so, but is there an issue with it with? hey, this person just lost a family member. Tell me what to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's sad.
Speaker 1:That is sad. That is sad, or I don't have time to preach or to put together a sermon. So write me a sermon and I'm telling you, i've tried it, i've messed with it just to see. I promise you have never preached from it. But I'm telling you that if you will go and look and just to mess around with it, it will write based on your denomination. I've seen this, but I was curious about it. So I went and looked and I said type me a sermon about XYZ with the Pentecostal theology And, bro, just like that, it sped out like a good solid whole page of notes and in a manuscript for preaching with the Pentecostal holiness denominational, and grade it into it.
Speaker 2:Yep, and back to what you were saying, and I want to come back to the sermon content. But what you're talking about analyzing the attendance and stuff I'll share with you is a few years ago, when I was in Goldsboro, we were at Kid Pastors and one of the things that I wanted to do is I wanted to find out when our peak attendance was, when our, what our really average was and when was the low attendance and stuff, because we were using it to plan. When should we plan events? when should we host meetings? when should we do this? I mean, it took me an hour or two just to figure out this stuff, to kind of take the information and figure out what works best.
Speaker 2:If I would have had AI capabilities back then for this man, i mean it could have eliminated. I mean I could have been so more resourceful and I could have streamlined that stuff made it such easier. So now those are the good things that you can use it for. When you talk about sermon content, man, it makes me mad to think that we we are substituting the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's a dangerous place to be pastor, to be a pastor and a leader of flock And letting a computer tell you how to pastor and how to preach Yeah.
Speaker 1:You should definitely feel some I had.
Speaker 2:I had a friend of mine. I shared this with you before We got. I had a friend. I want to read this to you guys. He he went into chat GPT and he was like give me a prophetic word for the nations. And he had put like something else on there And part of the first off it started off saying I feel a shift in my spirit for the nation. Okay, first off your computer.
Speaker 1:There's no there ain't no spirit and there ain't no shifting, Just for that.
Speaker 2:If it is a spirit, it's demonic. So this is what he said. This was how. this is how crazy.
Speaker 1:Sound like a false prophet. I mean, i'm sorry, go ahead, prophalion out here.
Speaker 2:This is, this is how, how dangerous, this is Okay. And my friend said if I ever hear this prophetic word from somebody, I will call you out Rightfully so And it says this I hear this is from AI.
Speaker 2:Now, this is not somebody we know. This is not a person, somebody that's heard from God, read the Bible, spent time with him. This is a computer And it says I hear a prophetic word for our nation, for our nation. Get that. The Lord is about to do a new thing in this land And he's going to pour out his spirit in a flesh in a fresh and powerful way, and he's going to brag about. He's going to bring about an awakening that will sweep across the nation. This awakening will bring people from every tribe, tongue and nation in the feet, to the feet of Jesus, and it will bring a great harvest of souls. This is AI driven. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Is that not wild? That is scary.
Speaker 2:Now you can't even trust prophetic words, no more. They're pulling them out of their pocket. Hey, i got a word for you, hold on one second.
Speaker 1:Let me type it in the chat GPT real quick. Give me a prophetic word for this person.
Speaker 2:I know that's right. There's somebody walking in here got asthma. Give me a word for them, oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you definitely, definitely, man.
Speaker 2:That is scary, and I'm not naive Pastor Jason, people have done this and used it, ain't no? doubt Aint no doubt People you look at. There are maybe certain faith, different belief systems where you know. You talked about how you struggled to plan four weeks, how that kind of stuff. And there's people who plan their whole year out that are not charismatic Pentecostals. Like us, they don't believe in the spirit you know at some Being spirit led and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, spirit led and stuff. You know I've taught the people two weeks ago that they're like I've never experienced the spirit moving. I've never done this. They came to our church and they got moved and stuff, and they're like I've never. I've been in church my whole life, i've never experienced this before.
Speaker 2:And you know, to be honest, people that don't preach this the spirit, the spiritual gifts are intentionally ignoring scripture And so. But you look at those people. It's gonna be very easy for these, these different beliefs and these different faiths, that will use this to build a year's worth of sermons. And this is where we have to be careful. Listen, leader, you have to be careful. Do not replace the gift of the Holy Spirit and being spirit led for a computer. What's going to happen is you think you're blessing people and you sound good and the historical facts are good and the theology sounds good, but God has nothing to do with it. And I don't want to just sound good, i actually want to be led by the spirit And because you know, we believe, we pray, we believe that whatever word we give, it's for somebody that walked in the room And we've got to, we've got to be diligent, we've got to draw that line.
Speaker 1:We cannot allow this to create slothfulness, to substitute our time with God, and that's exactly what this thing does, and it has the potential to do, to substitute I don't, i don't, you know, because, trust me, there are times and there are sermons that God gives me that takes a week to develop or longer, and I'm talking about not just a week of sitting down, writing, but actual research All the hours in a week, like sometimes it takes as many hours as I have to finish a sermon, to finish a series, to finish whatever God's given me. It would be easy to sit down and say all right, chat GPT, all right Google all right, who knows what's going to be the word.
Speaker 1:Who's going to know what, who knows what's next. It would be easy and would even be enticing for some people not for me, i'm probably. I I want the real thing. I ain't trying to substitute nothing with God, but it would be easy to sit down and say, give me a series on XYZ and have every single sermon typed out and you just go through and yep, yep, looks good. But that is not a God, that's a, that's a machine, that's of something made by man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now let me ask you this What's your thoughts on this? If we, if someone, looked at leadership material or wanted to teach on prayer and they they looked for some good topics to talk about or some key points that they could emphasize and reached, went to the chat or the AI whatever you want to call it and said hey, what are some good leadership points for this topic, this ministry or or what's some good evangelistic points to talk? How do we, what do you think about that?
Speaker 1:I think anything that you can use to help provoke a thought, anything you can use if you use it as a tool, not the content creation, but if you use it when it comes to ministry, if you use it as a tool to help you kind of develop cause. Let's be honest, if we were talking about social, social, economical situations earlier, right, i mean, and if you don't know what a social economical situation is, that's all gibberish to you. But if you, if you would use it as a tool to, to learn from, to, in terms of it has its hands and it's it's information to live a whole lot of different information, i think you could definitely use it in terms to help build an outline or to help do something like that, but it should not be the sole source of content. Yeah, it shouldn't be the me. Yeah, it shouldn't be the me, absolutely not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wanted to bring clarity. I kind of knew where you went on, that, for those that are listening to stand with dog, i shouldn't use it at all. but no, no, there's, there's. I mean you can use it to help build some content, but it just needs to be pretty much a an outline of source that you could you pull from.
Speaker 1:So yeah, for sure, Cause it will provoke some, some thoughts that you've never, you've never considered, Like it's nothing any different than than leaning from other other sermons from other pastors.
Speaker 2:I was going to say the exact same thing.
Speaker 1:There's no, there's no difference in that, but when I take it it's equally wrong. It's actually probably more wrong. But if if you take another pastor sermon and you use it, to me is just as wrong as creating another, creating another. Let me try to get my words right here Using chat GBT to build your sermon is just as wrong as completely plagiarizing a whole nother sermon from somebody else.
Speaker 2:I know one thing If you're going to preach a chat GBT sermon, you better. You better say sponsored by chat.
Speaker 1:You better give it some credit, yeah, no no, no, every, every pastor you know at some point, i'm sure, gleams that reread commentary, commentary on the Bible itself.
Speaker 2:That's not we've shared content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, We've shared content. I mean, and you will pull from other pastors. Look, I don't try to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes I preach what God gives me now, But there are times where I'm like man that really lines up with well, with what I'm, with what I'm trying to say here. So, yeah, I've used stuff from other pastors in the past And I've definitely gotten better about how I do sermon prep and things like that. But I don't you, I don't take your whole sermon and I lay in front of me and that's what I preach is my sermon, And the ones that you do do that too.
Speaker 2:I sell them to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate it. He got like five sermons for $25, you know real easy Like sir.
Speaker 2:Oh man, i love it bro. My thoughts of AI is in chat. Gbt is if you can use it to glorify God, if you can use it to help save you some time where it doesn't eliminate your walk with Christ or your time with him, and you can create the discipline. Use it to advance your church, to, to, to advance your knowledge.
Speaker 1:It's a tool, yep, plain and simple. At the end of the day it's a tool.
Speaker 1:If you use it for any more than that, you really need to. You need to be talking with God. Amen, yeah, and you're absolutely right. When it comes to some of the, the dominations, i think, that that are less spirit led and more um, how round right word is like they lay it out. The whole denomination knows what they're preaching on this Sunday a year from now. Like, like, i definitely think it has some issues in that it would be easier to use in that situation, but definitely got to be careful. Use it as a tool, don't use it as anything more, and I think you'll be fine Yep.
Speaker 2:Absolutely So anyway you're good to go. I'm done man. I'm fired up, ready to go search something on chat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i hear you touch you All right?
Speaker 1:Well, let's do like we always do, let's give you guys a priestly blessing and send you on your way off. Uh, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace. Hey, as always, we appreciate you taking the time to listen to pastor to pastor podcast. We look forward to catching you on the next time. Make sure again you like share, comment all that good stuff, share with people because we believe we're releasing stuff that's going to impact people's lives and help them in their walk with Christ. Hey, god bless you. We look forward to seeing you next time on pastor to pastor. See you later.