AI for Ministry: How Churches Could Use ChatGPT

This post is the second in a series on the intersection of Christianity and artificial intelligence. The first post in the series, which explores how AI may challenge what it means to be church online, is available here.

Creatio ex nihilo.

Latin for "Creation out of nothing."

This phrase is foundational to the Christian doctrine of God, which posits that God is the one who creates matter where previously there was none.

When ChatGPT was released last November, it seemed like a digital tool that could also create something out of nothing, producing everything from children's stories to song lyrics with minimal prompting. In fact, ChatGPT does not create from nothing. ChatGPT's creations are the product of a highly sophisticated model that ingests the contents of the internet and produces coherent answers through a process of prediction.

Of course, these answers aren't always accurate, nor are they always coherent. And there are many ways that these tools could be used for malevolent purposes. Indeed there has been a loud and clear outcry about the potential harms from systems like ChatGPT. Still, these tools also have the potential to make our lives easier. They can help us to generate and organize our ideas. They can provide structure to our communications. They can give us templates to kickstart the creative process. So while there are real risks of artificial intelligence, ranging from job displacement to violence on a global scale, there is also the hope that these systems can make us more effective, as individuals and organizations, leading to greater human flourishing.

Churches have a real opportunity to utilize AI systems to enhance our ministries. If we learn to use tools like ChatGPT, we can create practices that enhance, rather than replace, our ministries. As church resources from budgets to staffing continue to decline, these AI tools can help us to create digital content. They can help us to communicate more effectively. They can even help us to be better teachers of the Gospel.

Using ChatGPT to curate and create church digital content

33% of mainline Protestant adults attend church weekly. 25% of mainline Protestants never attend church. Just over 40% attend church sporadically. ChatGPT can help congregations reach infrequent church-goers, connecting them to the messages and themes first proclaimed from the altar and the pulpit.

Moreover, AI tools can help frequent church-goers to engage more deeply with what they heard from lessons, prayers, and preaching.

A sermon manuscript is a powerful resource for creating digital content. When a preacher writes 1,500 or more words for a sermon manuscript, he or she creates a resource that can be expanded upon or repackaged, shared with the broader community as it moves from the sanctuary into day to day vocations.

1. Instruct ChatGPT to create a Tweet or Facebook post based on your most recent sermon manuscript

2. Paste your sermon into the chat

3. View your ChatGPT-created social post

4. Provide feedback to refine the post

5. Edit and post to social media

Using ChatGPT to organize church communications

I've never been a member of a church that is lauded for its clear and consistent communications. Chances are, no matter how effectively you send newsletters and share announcements, someone is going to feel like you are leaving something out!

While AI cannot solve all of these challenges, ChatGPT can at least provide your communications with a consistent, repeatable framework.

Think of ChatGPT as a dictation assistant. AI can take an unformatted list of what is coming up next in the ministry and provide a template for a newsletter.

1. Input what's happening this week in your ministry

2. Instruct ChatGPT to write a newsletter

3. Include instructions to write a short reflection on a verse from next week's readings

4. Provide feedback to refine the post, then edit yourself for accuracy, clarity, and consistent tone.

Using ChatGPT to teach the Gospel

ChatGPT has been trained on a library of the world's sacred texts, and ostensibly some of its most influential commentaries.

While AI is by no means an authoritative theological research, it knows enough about the basic structure and narrative arcs of scripture to at least provide a teachable outline. These outlines can be adapted to the needs of specific audiences: age, school year, even familiarity with the subject matter. And while you'll need to scrutinize the theological outputs of any chatbot, AI tools can provide you with a well-organized lesson outline that has a coherent flow and sequence.

ChatGPT can be an especially useful assistant anytime a substitute teacher is needed, or when you aren't sure where to start. In the following examples, ChatGPT creates a 20 minute lesson plan for a group of Confirmation students in the Lutheran church.

While the hands-on learning activity (a "freedom collage") may not be particularly effective, the outline is a highly useful tool for organizing your lesson.

To create your own lesson plan:

1. Provide background on your learners and their familiarity with the subject matter.

2. Mention any time constraints.

3. Include the context of the ministry, such as the denomination or any core theological convictions.

4. Instruct ChatGPT to create a lesson plan.

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Challenges and issues abound with the use of AI in the church. ChatGPT may not be the best theologian. It's certainly not a great pastor. And it's ability to create personalized, immersive content might turn us away from community, drawing us further inward.

Still, in a time of dwindling budgets and resources, it can provide something invaluable to ministries in a digital age. It can spark the creative process. As we seek to create Christian community, AI may prove to be a practical assistant.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of two books on digital ministry. No chatbots were harmed in the making of this blogpost.

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Busy-ness, tech layoffs, and looming spiritual crisis

Writing for The Atlantic in 2019, Derek Thompson described the accelerating influence of "Workism,"or "the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose."

In the piece, Thompson traced two highly interrelated patterns in American culture: the drastic decline of religious participation, and the accelerating rise of those who describe themselves exclusively in terms of their career. Thompson argued that the workplace has supplanted religion and other institutions as a source of identity and belonging. Accordingly, the workplace has become America's new temple.

But I think Thompson's analysis is only part of the story. It's not just that the workplace has become a de facto temple. It's that our way of working - the busyness, the frenetic pace of it all - has become a cultural idol. Busyness, it seems, has entrenched itself as the only core value that we all share in common.

This explains why when asked to describe the state of our work life, we often share that we are "busy," with a smug sense of self-satisfaction, as if the busy are the blessed among us.

The symptoms of "Workism" are visible everyday, but are particularly striking during the summer months. We're working longer hours, taking fewer vacations, and leaving more paid time off on the able. According to the 2017 State of American Vacation report, American workers took an average of 20.3 days of vacation every year from 1978 until 2000. The rate has dropped nearly every year since. This year, Americans will only take an average of 16 days off, essentially donating one week of paid time off back to their employers.

Perhaps the case of the vanishing vacation can be explained not as a product of individual companies but as a broader cultural trend. Despite the fact that firms are doling out more vacation days to attract and retain talent, and despite their supposed support for detachment from email, 79% of American workers still check their work email while on vacation. According to The Washington Post, 4% of Americans check email constantly while on vacation. Workism has wheels, and will be joining you for your summer road trip.

The chief problem with Workism is that it places the things we do, or more specifically, the tasks we complete, at the pinnacle of human identity. When we put so much weight into the pursuit of tasks, we have little capacity left to examine our beliefs (what we think), or more importantly, our values (how we think about what matters). The things we do overshadow the things we believe, while crushing completely the things that we value.

It is ironic, although unsurprising, that our culture has a remedy for workism and task-obsession: namely, better organization of our tasks.

#productivitytok is among the most followed topics on social media. Books on task management are fixtures on Amazon's best-seller lists. And a cohort of productivity experts ranging from academics (Cal Newport) to evangelical Christian pastors (John Mark Comer) stands ready with exercises and checklists to reduce your busyness and organize the things you do - provided you are willing to complete the tasks they prescribe.

This is not to say that the we do is unimportant, or that doing a lot of meaningful work is undesirable. Occupations are often central to our vocational identity, and for good reason. Provided we have the opportunity to continue these efforts, our life may seem well-lived, perhaps even meaningful.

But what happens when our tasks are suddenly taken away from us?

Since the start of 2023, over 150,000 US tech workers have been laid off, their jobs cuts announced by a boilerplate email sent in the middle of the night. These lay offs are just the beginning of the disruption about to impact the workforce.

By some estimates, 300 million jobs globally will be "lost or degraded" due to artificial intelligence. And these jobs aren't the blue collar factory positions long thought of as at risk to automation. These job losses will affect computer programmers, graphic designers, digital marketers, and countless other white-collar professions long thought to be immune from automation and digital disruption.

It's no surprise, then, that layoffs are doing measurable harm to the mental health of workers, particularly those affected by job cuts. Indeed, this moment has all the makings of a shared cultural crisis.

For how can someone have a stable, rooted identity in the work they do when that work is no longer available?

How can one's sense of self be defined through tasks, let alone jobs or careers, when AI displacement and mass layoffs have arrived in seemingly every industry?

What happens when one's sense of identity, rooted not in religion nor in institutions but in the busyness of the workplace, is interrupted by job loss?

It's unlikely that there is a solution to this looming crisis of identity. Disruptions to our tasks and work lives are here to stay. This is not a crisis that has an easy solution. All one can do is to develop a certain capacity for resilience. And in this moment, resilience requires a shift in perspective.

It's time to label Workism as a destructive force, to view busyness as a threat to rather than a source of our identity.

It's time to find mentors, teachers, friends, and yes, even institutions, who can push away our growing list of tasks (if only for a moment) and to help us discover our values. It's time to study the art of discernment, rather than the practices of productivity.

As Carolyn Chen points out in her new book "Work Pray Code,"the world of work has developed its own theologies. These new theologies suggest that alignment between work and vocation defines our "authentic selfhood." In this digital age, our sense of selfhood has been redefined as alignment between work and purpose. It's time to rediscover the beliefs and values that are fundamental to our spiritual identities.

ChatGPT and the End of Digital Ministry

I thought I would write about artificial intelligence and digital ministry, until I realized that ChatGPT could write on my behalf:

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Since March 2020, most Christian communities have tested new models of digital and hybrid ministry. We sought to bring the church online because we saw the web as a place where faith could be nourished through content and conversation. We imagined that Christian community could flourish in digital spaces where real people were increasingly focusing their time and attention.

The goal of these models was not to replace in-person forms of church but to convene and revitalize new expressions of community. During the pandemic, the goal was simply to create some semblance of church community for a time of distress and distancing. More recently, the goal has shifted towards inclusive outreach, with digital seen as an accessible entryway into the life of the church.

Yet underlying this experiment in digital ministry was a core assumption: that the conversations we had, that the stories we encountered, would reflect the real, lived experiences of other human beings striving to express the inexpressible.

We inhabit a world where the concept of authority is murky and misunderstood. Still, we know that digital content and conversation from our church is authentic and trustworthy because it emerges through real relationship.

The online prayers and perspectives, the digital stories and the sermons, they work to edify communities because they come from people who we know and trust.

This, incidentally, is the reason why we watch online worship with low quality production value, or why we'll listen to a podcast episode with scratchy audio. Because the content originates from a familiar source, we understand it to be authentic and trustworthy.

For all of the patchy audio and shaky camera feeds, digital ministry carried the church through a pandemic because it brought together real people to express and respond to concrete encounters with a living God.

But what happens when a chatbot can write a sermon as effectively as compelling as the most gifted preacher, in a fraction of the time? What happens when AI-generated words can masquerade as someone's actual creative work?

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Chat GPT should not push us away from ministry in digital spaces. But this technological upheaval should force a reckoning with the purpose, or the ends, of digital ministry.

In an AI-infused world, content creation and consumption cannot be goals, or the ends, of digital ministry. As AI comes to create better content than we can, such an approach will create a vicious cycle: more and more high quality content leads to more individual content consumption, which drives us away from lived encounter with the neighbor. The view, the like, and the retweet can no longer be key performance indicators to the digital minister.

The world is about to be bombarded with technological changes we still cannot understand. All we know for certain is that this new technology will be captivating, addicting, even all-encompassing. In such an environment, digital-only forms of church community will only turn us further inward. Moving forward, the goal of our digital ministry must be to nudge an outward turn from a self-absorbed world.

In this model, digital ministry will offer an inclusive word that pulls us back to human relationship. When done well, digital ministry will become a lifeline that pulls us back to the face-to-face and the analog. In that sense, we have reached the end of digital ministry as a separate alternative to analog, offline church.

As I write this blog post, I am looking ahead to Sunday, May 21st, 2023, when I will preach a sermon on the 17th chapter of John at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Madison. Given how busy I've been lately, maybe it's best that I outsource the creative process.

Or maybe, I'll crack the spine of my Lutheran Study Bible and try to understand what all of John's talk of spiritual unity means for today's church.

Maybe I'll try to find relevant stories from the congregation, or anecdotes of my own experience. I'll likely turn to my usual preaching resources - podcasts from Luther Seminary's WorkingPreacher, and aging Bible commentaries my grandfather left me.

Perhaps I'll even include a joke about Lutherans and coffee. It might take more time. It might not be as clear or succinct as what AI could generate. But it'll be authentic.

Whether watched in-person or on the church's YouTube feed, my prayer is that the sermon may lead to real conversations with actual people. Whether viewed on Facebook or recapped in our email newsletter, my hope is that will tell a specific story of what God is up to in our world. And in the post-pandemic, post-AI church, that must be our purpose.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes" and "The Holy and the Hybrid." Neither were written by a chatbot.

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