The AI Boom Is Here and Most Churches Aren’t Ready

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of that Tech Pastor and Tech with that Tech Bastard. My name is Justin Lester and I'm your host here. Thank you all of you who've been tuning in and commenting on YouTube and engaging with us on Spotify. My hope is to bring you, like I said, every single week, a fresh rundown of what's going on in AI, what it means for our churches, ministries and our communities, and especially just how we are applying this stuff. And so I got five stories I want to bring to you guys. Some other stuff I wanted to give you a quick rundown on as well. And then we'll get to a tool to use and then we'll get to a prompt as well as a challenge you use. And today we're talking about mega prompts. And so it's not just a basic prompt, but a mega prompt, if you will. And I'm excited to dive in this with you. So my name is Justin Lester. This is Tech with that Tech Pastor. We're hitting here June 6, 2025, the year of our Lord 2025. So glad you guys are here with us. And let's jump into our time together Tech with that Tech Pastor as we dive into our time today. You know, I want to say this personally. It's been a cool week for me. Earlier this week I was at Hampton University's Ministers conference and we had a chance to dive into artificial intelligence at the conference. So it was super. So if you're here from Hampton, thank you guys for being here. If you're tuning in from those spaces, pretty cool. Got some other stuff coming up this month and next week if you're available on I'll be a part of the Black AI Think Tank and so you can sign up@blackaithinktank.com and I speak at 11am Eastern on next Friday. But there's great, great people all week long. And so if you're available and want to learn more about AI from some amazing Black leaders, please join us at the Black AI Think Tank Week for Black the National Black AI Literacy Week with Black A. I think taking a really, really cool dude named Stefan Youngblood I think you'll love as well. But here's my five stories. I want to give you five stories and actually think through these stories and five random things that are happening as well that we'll get into our tool, our prompt and our challenge. So the first one here, AI is is consuming so much energy and I want to unpack this. So first of all, AI's energy, appetite is off the charts. What projected is by the end of 2025, AI systems can be using more power than Bitcoin, potentially gulping down nearly half of all electric by data centers around the globe. Now, this is a big deal. And the reason this is a big deal I think we have to care for, especially those those of us of faith and those of us who lead churches for two reasons. Number one, creation, care. God calls us in the book of Genesis to steward the earth. We're called to create and cultivate. So if running these fancy AI models making your cat pictures is burning more fossil fuel, we have to ask ourselves a question of how to balance innovation while also caring for the earth God's given us. And I think that's where we have to look for cloud providers who are powered by renewables or helping tech volunteers think about energy efficiency as we're using AI driven tech. And then secondly is budget impact. So churches are starting to rent space for data centers or pay for cloud services as those energy costs keep climbing. Hosting an online giving portal, a live stream could get even pricier. So that we got to be good stewards of all of this. I think we have to shop around for sustainable hosting options. We've been partnering with local colleges or nonprofits that have green data initiatives. Now this has been something that has been brewing. People have been talking about how much water this uses and how much energy it's consuming. And all that's happening is because of all the rush to market and all the people that are competing. It's getting worse. And greed is a terrible thing. And so we're seeing this happen more and more. AI's energy consumption is soaring. What are we going to do about it and how will we care? Let's take care of the Earth and let's also be intentional about the people we partner with. So think about the green data initiatives. Think about people who are working to make sure we take care of the Earth. We are called to create and cultivate. So I'm a huge proponent of using artificial intelligence. Like, I'm a huge proponent of electric cars. I'm a huge proponent. I have a diesel truck. There's so many things that are killing our Earth. I don't think we need to accelerate anything. All right, number two, Nvidia is breaking records with their revenue. So Nvidia is a chip maker behind most of AI power. I went to their conference a couple months ago. You hear me talk about it all the time. And Nvidia's conference, they talk about how much money they've invested and how much they're spending in robotics. And so here's what they hit this month. I'm telling you how important this is. They hit $44.1 billion in quarterly revenue, smashing every expectation. Now that tells us a couple things. Number one, AI is not a fad. It's a fast moving train. So if your church is not at least on one platform, you're about to get left behind. Let me be really clear. The biggest chip maker in the country just smashed all expectations. AI is not just a fad anymore. If you are not with it, you're going to get left behind. And number two, hardware cost matters. When purchases spike like it is, right, prices go up. So if your tech tank wants to buy GPUs for video processing or live stream enhancements or AI driven sermon editing, you're gonna pay premiums now because everything is going up. So what's the impact? Start looking at your budgets now. If you've been waiting to upgrade your sound system, if you've been waiting to switch to AI assisted video stuff, get quotes now as vendors about educational and nonprofit discounts. And don't be afraid to shop for refurbished gear, especially if you're just dipping your toes in AI driven tools. I'm trying to warn you, everything is about to get expensive. 3. Perplexity Labs now this is exciting to me. Perplexity Labs is now live for pro subscribers. Think of it as an AI powered office suite that can break reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, slide decks, or all by feeding it like vibe coding natural language instructions. For those of you on staffs at churches or nonprofits who juggle budgets and attendance reports and volunteer schedules and outreach metrics perpetually Labs is a game changer. So instead of wrestling with Excel spreadsheets or hours formatting reports, you can simply say show me last quarter's giving trends by campus and program and you got a chart ready to share at your next business meeting. This is going to save time, which means more moments for pastoral care, prayer and community outreach. But always double check AI generated numbers. If the tool misreads your files, you could end up with misleading figures. So be sure that you always have a human in the loop. No matter how good this gets, always have a human in the loop. But I always think you should try out Perplexity Labs. I'm excited to play with it. I have a video that comes out in a couple of days that'll actually do some work on Perplexity Labs as well. Number four Odyssey's AI model turns video into interactive world. So this one comes out of London. Odyssey released a research preview of an AI model that turns plain video into interactive worlds. So imagine filming your church parking lot on Sunday morning and then instantly converting it to a 3D space where people can click on the youth room door or explore the worship center or even hear audio sympaths of previous sermons. For media ministries, this offers a brand new frontier for digital discipleship. Virtual campus tours for new members or interactive Bible experiences for kids. Even digital outreach where people can participate and navigate virtual fellowship halls and connect with people. The possibilities for this are amazing. So it's still in preview mode. The tech is very glitchy, but keep an eye on it and start brainstorming for how you can pilot something like this at your church. I even suggest you partner with a creative volunteer at your church or a local college media department. And as always, keep an eye on your budget and don't underestimate a learning curve. A little bit of patience can make you a digital pioneer in your city. Hugging Face gives us two humanoid robots. So Hugging Face, known for open source AI, just introduce two humanoid robots. Now, they're not your typical factory bots. They can carry on conversations, they can navigate physical spaces, and they can help with simple tasks. Now, before you imagine robots preaching on Sunday, let's think practically, right? The easiest thing is a robot preaching. Could a humanoid robot handle check in for vacation Bible school? Could humanoid robot help during church events like handing up bulletins, set up and break down, guiding people or assisting people or serving people, or even helping someone with slides during worship? It's amazing. I think also we gotta balance this with ethics, right? In the black church context where I pastor, we've always valued the human touch, pastoral visits from smiles and meals. So if a robot replaces face to face interaction, I think we can possibly risk losing a soul to soul connection. So the challenge to me is balancing efficiency with empathy. If we use bots wisely, like routines and repetitive tasks, we free volunteers up for pastoral care, prayer and genuine relationships. Now this leads us to a more important question about our values. Automation is awesome if it helps us serve better. But automation is not good when it erodes our humanity. So these are the things going on in our world right now and I really hope you guys take heed to it. I'd love to hear what you think in the comments about the soaring energy consumption, what Nvidia is doing in terms of breaking revenue, about Perplexity Labs, what Odyssey, and about Hugging Face and the implications that I'm suggesting. For our churches. The implications that I'm suggesting for your business, this stuff is real. This stuff is having fun. It's coming out. I think also we got to be aware of it. Let me bring you aware I'm up to date on some other stuff as well. I think it's also important. So that's the beginning parts. I want to tell you this. So the FDA launches their ELSA tool, which is a general generative AI tool that's assisting scientific reviewers by summarizing events, reviewing protocols and identifying high priority inspection targets. It's built within AWS's GovCloud, so it's helping streamline workflows while giving you Data Security. Number two. Now on a negative side, Builders AI collapse. So Builder AI was an AI started backed by Microsoft and SoftBank but inflated their revenue. So the company engaged with Shimbu Strategy. An Israeli espionage firm raised concerns about corporate governments and ethical practices in AI startups. So as much as we talk about the good stuff, there's still darkness in this. Number three, Anthropic CEO warns that AI impact on entry level jobs so Dario Ahmadi, the CEO of Anthropic cautioned that Gen AI could eliminate up to 50% of white collar jobs, driving us to unemployment to 20% within five years. This is a big deal when it comes to AI deployment, which is why also you've got to upskill. You've got to upskill. Number four, Google's vaio. And I want you to see the video I made. Here's the video. I cannot believe this is not a real video. But it is. This is a prompt video of me using Google's VO3. Isn't that crazy? Think about this. Google Veo3 is raising deepfake concerns. So it's capable of generating realistic clips with sound and dialogue. But people are using it in deepfakes, conflicts, misinformation. Think about the ones who've used it for news stories and where they're getting fake news out. Scary. Then lastly, Google's filmmaking tool Flow. So this is AI driven film designed for helping creative generate cinematic clips and scenes built from input from professionals. It gets camera control, scene building. It's democratizing concrete tent creation, which is pretty cool. This is what's happening. It feels like one day in AI is like a year. So that leads to the tool I want to tell you about. Then my prompting challenge. Before we do that, you guys already know, I got to tell you a little bit about Pastor GPT, Black pastor. And you're looking for a GPT that is Catered to you to help you craft sermons and do pastoral care and do work. Well, I got made one for you. It's called Pastor GPT and it's made for black pastors and black church leaders by a black pastor. In here you have formative space, formative ways to engage with your preaching, your teaching, your pastoral care, all for black congregations, black people and black pastors. Now, anybody can use it, but it's crafted especially for black people to have a space to do their own thing and to engage holistically as black individuals. So please go to pastorgpt Co and take a look at it. There's subscription models. There's a free model where you get five conversations a month. There's the first tier where you get 50 conversations a month and the second tier where you get up to 150 conversations a month. Take a look. Try it out. The goal of it is to give black pastors and church leaders a space to bleed black pastors and church leaders. I look forward to engaging with you in what Pastor GPT can do for you, for your future and for our churches and for all that God's calling you to be. So haven't already, please go try out Pastor GPT. It was my baby and I wanted to make sure I got that out to my friends and all of you today. All right, so what is my new release tool? There's a tool that came out brand new this week and it's Google's Jewels. So Google's Jewels is a public beta. It's an asynchronous AI coding assistant. So if you code, whether you're a developer, team building, custom management tools or just volunteers, those of you, even at my church who are doing Python, this helps you write and review and optimize your code faster. So instead of waiting for someone to push updates, this can suggest improvements immediately and help you give you feedback loops asynchronously. Now, it's a blessing for people, it's a blessing for volunteers who you might code on nights and weekends. But I think for churches, here's what I want you to hear about Google Jewels. So I think if you've got someone like maintaining your giving your registrations or custom apps you're building, juuls can speed up work and still let you keep things creative without having to vibe code. I like vibe coding, but this is really cool too. So that means faster things, more engaging chats. Listen, you don't treat AI suggestions as the gospel. You always review it and this becomes a space for you to help review and Accelerate that. So if you're coding, Google Jewel is going to be a helpful tool for you and it's in beta testing. So go have fun with Google Jewel. Here's my trend. So here's the thing. So my prompt for you this week, that was my tool. Here's my prompt. My prompt for you this week is mega prompts. Mega prompts are going to give you deep context. So like everyone's talking now, but think about mega prompts. They're long, detailed prompts to give AI deep context so you can get nuanced, intentional action based responses. So instead of saying like, you know, write me a devotional on joy, you say this, you're a pastor at a church and I need a devotional on joy written in a voice with these emotions, right? And I want to have things to talk about, I don't know, service to people, cultural references, modern angles on hip hop and include places how, I don't know, I can utilize this to help also give this to my kids as well. So that's a mega prompt, right? Because get that this, you're giving the AI context, you're giving AI style, you're giving AI interests. These mega prompts are the ones you can also use to create post social media posts to design volunteer training. So if you want a mega prompt, you can use ChatGPT. You can also use Pass through GPT and invest time in crafting mega prompts that clarify who you are, what you're speaking to and what you need. And you'll be surprised how much more relevant your response will be when you use a mega prompt. So I want to challenge you to be intentional with your mega prompts. And so the way you can do that with your prompts is recorded on your phone. Record it in your memos and take the transcript or upload the audio file itself and let it transcribe it for you in ChatGPT or record it directly in ChatGPT or perplexity, whatever you use. But do more mega prompts, make sure your prompts are longer, more robust, get everything out of your head and go from there. Alright, so lastly, my challenge to you for this week, my challenge to you this week is going to be very simple. I want to give you a challenge as this a Sabbath. One of the things that I've done as I've been doing a lot more traveling is I've taken time away from looking at AI news daily. I used to be so enthralled in everything I could find on AI, everything I found going on. And then it just got overwhelming. And so for the last week, this week, I took a break from AI News until I sat down and went through perplexity, which helped me prepare this podcast to give me all the top news of the week. And I got about 30 stories and I combed through, gave you guys the top five and my thoughts on it, and then I took five more because I'm like, there's so much going on, but I have so many more stories out there because everything happens. So I muted a lot of my blogs, I get, I muted a lot of things because it was just overwhelming and it was freeing to not know anything and spend time with the Lord. So my challenge to you is one day this week, take an AI Sabbath, Take a moment for one day to pull away from your AI tools, to pull away from your digital devices, and take some time to really connect with God. This week I really want to challenge you to make sure that as easy as it is to get information, as it is to prompt everything, take some time to unplug, to read, to listen to God, to listen to the birds outside, to listen to the wind, to talk to people around you, AI is going to be there, it's going to evolve, and you'll catch up the moment you get back. But that text message can wait, that email can wait, that phone call can wait. Make sure you and God are good. I wouldn't be that tech pastor if I didn't also pastor you. While we're talking about tech, my tool, Google Jewels, my prompt, go megaprompt my challenge. Unplug for a day, then plug back in. But I guarantee when you unplug, you'll see how God is plugged into you. Alright, this is Deck with that tech pastor. Every Friday we're here with you with a new episode, giving you something to think about, something to engage in. Please. If you're on YouTube, please comment below. If you're on Spotify, please like and share this out. And if you're online, please share this with someone so someone can know what we're talking about. And hopefully this could encourage them to be the person God's called them to be. I'm out. So go out, go code, go build, go deploy, go have some fun, go change the world because of what you're called to do. If you like it, like it. If you dislike it, dislike it. Keep innovating, keep serving, keep interrogating, keep building, keep deploying, but most of all, keep the faith.