Justin R. Lester, pastor of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Vallejo, CA, walks church leaders through five steps to bring AI into their congregations: start with basics, discuss implications, address theological and ethical concerns, highlight real cases, and encourage dialogue.
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Hey everyone, my name is Justin. I pastor a church in Vallejo, California named Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. I'm so privileged to pastor some of God's favorite people. And one of the areas of my life that I love to navigate is technology in the local church. And as I've been reading a lot about artificial intelligence, I see a lot of statuses, see a lot of questions that are arisen about it. I took some time with my podcast to think about how we can utilize artificial intelligence and what artificial intelligence is for us as religious leaders and as leaders in general. That's on my podcast, made for Mondays. But I thought it'd be kind of cool to jump on here just to talk directly to you about AI and church leadership. I've been in leadership in a local church. I've been preaching for 15 years now. I've been in leadership in a local church as a staff member, full time staff member, paid staff member, and a pastor since I was 27 years old. I've been talking about technology in terms of social media and video work and Facebook and things like that since its inception. And more recently I've been falling in love with this new age of tech, which really the thing about this is AI is not new. We're just getting access to it. And so as I began to think through this, I thought the opportunity would be to share with some of us and some of you on here if you want to, about how we can explain artificial intelligence and talk about artificial intelligence as church leaders and ways that we can explain it to the people in our pews as it's coming into the world. If we're going to be liberators, I think this would be helpful to you. I also wrote this as a blog format as well. My website www.jrlester.com so I want to give some definition to AI and then give you five ways that you can possibly begin to use this and talk about this in your church. And we'd love to talk to you afterwards. Put questions in the comments if you want to. Hopefully this can help you. So what is artificial intelligence? Artificial intelligence refers to this the ability of machines and computer systems to perform tasks that require human intelligence, like learning, reasoning and problem solving. AI technologies use algorithms and statistical models to analyze data, recognize patterns and make predictions. Now, these systems can be designed to learn and improve over time through the use of machine learning and deep learning techniques. AI has been used in a wide range of applications, from speech recognition to natural language processing to image and object recognition, and is expected to have a Significant impact on industries going forward. It already has in places like healthcare, finance, transportation, even church websites as well. So what about the local church? And here's some ways I believe you can talk about it to your church. I'm teaching this to my church in August. But here's some ways that I believe you can think about the concept of AI, implementation of AI, understanding of AI and alleviating the fear of people when it comes to AI. So number one, start with the basics, right? Many people in our churches, yourself included, may not be familiar with the technical details of AI. So it's helpful to talk about what AI is and the system. The simple way to put it is AI is a system that can learn and make decisions based on data. That's it. AI is a system that can learn and make predictions based on data. So how does AI work? It uses algorithms and machine learning and then use different examples of it, like how it's been used in healthcare, how it's used on Siri and Alexa, how it's predictive based upon, like what? These are things that you would eat based upon what's in your fridge. It's all data driven. I would challenge you pastors and leaders to use the basics. Start with the basics. Explain what AI is and how it works to alleviate the fear of people. Number two, discuss the implications. So now that you've told them the basics of AI, discuss the implications of its use so you can talk about its potential benefits like chatbot pastoral care, or let's get back, pull it back, increased efficiency and productivity. The goal of it is not for people to lose jobs, rather for AI systems to do the mundane jobs and then for us to do the more complex jobs. So discuss the implications of AI with your church and members who are curious, as well as the potential risks. Like there's ethical concerns about it, there's job displacement. Like we have to discuss how artificial intelligence does not understand what black and brown bodies looks like because the world doesn't. We have to understand that there are some situational things that comes with artificial intelligence, such as people losing jobs because they're doing the simple things like chatbots and chat phone lines, things like that. They're implications of utilizing AI. But number three, that I want you to consider the theological and ethical implications. Right? We are interested in these theological implications, but I want you to see how AI can relate back to issues like human dignity and justice and compass flow out of Christian love ethics. And consider how does AI promote human flourishing? How is it going to take away from suffering and how can it give forth compassion? On my podcast made for Monday, I take some time to break this down further about Christian love, ethics and artificial intelligence. Number four. Then highlight relevant cases like how chatbots are used for pastoral care or how AI power analytics can help you predict things in terms of attendance and giving. How AI can help you predict an increase or decline in your church before it happens. So you're not surprised by it, but you see it. Highlight relevant uses of it. Highlight the ways it is utilized on your Facebook page to reach people or to use on your website to reach certain people. I want you to highlight certain cases of artificial intelligence. And then lastly, like all things, encourage dialogue and reflection. Like I want you to encourage church leaders to engage in dialogue and reflection on the ethical implications of AI in your context. Consider how using it aligns with the values and mission of your church and and see if it's relevant for you. Now the thing about this I want to be really clear about is the same way social media, the same way streaming the same way, the same way videos in church, same way LED screens, the same way dress kind of hit some of us or we embraced it. AI is here. People are using it on their jobs, people are using it in their homes, people are using it everywhere. Either we get ready for artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence going to make us ready. So if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. Approach AI in a way that's accessible, relevant, grounded in values. Your church is going to be okay. But we got to foster a deeper understanding of this stuff as it's emerging technology. Now. I'm gladly I love to talk to your church about it if you want to throw it on me, this 34 year old pastor who loves tech. I'll gladly zoom into your church and talk about this stuff if you want to because I think it's really amazing stuff. God was not surprised when he told us that we will do greater things. He didn't say we would do the same things. He said we would do greater things. He's not surprised that we're going to do this. He's not surprised that it exists. Let's do something amazing with God's amazing creation. Namely you. I hope this helped you. My name is Justin Lester. Once again, my website is www.jllester.com. you can go on there if you want to connect with me or contact me or put it in the comments as well. Any way that I can help build a local church, I'm here for it. I'm excited about seeing what God's going to do in your life because of artificial intelligence in our lives. Have an amazing, amazing day.
