Unlocking the Future: How AI Transforms Your Church Experience

Well, hey everybody. Welcome to Made for Mondays. I'm here with Camden and I'm so glad you guys are here to start your Mondays off. Great, Camden, what's one way you would want to encourage somebody to have a good day today? To make people happy? How can people do that today? To give somebody stuff? So let's give people what? A hug. Smile. I'm gonna smile for everyone, Cam. And show them you lost your tooth. Those of you who are watching on YouTube, you can see that Camden has lost his upper right tooth. Right Cam. Awesome. Let's jump into Made for Monday. Today we're going to discuss how artificial intelligence can assist us in religious spaces. We've talked about your workspace, we talked about your general life today. Now we're going to jump into my wheelhouse, which is Religious Spaces. And I'm so excited to do so today. So let's get into Made for Mondays. Remember, you own your Mondays. Mondays don't own you. So let's see how AI can assist us in religious spaces.

Well, hey, Made for Mondays listeners.

Justin here.

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For Monday. So glad you guys are tuned tuned in with us today. And today we're going to discuss what it means for artificial intelligence to assist in religious spaces. So to give you a little bit of background on me, I'm a pastor of a church. One of the things I prided myself on is to bring innovation from the world into the space of the church. I believe that God created all things, that everything is in God, everything flows from God, even the good, the bad, the ugly and the indifferent. And that may be frustrating to think about and hear, but I believe it to be true. That being said, because of that, I believe that all forms of technology not only need to be welcomed into the church, but that the goal of the local church is to flip anything that has been used negatively that's going to harm people or distance people from the cross, to flip it on its head to be used for the gospel. I believe artificial intelligence, as much fear as we have about it and as much worries of sending the world to artificial intelligence, I believe it can be used for the betterment of our communities, namely our religious spaces. So. So today I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about and engage with how AI and the church can actually work together. Now, first of all, let's define artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, we believe, is a branch of computer science that focuses on creating machines that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as learning, problem solving and decision making. AI uses algorithm and statistical models to analyze large amounts of data, recognize patterns, and make predictions or decisions based upon that data. So with that AI, literally what ChatGPT and all these other things wonder AI, all these different things are doing is taking data that's already been out in the world, combining it together, and then producing something to you. That's all it's doing. So everything AI gives is something we've already done, which is why we talk about ethics. It's not AI's fault that it's biased. We are not AI's fault. This had ridiculous assumptions about people. We gave it the information. It's simply searching the Internet, our emails, our text history, our search histories. It's literally just analyzing all the data we have given the world, put it together, and it utilizes it to produce something. And what it does is it makes assumptions. And we talked about that earlier in our earlier podcast. So let's get to how it works at the local church. So if AI is going to assist our businesses, if AI is going to assist us as leaders, if AI is going to assist us in the medical profession, if AI is going to assist students and professors and teachers, and if AI is going to assist and be predictive in so many different things, I believe the same thing can happen with the local church. One of the reasons I believe we want artificial intelligence so much is that we want something that is bigger than us, that we can't see, that can answer questions. Sounds a lot like the way that some of us see God or the divine right, that we see God as the Father, that is one who has all the answers. We can't see certain people understand, certain people hear and discern. We have all these data called the Bible that we are given. And now we're trying to make predictions based upon what the scriptures say and do they apply? And does this work? And what does the scriptures say about this? And what do the scriptures say about that? And I believe that very same thing shows us why we want Santa Claus so bad. We want someone we can't see to give us answers, to give us gifts. We want something we can't see to give us answers. And one of the main issues I've seen that I can see with artificial intelligence when it comes to local church is treating AI like it's God. It's not, but it can be used to enhance our picture and vision of God. AI isn't God, but it can be used to enhance our experiences with him. So let's talk about some ways that I believe we can use that in the local church. Number one, chatbots for pastoral care. We're actually adding this in my own congregation. The chatbots are computer programs. You see this a lot with different like across the seas, across the ocean, companies from the United States and people from across the ocean coming to the United States as well. Using these chatbots to have conversations in different languages as predictive models where you say certain things that can answer certain questions and lead to a certain end that these chatbots literally make predictions for you. It has conversations with the users so that you don't actually need as many people. So I believe these chatbots for pastoral care give you an opportunity pastors to provide pastoral care like responding to prayer requests, answering simple questions about faith so that you have predictive things already built into your church. That when someone asks a question, you could automatically answer, like what about faith? What does your church believe about this? What does your church believe about that? What does your church believe about Jesus believes? It's very simple to already have those predictive models there. So when someone asks the question, you can answer it without having to call the church, set up a meeting and sit down, have a conversation. You can give the data right there. Because people aren't going to read our websites for all the things we say. What's in our covenant, what's under belief system, what's in our bylaws. So to have a chatbot system that answers that question actually makes it a lot simpler. Not only for guests, but for people. And then if they need to access someone, they can access us. But the cool thing is that's 24, seven. It's not just a one time thing, it's 24. Seven piece. Secondly, automated translations as we see we in a world that's a melting pot right we have people coming from all across the world coming to our churches, coming to our live streams, and this AI powered tool, infused into our live streams, infused to our websites, automatically translates our stuff to bridge translation barriers in religious spaces. For example, an AI powered translation device could be used to translate sermons, translate Bible studies, translate devotionals into different languages, making them accessible to a wider range of people. By not having to hire someone to do the work, you just automatically do it. On artificial intelligence and seeing that most churches are under 200 members, but seeing how diverse our world is getting, I think we're going to need to be able to utilize some of these tools to still build the kingdom without having to sacrifice a budget that seems to be getting slimmer and slimmer, especially in the midst of what we feel in inflation and recession. Although I truly believe there's no recession in the Kingdom of God. Number three Smart classrooms. I believe AI powered tools can enhance spiritual development and religious education. For example, a AI virtual assistant can answer students questions in class. If a student is out, it can help with teacher sorry is out. You can help with answering questions. It automatically can assist with giving personalized feedback to work for students as well. I believe smarter classrooms for Sunday school, for midweek studies, for small group studies give you a chance to not have to worry about tabling a question until Sunday when you have the small group leader has a chance to meet with the pastor, but now you can actually answer the question immediately while you're in the small group. Number four Predictive analytics for church growth. See, AI is predictive. It knows the community you're in. If you give it your website, it can see your website, can see your social media. It's predictive. It can predict patterns of growth and patterns of decline in your giving in your attendance. This can help you make informed decisions about how to allocate your resources, how to plan for the future, and just to give you a framework, not to give you the exact, but to give you a framework. I'm not saying that AI is going to tell you exactly how to grow your church. It's not on the ground, it's not real. But it can give you some predictive people, some predictive spaces. So be sure to be specific in the questions you ask it so that when you inquire upon artificial intelligence, it can give you some really sound advice as to how to navigate the next season of your church. And then lastly can customize worship experiences. See, the cool thing about artificial intelligence powered music and lighting systems is people can take the same lyrics and add different music to it. And now you're able to curate a worship experience in the midst of this intergenerational movement we have in churches where we have so many different generations a part of the local church now, it can curate music for people even while they're live in worship, or it can curate lighting systems as well to automatically adjust tempo, automatically adjust style of music, automatically adjust lighting systems. So it'll alleviate some of the worship wars we have going on in church right now. Some of the fear we have of change in church by actually having the word, the gospel go forth and just changing whether or not it's an organ or a guitar behind it. Doing that with artificially intelligent and artificial intelligence to give people some of their preferences prayerfully will give us a chance to continue to preach the gospel and not waste our time as church leaders fighting over the frivolous. Because we can function in that which is eternal. And I believe that's how artificial intelligence come together. So I truly believe that AI has potential to enhance and support religious spaces. And those of you listening to this, and maybe you're an educator or you're in the education field, I mean, also I believe can help you in a variety of ways as well. It can do things all the way from pastoral care to predictive patterns of growth. But we have to use it in such a way that always honors our values and missions in our communities and to ensure it doesn't replace the human interaction. Because the goal is to be known because Christ knows us first, right? To have an everyday relationship with Jesus. Artificial intelligence can enhance our experiences, but it's not the goal of it. It's not to replace who God is. So if that's helpful for you, hope that's something that you can take into this week to even consider in your church. Some areas where AI may be able to help. Take a moment to play around with some of the tools. You see, one of the things that's personally helped me was I put into wonder AI what my community may look like in 20 years. And it showed us some things that actually took two leaders in our community and said, listen, there's some changes we need to make because if computer generated analytics can take a look at our community and say in 20 years it can look like this and we look like this, something's got to meet in the middle because something is possible here that even computers say is possible that I'm not going to let politics get in the way of. There's ways we can use this as a way to actually change communities and not hold us hostage. So I hope this is helpful to you. And next week, we're going to talk about ethics behind this, and we're going to engage in the can we merge a Christian love ethic in light of Howard Thurman's mysticism and bring that together with ethics and artificial intelligence? So next week is going to be a lot of fun as we continue our journey with artificial intelligence here on Made for Mondays. Will you say our affirmations with me? Say, I am me. I can be me. No one will stop me from being me. You are made for this. You are made for Mondays. Mondays don't own you. You. You own your Mondays. Now go and win the day. It's waiting for you to go destroy it. Have a great day.