Episode 39: A.I. and the Local Church

To the Ruled Church podcast.

Christ Is King Over the Local Church

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

It's been a while, Eddie.

It has.

It's been a while since we've actually recorded. Thankfully, the podcasts continue to roll out. This is, I have to look, episode, drum roll, 39.

39, wow, we're almost to 40.

That's like you.

I'm a little past 40.

Welcome to the Rural Church, what? Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I'm your co-host, Allen Nelson. With me is my brother-in-law, partner in the ministry, good friend, Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of Marshall Baptist Church.

How you doing, Eddie?

I'm doing well, man. You can tell we're a little bit rusty getting started on this 39th podcast of the Rural Church Podcast 2 .0.

I'm a little bit rusty because I hadn't had my coffee.

Oh, man, how are you even functioning?

Yeah, that's right. You know what I need? Artificial intelligence.

That is right, that's what you need. That'll fix everything.

Without today, we're gonna

Or it may doom everything.

That's right, that's right. We're gonna jump into today's episode and talk about artificial intelligence and the church. And I'll go ahead and put my position on the table. I think I hold a middle position from the two extremes you just said.

I don't think artificial intelligence is gonna help everything, and I don't think it's going to ruin everything. So I'll start off with that. What do you think?

Artificial Intelligence as a Tool, a Common Grace, and a Potential Idol

Yeah, I think that there are definitely some dangers of ways that it can be used in an unethical way. I mean, I think it's a tool like anything else that we have available to us. I mean, right now, you and I are using technology.

We're using computers. We're using the internet. We're using microphones to record and to post this podcast. And yet at the same time, so we know these things can be used for good things. However, if you go out into the podcast sphere, you're gonna find all kinds of podcasts about bad things, ungodly things, unholy things.

And so that being said, I think we're gonna see with AI that it can be used in a positive way, in a godly way, in a way that blesses people, but it can also be used nefariously. And because of its ability to mimic and to shortcut, I think there's gonna be a real danger, a dangerous appeal to the sin nature of mankind to use it in a way that's negative and damaging.

Yeah.

You know, artificial intelligence is beneficiary. Like in some ways, it's a common grace. And it really depends on, you know, how far you wanna define that or whatever. But I mean, there's so many things technologically that we're grateful for in the world today.

And artificial intelligence in many ways is part of that. There's a lot of good that can come from artificial intelligence. We're grateful for security, you know, with face ID and, you know, fingerprinting and, you know, all these sorts of things like that.

But as you say, it comes with some real dangers. And we'll specifically talk about in this episode, you know, some dangers of artificial intelligence and the church. But one of the things this is, I think there's a lot more serious dangers than this, by the way.

I do think there's serious dangers about governments and currency and all those sorts of things. I'm not minimizing that. But as a Christian worldview, let me just go ahead and mention this. As a Christian worldview, artificial intelligence is not ultimately gonna take over the world, right?

That's right.

King Jesus is.

That's right.

In the new heavens and new earth, Christ will put his foot over all the globe. And so another thing is people put, and I'm gonna get to the church in just a second, but people put false hope in artificial intelligence.

Like we're not gonna get to a point where artificial intelligence is gonna help us to live forever. That's not gonna happen.

That's right.

And so these are just some basic things, and maybe we'll talk about it more. I think there is another idolatry associated with artificial intelligence. That is, God has made us in our image. And in one way, artificial intelligence is us trying to make a God.

So, you know, well, first off, do you agree with that? You know what I'm saying? I'm not everybody that uses it.

Well, yeah, we're trying to make something that's almost omniscient. You know, it can access, its ability to access information and at speeds that the human mind couldn't even imagine, which we kind of already have with, you know, internet, you know, search parameters and things.

But it's amazing what the AI can already do, and we know it's gonna accelerate. Now, what we might point out is there are gonna be some real advantages. You know, I look at rural communities like yours and mine, and I know a lot of people are afraid of the jobs that AI may take away, but I actually think that the rise of this type of technology may open up more opportunities, you know, when it comes to remote work and things like that and things that need to be done that companies, there may be jobs that they don't need done anymore because the AI can do those, but there may be support, technological support that needs to be done that will open up more jobs, maybe even remote jobs in rural communities that could be a blessing that we can't even foresee right now just because we don't know how the technology's gonna

Yeah, and I think technology's like that. Technology does take away jobs, you know, but it usually creates jobs, you know? And so a couple of dangers, though, about artificial intelligence, specifically when it comes to the local church, maybe even the rural church, I'll try to mention these.

One, our loss of intelligence on doing things ourselves. Two, I wanna talk about the temptation of pastors to rely on artificial intelligence. And then thirdly, I wanna talk about artificial intelligence and its replaceal of face-to-face fellowship.

So those are three thoughts I have. What about you?

Yeah, those were the same things that I was thinking we needed to address.

So where do you want

Losing the Ability to Do Things Ourselves

So we'll take them in that order.

Okay, so one, so we're concerned about artificial intelligence replacing our ability to know how to do things. So let's start there. So what I mean by that is a lot of people in particularly, I'm generation millennial or whatever, particularly, what are you, generation?

I'm the very, very Tellian, like the last year of generation X. So I'm a Gen Xer, technically, barely.

So

My wife is a millennial and she's two years younger than me.

More like my generation, really. Maybe you got some, but more like my generation and down has really forgotten how to do a lot of basic things. And some of, and it's not in like my son, for example, YouTube is a great thing, but he learns a lot from YouTube, you know?

And it kind of becomes like a crutch for him, you know, in the sense of YouTube's great to learn. But what I mean is if you don't learn a skill, and you're always dependent on technology to teach you that skill, there is the danger of what happens if we're not unable to access the technology.

Does it make sense what I'm trying to communicate?

Yes, yes.

And I think about it, especially in the church and as pastors, you know, you go back and you read brothers in church history and you read their mastery of the scripture. And it's even more amazing when you remember they didn't have Logos or Accordance or even the online Bible softwares, or they couldn't type in a couple of words and it would pop up and tell them all the places those words are used in the Bible.

When they're in their sermons and in their books and in their writings, when they're referencing all these other scriptures, I'm thinking of men like Whitefield and Spurgeon and Jonathan Edwards. And when they're referencing these different scriptures, they're referencing them because they had mastered the scripture.

And I think even for pastors, often we can begin to use these tools that we have. I mean, right now, as I'm looking at you on my screen, I've got two different screens of scripture text on next to you on the screen.

And so I think sometimes we can begin to use these things as a crutch. There's certainly a tool that can be used, but we wanna be careful that our entire interaction with the word of God comes down to the computer doing it for us instead of us recalling it, what it says in Psalm 119, storing away the word in our heart.

Instead, we've got it stored away on a hard drive.

Yeah, I think that's great. I think that's great. I know this is not artificial intelligence, but you talk about, we could talk about study Bibles is a similar problem with the person. So, oh, well, you know what?

You know what? There is a problem with the person in the pew when they don't, when they rely on Google as their theological, you know, foundation.

Yeah, yeah.

Instead of seeking to learn doctrines and own doctrines and seeking to study to show themselves approved and owning the faith and understanding the confession instead of if something comes up, they just Google it.

Well, the problem with that is, okay, not just if there's some sort of global catastrophe where we're unable to access Google, but there are many times that you're not able to, you know, like there are times when you have a coffee with someone or whatever, and you can't really go to that, you know, and you need to be able to discuss these things and you're unable to.

And when you use artificial intelligence to replace the discipline of understanding the Christian faith well and being able to own it well, that's a problem. Now, I use Google all the time. There's stuff that comes up.

I mean, it's impossible to be a master of all, you know? There's just so much, you know, me and you were talking about a situation before the show. And it's like, it's just impossible to go down every single rabbit trail.

That's right.

To understand, you know, to master it all. So it's not that we're against artificial intelligence. Again, don't misunderstand us. Praise God, use it. Use the Google algorithms. However, own the faith.

So I think that's good.

And people need to understand how those things work. This really did happen about nine months ago. Had a guy come, a brother, a Christian brother, and he had a problem with some things that I was doing as a pastor of the church here.

And he basically said, he said, I typed that into Google and, you know, I couldn't find at all. And like the first 20 things that it brought up, none of them agreed with your position. And I was like, well, you know, he wasn't understanding, well, the algorithm wasn't gonna pull up anybody that agreed with my position because he hadn't been looking for that information.

You know?

And so that's not how the algorithm works. That doesn't, that didn't have anything to do with whether or not I was being biblical or whether or not he was right or I was right. I mean, it didn't prove either way.

You know, but I think so often people say, well, you can just Google it. Well, some things, you can Google information, but you can't Google, you know, or you can't ask chat GBT to tell you what is true or what is beautiful or what is good or what is godly.

I mean, it can give you information from off the internet, but it can't give you reliability.

You don't, that's what I'm saying. Like, you don't know the sources that you're pulling up. You know, I've pulled up, I've pulled up things before and maybe I read the first line or two and I'm like, huh, this is, this is okay.

And then I read a little bit more. I'm like, oh, this is Mormon. You know what I'm saying? Like, wait a second. You know, this is, and you realize, no, this isn't okay. And so, you know, I mean, because some of the language and stuff at first seems similar.

So, you know, I think, I think all that's good. So artificial intelligence can be a danger. It can be a problem when, when it comes to not being able to own, own the Christian faith. At the same time, I don't want to slam it as I get, it can be greatly helpful.

You know, there are, there's so much that we can do now when it comes to artificial intelligence. That's, that can be helpful. That can make your life easier. And you should, if your life is being made easier through artificial intelligence, you should be able to use more time.

This is, this is what's concerning. More time for the things of Christ, you know. Yes, more, more time in enjoying this or that recreation is, it's not always bad, but we have more time to be in prayer.

We have more time to be doing evangelism. We have more time for studying and knowing sound doctrine. And sadly, often when, when artificial intelligence frees up sometime, we usually find something else to fill it with.

And sometimes it has to do with more artificial intelligence like social media. Yeah, yeah.

Self-Discipline, Godliness, and the Responsible Use of Technology

Well, I think we need to, you know, first Timothy chapter four, verse seven, we need to discipline ourself for the purpose of godliness. And we need to discipline ourself around the use of these things so that they actually do serve us and we do not serve them.

Yeah.

If we're not disciplined, we become the servants of the, I'm not, I'm not talking about like the matrix or anything like that, but I'm saying there really is a sense in which we are taken captive by these technologies if we do not discipline ourself to use them for God's glory and our godliness.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

So in the church, the next thing you'd mentioned was, was for like the pastor, right?

Yeah, yeah. I'm concerned about pastors anyway. We don't even know in many, not just the SBC, but in many places, we don't even understand the calling and office and qualifications for pastor. And now you're going to only add one more thing to that, which is the temptation to short circuit study, or, which is bad, to short circuit study is bad.

Yes.

But even worse is to just plagiarize sermons.

Right.

And if people will plagiarize, and it's already been proven, we don't have to go down this route, but if people plagiarize other people's sermons, well, certainly, certainly they'll plagiarize sermons of artificial intelligence, and maybe even justify that since they typed in the idea, it's really their sermon.

Yep, yep. Let me tell you what I did. I did this a week ago today, and I'm gonna post this this Friday. So whenever this comes out, it'll be a few weeks back, but you can go to marshallfbcar .com, I think is our website, but, and look at the blog.

But last Wednesday, I typed into chat GPT, I typed in a prompt, and I told it exactly what I wanted. I told it that I wanted a 523 word blog article about the importance of the church, because it is Christ's bride.

Yeah, yeah.

That was the prompt I gave it, and it spit out, Quatro, I'm gonna tell you, brother, it spit out a really good blog article. Like it was really good. I was like, wow. And you know what it did, because I told it the exact number of words, it just quit mid-sentence at the end.

Like it was like in the middle of a sentence, and it just didn't write anymore.

Yeah.

Because it couldn't figure out how to end it at the end of a sentence, I don't guess. But it was really well-written. And so I'm actually gonna post this Friday when my blog comes out, I'm gonna add a introduction explaining what I did, and I'm gonna add a conclusion talking about this issue of artificial intelligence and how it could be abused and using that article written by chat GPT as an example.

But that's an example of how a person could claim it as their own work. Like I didn't write that article.

Right.

That GPT wrote that article. But if I was unscrupulous, I could have posted it and nobody would know the difference.

Yeah.

Except for they might know the difference because they might say this is too well-written or you should have written it, you know. And this really becomes a danger. You know, there's one thing in something like a little blog article that like a dozen people read.

But it's an even bigger deal when we start talking about pastors, you know, having the chat GPT write their sermon or, you know, this last, I just finished a couple of days ago, the last class session, I was auditing a class at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, wonderful class on covenant theology.

But, you know, it's gonna become a real danger, a real temptation for students because it's gonna be so easy to type in and say, and especially if a student gets really good at entering the prompts correctly to have the artificial intelligence write a paper for them because they got too busy to get it done by the due date.

You know, and there's so much to consider because like, for example, do you ever use Grammarly?

I don't, my son does, he uses it quite a bit.

So there's like Grammarly will actually suggest better words or a better way to word a sentence.

And at that point, who's the author, you or Grammarly?

Yeah, and so it's like, well, but I wanna say like, I do wanna be careful because it's like, I am putting that in a little bit different category. You know, you write a paper, Grammarly goes through there, gives you suggestions, you choose, you're like, oh yeah, you know what, that sounds a little better.

I'll do that, you know, but it really remains your paper. You know, it's maybe just like you had a proofreader, you know.

Right, right. And like I do that with both my blog and even earlier this, during the class I was auditing, but I still wrote a book review for the class. And like I sent it to a young lady in our church that edits my blog and I had her edit the paper, but it was still my words and my content, you know.

So I mean, and you have people edit your book. It's not like you just hit publish and they print the book off.

Yeah, and so it's like, you still own it. It's still your intellectual property. It really came out of, it came out of your mind. But a prompt, you know, write a sermon on Matthew 25, that didn't come out of your mind.

That's right.

And it really comes to a greater issue, which is kind of moving away from the topic for a second, but it really comes with a greater issue of the misunderstanding of the pulpit. You know, over the years, the pulpit sermons have gotten shorter and shorter.

We try not to deal with weighty or controversial issues in the pulpit. We try to keep the language very, very surface level. And we just, we really don't understand the purpose of preaching. And that one of God's divine means for the discipleship and sanctification of the church is that his word would be taught in a public manner in the assembled body in a well done way from his human instruments.

You know, and what I mean is also another thing is we get so worried about preaching, maybe perfecting, like it's one thing to perfect the craft, but it's another thing to say, you know, I've got to preach like this person.

And like, no, you should preach like your call to be. And I just see artificial intelligence as a danger there. Again, things like Grammarly and stuff, that can be a help, can help you sound, you know, sometimes the way we say things are not grammatically correct.

And, you know, putting in your sermon notes, running it through Grammarly, it may help you maybe find a better word here or there. Sometimes Grammarly picks up if you keep using the same word over and over, you know, and hey, those things can be helpful, but in order to lean upon artificial intelligence to be the pastor of your congregation, no, that's not okay.

You'll answer, you know, for that. So stay away from those things.

Do you think that we're somehow, we're maybe even more prone today to this because we've been in some way catechized by such a remote use of sermons? Like what I'm saying is our ability to preach to a lot of people who aren't necessarily in front of us or to access the sermons of other men who aren't preaching to us has prepared us as a church culture to be even more susceptible to the dangers that could be inherent in chat GPT.

Preaching to the Congregation, Not to the Internet

Yeah, because we have so much access to sermons by men that we won't sit in the same room with.

Yeah, I think that's one of those double-edged swords, as they say. Praise God for all the technology with that, and I'm grateful for it. But yeah, it leans to that temptation. Let me encourage pastors.

If you're preaching for the internet,.

Stop.

Honestly, if that's a big problem, maybe take a few months and just unplug and just preach to your congregation. Don't record it. The Christian church has been doing this for 2 ,000 years.

Oh man, if you don't post your sermon, did you even preach, bro? Right, right.

And this comes from someone who we typically, as long as the internet's working and everything, as long as the hamster's been fed here in Prairieville and running and cranking the internet, we post our stuff online because we want it to be helpful.

But if I let in my heart that I'm preaching to the internet and I'm not preaching to my congregation,.

That's right.

Then that's a problem. So I'll give you a quick example. I preached from Ephesians 5, 19, and I was talking about Psalms, and I was talking about exclusive psalmody, but I only, I spent a little part, I did spend a little time in the sermon about it, but I'm not gonna preach a whole sermon about that because it may be useful out there in the interweb somewhere, but that's not actually something that we're really dealing with.

So I mentioned it and I mentioned why I don't think that text is pushing towards exclusive psalmony, but some people do use this text for that. But I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it because I'm not preaching.

And so sometimes people will try to spend a large portion of their sermon talking about something that your people, for example, you're gonna preach a whole sermon about the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, right?

Yeah.

Honestly, and this is kind of the debates and so it was like one of the problems I have with the pro-Aquinas guys are like, 99 of the stuff that you're saying, like a lot of that stuff is the people

Adam would say, nobody cares.

Right.

Yeah, so it's like, come on, man. I mean, so I just think the artificial intelligence, I mean, I know we're speaking a little bit more broadly, technology in general, but if you're using, if you're worried about using artificial intelligence to preach to your people so that, and when I say artificial intelligence preach, you understand what I'm saying.

You're still maybe saying the words, but you've copied them from a robot or something. Even a theologically sound, like you said, even if the AI is theologically sound, there's a reminder here too, I need to make this mention, there's no such thing as neutral intelligence.

That's right.

Even when it comes to artificial intelligence, it's created by somebody, right? And there's no such thing as neutrality.

That's right.

So it's just something to keep in mind. But let's move to the third one, kind of getting closer to wrapping up, but so we won't have plenty of time for this one. And that is the danger of artificial intelligence becoming our friend, if that makes sense.

You understand what I'm saying? You can talk to Google and Alexa, and it's almost like you can feel like you have a relationship with them. And I think there's even been movies, where it's like people even have romantic interest in artificial intelligence.

And we might laugh and joke about that, but it really can, if we're not careful, become a replacement for face-to-face interaction in the church. We saw this, again, this is not technically AI, but we saw in COVID with the great temptation of, well, we'll just stay at a distance from everybody, and we'll watch the service online.

Right.

Well, ultimately, that's not what we need is God's people. Right, we need the face-to-face interaction. We need the fellowship together. And so if we use artificial intelligence as a replacement for face-to-face interaction, then we're misusing it.

Right.

And I think one of the dangers, when we get into this side of the technology in general, but especially AI, is that it really can take on a persona that is very lifelike. It's not life. We need to remind ourselves, this is not life, but it is lifelike.

And we have to be careful that we do not allow ourselves to be essentially self-deceived into believing that this is real, because it really can appeal to our emotions in that way. I've seen where they had taken some AI, and essentially, they made a fake video of someone famous.

I think it was Joe Rogan, because they had so much hours and hours of content that they could use. But you couldn't tell that it wasn't a real video. And Joe Rogan said that he didn't actually say those things.

The video that it made was not real, but you couldn't tell it.

Yeah, that's scary.

It really looked like him. It really sounded like him saying these things that he did not say. And it wasn't just a matter of, oh, it was taken out of context. He literally didn't say it.

Wow.

But it was able to make it sound just like that. And so we need to realize that there are nefarious things that can be done with these types of technologies, and we need to be alert to Satan's schemes in those ways.

Face-to-Face Fellowship, Discernment, and the Limits of Soundbite Thinking

Yeah, so we're not saying it's a rural church podcast. We're not saying that the rural church should run away from technology.

No, no, no, no.

Technology is a useful tool. But we are saying that all churches ought to weigh these things carefully, think through them, try to teach on them as applicatory, and to stay away from some of these dangers.

Our brain is a really amazing gift from God. And if we're not careful, we'll let artificial intelligence rewire it so we can think less and less and less. And we don't realize there's a temptation because of fighting the flesh of laziness.

It's very hard to discipline our mind. I think you talked about that earlier, but to discipline our mind, for example, Twitter has taken our brain down to where you can't think, you can't argue well and rationally in a lengthy manner.

Everything has to be bite-sized, 15-second, instead of well-reasoned, weighty arguments. And so we have to be careful about those things. And so we have to discipline ourselves, and the church should encourage in that so we can use technology rightly for the glory of God while also being careful of letting technology use us.

Right.

We need to be reminded, the Bible is segmented into verses now because men have added them, but the Bible wasn't written in soundbites. It wasn't written in small pieces. The Bible is a large work, and it is given to us the way that it is by God's choosing so that we can learn the things about God he would have us to know.

And he gave it to us in a form that requires us to be able to take it in large pieces. Most of the Bible is narrative, and it takes being able to read and understand those things. And so often, a lot of the false teaching and the problematic teachings that there are in the world are because people take a little piece here, a little piece there, and they go off and make up doctrinal things that aren't really true because of the very thing that you were just saying, kind of that Twitter kind of mindset of, well, it says these three words over here in one place in the scripture, and they build a theology off of that that isn't even what it was teaching.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this episode has offered some helpful thoughts. You know, I've been encouraged. Eddie, I was preaching at a conference last week and a brother came up and said, thanks for the Rural Church Podcast.

So it's kind of neat to run into folks that are listening. We hope it is a benefit. You know, Eddie and I don't claim to be experts on artificial intelligence, but hopefully as pastors, we're able to offer some thoughts on these things.

So you got anything else before we are done today?

No, I think that's good, bro. All right.

Thank you guys for joining us on this week of the Rural Church Podcast. Say goodbye, Eddie.

We'll see you guys next week.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemos, the masterpiece of God.

How are you going to respond?