AI and a Theology of Preaching

Music.

To the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke and with me is Pastor Cameron.

Welcome to the Uncut Podcast where we try to have open, honest, and uncut conversations

about faith, life, theology, church, ministry, all the things above. Today, we've got an

and interesting and I don't know, kind of fascinating topic,

that's dealing with a lot of the stuff that's been going on in kind of,

I don't know, popular tech culture.

Right. Right. Cameron, I'm sure you've seen, and probably some of our listeners have not escaped,

the, all the talk about AI and chat GPT.

I think so, something like that. So. So yeah, this is something that is a little bit,

not a little bit, a lot of it out of my wheelhouse.

Or even my, I'm not gonna say out of my area of interest because it is interesting to me,

but it's certainly not something that I've considered,

or something that I've paid attention to, I should say, until I guess just recently,

where I'm starting to see a lot of the people that maybe I follow on social media

or that have been influential in my life from a ministry or faith perspective,

starting to talk about the advent of artificial intelligence as it makes its way,

or as it like relates to ministry and pastoral ministry or worship ministry or faith in general.

And so I feel like it's demanding a response.

Not because I even feel like it's imminent or like necessarily that it's.

Well, it's new. It's new. No one's like, like you don't, I mean, I bet you,

there's a handful of people out there right now scrambling,

to write a theology of AI and get it published,

because there's not much out there as far as like what we have to consider for like.

What is the theology of AI? What is like the Bible got to say about it? All of those kind of,

questions because like it's new, right? Like we don't, we can't pick up Martin Luther or Calvin,

or like John Wesley. We can barely pick up Michael Frost who's like a contemporary author right now

who writes a lot about theology and faith and culture and the church.

And right now in our time, he's got a few blog articles about it, but nothing that's been,

substantial or has really reflected on or wrestled with some of the difficult questions or issues that,

come up with AI as it pertains to ministry. I don't know, there may be people, I'm not going

to assume that everyone even knows what we're talking about. Right. Don't know what the...

Like, yeah, we should talk about like artificial intelligence, AI, right?

Like is more than just like the thing like I've always been interested in AI because I love sci-fi, right?

Terminator. The Terminator. Like, you know, like Skynet, How 2000, you know, from Space Odyssey, like all of those movies and things or stuff that I've always watched.

Watched, but artificial intelligence, computers that can think and formulate and reformulate,

and have the appearance of making decisions and producing something autonomously, that's.

New. I would say that AI is not brand spanking new because it's been out, I think it was several

years ago that like chess, a chess robot, chess AI beat like a human person.

Right.

And so, but like we weren't paying attention then, cause we don't care that

much about chess. No one cares about chess. Um, sorry, chess lovers. Yeah.

You know, so we've had artificial intelligence to some degree, but I feel like we're reaching a tipping point where AI is starting to insert itself more,

practically into our day-to-day lives.

So like within this past year, if you haven't, if you've not heard about these things,

there's been the advent of AI art generators where you can type in and you can tell,

you just go up to something that looks like a Google search bar and you type in.

A painting of a family standing outside of a house that's on fire in the style of Norman Rockwell and,

It will make that painting for you.

It looks kind of weird like AI art like is kind of if you've ever looked at any of it,

struggles with making hands it kind of creepy and a lot of people have been really upset about AI art because it kind of seemingly steals,

stylistic influences from other people's art that's on the internet and things like that.

Which is kind of where we want to talk about. Right, exactly. And then you've got chat GPT, which is the big one that's made a lot of impact here,

because I think it reaches a bigger audience. And so like if you've got Canva or chat GPT,

like all of these, there's a gazillion of these, but you could go in and you could say,

Write me a short essay about the American Civil War,

Focusing on its economic impact It would write that for you. Yeah, and and how would it do that? Like it essentially.

It scrubs the internet Yeah, right scrubs the digital world. Mm-hmm for the voices that have talked about,

that learns in an instant all the various perspectives that have been communicated and then creates.

Artificially, but it's almost for me, it's not even like artificial intelligence anymore. It's,

like AI is more like autonomous intelligence. Like it's doing it somewhat autonomously from,

my perspective or your perspective. It's gaining its own perspective based on the voices,

that are already out there. And it writes the essay based on what it finds on the internet,

Which, if you've been on the internet at all lately, does not inspire an incredible.

Amount of confidence.

In its veracity, accuracy, is that what you're talking about?

Yeah. Or in its bias. Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah. And who or what controls the sources from which AI draws its information? Yeah.

With every digital source, does it rank each digital source at the same level and then

discerns across the voices what comes into its final product.

So that's in essence, in as much as I understand it, which is like a sliver, that's essentially what it's doing.

Scrubs the internet, gathers all the voices, collates it, develop its own autonomous work.

Yes. Yeah, and we could, I think you bring up an interesting point,

which I don't know that we'll have a ton of time to talk about,

but the bias of, I think we sometimes have this idea that technology is sort of a blank slate.

Or that's moral neutral. It's morally neutral, right? But it does inherit things from us.

So like probably the most infamous example of this that kind of like points to how our

creation of technology and technology can then carry on kind of biases was back when

Xbox, like I think, I don't know if it was Xbox 360 or it was the first Xbox when they

created the connect, which was like this, like kind of like the Xbox's answer to the,

Wii. You could stand in front of this camera and you could move around and play with the

game with like, it would read your face and it would see your hand movements and everything.

When that product released over a Christmas and it kind of got launched that Christmas

season, a whole bunch of people bought it. And anyone who bought it, who was African

American or dark skinned found that that connect could not see or recognize them.

So the technology in there, the software hadn't been programmed. They'd never had tested it really

to differentiate different multicultural or multicultural, different skin tones. And so.

It was like an example of technology having a flaw because of an oversight or an overlook,

or a bias in the production team.

Gotcha.

And so that's a somewhat harmless example, kind of, but it's also, it's an example in that,

like technology continues to carry forth how we build it.

Right. So just, that's a, yeah, that's a whole. Right, it's indicative, it's not a new problem.

No.

In the sense that it's reproducing what it is experiencing from its designers or production. Right.

And so it, while it may be artificial, it's kind of not at the same time.

Right. There is still some, something of us. Something of us is in it.

Is being carried through with that. Right. Yeah.

So we thought we would take kind of this, I found a YouTube video and it's we've got this I can't I'll have to look at

video to remember his name but I remember his channel it's the 10 minute

Oh, it's the what is it the 10 minute Bible hour? See here Pulling up this video here. It's Matt Whitman. Yes his name.

Yeah, Matt Whitman on YouTube and so he made this video where he took.

He wanted to compare and see if you could make a differentiation between sermons that were written with AI,

versus sermons that a sermon that he wrote and And so he is. Is he a seminary grad?

I think so. He makes a lot of like Bible study and Bible focused content on his channel.

And so he's I don't know exactly what his involvement is in ministry, but he essentially he has two or has two different AIs,

eyes, write two sermons, and then he seeks to write a sermon and then presents those,

and then kind of challenges you in the video to see if you can differentiate.

So I've already seen the video, Cameron, you have not watched the video. Correct.

So we're going to kind of pause here for a second. There'll be a bit of a gap here.

We're going to not show the whole video in its link here, but we'll link it in our show

notes and at the bottom in the description of our video.

So you can watch it yourself if you want to pause, go watch that video and come back,

or you can just keep listening and then you'll hear our reaction and kind of our description,

of it after we've watched it.

Right. Yeah. And certainly like even on the original video, I'm just scrolling through the comment section

is always an interesting place to go.

Yeah. If you're really bored. Right.

And these ones, at least the top comments seem to be pretty insightful.

But yeah, so why don't we, we'll take a minute here and we'll watch this video.

And if you want to pause and watch the, go watch the video as well.

Have some context for the conversation that we have after.

Yeah, all right. Yeah, so we have watched it like and that was my first time watching the video,

Yeah, I watched it maybe a couple weeks ago and I I we've paused it at the seven minute mark

Yeah, so he's read all three mini sermons. Yes,

randomized the order so we don't know which one is which and then then essentially asking, okay, now which one?

Which one did he write? Which one's the original and which?

And which ones did the AIs? Right. Right.

I mean, it seems really clear to me that the third one is his.

And I could go into the other like, just reflectively, it sounded like,

or it felt like that the third mini sermon was full of more.

It had a more imaginative process by which it's told the story,

and how it came to the places of theological insight.

And application. It didn't just come right out and say, this is what happened, this is what it means, go and do it.

It was more, it drew the listener into a more creative process. It told a story.

Better. It had a hook at the beginning. It referenced the scripture close to the beginning.

And then it expounded upon its contextual and theological meaning and then brought application

to the points at the end and then wrapped it all the way back around to the beginning

of the first main intro, the hook.

The sermon at the little mini sermon three is the one that I also, when I was watching

the video for the first time, it's also the one that I said, I think that is his.

It has more tangential statements that are indirectly applied.

So I think there's a moment in there where he talks about all of the work that Jesus

had been doing in his ministry.

Jesus had been doing this, this, this, this, this.

Right? I was like, oh, well that is not, like that is not directly in the text,

and not directly to the point, but it serves the point. It's contextually tangential. Right.

But if you had someone or something that was simply writing a message based on the text itself,

it's not necessarily self-evident within the text.

Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna restart the video here and see, you know, if we were right, you know, if we were right or not,

because you've watched it, but I don't. So I think we were right. I think I've been doing this long enough now. All right.

Well, so we, we watched the rest of that video by Matt Whitman.

So I think it bears mentioning just that like, I think he did a fairly decent job of making the video and presenting an

interesting idea and concept of,

Yeah, appreciate Yeah, him.

So, Matt, if you somehow end up watching this.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the good info here to, or the content to talk about.

I think it brings up a lot of thoughts running through my head is that it was all going on

and try to write some of them down that we could talk about.

Some of it's really specific in nature.

Well, we should probably say, did we guess right?

We did guess right. We did. Yeah. The third one was the one that he wrote.

Right. I remember upon watching it, I did, when he read the first sermon,

I was like, oh, that could be, it could be him.

The second one, I was like, no, that was definitely AI. Heard the third one and I was like,

yeah, that's the one he wrote. Yeah.

It was, I don't know if it was just because, I don't know if it was.

It was really clear to me. Yeah.

Reading or hearing all three, which one was after all three or like even as the process, even as he read the first one, you were just like, as no way as he started like reading the second one, because I've never heard him preach like that.

I've never watched it. So I didn't have any like any comparative analysis as to previous work that he had done.

But once he started reading the second one, it had the same opening spirit.

Interesting. It had the same spirit to it, which was not one of inspiration,

or not one of like you could.

There was no out.

Maybe we can flesh out these things even a little bit.

There was no heart to it. Yeah.

It was. It was as if.

You were reading an informational pamphlet about the scripture. Yeah.

The, I guess this is maybe the way I would describe the two AI sermons is they

felt like throw away.

Not like, like, I think the general points that they make are generally fine. Yeah.

I'd like, like, yeah. So, but I don't mean throw away as in that, but they felt generically and they felt so

generic as to feel like kind of the type of religious statements that are said at like,

political or social rallies and like gatherings where there's kind of a general sense of wanting

to not wanting to not dive deep into the Bible.

Very vanilla. Very vanilla.

Exactly. vanilla. I would maybe need to re-listen to them and I would probably have to be really nitpicky,

about the two, but there wasn't anything, there was nothing that I heard that immediately struck

me as like, oh, that's like a really incorrect way of reading that text or an improper application

or theological principle that you're like, no, it was pretty like, okay, like you.

Yeah. I mean, I don't say this majority, pejoratively, but like, okay, you're a freshman at Bible college and you're just learning to,

preach. Yep. Like it was simple. Yeah. Not, not anything special or inspiring,

but not anything that was like, oh my gosh, like don't ever approach a pulpit again.

Yeah, kind of declarative. Like it didn't do anything to move us from point A to point B.

It simply just said, this is the text. Here's the pamphlet of the text.

This is the idea. Yes. Yeah.

And so I think like we could get.

There's lots of lots of things that we could do with this. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

I guess the question that I would want to pose as the.

Primary question. Well, I don't know. It we could talk about the whether or not AI should be used

in this way. Yeah. And, or we could use it as an opportunity to talk about what is preaching.

Yeah. Mm hmm. Like, cause if the point here was to have three sermons written, see which

one is the best. Right. Or not even the best, but like, see if you could tell the difference.

Makes me, it begs the question, what is the purpose? What is the point? What is the, both,

the content and the spirit of the act of, and many people will say the art of, or maybe even

going a little bit more deep, the gifting of preacher or preaching.

Oh, how like, how would you begin to like, how would you begin to pull, pull that apart? Yeah.

Well, like there's an interesting, you know, it would be interesting, even more interesting,

if we hadn't been able to tell.

If we'd watched the video and we were just like, absolutely flabbergasted, we like could

not tell the difference between the three.

Because I think that forces us to come directly to the question.

So we could say, oh, well, it's close, but not quite.

Is there a fundamental difference? Let's say in a handful of years, AI progresses, which arguably it might and will.

And it gets to a point where it's indistinguishable. Well, that was one of the questions I had.

It's like, OK, it's easy to tell the difference now. But it would be really interesting if in a year from now,

Matt went back and asked ChatGPT the same question.

Because the method that AI uses to create the content necessitates that it's ever evolving and ever learning.

More content it consumes, the more it's able to replicate genuine human intelligence.

Right. And so that would force the question of, because like right now we could say, we could kind of, ah, you can kind of tell things like that.

But if there was no functional difference, no aesthetic difference between them, what does it, does it, is there something different that's happening

happening when a sermon is delivered that was written entirely by AI or even partially by AI,

versus a sermon written by a pastor who like studied the word and was in prayer when he did it.

I would say absolutely. Yeah, I would too. But why? Right? Maybe we need to clarify that.

Because I think and then from there, I think we can trickle down into some of these like,

the applications of that. Yeah. So I would say, I would say there's a few things and these are not

not in order of importance.

Like as a man who like generally has written a sermon a week.

For the last 19 years.

Like every preacher generally has their own process. Yep.

And their own voice. And their own voice. Like you can, if you and I wrote sermons on the same topic.

People would be able to probably judge which one.

Probably, if they had a familiarity with us.

So the ways in which a sermon is created or the factors that go into the writing of a sermon,

there's a few of them, or the few questions that I have.

And like I said, these are not in order of importance priority. But, um, like what I, what I first heard, we mentioned this already.

What I first heard in the AI sermons was what appeared to me to be like a,

informational, an informational approach to the exposition of a text.

Yeah. And when I say exposition of a text, what I'm meaning is like, they're, they're proclaiming,

explaining, speaking about and towards a specific biblical text. Yep.

All right. and.

So when you came to that text, it felt really clear that there was no insight towards the text or with the text that was deeper than you would get from, like I said, an informational pamphlet. Right.

What is what appears on the surface of the water?

Yes.

Like if preaching is a deep pool, right?

It hit what would be on the surface of the water, but did not dive into anything that was there.

And so the question there that comes out for me is what is the nature of information gathering,

that happens in the art or the gift of preaching like when you and I would preach.

Right. Right.

Because there certainly is an aspect of it where there's information that must be or that should

be communicated. Right. Yeah. Right.

Well, so like, for example, like maybe the highlight this is if you were and I were

assigned the same passage. We were just given a passage and we would say, write a sermon on it.

Particularly if that passage is, let's say, say it's a chapter out of a gospel, right?

Your main point of the sermon and applications would likely deviate from my, they would not align

necessarily. We might find similarities in our sermons, right? But we would find that they're

probably different and the reason being is because we would.

Like we would be being we would be highlighting different portions of the text we bring to the text our own experience that's it's a that's an imp.

That's not something that you can generally avoid it i don't think that something that as preachers god is.

Wanting us to stay away now doesn't want us to be blank slate bring our experiences we bring our context we bring our approach or our background.

We even bring our biases to a text. And so similar to the way that why we have four different,

tellings of the story of the life of Jesus and the Gospels, we would have two different approaches,

that maybe followed a similar route, but not weren't necessarily.

Right. You might choose to highlight a particular verse and I might choose to highlight a different

one and we're making a discernment process in that we're deciding which of these past,

verses inside of this passage excuse me we feel like is most important to highlight.

And then if we were to even go a little bit different like if we're if you're preaching to,

like say a youth group and I'm preaching at like a men's retreat and it's the same passage it's,

It's going to be different how we preach it because the congregation or the

audience that we're preaching to is different.

Well, that was another one of my points. So yeah, is that like,

you know, if there's the, there's the informational approach,

which is what I feel like AI did, they grabbed the information.

They maybe reformulated it somewhat creatively, but it wasn't,

There was no abstraction, there was no nuance, there was no storytelling.

It was just a, here it is. you know, vanilla for you.

But you're exactly right. Is that when you would go to as a preacher when we would go to.

Preach something or prepare to preach something,

It would be with a particular audience in mind very rarely very rarely Would the preaching with the preparation?

Necessitate a General recipient. Yes where it was like, I don't know who's going to hear this.

It doesn't really matter.

Cause it doesn't change what I'm going to say. We call it, we call it the ability to read the room.

Can you read the room that you're in? Because you might, you might prepare and preach a sermon,

that is, that is completely genuine to the text, very well done, good orthodox theology,

but that sits on the high scale of like academic imbalance.

Yeah. And that may be appropriate for a seminary chapel. Yeah.

A college chapel, you know, something like that.

But then you might be, like you said, you might be preparing to teach it

to your sixth grade Sunday school class.

And being able to read the room, know who you're preaching to is incredibly important.

I think especially in the life of a pastor who is generally charged with.

Shepherding the souls of individual people. Yes.

Like I can bring a guest pastor in here and have them go up on stage,

stand in the same place that I stand, use the same pulpit that I preach from,

and have them preach a sermon.

But there is no way that they would have their finger on the barometer of the room like I would have because the same people I'm in relationship with, I'm toiling in

the spirit for their shepherding and their salvation and their discipleship and their growth.

And when I approach the word in order to prepare to preach it, I have them in mind.

Yeah. Well, it's like, really, I think this was maybe three, three weeks ago, four weeks ago.

I think we were at the beginning of a service and I think we both of you and I were picking up on the,

same sense that there was a lot of people who were going through some heavy stuff in the congregation.

And we totally sidelined everything that we had kind of planned. You totally paused on starting

your sermon, had a whole little sermon at the beginning, and that was all pastorally motivated.

And just because I know how you preach, I know that you are often up there as you're preaching,

making editorial decisions on what you're going to say, how you're going to say it.

Because you're aware of who's in the room, what's going on in their lives, you're aware of how

how people are responding, right? Like if you hit a point and you're like,

and that felt like in your spirit.

Like the Spirit of God testified to my spirit, like don't move from this point, stay here. Go deeper.

Yes. Which is the kind of semi-third question that I have here.

I'm not saying this in a snarky manner at all.

I don't think that the AI preacher stopped to pray that the Spirit of God would reveal

the truth of God's Word into his heart so that he then could become a vessel for that truth to be

proclaimed over the people, which is if you were to give me,

or if you were to give me the task of stating a theology.

Of preaching or a purpose of preaching in the preacher.

I don't know that I could create a better one, which would be that I go before the spirit of God

the Spirit of God, to ask the Spirit of God to reveal the truth and wisdom of God's Word

and in particular, this particular passage or this particular text or idea or whatever,

to testify and reveal that truth to my heart. And it just so happens, or not just so happens,

Like I've done the academic, educational, experiential work.

To have some context built into that, like some wisdom around some of those passages as well,

so that I then can proclaim the truth of God's word revealed to me by the Spirit of God to the people of God.

It's not a derivation of Cameron's wisdom or opinions or even my own heart.

Yeah. And that is a constant battle and struggle. Any pastor worth his salt should be committed to explaining and preaching God's Word and Truth,

not their opinion or preference.

Right. Which is...

Is that like a whole bag of worms right there? Triggering.

A little triggered on that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. There's no secret that there are pastors, preachers who have particular drums that they

want to personally beat and that their congregations are unwitting listeners to them abdicating and,

abandoning the spirit-led role of preacher. And they will answer for that. They will. But,

But it is a constant check, check, check, check, check.

And it becomes this interplay of like hearing from the spirit and discerning sometimes even in real time.

What is coming? Is this me? Yep. Is this the spirit?

And that's not always clearly definable for people, especially when what the Spirit desires to

communicate through the proclamation of His Word may be difficult for people who are sitting

underneath it to hear. Because it's very easy to harden our heart and rebel to the proclamation

of the word that brings conviction into our hearts,

and we automatically place the blame on the preacher for saying the thing.

Whereas, like any preacher worth assault, being a conduit of God's spirit and proclaimed

truth, right, would see that or know and believe that.

Yeah. So, you know, this brings like an interesting thought to my head is that not everybody like,

Like you and I might not conceive of preaching as a actively intimate and dynamically Holy

Spirit led piece of church or part of church or act.

I think like I'm sitting here and I'm thinking as you're talking, I'm like, you know, I think

I don't want to say 100% of the time because I don't know if we do 100% of the time, but

I'd say almost all of the time when we are praying for each other prior to the service

or in service when one of us is bringing the other up to pray, I think we almost always,

are praying for the Holy Spirit to do something.

Not praying for the Holy Spirit to be doing something in the listeners, praying for the

Holy Spirit to be doing something in the preacher.

I think almost always.

Um, and that might be something that is blatantly obvious to our presupposition

of understanding what preaching is.

Preaching is not me trying to be winsome or, um, preaching is not a, like a.

Pastor and Holy Bible endeavor. It's a pastor, Holy Bible and Holy spirit endeavor.

And ultimately, without the spirit, falls flat. I don't know if that's like a...

I don't know. I guess I'm kind of just wondering out loud if that's blatantly obvious to other people

as it is maybe to even our own understanding of what preaching is.

I don't think that it is. No, I don't think that it's blatantly obvious because you will...

I think for me it begs the question on how we can as people have preferences for who

we like to listen to preaching.

Because we do we do elevate yes preachers We we do make comments like,

they They're the best preacher in America, right? Yeah, like if we if we were to ask,

Who's the best preacher in America you and I could probably come up with a,

shortlist of five that if we were to just randomly pull people,

they would say at least one of those five, depending on which kind of bent they had.

Or if you attend a church where there's a teaching team and that teaching team,

they publish who's preaching what sermon.

And then you can track attendance based on who's preaching.

It shows, I think, that there is some preference for personality within preaching.

Now you could take that many different ways and you could say, well, it just goes to show,

that some people have more of a gift.

And I'm not going to argue that there are or aren't people who are extraordinarily gifted,

at the art of preaching. But I will argue against the idea that it's only the charismatic

storytellers of scripture that channel the authentic spirit of God in the proclamation

of the preaching if it's done in a faithful manner. And so it's tricky. It's tricky because as.

Do I want people to want to hear my preaching? Duh.

Right, we want to do a good job. I want to do a good job. I want to be known as an excellent preacher.

I also do not want to be known as an excellent preacher.

Right. I want people to experience the life-changing power of the gospel.

As it's proclaimed in their lives, and as they believe it by faith and repent of their

sin and trust and follow Jesus with their lives, that's what I want.

Now, faith comes by hearing the word of God.

Yep. Right?

So, how can they believe if they have not heard? So they must hear.

Do I consistently elevate the art and the act of preaching and the Spirit of God

within the preaching while simultaneously taking a spirit or posture of.

Abject humility as the one bringing it is a dynamic that we must always wrestle with.

And I think almost like, not almost, we must self-impose a posture of humility,

because people will naturally elevate the preferential style of a pastor to the detriment of the proclamation of the truth.

Yes.

So I don't know how to do that in a non like self-flagellation way where you get up on a Sunday morning and you're like,

I'm an idiot. I have nothing to offer.

I am not smart at all. Which is not true. Right. Right.

Like you and I both study, We work hard on our sermons.

It's interesting because the act of preaching a sermon is it reflects the nature of the Bible,

of being both a book written by God and a book written by people.

It's kind of got this, like, you cannot extract from the sermon the preacher.

But if you only have a preacher and you don't have the Spirit of God, you don't have a sermon.

Which is AI. Which is AI. Exactly. It kind of brings us back to that. I will say like, you and I, like, we've thought,

we've listened to a lot of sermons, like a heck of a lot, and we've thought about sermons,

not just in like a passive way, but in like a very critical way.

Like the technicalities of how you say a thing, the order you say a thing, how you stand when you say a thing, the hand gestures.

Like I, like we, I could talk someone's ear off about like,

We have dissected absolutely every angle of preaching that you can possibly dissect.

Yes. Like it, like, and it's actually like, you know, just as a personal note,

like it made it for season really made it hard for me to listen to sermons because all I could see,

Was all of the technical things going into it. I was like, oh,

They shouldn't have said it that way or they should not have done that They should have done this instead. And so I bring that up to simply to say is that.

Probably your favorite preacher like we could probably critique like oh, yeah, I can think I can think of one,

particular like well-known one of the top preachers in the United States who,

who is actually pretty bad with filler words and is really bad at writing introductions.

They're usually clunky and they're, they usually meander and kind of lose people's interest.

But people like I've been in from, from his sermon, we could probably fight over who's

the better preacher, who like the best preakers in America. We probably could, we could probably,

you know, but like, like he's a great preacher because in a lot of people benefit from his,

I've benefited from his preaching from tangentially and all of that but.

Technically like the technicalities of how he sometimes preaches I'm like that is a really bad introduction to the sermon or he is using a whole lot of filler words right now,

like which is interesting because,

Who has developed the standards of technicality for?

Or preaching.

We have, humanity has, right? Fallen, sinful, you know, preaching is our idea,

not God's type of thing. Like, and we'll create, we take class.

There's, you can get a doctorate in preaching. I know.

You know, it sounds fun. I know, I kind of attempted to do one.

Me too, like it sounds fun, but there is, yeah,

you can dissect it down to the point where it becomes now a scientific exercise rather than a spirit inspired demonstration

of your gift.

Now, that is not to say, which everything is nuanced, right?

It's not black or white.

This is kind of like a, it can become a great conversation because I want to get better

as a technical preacher.

Yeah. For example, I am usually an outline style preacher that hand writes my sermon notes because I can follow them more easily.

Recently, I've become more aware of my like, my like, my ums, and my uhs in preaching and have

wondered how a different approach to the final copy of my sermon would produce either a better

or worse or more clunky or more fluid or more clear proclamation. And so this past Sunday,

I did something that I've not done probably since the first couple years of ministry,

which is I completely manuscripted my sermon and I typed it out.

Which is what I normally do. That's my preferred method of prep.

And I used the manuscript, not even an outline of my manuscript. I used the manuscript itself,

to preach from. Now, I have not gone back to listen to that sermon in comparison to

a sermon that I do in my normal style, but early reports coming in are that it was more

clear. It felt more focused and it was less tangential, but it was still you. It was still

like in your voice. So there's the necessity, I think, as men who want to do an excellent job

at the extraordinarily heavy task that the Lord has given to us to do it as best as possible.

Because the.

It's often thrown around that, oh, God is going to hold me accountable for every,

word that I say. Everyone says that. That's not abundantly clear in Scripture, but what is abundantly

clear in scripture that those who presume to teach the word of God to others will sit in a seat of

judgment over the words that have been said from their mouths that is a lot heavier than others

have. Well, because in the act of preaching is the assumption that we're saying, thus saith the Lord.

Lord. When I say this is what God wants you to do, that is a particularly strong statement,

to be making, to be saying this is what I believe God clearly has said in His Word.

What I believe God is particularly saying to you in this moment based on that, and thus sayeth.

Death, right? If to do that negligently or flippantly, you know...

It's an eternally dangerous thing.

Yeah. It's a weighty task because what we say about God and how we conceive and preach

Preach informs how people live their lives and their spirituality.

And if you and I were to get up and to consistently preach that God was nothing more than an angry free.

Guy in the sky, like just like always like that, like, you know, God is just absolutely,

furious and angry, right? We kind of talked about some of this like in the last episode about shame.

If we were to continually preach in a way that induced shame, right? Because that was how we,

like for one reason or another, that's how we conceived God. That's impacting how people,

pray to God. That's impacting how they talk about God to others. It's shaping and forming their whole,

worldview. Now, I don't believe that that's an accurate representation of what the Bible shows.

Right? We're not just creating God how we want Him to be. Our job is to look at the whole scope

of the Bible and try and represent that well, right? But like that's a weighty task and like,

to even to to check ourselves. But I'm curious, what would you say to like even the.

I guess like, well, like, I guess, do we talk about preachers who don't use their own sermons?

Like we are exactly in the same wavelength because the last question that I have is,

are preachers who use these sermons, are they accountable for them?

Yeah.

You know, or like, what is the, how should we approach that issue of now?

Because like this is, I don't know, you know, like this is like a, this is an issue that pops up,

every, I guess, like every couple years, somebody publicly, someone is big enough

and well known enough to get publicly called out for preaching other pastors sermons.

I think that happened maybe a year and a half ago. I can't remember exactly who it was. It was,

down south. I think it was associated with some denomination. And they had the same.

Main point, same outline as somebody else's and even used the same illustration. And there was

There was a whole lot of back and forth over as to whether or not that was justified.

And then that, you know, brought the conversation back up. But it happens every couple of years.

Somebody gets found out for not preaching an original sermon, uh, that they are

present, but they are presenting it, which I think is a very key, key distinction, right?

Where you show up on Sunday.

It is assumed that what you are saying is what you wrote or your, or is your actual

words, but they're maybe reading or copying and copying, pasting from, you know, some,

famous pastor and they've just downloaded his manuscript and essentially copied it.

And like that is the current iteration of it. I think the future iteration of that problem will

probably be pastors showing up with sermons generated by.

Like, oh, I had a super busy week, lots of pastoral care, lots of meetings,

didn't have enough time to write my sermon. Hey, chat, GPT, can you write me a sermon really quick

on this scripture? Because I was too busy to do it myself this week.

Yeah. Or even like pacing it out, like piecemealing it. it. Like you could say like, write me a couple paragraphs on this and then just inserting it

into the rest of your sermon. Like I could see pastors doing that. Like, like if someone really

wanted to kind of like use the shortcut, but kind of not maybe get caught or maybe wanted to, or,

or maybe there's just attribute more positive intentions. Like they just wanted to supplement

what they're doing. Yeah, I could see that as a reasonable practice because I don't think it's

substantively different than what we would do reading commentaries, reading books on issues,

or on sermons, or on topics, or texts, or something like that. We're developing or filling content,

not fluff content, but we have an idea, we have direction.

We need to maybe explore what has been said, how this has been processed through by other men and women

who are digging into the word of God.

So yeah, I think that I don't know that there's a humongous difference there.

You know, for someone to take someone else's sermon, preach it as their own.

Feels to me to be, I guess the generous term that I would use is disingenuous. I think

that it does not address some of the questions that we've had about the factors of preaching

like being able to read the room, asking the Holy Spirit of God to reveal the truth of

God's word so you can proclaim it over your people. Now does it cease to be the truth,

of God's word if it was originally proclaimed over a congregation in Atlanta and now is

being proclaimed over a congregation in Jamestown.

No, it doesn't cease to be God's word.

It doesn't even cease to be true.

I just wonder whether it's responsible to the calling that you've received as a pastor,

to search the scripture, to search the heart of God, and to prepare something for your people.

And so would we say something similar or is there any difference? I don't think there is if I just

generated carte blanche the entire sermon from chat GBT. I would say that's worse. I would say

it's worse. I could see that. Yeah, I would say it's worse because there's like, now you know

that there is no petitioning the Spirit for the content even. At least maybe if you were to steal

someone else's sermon and preach it for yourself, you could operate for your conscience sake under

the assumption that they did the hard work of praying for the Spirit's revelation and that

you're just a secondary,

you're just a secondary conduit for that revelation.

But when you have some like.

Software program Scrubbing the internet. Yeah to get you content then.

That's a that's a big Stinking no. Yeah for me. Yeah.

Yeah, I think there is something to I guess I want to point something out or like bring it a little bit of something we

It's not common practice anymore, but in some church traditions and historically, it,

would not have been out of the ordinary or perceived as wrong or disingenuous for a local

pastor of a parish or a church congregation to pull out a book of sermons and to read,

a pre-written sermon that somebody wrote.

It was always kind of, it was well, there was no pretense as this is the sermon I wrote.

It was like, I'm going to read a sermon from so-and-so on this book.

I've ran across that in some. Have you really? I've never experienced that.

Yeah. Not like it doesn't happen now.

Okay. But like in some books that I've read, I've ran across like, that was how some sermons

were delivered in like, it wasn't like a all the time thing, but that was how some sermons

were delivered is like, here's a book of sermons, just read the sermon that somebody prayerfully,

crafted and was put into this book. So I mean, it makes me wonder if we should dive down the rabbit hole of like the Book of Common Prayer.

Or like prayers. Yeah. Oh, I think there's a ton of value there.

Yeah. Right. So I guess my own thing is to say is that like, I am not so closed off to the idea,

that somebody could bring a sermon and say like, I didn't write this, but this I think is.

Pertinent to us now. And I want to just simply deliver this sermon to you. Right. I would be

much more generous of that. Right. Like, because of the honesty, forthrightness and clarity with

with what's that's being conducted? Yeah. Right. Versus,

the sort of what you said, you said the word disingenuousness,

of just coming up there, not explicitly saying this is what I wrote, but also not clearly explicitly saying, I'm just

reading somebody else's words, right? Leaving the assumption because anyone who walks into Sunday service is assuming that,

the pastor wrote what they're saying. In most cases, yeah, yeah, like that wouldn't be the assumption. No. So I think it's

disingenuous to not preface that. But anyways, so that was just a little small side tangent,

that I thought was worth maybe, I don't know, just mentioning it. I agree. I agree with that.

You know, like, and I've, I think we've, I know that I've used, I can't recall at this point, but

like, I can see myself using snippets of sermons that you find on YouTube to, as conversation

starters, you post a snippet on your Instagram stories or whatever. Like, oh yeah, that's an.

Insightful word from the Lord there. We use quotes. Right. Right? So I don't want to,

completely dismiss that, right? And I'm partial to prayer books and things like that with pre-written

I am too, and like, jeez, I'm pretty sure that Jesus gave his disciples a canned prayer.

Or, you know, like you could make that argument that Jesus was like, okay, pray like this.

So are we to take that as a disingenuous way of praying because Jesus said to pray this way? Right. Right.

I don't know if I'd go there. No. Yeah. I don't think you can go wrong in saying the Lord's Prayer.

No. No.

So I guess that kind of all... Oh no, I feel like that kind of wraps up the topic as it stands a

a little bit. We've kind of explored some of the practical implications of AI as it comes to kind,

of particularly preaching in general. Yes. Yeah. I'd be interested to hear, you know,

if you're watching or you're listening, what your thoughts are. Yeah. You know, if you,

whatever platform that you're using, if you know, there's a comment function on there,

I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. If you are listening, why don't you please go over to

Matt Thornton's YouTube channel. We'll make sure that the link for that particular video is in the

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