Preachers and AI

[ken_sylvania]

I would hope that the preachers at the church where I attend are not using AI to "improve" their sermons.

I don't think I have done this yet for a sermon, but I have done it for other writings. I sometimes ask AI for suggestions if I am trying to say something, but the sentence structure or grammar sounds awkward. (I used to get my wife or daughters to help with this.)

Are you fine with wives and daughters helping a preacher with sentence structure/grammar if he is having trouble?

And what about using AI for something like this on occasion, as long as it is not being used to polish the entire sermon?

I think it's fine if a preacher's wife and daughters assist with sermon preparation if it helps the preacher avoid grammar such as the underlined.

We teach our scholars in school that they should not copy their compositions "thought-for-thought" from an encyclopedia, but rather to note down the facts and then write a new, fresh composition using their own thoughts and wording. If ask AI to help you re-word an awkward sentence are you going to then just slightly rework the AI output and put it into your sermon? If your wife or daughters help you to reword something, hopefully they are comprehending the thought you are trying to convey. AI will never be able to comprehend a thought.

I don't think that there is, long term, such a thing as using AI for this "on occasion." My observation is that AI helps to make most people stupid, and they incorporate the AI output without thinking as carefully about it as they would if they were doing the writing themselves.

[barnhart]

I don't go looking to use AI but now it seems enmeshed in regular Google search.

[JohnH]

I don't write sermons, but I would offer up that I consider my wife and daughter (who is 1 year old) to be something different than AI. I would consider their assistance on something to be quite different from just asking AI to produce something.

I don't go looking to use AI but now it seems enmeshed in regular Google search.

Indeed it is, and it is a quite low-quality form of AI. It shows up at the top of a search. Google search results have been trusted for a long time, leading to the phrase "just Google that". Many people don't really understand the difference between Google's "AI mode" summary box and a classic Google search.

Since Google has to handle billions of searches per day, that means it is a quite weak model, since it needs to return results quickly, and on the order of 150,000+ results per second. In AI, the weaker the model, the worse the results, including hallucinations (just making stuff up), confidently asserting something inaccurate as accurate, and so on. Here is an example of what it says if you search for me and my employer:

Performance Impact: Helps business clients achieve drastic operational improvements, including reducing emergency inventory order backlogs and cutting support ticket volumes using AI and Copilot automation integrations.

We certainly do no such thing - we don't do Copilot automation integrations, never have, and have no plans to start doing so.

Google actually has much better AI technology called Gemini that is not nearly as bad as the "AI mode" in search results, but most people's impression of Google's AI is going to be these terrible results. Now just imagine someone Googling for information about a Bible story, doctrine etc. and using those bad AI results and not even realising it...

[joshuabgood]

AI makes some preachers better. I read a news report of one case a small church pastor was fired for using AI. His board became suspicious after his sermons drastically improved.

I myself have heard speakers before that might have been better off using some AI.

[JohnH]

AI makes some preachers better. I read a news report of one case a small church pastor was fired for using AI. His board became suspicious after his sermons drastically improved.

I myself have heard speakers before that might have been better off using some AI.

Why not just wheel a computer out in front of the podium and have it deliver the sermons to us directly?

Chatbots could also be set up to do spiritual counselling, marital counselling, etc.

Tithing could be replaced with a referral code for a $20 a month ChatGPT subscription (or $100 for "ChatGPT Pro", for people who want an upgraded tier of counselling).

[JayP]

Let’s see…..

First, yes for the one that asked the homily at a Latin Mass are in English. And it is customary to reread the NT passage and gospel is English as well

second, I do not know about AI messages but I am pretty sure it seems like Eastern has rolled out a robot or two for the message.

And I heard one once at a Baptist church that might have used Artificial Non Intelligence

[barnhart]

And I heard one once at a Baptist church that might have used Artificial Non Intelligence

I've heard some like that as well except it was real, actual non-intelligence.

[Soloist]

Let’s see…..

First, yes for the one that asked the homily at a Latin Mass are in English. And it is customary to reread the NT passage and gospel is English as well

Whatever happened with the whole thing with Latin mass? That would be one of the reasons I’d ever be curious to go.

[Soloist]

I would hope that the preachers at the church where I attend are not using AI to "improve" their sermons.

I don't think I have done this yet for a sermon, but I have done it for other writings. I sometimes ask AI for suggestions if I am trying to say something, but the sentence structure or grammar sounds awkward. (I used to get my wife or daughters to help with this.)

Are you fine with wives and daughters helping a preacher with sentence structure/grammar if he is having trouble?

And what about using AI for something like this on occasion, as long as it is not being used to polish the entire sermon?

Wife: I bet wives and daughters have been helping preachers for a very long time. I don’t know if it’s wrong to use AI for grammar, but I think it could be spiritually edifying for both parties to discuss it together vs llm.

I could potentially see someone looking up relevant sermon illustrations using it, and I wouldn’t have a problem with that but I feel like there is something about preaching/friendship/counseling that should not get replaced by AI. At least that’s hypothetically not something Apostolic Christian church would have to worry about. They just flip to a page and start discussing a chapter.

[Bootstrap]

We teach our scholars in school that they should not copy their compositions "thought-for-thought" from an encyclopedia, but rather to note down the facts and then write a new, fresh composition using their own thoughts and wording. If ask AI to help you re-word an awkward sentence are you going to then just slightly rework the AI output and put it into your sermon? If your wife or daughters help you to reword something, hopefully they are comprehending the thought you are trying to convey. AI will never be able to comprehend a thought.

I think the process really, really matters. Depending on how you use it, AI can make you dumber and more passive, or it can make you better informed and sharper. The difference is about engagement.

For instance, when I use AI to reword something, I don't just accept its output, I think about whether it is better or worse than the original, and if so, in what way. I might ask AI to reword it 3 different ways. I try to think about why a sentence lands or does not. Or sometimes I ask the AI to write an outline of what I have written to help give me overview.

Similarly, if I use AI to research something, I still have to decide how I can know which things it said are true, and how I can know that. Often, the "research" I do with AI is mostly a lazy lookup. I know this person said something like this. Where, and what were the exact words? But you really can't trust it to quote completely accurately, so I look it up.

An example from language learning. If you use AI to translate a text, you learn very little. But I know people who have conversations with AI in languages they are trying to learn, asking the AI to correct them.

It's not just about whether you use AI or Google or Wikipedia or an encyclopedia or whatever. It's about how engaged your mind is, whether you are educating yourself or looking for an easy out. You can use AI to get smarter or dumber, and which you choose is up to you.