“ChatGPT answered your question in 3 seconds. It took you 45 minutes.”
After I finished a talk to a room full of pastors, a guy leaned over and said this to me as I found my seat. He meant it as a joke, but it lingered. Moments like that—when you’re tired and discouraged by your own lack of precision—makes you think. What am I doing? And why is it important that I do it and not just a robot?
I mused on these questions for a bit, returning to some basic reflections I’ve had over the past few years. I think it’s important for us to have some core categories settled, especially as AI’s accessibility and perceived utility continue to expand. Core convictions keep us steady; they calibrate and counsel. This is helpful as technology speeds ahead with cries for efficiency, threatening to drown out your conscience.
1. AI provides new challenges to an old problem.
The speed and scope of the answers are staggering. We can ask questions about anything and get answers within seconds. Often, the answers are helpful. It’s not a stretch to say that, with help from an AI tool, pastors could put together sermons, Bible studies, and prayers in a matter of minutes. They could just cut and paste, and it’s done.
What’s wrong with this?
A temptation to copy answers from others is nothing new. Regrettably, many pastors have lifted content from commentaries, books, or other sermons and passed it off as their own. In academia, it’s called plagiarism. In the church, we call it stealing and lying.
The new challenges today stem from the detachment from published content. It’s not in a commentary or in a sermon audio file. It’s buried in a chat query on a phone. But the veneer of privacy or distance from public view doesn’t hide it from God. No one else may see it, but God does. He knows the plans of our minds, the desires of our hearts, and the deeds of our hands. So AI presents some new challenges, but the core question is the same old question. Pastor, are you going to do your own work or lift it from somewhere else and pass it off as your own?
2. The technology is not morally neutral.
Like any tool, AI can be helpful, but only when used with discernment and integrity. Some talk about AI like it’s morally neutral, but it’s not. There are two touchpoints of flawed human interactions that cannot be overlooked: the creators and the users of the software. AI is shaped by the data it’s fed. This brings with it human bias, sinful tendencies, and a worldview. It’s impossible to sanitize the source that gives the “intelligence” to the system because the source are themselves affected by the fall.
Furthermore, the user is also not morally neutral. Used wisely, people can input questions to get information and analysis that’s helpful. However, the tool can be used to serve selfish and sinful ends. Just because a tool offers many positive benefits, that doesn’t mean the technology is morally neutral. We cannot escape the (fallen) human element.
3. Efficiency is not the goal of ministry.
Just because you do something faster doesn’t mean it’s done right–or better. I can cook a brisket in a microwave for five minutes, or I can smoke it all day. In both cases, the food is cooked, but who would prefer a microwaved brisket?
You cannot microwave the work a pastor does when wrestling with the text, grappling with its meaning and implications. It may be very efficient to ask AI (or a commentary) for all the answers, but is this best? Just as when smoking a brisket, something extraordinary happens to the pastor when he reflects, prays, grapples with, and works out the text, dependent on the Holy Spirit. This kind of dependence takes time. This is a process that cannot nor should be short-circuited.
Remember, the means of grace are supernatural. God blesses the work of faithful men, not efficient men. AI sermons will produce artificial grace.
Just because you do something faster doesn’t mean it’s done right–or better.
4. Robots can’t taste and see that the Lord is good.
God has ordained that pastors preach and teach God’s Word to his people. He’s gifted them with the ability to fulfill this task (Eph. 4:11ff). Part of the beauty of this resides in the fact that God works on ministers as we work on our sermons. He presses the truth into us and shapes our hearts and minds. When we study the Bible, God invites us in to experience the truths of the text personally. We work out the implications of our sin and God’s grace. We repent. We taste and see that the Lord is good.
The machines don’t do this. They don’t feel or know their sin and God’s grace. They can’t taste and see that the Lord is good. To outsource our work to AI is to rob ourselves and our people of the gift of the pastoral and Christian experience. This circumvents the divine design in the means of grace. It cauterizes the heart of preaching and robs the people of the work of grace upon their pastor.
Imagine the devil’s grin as he beholds a generation of artificially intelligent pastors?
5. You may be hollowing out your soul.
What are the long-term effects on the pastor who relies upon AI to do his work? In addition to the moral, pastoral, and congregational implications already mentioned, I think the effect upon the pastor’s soul is equally concerning.
If the pastor is neglecting his time in the Word to prepare a sermon, a Bible study, or for a counseling meeting, then he is drifting from his calling and from God. How will we preach, teach, train, or counsel?
God commands ministers to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15). Preparing sermons and talks with reliance upon AI instead of the Holy Spirit demonstrates a disregard for one’s pastoral calling. It reveals a flippancy toward God’s design, coldness toward his people, and deception about accountability. If a man lives with this much incongruity to God’s Word, then he will continue drifting from the Lord. And over time, he will have two things: really polished sermons produced by AI and a hollowed-out soul produced by his own neglect.
Imagine the devil’s grin as he beholds a generation of artificially intelligent pastors?
Lord, have mercy.
Conclusion
An hour or so after the guy’s comment to me, I leaned over and said, “Can ChatGPT do that?”
We had just heard a seasoned pastor pour out his heart about the priority of prayer in sermon preparation and stories of God faithfully answering his prayers and providing light when he was stuck. The seasoned veteran told stories of God’s faithfulness to “show up” in his study to meet with him as he labored over the Word, preparing to preach to his congregation. This older man was living proof of God’s ordinary means of grace, a man seasoned by years of divine and human faithfulness.
My new friend smiled and agreed, “No way.”
