It seems like the topic of AI has consumed our public discourse overnight. A year ago, we were not talking about the AI revolution or the impact of massive data centers to support AI generation. Although AI had made its way into the daily conversation of our culture, it was mostly a topic of curiosity and not worry.
Wow have things changed!
In recent months, there have been lengthy publications on how AI is shaping the future of education, the Dell family gave $750 million to the University of Texas for the construction of a new medical school on an AI campus, and lists of occupations that will be made obsolete continue to grow. It is no wonder that members of religious institutions are beginning to wonder if the next thing to be replaced is the church. As a pastor, I have certainly given some thought to whether or not the church will need people like me in the near future.
My gut reaction is to say that AI cannot do what I do. Sure, it can write curriculum and compile an agenda for a meeting. It can write a policy and it can even oversee the operations of the church. But can it preach? That is a question that is plaguing pastors and teachers of pastors. On one hand, the answer is an easy “no.” Preaching is not merely writing it is expounding on the word of God revealed in the Bible and we fundamentally believe that it is the work of the Holy Spirit. That is a comfortable place to leave it. However, it raises some theological problems.
Who are we to say where the Holy Spirit does or can work? Scripture is clear that he ruach- the spirit/breath/wind- of God was present even before the world was made. In fact the Spirit was at work in the void of chaos before creation itself. So, the answer is also “yes.” If preaching is the work of the Holy Spirit through the preacher, why can it not speak through AI?
So are we stuck? Should we just surrender the church to our coming tech overlords and prepare for some kind of dystopian future resembling a sci-fi movie?
I don’t think so.
AI is here to stay and it will certainly change the way we are the church and how we do “church things.” But there is one limitation of AI that is fatal to any attempt to substitute it for the body of Christ in the world.
AI is too good.
It is too perfect.
If you type in a prompt to an AI text generator, in fractions of a second massive amounts of information are sorted and ordered into an answer to the prompt. AI has so much information at its fingertips and is so capable of sorting that into coherent results, it rarely surprises with its results. Put another way, AI is reliably predictable in its tendency to move from point A to the most predictable point B.
People, on the other hand, are anything but predictable. We constantly surprise one another and ourselves. We are capable of great sacrifice and wondrous acts of love that defy logic.
We are far more flawed, inefficient, unpredictable creatures. And it is in that wonderful imperfection that God’s grace lives in and through us. What, after all, is the church if not the gathering of the imperfect? The very foundation of our faith is the love of God despite our flaws and our failures.
AI is no doubt here to stay. But so is the church of Jesus Christ.