The AI Preacher – Artificial Intelligence in the Pulpit. Ps Chris Field Nov 2023
If you haven’t been paying attention AI is on the rise as a preaching tool.
Did you see the CNN report from April 2023 – “ChatGPT can write sermons. Religious leaders don’t know how to feel about it”?
CNN questioned AI’s ability to deliver a ‘convincing spiritual message’. It also raised alarm, as expressed by New York Rabbi Joshua Franklin who delivered a 2 minute AI message to his applauding audience, while declaring, “I’m terrified!” That was December 2022.
Since then people have flocked to hear AI messages in various places around the world, attracted by the novelty, then impressed by the result.
So, will AI make preachers redundant, as technology has done in many other places?
With the combination of attractive CGI presenters, can we put preachers out to pasture, so to speak, for more ‘shepherding’ roles?
AI’s transformer neural network is vastly superior to human abilities, in terms of speed, scope of access, depth of investigation, and capacity to hold, filter and collate abundant resource material.
Careful parameter setting allows people to be quite specific about what is needed and what is to be included in source material. So it’s highly unlikely an AI sermon will be heretical.
It’s likely to set a high standard for scholarship, interpretation, relevance, breadth of resources and organisation of thought. Many a struggling preacher could lose sleep over this strong competition.
Wonderfully for those committed to transmitting the Word of God as faithfully as possible,
AI brings new hope of expository excellence, and doctrinal purity creating the very best taught Christians of all time.
Artificial Intelligence is here to save the day, and is proving itself popular with audiences around the world while proving itself much sharper in insight and much more up-to-date with the latest in scholarship than human preachers.
What’s more AI can provide ‘the whole counsel of God’ in an instant, with lightning fast access to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Add to that every recorded word of the greatest of preachers and expositors throughout history. Add to that absolute fluency in all Biblical languages, along with full grasp of all extra-biblical sources, along with critical appraisals of each of those resources, along with selective theological parameters to ensure the whole counsel of God isn’t contaminated.
So, cheer on AI Preaching!
Oh, and say farewell to those struggling preachers who didn’t quite master Biblical languages or who struggle to understand deeper theological arguments, or struggle to eloquently articulate what they understand intuitively.
Step aside all strugglers, and make way for a technological revolution that will release you to re-imagine your role.
And consider the privilege you now have to truly empathise with all those who lost their career to technology.
As we welcome this new day, delighted that audiences are attracted and time is freed, let’s reflect on the impacts of this new advance.
One of the most important advances is heightened capacity to teach the whole counsel of God.
AI can exposit the Word of God, to the iota. What could be the danger in that?
Is the Bible not the Word of God? Is not God’s Word true? Does not Truth set people free?
Teaching God’s truth, more thoroughly explained, more carefully crafted and more interestingly presented should lead to revival in our churches. We could expect to find better believers, more alive in faith and more active in Christian life.
Yet Apostle Paul does not uphold clear Bible teaching on its own. His ministry and that of his team is expressed as ministering the Spirit, and specifically not the letter. Paul went so far as to declare the letter toxic – it kills!
“Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” 2Corinthians 3:6
Is it possible that careful, accurate and thorough exegesis of a Bible text could be stultifying or toxic, failing to bring life to the hearer? Can exegesis be a mere autopsy of the text, failing to transmit the spirit of the word to hearers? Can one who is not alive to God bring life to their audience?
Consider the words of Jesus.
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” John 6:63
According to Jesus speaking words does not guarantee life transmitted to the hearer. Jesus described his words as both spirit and life.
What could Jesus mean by ‘the flesh profits nothing’? Is he discrediting human talent, eloquence, scholarship (like the scribes of his day), oratory, dogma, persuasion, passion, and the like?
Is it possible that the lack of faith or engagement with God’s Kingdom in today’s church-goers, despite the study-rich sermons they hear each week, is evidence of empty words, or an autopsy on a dead letter, or preaching that lacks the Spirit and life preached by Jesus and Paul?
What gave Jesus’ words ‘spirit and life’? Jesus explained by quoting Isaiah 61.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Luke 4:18,19 (quoting Isaiah 61:1,2)
Jesus claimed an anointing of the Holy Spirit – ‘anointed’ to preach.
Being trained to preach, authorised to preach, or employed to preach is not the same as being anointed to preach.
Can a computer be ‘anointed to preach’? Does the Holy Spirit anoint technology and software?
How does preaching under the anointing of the Holy Spirit differ from preaching a dead letter message that kills?
In Jesus’ ministry he taught as one with authority and not as the scribes (Mark 1:22).
Jesus was seen to have wisdom, and he did mighty works confirming the word (with signs following – Mark 16:20).
“And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?” Matthew 13:54
Jesus was both teacher and preacher. He did not rely only on teaching but exhorted people.
“After Jesus had finished instructing His twelve disciples, He went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.” Matthew 11:1
See also this rebuke of the lawyers who kept the keys to true knowledge from people.
“Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” Luke 11:52
We see in Isaiah 61 that anointing brought significant results, healing the brokenhearted, delivering captives, giving sight, and giving liberty to the bruised.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Luke 4:18,19 (quoting Isaiah 61:1,2)
Preaching under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, speaking life, rather than sharing the dead letter that kills, reflects godly wisdom (not the other kind described in James 3:15), and teaching and preaching that impacts the hearers in fruitful ways, plus miraculous physical impact on the hearers.
But, you may well ask, is anointing by the Holy Spirit to be expected in the ordinary believer or today’s preachers?
At Pentecost Peter quoted Joel declaring God pouring his Spirit on ordinary people, sons and daughters, young and old, who would prophesy. Bible teachers readily interchange prophecy with preaching, so we should expect that today’s preachers can surely minister under the Spirit poured out.
Apostle Paul gives us two reference points for the impact of prophecy on hearers, confirming that preaching under the Holy Spirit produces results.
“But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” 1Corinthians 14:3
“But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.” 1Corinthians 14:25
A limitation of AI might well be the absence of any anointing to impact and transform.
AI may well be a way to enhance what Paul calls ‘the flesh’, while starving hearers of what is meant to come to them under an ‘anointing’.
Consider how that was experienced by the disciples through Christ’s preaching after the resurrection …
“And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” Luke 24:32
I heard an interesting example comparing speaking the dead letter (such as intellectual AI sermons devoid of God’s inspiration might be) with speaking by the Holy Spirit, bringing life to the hearer, as Jesus and Paul did.
In the first half of last century the Assemblies of God Bible College in Melbourne Australia required students to preach sermons under the anointing of the Holy Spirit (however that was determined). Bible College faculty sat on the front row and if within the first few minutes the preacher did not evidence that their message carried God’s anointing the student was interrupted and asked to sit down.
Terrifying as that sounds, that requirement directed preachers to focus on seeking God, being led by the Spirit, speaking what God prompted them to speak, and relying on God’s grace on their message, not their own intellect or performance prowess.
AI assistance would be of no help in such a situation.
AI preaching knows nothing about hearing the voice of God, being led by the Spirit, or preaching as the Holy Spirit leads.
If AI can enhance your sermon ….
If AI can make you redundant then all that AI can’t do are things you are failing to do right now.