Why don't I use AI for my sermons

lIfe is busy. Whether we are doctors, teachers, students or retailers, it's busy for us all. Life is busy for pastors and priests too. Clergy may have a little more flexibility, but they may have a little more agency about what they do every hour of each day, but there is a reasonable attitude to “on-call” in various emergency situations.

And there are regular deadlines for family crises, building crises, and even deaths. Working with materials for others to lead, worship planning and coordination, weekly parish communication, supervising (often part-time) staff and volunteers to manage your finances, preparing for productive (simply not functioning) attack meetings, and always preparing for comfort. At the best, the thoughtful pastor is agile, navigating meetings, talking parishioners, responding to the crisis, and alienating long enough to write weekly prayer, thin, and exegetical respect.

Tackling this family life, home management, health and wellness means your schedule will be full for most weeks.

But let's be fair. So is the schedule of the people we serve.

But imagine having a sick child in your home (or more realistically, that illness flows through your home), or just too many unexpected idyllic calls or car troubles, or one other thing that eats valuable margins. The pastor may panic.

In such a pinch, one new solution is to offload even one of the most sacred tasks to artificial intelligence. It's easy for a pastor to write a sermon or prepare a Bible study using ChatGpt or other AI programs, especially during heavy weeks. No one would know.

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Readers seriously doubt that AI, the ability of computer programs to produce what appears to be human thoughts, stories, and arguments. The program is still clumsy and rough, but it is said that in time these details will become smoother.

There are all sorts of questions you might ask about church AI. One question is whether it is appropriate for pastors and priests to use in preaching and teaching.

My answer as a pastor is overwhelming no.

My resistance to such options doesn't come from aversion to technology. Smartphones in my pocket and my always ready laptop are used in a lot!

Yet, the relationship between readers and writers, especially pastors and congregations, is one of the trust. Each week I have the divine burden and privilege to study the sacred Bible, pray, draw from literature and experience, to share the message that it may be used by the Holy Spirit by God's grace and open our hearts to live more fully in God's love. And the good people in Christchurch, Tyler, Texas, have the burden and privilege to listen to me.

I know they are busy, they have demands in their lives just like me. Plus, there's a lot they can do on Sunday mornings. They made an effort to honor God by coming to worship him on the Lord's Day. They began to receive the sacraments, but they began to hear the Bible, the Word of God, preached. So, the last thing I want to do is pass the money to the computer to write a script for me to read.

I don't have any special insight into the Biblical world, and some kind of access they don't need to do stellar commentary or interesting meditations. In fact, many people who listen to me are smarter and better reads than me. Some understand the path of Christ better than I do through the long practices of disciples.

But like any other clergy, I was ordained to preach not only to administer the sacraments. In the Book of Common Prayer (1979), after placing your hands, the bishop presents the Bible to the new priest and says, “I will receive this Bible as a sign of authority given to you to preach the Word of God and administer His Holy Sacrament.

And the faithful preacher turns to texts in the midst of the living community. A good sermon is a place of connection between living words and positive words and those who need to receive them. What I have to offer is not merely by being a pastor, or by publishing the Bible, but rather Their Pastor. We live our lives together. Everything in life, every idyllic conversation, every reading in the morning prayer, every hospital visit filters that path into my heart and spirit. So, when I pray, read and write, the words are not perfect, but they grew from the local soil. At this time and at this place, they feed us.

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You might argue: I use AI carefully to gather some details here and then some sermons. In other words, this is AI use Basics Of the projects, it is something that can connect with the congregation. This may not be as reliable as you look to reliable commentary, but it appears to lie in the same basic category. Occasionally I use images generated by AI to explain the sermon. When I do that, it is usually due to comedic effects, and I always reveal that the images are generated in AI. But I know if I've decided to resort to AI Configure My sermon, I'll feel like I'm cheating on people I care about. I'd feel like a con man. I feel embarrassed.

I don't want to live that way. I would rather be a mediocre priest who offers a middle homily born from a place of love, effort and prayer than to make pristine ready-made ones shine and hand them out as their own.

So I decided that I wouldn't use it in my writing and my people decided that there was no need to worry about me using it. I have these powerful tools at my fingertips, but I plan to write, teach and preach old ways. To borrow the title from the book Leif Enger, I see what AI has to offer me and see, “I refuse happily.”

Otherwise, for pastors who believe there is a place for AI in sermons, I am ready to listen to their rationale and be charity in conclusion. But I think if they take that route, they need to be transparent about it along with their people. When we start to hear the sermons of the Lord in the Church, we should not feel bad.