While several churches our team at Cooke Media Group works with have been using artificial intelligence (A.I.) for quite some time, I’m still getting a significant number of inquiries from other churches and ministries about the ethics, practice, and pitfalls of using AI in a church setting. So I asked Will Chapman, the Online Minister at Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, Texas, about his experience. Hopefully, it will give you a solid perspective for making the right decision about using artificial intelligence in the church:
Using Artificial Intelligence in the Church
Phil: Tell me a little about your recent experiments with using artificial intelligence in the church.
Will: Our digital ministry staff started experimenting with A.I. sites explicitly built for ministry earlier this year. Two sites we began testing were rever.ai and church.tech. As I jumped into church.tech more, their developers contacted me to join their beta testing program. I’ve enjoyed using both sites and seeing how they can help with ministry content.
Phil: Were you concerned at first about using AI for your church?
Will: Yes. I was concerned about using AI for ministry content because of plagiarism and hermeneutics (Bible interpretation) issues. From the plagiarism standpoint, I was worried about how content from other people, websites, etc., might be brought into the content I wanted to generate from my pastor’s sermon. So, I reached out to a friend of mine who is a professor at Liberty University. He ran the A.I. content I generated through plagiarism software that scans work submitted by students to see if it is original content. The scan returned showing the lowest possible plagiarism and A.I.-generated content scores. This means that the A.I. I used acted like an editorial board at a publishing company, meaning that the A.I. took the content there and rearranged it for the use I needed. This means no additional content was added besides what I provided the A.I. platform.
Secondly, regarding my concerns about hermeneutics, the scan scores confirmed to me that content from other authors or websites wasn’t used that could change the theology of what my pastor preached. I was also impressed that every sermon-based resource the A.I. generated did not mix up words, phrases, or Bible verses that would change how my pastor interpreted the Bible, so I was impressed.
