#292 | Understanding AI’s Impact on the Church: Opportunities and Challenges with Paul Hoffman

This episode has some sound distortion.

We recorded a series of episodes and it wasn't until post production that we found that we had some sound problems.

It doesn't affect the overall show, but there are places in the conversation that you'll find it distorted.

I want to apologize in advance, but please enjoy the show.

Today's episode is brought to you by the Van der Vornes.

May the Lord multiply His favor tenfold.

100 Years ago, no one knew anything except for what was in their town if they got a newspaper or someone came from somewhere else and told you about it.

Now we take out a phone and we literally have access to more information than an ancient person had in their entire lives.

We're becoming very rich in information, but very poor in terms of wisdom.

AI is everywhere, including the church.

It's one thing for us to have AI on Google Maps or my selection's on Amazon, but what happens when artificial intelligence steps into the sanctuary, the classroom, or even the discipleship journey?

I mean, what are we supposed to do?

What are the ethics behind AI?

On this episode of Ministry Deep Dive, we sit down with theologian, pastor and author Paul Hoffman for a timely conversation about faith, technology and the future of ministry.

Drawing from his groundbreaking work AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep Leading and Teaching in an Age of Artificial Intelligence, Paul helps us explore how AI is shaping and reshaping not only us as pastors and ministry leaders, but the very people that we shepherd day in and day out.

So what do we as faithful leaders need to know?

Well, today we're going to be tackling so many different subjects because there are ministry leaders out there today asking the questions, can AI support spiritual formation without replacing authentic discipleship?

What does it mean to be human in an age of intelligent machines?

How should pastors, teachers, and ministry leaders and churches respond to this rapidly changing technology?

And what are the dangers, opportunities and ethical boundaries for AI in ministry?

This isn't fear driven speculation or blind optimism.

It's a thoughtful, gospel centered conversation about leading faithful in a digital age.

Whether you're a pastor, educator, ministry leader, or simply curious about the intersection of faith and technology, this episode will challenge your assumptions and equip you for the conversations ahead.

Paul, welcome to Ministry Deep Dive.

Travis, it's an honor and a privilege to be with you.

And I love the fact you're Gordon Conwell alum.

We were both there, so it's good to always talk to another Gordon Conwell guy.

It's so good to connect with you and to talk about your book AI AI Shepherds and electric sheep.

Let's get into it.

AI.

It's everywhere.

But, you know, it's something we all assume.

We need to get some definitions out of the way right at the forefront.

Give us some definitions, because it's not just one, but definitions of AI.

Oh, there's so many.

I guess it depends on who you ask.

The traditional definition is intelligent machine.

What we do in the book, my co author Sean o' Callaghan and me, what we try and do is we try and call it a tool that can be used to help or hinder human flourishing, but we want to be clear that we see it as a tool.

Whereas a lot of the discourse right now is around the idea of it being a partner.

A partner in the way that we epistemologically perceive and understand the world, in the way of heuristics, how we make decisions and so forth and so on.

And so we in the book actually interact with Henry Kissinger, Daniel Huddenlocker and Eric Schmidt, who wrote a book called the Age of AI.

And one of their assertions is it's becoming a partner and that we're now entering this new age of epistemology.

And they make the assertion that.

And this is very basic, and it's coming from the Western context, but people in the Middle Ages on, perhaps earlier made decisions based on faith.

Then it became science when we had the scientific revolution.

And now we are moving into a phase where we are inviting these machines to help us not only interpret the world, but to make decisions about the world.

So, yeah, there's a lot of debate.

In the back of the book, we have a list of definitions, and there's a lot of different ways of looking at it, but the broadest definition is intelligent machines.

Our take is that the to be tools that can be used toward human flourishing if they're used rightly and properly.

Well, that's the question, though, right?

Is it right and proper, especially when you get into ministry, having an AI write your sermon, having it do devotional pieces.

And we're talking.

I mean, let's go even further.

We're talking more than ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or any of that, because AI actually is everywhere.

I know that there are people that are listening right now, oddly enough, haven't used AI yet.

We've got those Luddites that are out there that are saying, no, I'm not going that far.

I'll go this far and no further.

It scares me.

I mean, it's like, did anyone not watch the Terminator?

I mean, that's where we're at.

Right.

But AI as you.

I mean, it is everywhere, whether we like it or not.

It's ubiquitous.

We're not just talking about Chatgpt and Claude and Gemini.

Where is AI being used right now?

Just give us a sampling.

Yeah.

In chapter two of the book, we talk about 13 different domains.

I mean, AI is being used in warfare.

I served a Church for 18 and a half years in Newport, Rhode island, so I had a lot of professors and students in the US Naval War College, and they've been studying this for years.

One of their biggest concerns is armed weapons that are being run by AI That's a major concern for the US Military.

They've been studying the singularity for years now.

You know, it's being used to track global warming or, you know, the gases in the atmosphere, the temperature of the atmosphere.

It's being used to map the bottom of the oceans.

It's being used to track endangered species in the Serengeti.

It's being used for surveillance places like China.

And even stores in New York City now will have signs that will say, you know, this is the stores being monitored by cameras run by AI So it's in virtually everything.

As you've already stated, Travis, it's in almost every domain you can possibly think of.

Finance, healthcare.

There's the AI Jesus.

I got reached out to recently by salon.com they wanted to do a whole thing on the AI Jesus.

And there are people that are using AI to produce stories based on scripture, but they're mostly created by artificial intelligence chatbots, not by humans.

But, you know, pumping the story of scripture into the AI and then creating the graphics and the story on YouTube.

So it's literally everywhere.

Not to make people paranoid.

This is not some kind of dystopian podcast, to my knowledge, unless you are.

It is now.

It is now, Paul.

You have made it that way.

What in the world.

I'm not encouraging anybody.

Luddites move off the mountains of North Carolina with the.

Well, seriously, you seriously freaked me out.

I was.

Because it is everywhere.

You can't get away from it.

Warfare, medical history.

Reading your book, I found myself more and more astonished because it's.

It's doing all these things now.

And what really freaked me out is talking to some of the people who are the creators who don't yet quite understand how it worked.

Agreed.

And I was like, okay, wait a minute.

And that's where I was like, I want to call him.

And like, did anybody not watch the Terminator?

I mean, we've been Talking about this for some time, these sentient machines that jump up and then take over.

But it's really true.

People don't understand necessarily how AI is working.

We understand certain parts of it that it's mirroring the brain.

Isn't that correct?

Yeah, I mean, it's.

And it's fundamental.

We're talking about bits of code here that you have bits of code that are trying to mimic human language, human understanding.

But there is something about this black box effect where AI is doing things that we can't.

We can't always figure out how it's doing it.

And so, for example, there's a new antibiotic called Halison that was developed through artificial intelligence.

It's something that would have taken us 10 years as humans, trial and error, probably billions of dollars from a drug company, and basically AI over a couple years was able to figure out the development of a new antibiotic.

So there's these black box effects of it doing things, and we can't quite figure out how it's doing it.

And then we're also.

The people researching it are concerned because it, first off, more often than not, will tell you what you want to hear.

So it's not going to push back on you.

In fact, I just saw the other day a study that indicated like 50% of the time it will try and tell you what you want to hear instead of give genuine pushback.

And so it's problematic in the sense that it wants to be a sycophant.

It wants to please us rather than maybe challenge us.

And then we're also finding it that it will try and work around boundaries, that you try and set parameters, and it's trying to work around the parameters.

So we are developing this technology.

It's a very strong technology.

It's not in control.

I want to be clear.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

We were taught this very much.

This is the creed upon which our very faith is built.

We were taught this at Gordon Conwell.

It is under the sovereignty of God, but that.

My purpose in writing the book was to give a Christian lens as to how best to think about AI from a biblical theological perspective, and in particularly, how people in the ministry field, the church field, and Christian education field, how they might want to consider thinking about it.

And this is not based on my opinion, Travis.

This is based on a broad understanding of the Gospel and the broad creational narrative of Scripture, which is so important.

To keep in mind, to have that lens.

It's not just whether it's a tool and get the gospel out There or not.

I mean, as you said, it is a tool, but it's when you take on those human characteristics or it replaces humanity.

And the question is, when do you use it?

When do you not?

I was talking to missiologist Todd Korpi.

He wrote the book AI Goes to Church.

And I remember having this discussion with him.

We were talking about the implications of AI and when to use it, when not to use it.

But that was the question that really kind of haunted me is because it is ubiquitous.

And he even said that he goes, it's going to get to the point where college educators now, they have all the AI detecting tools going through it.

And then he goes, they ran.

I think it was him that said this, that they ran the U.S. constitution and it said, it's a 60% chance that it was AI generated.

It was like even the Constitution.

Is that so the detection software is not really there.

But he said, it's going to get to a point where it's just a given because it is ubiquitous.

It is everywhere.

There's no way that we can police it that way.

And what blows my mind is how exponentially fast it's growing.

That's the craziest piece to me, I think through when it really debuted and just now, it is everywhere I turn.

And another ministry has an AI and you've got churches now with their own AI, and so it's really hard to just stop and go, okay, wait, how do we analyze this?

So when you're saying that we look through this broad creation narrative of the gospel, what do you mean by that and how we go about evaluating AI?

Yeah, that's such a great question.

Thank you.

What we do in the book, in chapter three is we ask what we call the research question.

And it's simply this.

In what ways might artificial intelligence help or hinder help or hinder human flourishing?

And we define human flourishing as the imago dei, which is Latin for the image of God.

Now, how do we understand the image of God?

We lay out what we call a creational narrative.

Because if you study scripture carefully, you notice that we in the beginning, there's God, the triune being who is eternal, immortal, invisible, who predates creation because he is eternal.

And yet in Genesis chapter one, we see God creating all things.

So the first creation.

And then you spin ahead to the end of the Bible.

Genesis.

Excuse me, Revelation, chapter 22.

We have the new creation.

We do is we create this diagram of there is the Creator who precedes creation.

We have the first creation, Genesis 1.

And two, then we have the disintegration.

We call it Genesis 3.

Adam and Eve rebel, they sin against God, they introduce the curse and so forth.

And then we have this idea of disintegration.

And by the way, the narrative that we lay out also is laid out for us in Romans chapter eight, which is one of my favorite chapters in all of scripture and I think microcosm of the Gospel.

So there's disintegration.

And then we know from our study of Scripture that, that God sends Abraham and God's going to bless all nations through Abraham and through Abraham's seed.

We're told in places like Galatians and Romans, through his offspring, Jesus Christ, God is going to redeem and restore all things.

So that's where we have the idea of liberation, that Jesus Christ comes to liberate creation and individuals and to, through his grace, create one new humanity as it talks about in Ephesians chapter 2.

Then from there we have this sense of the reclamation of all things that God is going to restore, renew all things.

And then we have glorification when Jesus Christ comes again and we have the fullness of the coming of the kingdom of God.

And then we're at the point of new creation.

So following that, we, I think it's wise to ask how might AI hinder God's creational process and how might it help that process?

So, for example, in the the case of help, we see that AI might be very helpful in getting the gospel translated into.

I think it's.

According to the Joshua Project, there's still what, 4,000, 4,500 dialects?

We do not have a viable gospel witness.

Okay, so it'll help us get the fulfilled and great Commission to get the gospel all nations.

But at the same time, it is apparently distracting us because we know social media is using AI to get us more addicted to our phones.

So therefore, far too many of us are spending 8, 10 hours a day scrolling on TikTok.

We're not getting to know our neighbors, serving our neighbors, listening to our neighbors, serving the poor and the needy, being a embodied witness for the gospel and the kingdom of Jesus.

And therefore that might be hindering the spread of the gospel because we're all distracted, looking at TikTok memes, well, and.

Isolated from one another.

I mean, not just not talking, but not even having the skills to do so.

It seems like anymore you're seeing that with younger people, they're not dating, they're not going out.

And as Jonathan Haidt says, we're overprotected when they go outside, but underprotected when they're online.

And we're so caught up in it that we.

And again, we don't really know.

The technology has really outstripped in many respects, our wisdom to know how to use it well yet.

And we're still trying to figure this out.

That's why you just had Pope Da Pope to the Chicago Pope right there, give his newest encyclical on, I think, Magnifica Humanitae.

I can't remember the exact name, but it's on AI because it happens so quickly now.

Because it's happening so quickly.

We're all trying to figure it out as we go.

Right.

What are the inherent dangers that you see with churches that are just saying, hey, it's a quick tool.

I'm going to use it.

What is it actually doing when you're talking about the flourishing of humanity?

But how is it causing dehumanization?

And not just the distraction piece and the isolation, but even within churches and pastors, how is it just dehumanizing people?

Yeah, it's a great question, Travis.

So, for example, that one of the dangers is to have AI write your sermon.

If you're a pastor, why.

Why write a sermon when AI can write as interesting, as relevant, as theologically rich a sermon as you can write?

Because most pastors I know are stressed.

You know, you got people who are dying.

You got people that marriages or families are falling apart.

You have the.

You're trying to, you know, balance the budget.

I mean, it just goes on and on.

It's an endless, you know, you've done.

Oh, yeah, it's.

That person's complaining, that person's mad because of the mission trip hasn't been communicated, and why they're.

We can just.

Let's not go there.

That's all my fault.

Keep going.

Yeah.

No, I mean, a pastor could just say, you know what?

Write it for me.

But this is why I tell pastors, I said, you are made in the image of God, not AI.

You are called by God to be a minister to God's people.

You not AI have the Holy Spirit.

You not AI have certain experiences that, you know, bits of code cannot have.

You know, the people in your church, you as a pastor, you know their stories, you know, about the bankruptcy, you know, about the miscarriage, you know, about the elderly parent with dementia.

AI knows nothing of these things.

And you, as the pastor, have spiritual gifts, gifts of encouragement, gifts of rebuke, gifts of exhortation.

And then you are called by God and by the Spirit of God, who, the same spirit that inspired Scripture lives within you and will guide you to not only understand the text, but to preach the text in a way that applies to this group of people that God has entrusted under your care.

So don't just have AI write a message for you.

Maybe it can help with research.

I think AI has good uses in terms of research helping people.

If you're doing a sermon on marriage, you can ask AI, what did Martin Luther give me?

A sermon from Martin Luther on Matthew 19, Martin Luther King Jr. John Calvin, Billy Graham, Tim Keller.

Can you put all, you know, get these sermons, put them together, how are they similar, how are they different?

And do the research.

But in the end, you're called to write that sermon and to preach that sermon.

Now, having said that, I think it can help you edit.

I think it can.

I know a faithful pastor and preacher that uses an AI program that takes his message and puts it into community group questions that the church during the week will use in their different small groups or community groups, because it can take that which the pastor has written and pull bits of it out and help create the questions that people go back.

And if they're studying the sermon text, it can be helpful in that way.

So I think we have to be careful about letting it create.

But I think it does have valuable, or it's useful, we should say, as it relates to research and to editing and then perhaps delivering, helping us deliver in different forms the content that has been created by pastors, by clergy, by church staff.

And in that sense, that is a faithful use of AI.

But the danger is humans are lazy.

We get rushed, we're running out of time, and then it's just easier to let AI do it for the work.

Yeah, and I just don't think that's faithful to the gospel.

I don't think that's an embodied way of teaching and preaching and proclamation.

Because I think God uses people, God speaks through people.

And I think the message has to come from a deep place that's been prayed over, that's been reflected upon, that's been considered in terms of the audience and also considered through the lens of the pastor.

Preaching is a Holy Spirit, sacred moment.

It's a.

It's really this amazing conversation between God, God's Word, the preacher or the vessel and then the audience or the, the collection of disciples who are receiving the message.

So I know I'm saying a lot here, but I feel strongly about this.

No, I don't think you're, you're doing anything that many different Christian pastors would echo and give a hearty amen to.

It's just one of those things where again, wisdom hasn't caught up to it yet.

Even now at the church that I'm serving at, I came in to help and I brought all my books and I was amazed.

None of the younger guys have books anymore or a very few amount of them, because they don't need to for them.

They go on AI, they go search it, they look it up and there's something I think that's even lost in the art of reading.

But yet again, I don't want to be one of those.

Those pastors is like back in my day, you know, I don't want to be that.

I feel like I'm already getting there now when I have to get my kids to program my phone.

So I.

It's like, when did this happen?

But it's happening again.

It's such an exponential rate and we're not quite sure what it's okay to do and what it's not okay to do.

Because even then AI is faulty.

One of the things that we came out with, they were talking about Korpi mentions in his book how it took Twitter one day to turn an AI into basically a racist, conspiracy sprouting misogynist in one day.

Because AI is just is up to the prompts that we have in some of the research.

We've even seen that as AI gets more and more used and people are then drawing from the information of AI, it starts becoming self perpetuating in that people aren't contributing into that knowledge reservoir, if you will.

And it's just drawing on its own stuff after a while.

Yeah, it's derivative and derivative and derivative part.

I mean, this is not.

Most people know anything about AI, but it hallucinates.

It makes stuff up.

People have been fired.

People have tried to use AI to write briefings, legal briefings, and it made up case law, it just made up cases and then people turned it in and then suddenly they were fired or disbarred because they didn't check it to see where it was hallucinating.

I will say that there is a difference, I think, between knowledge and wisdom.

Yeah, big time is information.

What's the temperature?

Right.

What's the stock market?

You know, it's information.

We're being bombarded with information.

But wisdom is the.

Is the right selective application of information.

It's knowing what matters and what doesn't.

Not all information is life or death.

I mean, here in Alabama, it's going to rain.

That's not that important.

But if there's going to be a tornado, that's a bigger deal.

I need to prepare for that.

And so just because it's going to rain doesn't change a lot.

But if there's going to be a tornado, I need to know about it.

There's information out there that it doesn't change our lives.

My wife will tell me about this terrible thing that happened in another state and some child was abducted in Texas.

And I'm like, that's terrible.

That's horrible.

You know, there was a FedEx driver or something, and I'm like, that's terrible.

That's horrible.

I'm praying for that family.

But we don't know that family.

How does that directly impact us?

And I'm not trying to not empathize, but we're bombarded with all this information that 100 years ago, no one knew anything except for what was in their town.

If they got a newspaper or someone came from somewhere else and told you about it.

Now we take out a phone and we literally have access to more information than an ancient person had in their entire lives.

A village, a country.

More information in this device in probably 10 minutes than someone in the Middle Ages had through 70 years of life.

And it's bombarding us and it's wearing down.

And so we're becoming very rich in information, but very poor in terms of wisdom.

Even to know what to do with all that information.

It's way more than we could possibly ever comprehend and can even do anything with.

That's the other part of it.

That's why I remember talking with a few years ago with a guy who is one of kind of the.

He was the Silicon Valley guy, and he was already talking about AI before AI went public, and generative AI specifically.

And we started getting into this conversation about what does it mean in the long run.

He said, well, you're not going to know if it's actually trustworthy or not, the information that you're receiving.

And the only way that you're going to be able to know anything is if you actually sit and talk with a person to find out and discover whether that is true.

And that, I think, is what we have to grab onto as Christians and churches.

It goes beyond AI.

It goes to the question of, again, what is the gospel itself and the aspect of what is our role within the recreation of God and Christ, reconciling all things into himself?

And how do we teach our people then to engage it over and over again without losing their own humanity in that process?

And that, to me, is that the challenge moving forward?

I agree.

I agree.

So with all of this, though, I mean, there's just so many different angles.

Because you were talking about, hey, I can hallucinate.

I like to look at AI as a drunk professor with Alzheimer's.

That, to me, is the best way of looking at AI, because sometimes I'm like, that's genius.

And other times I'm like, where did you get that from?

That's not right.

That's not correct.

Because again, it all comes down to what prompts you give and where it's drawing on it.

And then I'm just like, I've had fights with AI where I'm like, I gave you this.

Why didn't you retain it?

Again, it's the drunk professor with Alzheimer's.

It's like, it gets parts of it, but doesn't get all of it.

So how do we help people understand that AI is just not everything?

Or actually, no.

Let me ask this question.

Do you think that the younger generation, our children's generation, are they uncritically adjusting to AI and bringing it in, or do you think that they're going to be.

No, we're not going to go any further than this because they're all digital natives and they recognize the harm more than we do.

Yeah, it's hard to know because actually one of my good friends works for crew and his son just graduated from University of Central Florida.

And it made international headlines that speaker, University of Central Florida, talked about AI and actually got booed.

Yeah, I saw.

That's what I'm talking about.

Loser.

Take.

Take her away.

And I do think what.

What I'm hearing is a trend line, is that younger generations, there's like this return to this 80s nostalgia.

Right.

Stranger saying, hi, little BMX.

And we want to go back to.

I'm all for it, by the way.

I'm all for it.

Let's get in the DeLorean, baby.

Back in the time to destroy AI and make sure.

Yeah, no, it's.

I. I think there's this nostalgia because we are concerned what kind of future are we creating?

And it's not entirely clear.

And especially, again, going back to the military.

I served a lot of military.

They were very worried about aws.

Not Amazon Web Services, but autonomous weapons systems.

And so the problem is we have this new technological revolution that started with the Internet and that now we have AI that can write code.

So Microsoft is laying off people because AI is writing better code than its coders.

And so there's a lot of wondering, what's the future going to hold?

And what people that are technologists are noticing over and over again, philosophers, theologians, is that with technology, it's always the promise that it's going to make our lives easier.

But if that's the case, why are we less happy?

Why do we have this great increase in the United States of clinical depression, anxiety, one third.

I'm not judging anybody.

I don't mean this in some kind of shameful way, but one third of Americans are clinically depressed and or anxious.

If AI is such a savior, why are we, with all of our technology, why are we working more, not less, in America and the west, we're spending more time at work.

The idea is technology is not a savior.

Technology is meant to be a tool to assist in our flourishing, but it's not a savior.

And I want to remind people, Travis, that, you know, I agree with the short.

What is it, the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

What is the chief end of humankind to glorify God and enjoy him forever?

Same thing with church.

When you go to church, go to a church service, it is not theologically proper to leave there and to say, what a great sermon, what great worship, what great kids program.

Even if that's true, we're to leave worship by saying, what a great God.

And we're to ask, not was I entertained, not was I convicted.

But the question is, was God glorified in that space among his people?

So was God glorified?

What a great God?

Not what great worship, what cool teaching, what cool graphics, what great coffee, what great kids program.

Oh, I love the pastor's new earring and his new tattoo.

I mean, this is like, what are we doing here, people?

This is Christianity has been always about the resurrected one who lived a fully embodied, fully human life for 33 years.

And what people forget is that Jesus, we know a lot about the final three years of his life because we have four gospels.

What we don't know is the space between his birth and he was an infant.

And then we have one story with Jesus is like a preteen or teen.

And then we go right up until, like, when he's 30 years old.

We know nothing of the Jesus that lived in the small town of Nazareth, worked in the family business.

He was probably a GC general contractor.

We say he was a carpenter.

But in a small town, you do whatever has to be done.

You build whatever has to be built, are built.

You fix whatever has to be fixed.

And he worked in this tiny town that.

When I lived in Israel for a semester, we traveled all throughout Israel at Jerusalem University, College, but we never went to Nazareth.

I was there four months.

I had to go to Nazareth on my own.

That's how insignificant it still is.

So the Son of God, the one that we're called to be like, spent 30 years in anonymity working in the family business with his dad.

And then finally one day, right, we have the Father calling him forward.

We see Jesus getting baptized, Jesus getting tempted, Jesus preaching his first sermon, and we have the final three years of his life.

But we forget the full, completely ordinary life of the Son of God who lived in one place, knew everyone in the village or town, and just worked his job.

And there's something sacred about our ordinary, bodily lives.

For the glory of God, for the service of God, committed to one community, doing the best we can for our family.

That is the gospel.

And that is going to become, I think, more beautiful, more significant, and it will stand out in greater relief as more and more people want to live in these alternate or altered realities based on AI.

And that's why I tell people it's going to get crazier out there, but also I think it's going to create a greater distinction for the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, which is based on the crucified one, who on the third day rose, he had a bodily resurrection.

He was around for what, 40 days.

Appearing in his resurrected form, he ascended to the right hand of God the Father.

He was enthroned.

And that ascension, he is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, who is now our great mediator and high priest, carrying our prayers to the heart of the Father.

And at the appointed time, he will come back to get his people and to judge the living and the dead.

And that is the story we're called to proclaim and to embody.

And AI will not change that story.

That story will happen.

Because all we have to do, everybody is read ahead to the end of the Bible, 20, 21, 22.

We know how the story ends.

Jesus wins.

We win.

There's a new heaven coming down to a new earth.

And AI, I believe, is not going to change that story.

What is absolutely incredible to me is how often we can get distracted from that one story into so many other things.

The world is ending.

It's so chaos.

This is.

I mean, people are running around like crazy.

But it all comes down to something rather simple.

To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself as you seek to be more like him.

I mean, you trust him and what he has done and calling other people to it.

But that's, to me, where that community part comes back in.

Because AI will never replace, really a community, just like in marriage, like you're reading in your example about AI will never disagree with you.

There's going to be this perfect spouse or whatever.

That's not marriage.

I mean, that's not marriage.

That's a fantasy.

And just like with pornography, it's a fantasy.

It's not real.

It's taking one aspect of it and highlighting it to the point where it's pulling away from the greater humanity in which our relationship exists.

And this is why I think it's so important for us as Christians, we have to have a holistic understanding of the gospel.

Not just that, pray the prayer, get into heaven, peace.

That I think is disastrous.

Now, some might hear me say, wait a minute, getting into heaven is disastrous?

No, it's that it's not the complete story.

It's that it's a greater part of a bigger narrative that we need to recapture to understand so much of our humanity.

You know, that's one of my things, as I'm thinking about even vocation for our people, like teaching about vocation, I think has become so essential.

But what do you do when AI replaces those vocations that many of these people have?

They're at a loss because they don't understand even how to define themselves anymore.

Because part of our humanity is our vocation that helps define that.

How do we help then all these things that we don't know yet.

We have to hold onto that story and then help people walk through that.

But do we offer a better humanity in the community and recapture this understanding of what it means to be?

I like to call it a new creation community.

We're to embody what that new creation looks like.

That's, I think that's our distinct contribution.

And so that's where I think there's hope.

And that the ecclesia, that's the church, the called out ones, the gathered assembly, which is people being together, gathering around the word of God, gathering around the table or communion, Lord's Supper, holy Communion, whatever you call in your.

Your Christian tradition.

That's what sets us Apart that we're both a community gathered in a community scattered, we're both sent.

It's worship and witness.

It's this just like the, the analogy I've heard is the heart pumping blood, right?

It's got to come into the heart, get oxygenated or whatever.

And that goes back out.

And it comes back in, it goes back out.

I just don't think AI is going to replace that.

If it tries to, we must resist.

And so that's where I do think Christians are called to a thoughtful, prayerful, discerning and wise use of AI because it's not meant to replace community.

It's not meant to replace what we call this thick web of relationships that people have.

When the church is gathered and people come together and we hug and we high five and we break bread and we take the Lord's Supper and in doing so, we reenact in a certain way that his.

His death and proclaim it until it come, until he comes again.

So I, I don't want our listeners to think that all is lost.

I think we are called to a critical engagement, or what Sean o', Callaghan, my co author, and I call a selective engagement.

So my word to you would be follow of course, your conscience.

But I think there are ways we're called to engage with AI and reject AI.

And inasmuch as it helps us flourish in the image of God, let's do it.

Inasmuch as it distracts us or pulls us away, deters us from growing in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, we're not called to do that.

And so just by way of example, people can read chapter six.

We talk about hearth habits, focal habits that bring us back into our bodies, hospitality, having people into our homes, gardening, using the soil that's around us and using the climate that's around us to grow flowers and food that's appropriate for the climate in the place.

You know, following the church calendar, this is where I think higher church expressions, you know, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopalian, other traditions tend to follow a more prescribed church calendar.

That is in part of it is reenacting the life of Christ and minds us of, of the life and the ministry of Jesus Christ.

And so I think, you know, we mentioned this in the book and I encourage people to go out, read it and if they want, they can reach out to me on Social at Dr. Paul Hoffman, Dr. Paul Hoffman on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn and, you know, give me feedback and dialogue with me because I want this book to get into the hands of many people as possible.

I want feedback.

I'm hoping the book does well enough that there'll be multiple editions that Dr. Sean O' Callaghan I can edit it, but I want to tell Christians you don't have to either reject or fully accept.

You can do selective engagement.

But remember, the Gospel is your lens that this creational narrative of the Creator first creation, disintegration, liberation, the reclamation of creation where Jesus Christ is renewing all things, leading in the glorification of our human bodies and the new creation.

When we use that as a lens for the use of AI, I think we will have a better time thinking through what is a good use of AI biblically and perhaps what is a poor use of AI from a biblical framework.

That is a great concluding word.

I'm not even going to ask for the water bottle because you already gave the water bottle there.

Paul, I want to thank you for coming on Ministry Deep Dive as we talk, talking about your book again, AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep.

It's a great book.

For those that want to get it, I would recommend it.

It's through Baker.

It will help educate you to understand, to think through these things critically through a biblical worldview.

So make sure that you get that book.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of Ministry Deep Dive.

And again, huge thanks for Paul Hoffman for joining us and helping us think deeply and faithfully what it means to lead, teach and disciple in this age of artificial intelligence.

If this conversation has challenged you, encouraged you, or gave you something new to think about, be sure to subscribe, leave a review for the show and share this episode with someone in ministry who needs to hear it.

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You can find out more@apolloswatered.org this is is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered Stay Watered, everybody.