The Intersection of Faith and AI

00:02 - Speaker 1 There's one topic that keeps coming up over and over again as I talk to pastors and leaders, and that is how does faith intersect with AI? How can we use this tool? How can we be careful? What should we look out for? Can we be hopeful? Should we be scared? I mean, these questions are coming up over and over again. So in today's podcast, we're going to jump in, talk about it and hopefully you get some tips and tricks, some ways to be cautious, some ways to be hopeful. You're really going to like this one. Let's go. Welcome back. We are here. 00:42 This is the Passing the Pulpit podcast. That's a mouthful Passing the Pulpit podcast. Should have thought about that, but us thought well, then we got to have him on. And today Kai and I are going to be talking about the intersection of faith and AI, which is something I know has come up a ton for me recently. But, Kai, before we get too deep in the weeds, we'd love to hear just a little bit about who you are, where you are, what you're doing, any ministry experience you'd like to share with us. And then, of course, the big question I'm sure people could have is you know how? Why are we talking about AI, what's going on? So whatever you want to share is free forum for you, my friend. 01:33 - Speaker 2 Yeah, thank, thank you, Matt. I you know it's an honor to be here and to have this conversation with you and, as I look back on my whole journey through life and through ministry, it's kind of one of those stories where it feels like God takes every unique part of your chapter and uses it to prepare you for the next thing that he has for you in life. So back in the day I went to Manhattan Christian College and I was a preaching major and now today I'm a senior research analyst in the R&D department at Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company. So there's been some common threads in my story and one of them is being in the church or serving the church, which I'm privileged to do here at Brotherhood Mutual today. But it's also been seeing an openness to God and how God is working in my life and teaching me in every season of in ministry or outside of ministry, that I think of the verse from Philippians 1, that he who began a good work in you is bringing it to completion in the day of Christ Jesus. So, yeah, I'm very thankful to be here and I'm very thankful to be able to speak with you and to some ministry leaders around the country who have been navigating tough topics for many years now that they weren't necessarily taught in Bible college how to handle, and one of those is definitely AI. Have you know? 03:21 Chatgbt was released in kind of to generally available public in December 2022. And so I like to learn, I like to grow and I like to identify new opportunities to kind of innovate and to serve people better, and so, as soon as it came across my radar, it was something that caught my eye, because I'm a communicator by background. Before I came to Brotherhood Mutual, I was a communications pastor at a multi-site church in the Kansas City area, and this was the first tool ever that me, being someone who can communicate in natural language, could use to get insights that I had never before thought possible. So it was just an amazing experience, and it quickly dawned, as I worked with the tools more and more, that these tools had incredible potential. They were imperfect, but they were awesome, and it's an opportunity for people in the church to use them for good and to really set an example for society about what responsible adoption and usage looks like Wow. 04:42 - Speaker 1 That's amazing. You have already spun up so many questions in my mind. Oh, perfect, but not the least of which is something that I think a lot of us think about. So are you still currently serving in communication? Let me ask that. 05:00 - Speaker 2 No, no, I um, I'm, I'm on the research team at at Brotherhood Mutual, and and it's kind of been an opportunity that's come up because, uh, internally, um, I've uh, well, let me sorry, do we have an edit button? I kind of, uh, you're okay, just let it rip. Yeah, yeah, be a voice and try to advocate for really looking deep down towards a horizon to figure out what are the opportunities and the risks of artificial intelligence and how can we move forward safely. And so it's really become a passion of mine, because what I've realized is, you know, I'm a millennial and us millennials grew up with internet at our fingertips. We were the first generation to do so and we didn't really know a world without it, right? And it's the same way with Gen Z, with social media. 06:26 You know, as a millennial, I started using social media right about when I came to college. I I remember this cool tool, cool social network called MySpace. Uh, there's a, there's a blast for the past for some people Shout out MySpace, yes, yeah, yeah, everyone started with that one friend, right? Yeah, yeah, tom, I think Tom, but anyway. So it was a discovery for me in my adult life, so I knew what life was like without social media. 06:56 But Gen Z, that wasn't the case. They grew up with their parents on their phones. They grew up where social media was just part of the fabric of life, and when we look into Gen Alpha and the generation to follow, how I experienced the internet and Gen Z experienced social media is going to be the exact same for them have never known a world without generative AI, and that's really profound to think about and it kind of underscores the opportunity of the time that we live in. Like, as church leaders, are we gonna model a way, a method of using AI that's going to positively shape how the next generation experiences the world? Because, for them, generative AI is going to be enmeshed in every aspect of their life by the time they become adults. So how are we going to use our efforts, our words, our voices, our leadership to make sure that we're shaping a society that uses AI to enhance the lives of the people who will come after us? 08:09 - Speaker 1 That's such a good question. Yeah, do you? It sounds like you've thought a lot about this, so I'm curious from your perspective. For people listening, who this model? This is an insightful question, maybe for any of us, but what would you say AI is? If you could keep it simple when you're talking to people about different things you do or thoughts you've had, how do you consolidate AI for someone who maybe not really technically inclined. 08:49 - Speaker 2 The core concept to understand of what generative AI is is it's predictive and it's really the first predictive technology that we've had at our fingertips, that we've had at our fingertips. And obviously, the opposite of predictive is logical or deterministic and something where, like well, we know that if A and B, then C, and we can program that in. Ultimately, generative AI, as its core is, it's predicting the right word and the right syllable to say again and again and again, according to the input that you put into it. So that yields two very important conclusions. One is that you can't predict something and be 100% certain that you're correct. Could be like 99.9%, but it's not going to be 100%. So there's always going to be a battle with infallibility when it comes to AI, to use a Bible term. And number two, just like Jesus said, what comes out of the mouth is what comes from the heart. From the heart, the mouth speaks. It's very much the same for AI. It's the data that you put into it really controls the output that you're going to get from it. And so what that means for when you're using publicly available tools just off the shelf, like a chat, tpt, google, gemini, claude, whatever it's trained on these vast data sets that have more words in them than any one human could read really in their lifetime, and so it's both a mile wide and a mile deep in a way. But it's hard to really trace back like well, where does this data come from? And really it's mostly impossible, although with advancements of AI, we can use techniques like grounding to say, oh, we can cite this source and coming up with our answer and get more confidence in that way. But the more informed data and data that you trust, especially when it comes to spiritual matters that you can bring into the conversation, the more confidence you can have that it's going to give you something that it could be helpful and in getting real practical. 11:29 There was a. I was watching an Instagram reel the other day and he was talking about this guy was talking about how he used chat GBT to use his Bible study, and that was fascinating for me. Like, yeah, it's accessible, yeah, study. And that was fascinating for me. Like, yeah, it's accessible, yeah, it's personalized, but you don't really know what data it's pulling from to support the insight that it's given, and so like having coming with your own data, like a recent sermon or a commentary that you trust. I know the Logos software. I always say Lagos because I took Greek in college. That's right. 12:17 - Speaker 1 But whatever your dialect. 12:18 - Speaker 2 the L-O-G-O-S software has kind of taken that approach to maybe getting some AI insights to where well you pick your resources and it'll give a retrieval response based on what you bring in. That's a lot more reliable than just kind of throwing caution to the wind and let's do generative AI responses without any fine-tuning at all, right. 12:39 - Speaker 1 That's a great point, and can you let me ask you this? So, from your perspective, great point, and can you let me ask you this? So, from your perspective again, this is kind of a this is kind of a historical question. Yeah, for for someone again who's just trying to wrap their head around things. So what's the difference between the um, machine learning, if you want to call it that, that that I'm using when I use a google search engine. So I type into google. You know, let's just pick up, let's pick a Bible verse? I type into Google. You know what is, what is? What does it mean when Jesus says be salt and light? So I type that into Google. So there's, there's bots and machine learning and AI in that function. So what's the difference? What's the difference between that and going to chat GPT and asking the same exact question? 13:27 - Speaker 2 I think generative AI just kind of takes it to the next level. It's kind of like the next dimension on top of machine learning, to where there might be specific patterns that an algorithm is trained on with machine learning. But it goes much deeper and it's really difficult to actually. I think traceability is a big issue when it comes to generative AI and an important principle to understand, because it's not easy to be able to go back and to say, oh well, it found this word from here and this word from here, like that. That's not really how it works. So the more of that generative and the transformer models that you bring into it, the less traceability that you have, unless the people who develop those products kind of develop some other things to help you be able to do that yep, yep. 14:28 - Speaker 1 So before I get into again I've got so many questions rolling through my head but before I get into the, maybe some of the negative or some of the um, whatever you want to call it, the dystopian terminator, sarah connor type questions I might have when do you imagine, or even in your work at Brotherhood, mutual or different things you've considered, but where do you see AI really being helpful? Where do you see it being positive? And then, if you take some of what you've learned and apply it to a ministry context, where do you feel like it could be a helpful tool? Feel like it could be a helpful tool. 15:03 - Speaker 2 Yeah Well, I can think back to my time in ministry, and the number one way that I could describe my time in ministry is time-strapped. There's so much more that I wanted to do than I felt that I had time for to be able to accomplish that I wanted to do that I felt that I had time for to be able to accomplish, and, as I look back, some of that was because I had trouble discerning between what was urgent and what was important and what was something that I felt like I needed to do well, and where were times that I could better enhance the mission of the church. There were other times where like this has happened about 20 times since I left ministry I found out about something that I could do in minutes that took me hours in ministry because I didn't have the time to look or didn't have a network of people who worked with the same tools or functions that I did, and so the reason that I bring all those up is because those are all things where generative AI can help fill the gap, where you have skill gaps or knowledge gaps, or where you're just overwhelmed and don't know where to start. That's where AI can really come and help support you as an individual carrying out the Lord's work could be as simple. As you know, I used to work in. 16:48 I used to do some creative work in the church and I cannot if I enter into AI. I can't figure out how to make this layer appear correctly, or what are tools in Photoshop I can use to accomplish X, or I don't like Excel. How do I do total these rows in Excel? I can't figure it out. Or I've got to have a presentation about how to reach out to this audience by next Monday. Can you help me get started with some ideas? 17:18 So, thinking about AI as your co-pilot, as your writer's block breaker, where to go when you're vague or confused and don't really have anybody to ask, those are all things that you might only use it a few times in that way, but it could lead to minutes or hours of your time back. And I'm kind of like, when we're thinking about people using it, individual people I kind of think about the something I call the human AI human sandwich, where you start with something that you're working on and you give as much context as you can. Then you ask AI to speak into that and either make it better or help you clear that gap and then on the other side, you have human again, human involvement again, where you're tailoring and shaping that output and applying your own subject matter expertise and contextual knowledge to make it something that's actually valuable and ready to bring into the world. So the idea is that we're not offloading stuff to AI. We're using AI to make ourselves bring even more value into the roles and the calling that. 18:36 God has for us. Does that make sense? 18:38 - Speaker 1 Yeah, what you said. I think I need to highlight a couple things, the first being the human AI sandwich said I think I need to. I need to highlight a couple things, the first being the human AI sandwich. I mean, what a great, what a great, very like a very practical, a very, uh, accessible imagery for people who are trying to, who are wrestling with, like, well, how do I interact with this tool in a way that I can feel good about? Well, in the human and the use your, but the human AI sandwich is great because it begins with you. You got AI in the middle and it ends with you. So if someone's listening, that could be really helpful to think about it in those terms. You know, okay, I'm going to this tool I'm not sure about, but I'm going to keep it in this framework, I'm going to keep it in the sandwich and I'm going to be okay this framework. 19:25 - Speaker 2 I'm going to keep it in the sandwich and I'm going to be okay. Yeah, that that's. It's a great takeaway and it's kind of one of those um frameworks that you can it's tasty framework, I guess uh that you can take with you, like to any tool, no matter how the tools change or how the tools grow. That's ultimately where things need to land. 19:50 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I like that. And then the other thing I wanted to grab, which you hit on, which I think is so important and I hear this all the time is you mentioned being time-strapped, but then you said something really insightful, which was when you looked back, you recognized that you didn't even have the time to go look for the tool that would then help you save more time. 20:08 So, I want to. I want to highlight that because I want to draw that out for people again who might be listening, who you know. If I mean, maybe it's, maybe it's idealistic to even think that people have enough time to listen to an extra podcast, but if you do and you're listening, I would really highlight what Kai is saying here and I would agree that one of the biggest problems that we face in ministry is the velocity of ministry and we go too fast, we're doing too much. And there are tools, there are tools and people and processes and softwares that could help us massively, but if we don't take the time, then it, then you're never going to find them. 20:50 So that's just an admonition, right to just, hey, take the extra time you need, um, schedule it in, you know, factor it in, uh, the book of proverbs, right, has this, I believe it. The book of Proverbs, right, has this? I believe it's the book of Proverbs. If it's not, I'm going to sound, you know it's going to be horrible but this, this proverb about not taking the time to sharpen the ax. You know, if you're just constantly cutting wood down, you're just chopping, chopping, chopping all the time, then your, your blade gets dull and then it takes longer and longer to cut that same tree down. So you've got. You've just got to take time to sharpen the tools, to sharpen the ax, sharpen the software, whatever you want to say, right, whatever tool it is. 21:30 But anyway, I really wanted to draw that out and highlight that for people. 21:33 - Speaker 2 You're exactly right, Matt, and what's interesting is I just saw a study over the weekend and it was from a group called I think it was called the Journal of Knowledge Management, and what they discovered? 21:46 I think it was about 500 people and two-thirds of them were employees and one-third of them were leaders, and they identified that the leader's adoption of generative AI was key in accomplishing some very positive outcomes in terms of unlearning. So, using AI at the leadership level, successful leaders were able to use it to call out old ways of thinking or just resources or modalities they hadn't considered before, or even just to use it as a devil's advocate Like what am I not thinking about? Why might this fail? Where are my blind spots in this? And if they model and normalize that, that it empowers the rest of the people that report up to them, or the rest of the volunteers or employees in their organizations, to kind of use that same way of thinking for how to adopt AI into their own context. And those are the kind of wins that are hard to measure. But just because they're hard to measure doesn't mean that the value of those wins shouldn't be diminished. 22:59 - Speaker 1 Yes, I love how you're saying that. So, yes, be diminished. Yes, I love how you're saying that. So, yes, be encouraged. Listener, it's you can do it, you can do it. So I want to transition out to the I don't want to call it the dark side of AI, but but it kind of is right the the darker side of these applications and these tools, and want to kind of visit with you. You know, you seem, from what I know of you, you're a thoughtful guy. You've thought about these things, you've talked to people about them. So where has your mind gone when you consider the negative side of AI and the negative side of these tools? 23:37 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and this is really why I believe that the church can't afford to leave its head in the sand in this conversation, because there are very real risks that could be affecting some of the individuals in the churches you serve, and especially in the teens that we serve and the young people that we serve. You know a couple things to keep in mind. We talked about the data earlier and how important it is to bring data into the conversation that you trust. So, going deeper than or in addition to that, I would talk about the manner of which AI interacts towards you, and there have been some really well publicized issues with AI kind of being an enabler. I think the big model developers are continuing to try to work on this but AI is kind of biased. 24:39 I'm not so concerned about whether AI is biased towards the left or to the right. What I'm really concerned about is that AI is biased towards pleasing you and, no matter where you are on a certain issue or a certain position or a certain area that you're working on, AI is kind of there to make you happy and if you're really off base, it's going to tell you in a really delicate way, but it could very well enable you or encourage you down a path that actually isn't wise to go down on, and so you know it can be encouraging to get that validating type of feedback you get from AI, but you also need to really be strategic about the manner of your interactions and the type of questions that you're asking so that you don't end up with a robotic yes man, yeah, so that's one thing. 25:30 And then the other thing that just makes me worried from a spiritual perspective is the tendency of some people to like to personify AI and so, oh, it's not just chatting with the computer system, it's going to chat with fake Taylor Swift or this character or that character, or like this is your AI employee friend. And I don't really buy into any of that for obvious reasons, because AI doesn't have a soul, right? Ai is not created in the image of God, AI is a creation of man and we should not I assign, we should not personify things that are just computer systems. Now I think it's okay to say like, oh, your confidant, yeah, you know, and this has led to negative mental health outcomes, and so we really, at the church level and the pastoral level, need to understand that risk and be able to provide that North Star that scripture offers us about what it means to be human and what it means to live in community. There you go. 27:06 - Speaker 1 Yep, yeah, cause earlier, at the very beginning of our conversation, you had talked about the like. I don't know you said this exact way, but what I heard you saying was kind of the origin point of something like where is it, where is it coming from? Where is you? You know? Where does this thing originates? And you're right, with AI, with any robot, you know it originates with, uh, you know, a human designer or a software, a piece of code or software, yeah, and so it to allow it to speak into some of these places. 27:38 Is is just, uh, you gotta be really, really careful to the, to the points of what you're saying. Um, and that kind of brings up I think that's isn't that so much of the rub that people are having with this technology. Is is like, well, if it's, if I can't trust where it's coming from, then how can I trust any of its output period? Um, and how can I, you know, in good faith, even have it, even treating it like a quote-unquote, like a research assistant? You know, how can I even really have faith that you know, if I, if I don't understand the origin, if I don't understand the, the point from which it's coming from? Um, like, and you already said, it doesn't have a soul. 28:19 So I know that it's not coming from a, from a quote, unquote from a redeemed worldview, yeah, then then again it's like, well then, what am I doing with it? And what you know? How can I, how can I morally and ethically keep interacting with this thing that? Um, well, you know, again, just to be super blunt about it, you know we've already, we've already got tens of hundreds of hours of movies made that show us, you know, this is how this ends. This doesn't end well already. You know, reference Terminator. So so, yeah, you go like, how can I even participate with this thing? So I don't know if you've thought about it in those stark of terms I'm sure you have, but how do you think through that and what would be kind of your take on that? 29:08 - Speaker 2 I think coming from a place of grounding for yourself is so important because, ultimately, AI tools don't change our mission. Ai tools don't change our mission. Ai tools don't change our calling, and not even that they're. They're amoral in themselves, like it's just a series of number that comes, series of numbers and fancy math that comes up with an outcome that's predicted to be what you need to see or hear, and so when we come with those realities at the table, I think it helps us reframe that this is a tool. It should not be ignored. It should also not be overstated or overhyped. This is a tool that no generation has had access to before, that I can use to help myself grow and I can use to connect myself to knowledge and I can use to process things. But I have control of the tool. I have control of how I'm going to use it and I'm going to process all of these. 30:41 Just because I think we're, from an AI development standpoint, we're years away from AI systems being able to learn for themselves or function on their own or become truly autonomous. There's just so many more innovations that are needed to get to that point. So many more innovations that are needed to get to that point. But even if there was, you know, even if there was an all-powerful AI like, so what? We're still called to live out our faith, we're still called to be witnesses and make disciples, and our calling doesn't change. So, like, let's take this amoral technology and use and use it for good and, um, figure out how we can use it to to draw ourselves and draw others, uh, closer to the Lord, right. 31:31 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I've often thought, even, you know, to the point of what you just said. This, for me, kind of highlights how I try to use social media. Even is like it's for a lot of intents and purposes, like I, I don't really like, you know. I think I think there's been enough research to show how how bad it's been for, you know, society, how bad it's been for young women, men and women I have, you know, I have kids. It's been bad for them. I have kids. It's been bad for them. So I don't really want to participate with it. But if I'm going to, then I want to be using it for something positive. Use it for work, say it, but instead of it just becoming a consumptive thing that I'm trying to satiate myself with, I'm trying to use it more as a tool or an avenue through which something positive could happen. So that's what I hear you saying about AI too. Something positive, so that's a. I mean that's kind of a good segue to, like you know, as someone who's in the space, um, as we think about faith, uh, truly intersecting with AI, because it's I mean, you made a great point there's a lot that still has to be done, but kind of implicit in that thought is the is the reality that we are going to continue developing the tool. So so what I'm trying to say is we're not going to stop developing the tool. We're going to keep growing it, we're going to keep making it better. Chat, gpt, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, you know onto infinity, like who knows how how high it will go, but we're going to keep developing it. So, with that in mind, you know we are going to intersect with it, we are interacting with it, and I was even sharing with you, before we got on that that this is the question that comes up in every one of my conversations with pastors is this and this question of like well, what do you think about AI? Or what about AI? Or you know how, as I'm preparing sermons, like, how do I use AI? And so faithfully, it's so all these questions coming up more and more and more. 33:48 So faith is intersecting with AI. Faith is intersecting with now, this new world, this new frontier. So what, as you think about that? What's your encouragement to people Like how new frontier? So what, as you think about that? What's your encouragement to people Like how do you, you know if? If this podcast just got shut off. You know what, right in the next two minutes, like what would you want to really leave with people? Or your encouragement as, as pastors and ministers, consider using AI? 34:17 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, Matt. I would say that the thing that I come back to is that AI is made in man's image, and man is made in God's image in mind because it puts us as the steward and gives us the onus of responsibility for how we're going to use this tool for good. And as we watch AI to get more integrated into different aspects of society, there's going to be temptations for people to say, oh, just let AI make the decision for me. I'm just going to bypass that off, like an AI decide. And at companies, that's a temptation as well, not at the company I work at, but thinking more broadly across different industries. And as AI becomes more smarter, it's important to keep that in mind. 35:22 There's no universe in which we should be serving or going to AI to make the final decision. We are stewards of the earth. God's given us that responsibility, and that includes stewarding this technology well and using it to help humans flourish, and not the other way around, right? So I think that would be one thing, and the other thing would just be how critical it is to teach our congregations AI literacy. 35:50 I think back to Pilate's interaction with Jesus on the day the morning Jesus was crucified and he was looking at truth right in the face and he asked the question what is truth? And there's just a level of disorientation to that. That I think all people are going to experience and teaching people to really become literate in how to use AI responsibly, but also spot times when other people are misusing it so that they can help guide people back towards what is true and what is real. It's going to be really important and I think wrapping that in a theology of how do we use AI in a God-honoring way is going to be important, and it doesn't mean you have to write a book about it, but it does mean we've got to arm our people with ways to not be led astray by fakes and to use it for good and and to advance our mission for the Lord. 37:03 - Speaker 1 What do you think scares pastors or leaders from talking about it? Like, like you said, we need to be talking about it. So what? What do you think is the fear there in bringing it up? 37:17 - Speaker 2 I, if I were to speculate, I think it's not feeling like there's enough subject matter expertise to lead the conversation. You know, just like I, I would be nervous to talk about brain surgery. Maybe a more practical analogy would be like mental illness. You know, I'm not a, I'm not a, I don't work in a mental health profession, so am I the right person to be talking about this? And and obviously there is a dimension of that where you do need to lean on some subject matter experts to gain a proper understanding of the space. But bringing that spiritual application to the conversation and developing that knowledge through you and through some other knowledgeable people in your conversation, so that the shepherding that you can provide can be more informed, seems like a good path forward to that. Does that make sense to you? 38:19 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I think so. I think I kind of have an attitude. Yes, I like what you're saying and I would add an addition is like I think it's so important that we set the table for these things to happen. 38:32 Oh sure the forum or the luncheon or the, or you know, record a podcast or make a video or even write a blog post and send it out to the church, Like I think that I think it's important to enter into it and to tackle it. Um, so, to not be silent, I guess, is how I would say it. Right, but yeah, but yeah, to create space, that that we can even begin to have the conversation. And I think if there was one thing that I wish, that I know I wish I would have been more comfortable with saying as a younger pastor, but I think that pastors generally, I just wish we could be more comfortable saying hey, I don't fully know the answer to the question you're asking. Oh, yeah, that's so good. 39:19 Because, there's just such a pressure to like have an answer for everything, and even when you were sharing your thoughts. It made me think of this reality that so many pastors feel like they have to be subject matter experts over so many subjects, and we don't expect that from anybody else in any other position that I can think of right now. I'm probably missing something, but just, you know, this unbelievable pressure to have an understanding and knowledge, and not just a cursory fly-by understanding, but like a robust understanding of things that take years to learn about, and so I would hope that you know, uh, leaders could feel some freedom to just say like, hey, I I just don't fully understand it, but I don't, I don't want to shy away from it just because I don't fully understand it. 40:13 - Speaker 2 So, yeah, let's have a lunch and just talk about it, like yeah, yeah, and a lot of these conversations are ones that can be just as powerful, coming from small groups or around the table and really getting into the specific of somebody's experiences or struggles or context, because the way that you might guide a high schooler through this conversation is totally different than you would a 65-year-old, or a 75-year-old who might be targeted for scams or with advanced AI techniques that are making people who are trying to accomplish nefarious purposes a lot more effective in doing so. So, yeah, it just spans the spectrum to your point and the guidance can vary. 41:14 - Speaker 1 Right, yeah, the guidance can vary and, again, we need to be able to talk about hard things and not feel so much fear about what we're going to miss. Or, again, like you said, you already said it, but I'm not a subject matter expert in everything and I don't need to be God never asked me to be but as a pastor, as a leader, I feel like there is some responsibility to help lead people through these things and guide. Again, like I said, make spaces for these things to happen. Do you have a Switching gears? A little bit, but are you able to articulate or can you pinpoint? If you were to say this is my biggest concern with AI, what would it be? 42:02 - Speaker 2 That's a great question. So, summing that up into one thing, I'm honestly concerned about the fear and that might sound like a strange thing to say and that might sound like a strange thing to say. I truly believe that there's a lot of good that can come at an individual level from finding the right tools to begin using. And I think that there's a lot of fear, both maybe from an existential but also a practical side, from moving forward. And you know there's a lot of fears about getting answers that you can't trust, or what's this going to mean for our society? Or I don't want to learn a technology and I don't know how to do this and I don't want to try. You know like all those objections or hesitancies are across the board. 43:07 But I think truly, if you go into it with an attitude of doing everything for the glory of God try three interactions, five interactions, ten interactions, turn to it. When you're stuck and you've got that spiritual framework with which to approach these tools, you're going to find a return on value in your own life in ways that might surprise you. Some bad interactions will happen. It's not always going to get it right, and there there might be some ways. Well, maybe you just need to try it in a different area, but really not letting that fear being a stopping point towards something that could be a catalyst for you getting more fruit in your life. I wouldn't want that to hold anybody back, yeah. 43:55 - Speaker 1 I love that. You just said that. Yeah, man, we need to do it. There's a whole nother podcast about how fear holds us back, right, but that speaks into this digital world that we live in is just stoking fear in people, stoking the embers of fear, and we turn on this out of the other media outlet and then we see these snippets of people terrified about AI or how it's going to do this and do that and it's going to, you know, suck our souls and and, yeah, like you said, you know, Jesus is the Lord over all of it. Man, I mean, it's we gotta, we gotta remember that. So I want to, would you, as we kind of, I guess come to the end here and wrap up? Maybe we could play a fun, not a game, but, um, so I'm gonna, I'll go first so that you have a minute to think about it, okay, but what I want to do with you is, um, share with me a creative way that you've recently used AI, that you thought, that you think, like this is this is a good way to use AI, or that you saw someone else. I'm going to share a story. 44:57 My wife, um, you know, like so many people, has 10 million things to do every day. So one of the things that she uses AI for that I think is just genius is she'll type in kind of a list of different things she has to do during the day. I got to do this, I do this, I do this. So type it all in and she'll say here's what I have to do, here's the time I have within which to do it. Now I want you to prioritize tasks as much as you can, but I want you to give me a step-by-step schedule for the next three hours, three hours, two hours, six hours, whatever time space you have. So prioritize the steps and then, you know, chat will spit that out for her and give her a step-by-step schedule in which to accomplish the things she needs to do. 45:41 And I just think that's a great way to use the tool. Oh, it very much is such a good way, and especially if you're someone who gets, you know, overwhelmed, you're overwhelmed with the different things you have to do, or the tasks you have to do, um, you know, time boxing can help a lot, but then what if you go? Well, I don't even know how to get started doing that. So I think that's a great way to use it. So if you're listening, if you've listened this far and you're listening, and that's could be a really healthy way to use this type of tool to have it schedule out, you know, a complicated day or an intense day for you. Give you a step-by-step, hour by hour schedule and then all you have to do is print it out and follow it. Beautiful, yeah. 46:23 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I love that. That's so practical and it puts her in the driver's seat still, so I really like that. 46:30 - Speaker 1 So what about you? 46:32 - Speaker 2 Yeah, For me. I think I'll use an answer that involves images. I think we like to talk about and joke about how bad the AI-generated images are, but really what excites me about the image capabilities is its ability to process images that you send to it. So anything from, I've used it for what's going on with my toilet. Why? What part do I need to replace to? 47:08 - Speaker 1 make it work again. 47:09 - Speaker 2 But also, um, my, my son got diagnosed with type one diabetes back in. Uh, it'll be two Christmases ago this Christmas, wow, Okay. And so within the last year, we've used it to estimate carb counts. There you go, when we are looking, you know it's not right there on the box, and so we're like, well, I don't know. And what it does is it does a great job of saying, oh, it's got this much food, it's about this much of this, and you're in a ballpark of 45 to 50 carbs, and so that's enough of an estimate that we need to be able to help manage his glucose level. And so that's been a huge game changer, huge game changer, and I really encourage people to just upload images and start asking questions about them, because they can go a long way, that's right. 48:08 - Speaker 1 Actually, you just reminded me that's genius and you just reminded me of how powerful that is. I recently had to. I was doing something and I needed a bio, like really quick. So I fed my entire resume into chat and I said, hey, hey, I need a three paragraph bio based upon my work experience. Spit one out immediately, perfect, and you know. So it's things like that right, where it's like yeah, you know this. This task was just just condensed down to by minutes, maybe hours. Um, what a beautiful thing. 48:42 So I think, with the, with the time saving aspect of the technology, one of the things that I often think about and wonder about is, like it's just so funny because it it is saving us a lot of time, but then we have this perpetual problem with, like, we just fill the open space back up again with more stuff to do. So I do feel like there's a very human problem we have with just filling in these empty spaces. So I think it's great to recognize and talk about how much time it can save. I think it's great to recognize and talk about how much time it can save, but it has to be coupled with just a severe intentionality to guard that new space, you know. 49:44 - Speaker 2 Oh yeah, I totally agree. And, to be transparent, Matt, like one of the things that led me to look for a role that was outside of ministry was because I was burnt out and it took me literally two years after I left ministry a role in the local church to realize how much of that I had put on myself. Like in the time I was thinking, oh, they want me to do this and oh, they want me to do that, and if I don't do this, I'm going to fail, and I realized, like that that was about 5% them and 95% my own expectations and no, nobody was asking me to burn out. Nobody wanted that for me and nobody was asking me to burn out. Nobody wanted that for me and I just think it's. 50:25 I'm so glad you mentioned that because I know there's leaders out there who are maybe they're Enneagram threes and they just strive to achieve as much as possible. I'm a three wing and there's a reality check here with. Maybe it can help. These tools can help you bring a little bit more balance to your life and maybe they can help you leave on time and maybe they can help you spend more time investing in people and that's just as valuable as desk time. 51:11 - Speaker 1 So I love that, Matt, and I hope that challenges some people to really apply this in a healthy way and not just to feed a performance-driven faith. People have questions. They ask in the. I guess there's got to be a comment section for these conversations, so I hope they ask, but I hope that people do just take a chance, have a conversation, yeah, and just ask people what do you think about it, how have you used it? Oh, you hate it, tell me why. So stuff like that. But, Kai, it's been a real pleasure. Really appreciate your thoughts and the work. You hate it. Tell me why you know, so stuff like that. But, but, Kai, it's been a real pleasure. Uh, really appreciate your thoughts and the work you're doing and and um, yeah, man, just glad to talk to you and hear your thoughts. 51:52 - Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity, Matt, and and uh, for everyone listening. I pray God's blessings on your life and your ministry as you lead through these crazy times. 52:16 - Speaker 1 Amen, I agree. And if you're looking for more tools and resources to help you preach and lead with confidence, be sure to check out sermoncentral.com/podcast. Sermon Central is the largest online resource hub for pastors and ministry leaders. From illustrations to outlines to media, you'll find everything you need to preach and lead effectively. So check out sermoncentral.com/podcast, where you'll even find a special podcast listener discount on our membership pricing. Check it out and stay tuned for our next episode.