AI Is Coming for Everything… Except This

Speaker A: 00:02:07

Marcus Aurelius said, what we do in life echoes through eternity. What is your life echoing through eternity? Welcome to Echoes Through Eternity with Dr. Jeffrey Skinner.

Our mission is to inspire, engage and encourage leaders from across the globe to plant missional churches and be servant leaders. So join us and hear the stories of servant leaders reverberating lives as God echoes them through eternity.

Brought to you by Missional Church Planting and Leadership development in Dynamic Church Planning International.

Speaker B: 00:02:43

We've been on a journey together. We started this series asking what artificial intelligence is doing to our inner life, to conscience, to discernment, to the quiet work of becoming.

We asked whether a machine could really ever know you. And we found the answer in the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept not because he lacked information, but because love enters the pain.

And somewhere in that conversation, a question started forming underneath everything we are saying. Question bigger than formation, bigger than empathy, is asking what is the church supposed to do now?

Not just survive this moment, not just adapt to it, not just manage it carefully so nothing is broken. But what does it look like to be the church, fully, faithfully, irreplaceably the church in the next 10 years?

That's really kind of the where we began. I want to prepare the church for the next 10 years of ministry. Too often the church and I said this in the beginning, we. We are behind the curve.

Instead of leading the change, we're adapting to change. And so that's where we are today. That's where we're going today. And I want to tell you upfront that I have been a tech expert in the past. I am.

My background is it. Which is. I feel like I can speak to this because I keep up with tech trends. Now could I go back into the tech sector and be a leading voice there? No.

But I do believe I can be a leading voice in helping the church navigate technology in an age of technology, because I know how to use technology faithfully without having it replace me. And so I just want to tell you that. But I'm not a futurist. I'm not a prophet. I don't know exactly what's coming. I can look at trends and.

And I can tell you that some trends are troubling and I've addressed some of those. But simultaneously, I'm hopeful.

I'm hopeful because my future does not rest on any trend or cultural movement that is going to happen today, tomorrow, or ten years from now. My hope is firmly planted in Christ. So I'm not a futurist.

I'm a pastor who loves the church and believes that she has something to offer this world that no algorithm will ever be able to replicate. So let's talk about the church. AI cannot build the moment we're in.

Let's name the landscape, honestly, because the church doesn't serve herself by pretending the ground isn't shifting. We can't put our head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. In the next 10 years, AI will be embedded in virtually every dimension of daily life.

It will. There will be some pastors who will use it to write their sermons, and there's still some pastors that are using to write their sermons, even today.

And I don't think those are the best sermons. It will counsel people.

A friend of mine shared a text with me earlier this morning, and he said, this is exactly what you were talking about in your episode this week. And it was essentially an app that people could download that was designed to at least, if not replace the pastor, assist the pastor.

AI will run the church communications. It will manage benevolence, funds, answer prayer requests at 2am and provide what will feel to many people like genuine spiritual companionship.

I think the administrative portion of that is genuinely useful. I fear anyone utilizing AI for counseling purposes or pastoral, pastoral leadership purposes or anything like that, I think that's counterfeit.

But it's also convincing to many people. And it's. It's. Some of it is a counterfeit so convincing that the church will have to work hard to help people see the difference.

And that's where we talk about discernment. Todd Bolsinger has a phrase for moments like this one. He calls it going off the map.

In Canoeing the Mountains, he writes about Lewis and Clark reaching the edge of what their maps could tell them. The moment when the known terrain ran out. And the only question left was, who are we? And will that be enough to navigate what's ahead?

In those moments, we discover who we are. In those moments. They're the.

One of the reasons I love the Lord of the Rings is Frodo and Bilbo Baggins and the rest of them are as they're making their journey. Frodo has to decide when he gets to that breaking point at the Mountain of Mordor. He has to decide who he is.

And so the journey that he's on is not just a journey of a mission to destroy the ring, because that ring is constantly tempting him to take over his identity.

And I think it's a great movie for today as well, because that is AI it is going to constantly tempt us to take over our identities because it makes things so easy. And as we talked about, the refining process takes place in the heat of the fire in the furnace. That's the Church right now.

The, the old baps, the Christendom map, the program driven church map, the attractional model map. Those maps were drawn for a world that is changing faster than we can reprint them. The question isn't which map to use.

The question is what is so essentially irreducible to the Church that remains true no matter what the terrain looks like. That's not a technology question, that's a theology question. And the Church is the only institution on earth equipped to answer it.

What AI cannot build. Let me tell you what AI is genuinely very good at.

It's good at information, at availability, at consistency, well, somewhat consistent depending upon how far you get down into it and starts making things up, at pattern recognition. It's good at responding without fatigue, without ego, without a bad day getting in the way.

And if the Church's primary offering is information delivered consistently without friction, then yeah, the next 10 years are going to be a hard conversation. But that was never the primary offering of the Church.

Paul writes to the Corinthians, you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it now, the information center of Christ, now the content platform of Christ, the body, flesh, presence, particularity, and I would add, peculiarity. This person in this place, bearing the weight of this community's sorrow and joy. James K.A. smith helps us see why this matters so deeply.

In Designing the Kingdom, he argues that what the what forms us isn't primarily what we know. It's what we practice. And we talked about this before. The embodied, repeated communal rhythms that quietly aim the heart in a particular direction.

Baptism, the table, foot washing, sitting with the grieving, singing together in the same room. These are not content. They are formation. And they require bodies. An AI can tell you what baptism means. It cannot baptize you.

It cannot stand in the water with you. It cannot be the community that witnesses and receives you. That gap, that beautiful irreducible gap, is not the Church's weakness in an AI age.

It is her gift. NT Wright reminds us that the resurrection was bodily for a reason. The new creation isn't a downloaded upgrade. It's a renewed physical reality.

And the Church, as a foretaste of that new creation, is called to be physically present in the world, in neighborhoods, in workplaces, around tables, in hospital rooms, as a sign that God's future has broken into God's present. That the kingdom of God is not some far off place in the future that we have to wait for.

The kingdom of God is present today, right now, in this moment. It is arriving. It has not fully arrived. But we can certainly see glimpses of the kingdom where we can see that hope arriving as we speak.

I think that's the danger of a disembodied idea of an idea of a disembodied soul, an idea of a heaven, so to speak, that we go to. God spoke. Jesus spoke much more about heaven coming here than he ever did about us going to heaven.

That's really much more of a Greek understanding that we, that we kind of brought in. And you got to understand that in the west, our understanding, our practice of Christianity is very much influenced by Greek, by Hellenistic thought.

And it looks very different than what the faith of the Hebrews looked like. The faith of Jesus looked like they were primarily in Eastern and Middle Eastern faith that were borrowed from the bell gods.

And we've talked that before. But I don't want to get too far into the weeds of that. And I'm not saying heaven doesn't exist. I don't want to.

I don't want to discourage anyone who's 94 years old or 84 years old or on death's doorstep and live their entire life for getting heaven. I'm just saying the point of our existence here, the point of Christianity has never been to die and go to heaven.

The point of Christianity has been to embody the kingdom of God here and now as a sign, as I said to the world. That's why we were created in the very beginning when God breathed life in us.

Everybody else had these stone and wooden statues and God said, you will be a living presence. You will be living stones in the world. No algorithm can be that sign. Only people can. Three things the church must lean into. So.

So what does faithful witness actually look like for the next 10 years? Not as a program, as a posture. Here are three things the church must lean into hard. First, radical incarnational presence.

So we talk about being present with people.

This is incarnational presence in a world where you can get anything delivered, where you can work, worship, grieve and celebrate entirely through a screen. The most countercultural thing the church can do is show up. Not just live stream, show up in person, in the hard places.

The way I walk as a chaplain when I go into the workplace, not because anyone asked, but because presence itself is a ministry.

I can't tell you how many times that I've walked into a place Three or four years consistently, and had just general conversation with people, just positive conversations. But one day they actually need the chaplain. And that conversation turns deep. We go deep. And so presence itself is the ministry.

Lynn Sweet has been saying for years that the church of the future will be distinguished not by his platform, but by his proximity. Who are you physically near? Who knows that you will come when it gets hard? That kind of presence cannot be outsourced. It cannot be embodied.

Second, becoming communities of genuine knowing.

We talked last episode about the grieving widow who ended up talking to a chatbot, not because AI was so good, but because the body of Christ was absent. That story should haunt us not as guilt, but as a calling. The church must become one with intention, with structure, with real investment.

The kind of community where people are known, not known, about, known again. Wesley's class meeting wasn't a program. It was a covenant. How is it with your soul?

He asked weekly, in relationship with accountability and tenderness and the long practice of people committed to each other's formation. I go back to the story of Mia. She, she had a youth pastor, and she knew her youth pastor was available.

But somewhere along the way, the youth pastor had convinced Mia that she wasn't available. That kind of community is what the loneliest generation in human history is starving for. For that's what Mia was starving for.

And the church is the only institution built at her core to provide it. Third, prophetic discernment. Naming what serves life and what diminishes it.

The church has always had a prophetic calling, not just to comfort, but to name, to say, this serves human flourishing and this does not. And, and prophets did it. And prophets were not popular.

I, I tend to remind those pastor friends of mine who like to, to be the, quote, prophetic voice on the Internet that prophets generally died young. And there's nothing prophetic about having courage behind a screen. True prophets went to the people, not from a distance.

It's not even courageous to stay in a pulpit as an associate. What's courageous is to say it one on one, to say it in a small group for the. Where you know the people and you can hold them accountable.

Not in a hateful way. Too often, I think we, we, we hear prophet. When we hear prophetic, we hear hateful. And the prophets said what they said in love.

And so, as I said, a prophet says this serves human flourishing, but this does not.

Anytime someone comes to me and starts talking about heaven and hell, I immediately turn the conversation from heaven or hell to life or death, because here's something that Gen Z and Gen Alpha and millennials, they've had instant access to information and instant access almost their entire time, their entire lives. And anything that they can't experience here and now doesn't seem real to them. So a heaven they can't experience now doesn't feel real.

And a hell that they need to avoid at some point in the future doesn't seem like a threat. And so I talk in terms of life and death, and I ask them, does this decision lead you closer to life or does this decision lead you closer to death?

Because in reality, hell is death and heaven is life. In reality, love is not a feeling. Love is a person. In reality, evil is simply anything that God is not. Anything that Jesus is not in is evil.

The prophets did this. Jesus did this. The early church did this when it refused to burn incense to Caesar.

In an AI Age, that prophetic works looks like helping people see clearly what these tools are doing to their attention, their conscience, their desire, and their relationships, not with panic. The church too often wants to use fear. They complain about fear. We talk about. The Bible tells us not to fear.

But too often we lead with panic and not with a ban. We want to protest. We want to, you know, say, we're not going to do this. I have pastor friends now. I'm not going to use AI.

Okay, well, let's see how that works for you. It's going to be embedded in. You go to book an airline ticket. You're going to be using AI So maybe you may. I'm not going to use AI in my ministry.

Well, again, it's going to be difficult because a lot of your commentaries are going to begin. The electronic commentaries you use are going to utilize AI Maybe you go back to the. To the book. Okay, you can do that. But it's a.

And, and, and, you know, I'll applaud you. I mean, it's a slow way, and there's nothing wrong with slow, for sure. I prefer a physical book a lot of times, but.

But I do love that if I've got a question, and I'm spending two hours trying to find this sentence that I read somewhere in the commentary or somewhere in a book by Walker Brueggeman or somewhere else, Someone else. I love the search feature where I can look for that sentence in a Kindle.

So the church reacts not with a ban, but with the wisdom of a community that knows what human beings are made for and refuses to let the vision get quietly eroded. Richard Rohr. Rohr.

Rohr would call this seeing, the contemplative gift of the church, is that she sees from a different vantage point, under the light of eternity. And what she sees, she is called to speak a word to pastors and leaders.

I want to speak directly to the pastor or church leader who's listening right now. Because I know some of you are carrying a particular weight in this conversation. You're already tired, you're already stretched.

And now someone is telling you that the next 10 years require more presence, more community, more incarnational investment, when you barely have enough emotional availability for your family at that exact moment. Technology is promising that, promising you that you could finally do more with less. But here's what I want to say to you. You are not behind.

rmation, sacrament, love, for: 2000

Artificial intelligence did not invent those needs. It just made them more visible by failing to meet them. Bolstinger would say, this is not a moment for panic or nostalgia.

It is a moment for adaptive leadership. Holding on to the core identity of who you are and what you're called to be while releasing the methods that were never the point.

The methods can change. The mission cannot.

And the mission to make disciples, to embody the new creation, to love their neighbors with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love the Lord our God with all our excuse. Love our neighbors to ourselves, love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength.

That mission has never been more needed or more possible than it is right now. I want to close with this question. It's not a rhetorical one, a real one that I'm inviting you to carry with me.

What would it look like for your church to be the thing AI cannot replicate? Not as a strategy, but as a way of being?

Not more programs, more presence, not more content, more covenant, not more information about Jesus, more embodied, particular, costly, irreplaceable love that looks, even if only partially, even if only in glimpses, like Jesus. The widow who talked to a chatbot at midnight wasn't looking for information. She was looking for what only the body of Christ can offer.

She was looking for someone who had suffered, who had grieved, who carried their own wounds into the to the room and let those who those wounds become the very thing that made ministry possible. Mia was looking for wisdom. She wasn't looking for a chatbot.

She wanted someone who had navigated the challenges of middle school, of high school, of adolescence, and survived it, and could look back and give perspective on it. Henri now and call that the wounded healer. And it's still the most powerful model of ministry the world has ever seen.

The next 10 years will test the church. They will expose every place we substituted program for presence, information for formation and efficiency for love.

And in that testing, there's an invitation. The same invitation that has always been at the heart of the gospel. Come, be present. Bear one another's burdens. Love as you have been loved.

Artificial intelligence cannot issue that invitation. It cannot mean, cannot live it out. But you can. The church AI cannot build. That's your church. That's your calling.

And that future, by the grace of God is still very much being written. Thank you for joining me on Echoes Through Eternity.

If this series has stirred something in you, share it with your pastor, your staff team, or your small group. Subscribe. If you already haven't, leave a comment or a review.

And until next time, keep listening for those those Echoes Eternity is already breaking through. Send me suggestions if there's something that I haven't talked about. Missional Leadership coachingmail.com send me. Send me that email.

I would love to hear your feedback on that directly. And also I'll be including show notes and all this in in the in the episodes. And welcome our new sponsors that we have out there as well.

Cozy Earth and the rest of them. And until next time, I leave you the same question I always do. What is God echoing through your life today?