The Serpent in the Techno-Garden: Resisting the Temptation to Use AI for Ministry

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Pastors face time-management challenges every week. When Grandma Mabel is dying in the hospital, the Board of Trustees is fighting over which color carpet to order for the sanctuary, hurting couples are desperate for counseling over their broken marriages, and the sermon preparation still hasn’t been started for Sunday service, pastors may face the temptation of reaching for innovative technologies to survive. But some ministry tools may prove more harmful than helpful. 

ChatGPT for Worship

The latest aid to ministry promoted by some technophiles is artificial intelligence (AI). Programs like ChatGPT respond to natural-language prompts, search the internet for information, and in the blink of an eye provide a response in conversational language. Some ministry gurus suggest that AI programs should be used for writing liturgies, prayers, sermons, Bible study questions, and more. Let that sink in. A soulless computer writes prayers that praise Jesus. Although it’s easy to be skeptical about AI’s work product, consider this: In response to the prompt, “Write a Trinitarian prayer based on Matthew 28,” ChatGPT wrote:

Gracious and Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, We come before You in awe and reverence, Recognizing Your presence in our midst.

Father, we praise You for the love that sent Your Son, For the plan of redemption woven throughout history. Thank You for the gift of Jesus, our Savior, Who conquered sin and death through His resurrection.

Lord Jesus, risen and victorious, We worship You as the crucified and risen King. You have triumphed over darkness and brought us hope, Granting eternal life to all who believe in You. Help us to follow Your example of love, humility, and obedience, And empower us to share Your good news with the world.

Holy Spirit, our Comforter and Guide, We invite You to move in our hearts and lives. Equip us with Your wisdom and discernment, That we may faithfully fulfill the Great Commission. Fill us with Your power and boldness, To be effective witnesses of Christ's love and truth.

Triune God, as we go forth in Your name, Unite us in purpose and unity of heart. Give us hearts that are open to Your leading, And eyes that see the opportunities to share Your gospel. May our lives be a reflection of Your grace and love, Drawing others to know and experience You.

We pray this in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Three in One, our eternal God, Forever praised and worshipped. Amen.

Although one might expect a hodgepodge of poor theology from AI, the quality of this result is startling. Perhaps we should not be surprised. The computer program searched its digital databases, took language from published collects and other prayers of various churches, analyzed their similarities and potential matches for the prompt, and produced a conglomeration of these prayers. 

The Ethics of “Original” Content

ChatGPT’s “original” content is based on these previously published works of human beings—yet without citation of its sources. This, of course, raises the ethical question of plagiarism. Even if the work of another person is not directly quoted, paraphrasing the work of others without citation is generally considered plagiarism. Without knowing the sources of AI’s content, a pastor could end up echoing Marcion or Arius rather than Irenaeus or Athanasius!

Furthermore, the results are not always consistent. Responses are often very general and lack nuance. In fact, the ChatGPT website itself states, “While we have safeguards in place, the system may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information and produce offensive or biased content. It is not intended to give advice.” Consider the ramifications of this disclaimer. Even if ChatGPT gives reliable theological material the vast majority of the time (which is not a given), any broad generalizations or small errors in responding to a theological prompt could lead one to make heretical statements. The Council of Nicea debated in 325 the difference between Christ being like God or being the same essence as God. In the Greek, only one letter was different (homoiousios vs. homoousios). Yet the difference in meaning is key to our Trinitarian understanding of God. Accuracy matters. Pastors who are in such a hurry to prepare for Sunday worship that they use AI are not likely to take the time to parse the results. Yet this inattention to detail can result in false or misleading teaching.

Spiritual Formation Without the Spirit?

When AI does produce good content, however, what’s the harm in churches using it? Good theology alone is insufficient for promoting the welfare of the church. James notes that even the demons have good theology—they believe that God is one, and they shudder (2:19). Paul, too, argues that orthodoxy without orthopraxy causes harm to the church. In 1 Cor. 8:4-6, Paul technically agrees with those in Corinth who affirm that there is only one God—although these believers use their knowledge to eat food that earlier had been sacrificed to idols. As Paul’s argument continues, however, he suggests that the bold actions of those with right beliefs nonetheless harm their weaker brothers and sisters in Christ, who are encouraged to eat such food even though their weak consciences tell them they should not do so. This has serious consequences: not only does this destroy the weak brother or sister, but it also results in sin against Christ himself (8:7-13). The point for our discussion here is that accurate theology—such as good output from AI—does not guarantee a harmless impact upon the church. 

From where, then, might such harm arise? In order to answer this question, we need to address the larger question of the purpose of liturgies, prayers, sermons, and the like. Susan J. White notes that a common definition of worship is “the church at prayer,” that is, “the prayerful conversation or discourse between the Christian community and the God who has called it into being” (Foundations of Christian Worship, 2006, 27). In other words, the various elements of the worship service are part of a relationship between believers and God. The words we proclaim are not mere theological summaries, statements of fact that define the community. They are this, to be sure, but they are much more. Rather, our words reflect our allegiance, love, and commitment to God. Our words form us even as we are being formed by the God who is present in worship. Simon Chan describes this dynamic as a synergy of “divine action joined with human action” (Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community, 2006, 48).

To  experience this synergy properly, the liturgies need to reflect our words, our thoughts, our feelings—whether from a freshly written liturgy or the tradition of the church from long ago. A machine can mimic human longings for God, but we should never let the machine usurp our place as proclaimers of the glory of God. Even when we borrow from the Book of Worship or The Book of Common Prayer, we borrow language from faithful Christians who have gone before us. They have experienced the love of God and have been led by the Holy Spirit to describe that experience in human language. 

By using AI as a shortcut in worship preparation, we prevent the Holy Spirit from forming us as we thoughtfully work to create the liturgies, prayers, and other words of worship. We must remember that the Spirit does not only show up in the service itself; rather, the Holy Spirit is present in the preparation. As a pastor meditates on which words to use in the service, the Holy Spirit is guiding the process, directing the pastor toward the specific message which that specific congregation needs to receive in that specific context. The general output from an AI prompt cannot give Spirit-led directions for ministry, such as “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul” (Acts 9:11), or turn the pastor away from the wrong direction, such as heading to Asia or Bithynia when God intends work to be done in Macedonia (Acts 16:6-10). 

Not only this, but the Holy Spirit convicts and shapes us as we engage with the Word of God, as evidenced by King Josiah’s tearing of his robes when the book of the Law was found and read to him (2 Ki 22:10-11), or the crowd’s response to Peter’s preaching at Pentecost, when they were “cut to the heart” at his words (Acts 2:37). Pastors who use AI to write prayers, a Bible study, or a sermon deprive themselves of the opportunity to be spiritually formed through their conscious engagement with the truths of God.

One might argue that ChatGPT is a tool—and God has been known to use tools for his purposes. Moses used Aaron’s staff to demonstrate the power of God to the magicians in Egypt (Exod. 7:8-13), and the high priest used the Urim and Thummim to learn the will of God (e.g., Ezra 2:63). A significant difference exists, however, between God creating a tool that he directs his representative to use and a tool that pastors take upon themselves in order to avoid the challenging and time-consuming work of worship preparation. John Wesley—although he could never envision the use of AI for ministry—nonetheless warns us in his sermon “The Wilderness State” of the negative consequences arising from such neglect:

Nothing can be more plain, than that the life of God in the soul does not continue, much less increase, unless we use all opportunities of communing with God, and pouring out our hearts before him. If therefore we are negligent of this, if we suffer business, company, or any avocation whatever, to prevent these secret exercises of the soul, (or, which comes to the same thing, to make us hurry them over in a slight and careless manner,) that life will surely decay. And if we long or frequently intermit them, it will gradually die away.

Spiritual formation through the work of the Holy Spirit must be our priority; the use of artificial intelligence displaces the necessary soul work that occurs when we prepare liturgies, Bible studies, prayers, and sermons for ourselves.

Religious Formalism

In his sermon “The Means of Grace,” John Wesley makes it clear that the means themselves (e.g., prayer, searching the Scriptures, and the Eucharist) have no power if the Holy Spirit is not present: “all outward things, unless He work in them and by them, are mere weak and beggarly elements.” He goes on to argue that those who think they are saved simply because they use these means—as a sort of work—stand condemned: “Yet once more: We allow, though it is a melancholy truth, that a large proportion of those who are called Christians, do to this day abuse the means of grace to the destruction of their souls. This is doubtless the case with all those who rest content in the form of godliness, without the power” (emphasis added). If this is true for the actual means of grace, how much more is this true for artificially constructed liturgies, prayers, and sermons that—by the very nature of their production—lack the shaping influence of the Holy Spirit! 

This kind of religious formalism is one of the main critiques leveled by the Old Testament prophets. Judgment came upon Israel because the people of God no longer listened to God or invested wholeheartedly in worship. Isaiah condemned Judah for praising God with their lips while their hearts were far from God, and “their worship is a human commandment learned by rote” (29:13). Jeremiah proclaimed that the ears of the people of Jerusalem were closed and the word of the Lord was an “object of scorn” to them (6:10); God declared that their offerings would not be accepted and their sacrifices were not pleasing to him (6:20). Isaiah, too, proclaimed that God hated the sacrifices brought by his disobedient people (1:11-15), as did Amos (5:21-23). Merely going through the motions has never been acceptable to God. 

Instead, the church is called to offer worship that doesn’t cut corners, but instead invests all of who we are—true heart worship—in our prayers, Bible studies, liturgies, and sermons. Simon Chan calls the church to return to this kind of priestly ministry: 

For it is as priest that the minister discovers the essence of ministry: to offer up to God an unblemished sacrifice, one that meets the demands of a holy God…. A mass of half-committed, fair-weather adherents or a group of psychologically well-adjusted individuals (which is what a mass-production church could hope to accomplish at its best) does not amount to a perfect sacrifice. Only God himself can define what is the perfect and acceptable sacrifice: it must be a sacrifice sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Liturgical Theology, 45-46).

When pastors use AI to write liturgies, prayers, or sermons rather than make the effort themselves to contemplate the glory of God, they dishonor Jesus who made every effort to draw near to them. 

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

The search for quick and easy knowledge goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Rather than investing in their relationship with God, Adam and Eve chose to pursue the folly of human wisdom. With AI, we might be deceived into thinking that we have godlike knowledge at our fingertips. But AI is the result of human wisdom and thus is not inoculated against the effects of the Fall. The programmers who designed the technology are subject to error and bias—the noetic effects of sin—which undoubtedly affect the programming. Thus AI, because it is programmed by fallible human beings, can never reflect pure knowledge or decision-making. 

As Diane Chandler notes, “Beginning in the Garden, when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:5-6), we see that knowledge apart from God opens us to evil, and that the mind must be guarded through the helmet of salvation and protected by the Spirit” (Christian Spiritual Formation: An Integrated Approach for Personal and Relational Wholeness, 2014, 145). Our liturgies, our prayers, our Bible studies and sermons must all provide Spirit-inspired knowledge of God. 

Pastors tempted by quick AI-produced liturgies must avoid being deceived into thinking that AI is good for worship and that it is a delight to the eyes and that it is to be desired to make one wise; they must avoid taking of the fruit and eating, and giving it to the congregation to eat as well. Eve made a similar mistake long ago, and the world has never been the same.

Suzanne Nicholson is Professor of New Testament at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. She is an Elder in the Global Methodist Church and serves as Assistant Lead Editor of Firebrand.