October 25, 2024 • 14 mins
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – You can be afraid of AI, or you can use it to further the Gospel. That’s a major piece of the conversation we had with Alabama pastor, Bobby Gourley. AI should never diminish your time digging into the word to prepare Spirit-anointed sermons. However, it can do so much to streamline your everyday tasks in the leadership of the local church and in some cases save the church money.
Show Notes: https://leaders.church/podcast/ep-138-ai-pastors/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dick Hardy (00:06):
Hey, friend, it's great to be with you on this
Church Tips podcast. I've gotthe privilege today to hang out
with a friend of mine fromFlorence, Alabama, Bobby
Gourley, from the great churchChapel in Florence. Say hi,
Bobby, to a bunch of greatpastors.
Bobby Gourley (00:20):
Hey, it's Bobby Gourley, great to be here with
you. It was great havingbreakfast with you last week. As
always, when you pay, it'salways better.
Dick Hardy (00:26):
Always! Guess what, they only want me because I pay
for the meal. But yeah, we had agreat time down there. Bobby's a
pastor in the town where mydaughter, son-in-law, and
grandkids live, so we'reconstantly making the eight-hour
trip to Florence. I always enjoytalking to Bobby about
(00:47):
church—we're church junkies.
We've had great rides, servingin great ministries. It's been a
real privilege the Lord hasallowed us to do so and allowed
our paths to cross. One of thethings we were talking about
recently was the future and whatAI is going to mean to the
(01:10):
church and the pastor. This isstill a relatively new topic for
lots of pastors, some trying toget their head around it. So,
Bobby, we're going to drop aquarter in you and have you talk
about what you see with AI andhow churches and ministries can
leverage it to advance thekingdom. What are your thoughts?
Bobby Gourley (01:35):
Ministry changes very quickly. I was talking to a
pastor friend of mine. It feelslike last year, I could get
ahead of what was going tohappen culturally in our church
and the surrounding area. Now,it seems like culture changes so
quickly, you're just playingcatch-up continually. One of the
things that emerged from thatwas AI. About a year ago,
ChatGPT launched publicly. I sawit on podcasts and Twitter, or
(02:02):
X—no one calls it X, it's stillTwitter—about ChatGPT writing
sermons for people. I ran into aworship leader who gave ChatGPT
a cue (02:13):
"Write me a song about God's love in a Chris Tomlin
style with a big bridge," andboom, within half a second, he
had a song.
That’s scary for pastors,knowing they could be replaced
by AI at some point. People hearAI and think of Matthew 24,
(02:39):
where Jesus talks about falseteachers, rumors of war, and the
like. I think AI could play arole with deep fakes and fake
news, producing things that lookreal but aren't. But on the
other side, AI can help usspread the gospel faster if we
(03:02):
use it correctly. There’s greatstuff being done with AI. In
Africa, it’s been used todetermine where food needs to go
in drought situations, ensuringno kids are starving. In medical
(03:24):
science, AI helps detect cancerquicker. So, while AI can have
negative sides, it can also be agreat tool for ministry. We've
started using it quite a bit,and it’s been amazing.
I first got into ChatGPT when Ineeded to write a recommendation
(03:55):
letter. A professor who helpswith our Dream Center asked for
a letter for her tenure board.
Normally, writing a letter takesme an hour, but I asked ChatGPT
to write one, gave it thedetails, and boom, it was done
(04:20):
in five minutes—much betterwritten than I would have done.
Dick Hardy (04:29):
How much did you have to edit it?
Bobby Gourley (04:33):
Not much. It was professional, way better than I
could have done. I'm just aNashville Southern, trailer park
kid, so it was a big help. Thenwe started using it for social
media videos. We were paying acompany close to $1,000 a month
(05:00):
to produce clips from oursermons, but now, with
sermonshots.com, for $89 amonth, we can upload our YouTube
video, and AI generates clips,captions, and even discussion
questions. It gives a fulltranscript, a short summary, a
(05:25):
long summary, and even a blogversion. We're about to start
releasing a full blog of thesermon. So that hour and a half
on Sunday is now becoming a 24/7message throughout the week for
(05:50):
little cost.
Jasper AI is another tool likeChatGPT, but for marketing. It
uses your language, learningyour church’s DNA to produce
content. So, for example, itwill generate Instagram posts
(06:12):
with our worship service detailsand songs. We don't write copy
Dick Hardy (06:19):
When you say it uses your language, does it start to
anymore.
learn your style?
Bobby Gourley (06:25):
Yes, it begins to learn Christ chapel, our
language, and our DNA.
It’s still our content, but itpolishes it for social media,
which is really cool. After Ifinish my sermon notes on
(06:53):
Thursday, I put them intoChatGPT and ask it to write a
YouTube description for thesermon. It writes the full
description, which we copy andpaste into YouTube, so before
(07:13):
the sermon is even preached,everything is ready.
Dick Hardy (07:25):
Another piece that jumps to mind here. I can hear a
pastor out there liking whatyou're talking about but
wondering about the issue ofplagiarism on the sermon side of
things. Do we have any concernsthere, or not?
Bobby Gourley (07:48):
Well, it's our content, so we're not asking it
to produce any new content.
We're taking our content,putting it in, and letting it
summarize for us, for whateverwe need it for. It's my sermon
notes. For example, this Sunday,Pastor Jason preached on Joshua
3. We took his sermon notes onThursday, put them in, and it
(08:09):
produced the YouTubedescription. We used that same
prompt to create a social mediapost for it as well.
Dick Hardy (08:18):
So in your case, you are not using AI to creat
sermons?
Bobby Gourley (08:24):
Correct, not at all.
Dick Hardy (08:25):
is that a conscious decision?
Bobby Gourley (08:28):
Yeah, it's conscious for us. We want to use
our own material. I have, like,asked ChatGPT to rephrase
something for me. It neverreally worked for my style of
language, but it may work forothers. For example, if I'm
struggling with a phrase in mysermon, I'll put it in and ask
for another way to phrase it,which is really cool. But it
(08:49):
just didn't work for us. So no,we're not asking it to produce
any language or content.
Dick Hardy (08:54):
I'm guessing if a pastor was asking it to help
with sermon content, they'regoing to have to give it a
critical eye to make surethere's no plagiarism involved,
right?
Bobby Gourley (09:07):
yep.
And then, even with socialmedia, for Passion Week, we had
ChatGPT write a social mediaschedule for us. It produced
content for Monday, Thursday,and Palm Sunday. It gave us a
starting point, and wecustomized it for our needs, but
the outline it provided wasreally helpful. It saves you a
(09:29):
ton of time. I had a buddy on atrip, and I asked him, "Have you
read this book?" He said, "Idon’t read books anymore." I was
like, "What? You're a pastor!"He pulled out his phone and
asked ChatGPT for a summary ofthe book Arrow Striker. It
(09:53):
produced a summary, and he saidif he wanted to dive deeper, he
could ask for achapter-by-chapter summary. It
cut out a lot of his time. Idon’t do that, but it’s
interesting how pastors areusing AI to save time.
Dick Hardy (10:05):
Yeah, it’s like a new version of the old
CliffsNotes. Some of the olderpastors will remember those. But
you’re seeing a lot ofpositives. If pastors harness it
properly, they could really do alot of good for the church, the
(10:26):
kingdom, and the message of thegospel.
Bobby Gourley (10:28):
Yeah, you're going to save money. We went
from spending $1,000 a month forsome social media videos to $89
a month. It cuts back on ourtime tremendously, but it also
maximizes the reach of thesermon. Now, we have video
clips, a blog, and we can copyand paste a summary of the
(10:49):
sermon in blog form. You couldeven potentially turn it into a
book at some point. It reallymaximizes the impact of your
Sunday morning message, gettingit as far as possible. It's
wild.
Dick Hardy (11:02):
Well, that's cool.
So what's the biggest cautionyou would give to pastors about
being careful with AI? Or maybethere’s more than one?
Bobby Gourley (11:12):
Yeah, I would say the biggest caution is, don’t
get lazy and let AI do the workof ministry for you. Let it be a
tool in your tool belt to helpyou do ministry better. That’s
what I would say. I would hopeno one would use it to write
their sermons or create worshipsongs. But there's always a
(11:32):
temptation to cheat if it'savailable. I’ve got four
kids—three in college, one inhigh school—and they use ChatGPT
to cheat on everything. Theywrite their paper with it, run
it through software to removethe plagiarism, then put it into
another tool to make it soundthe way they want. That’s the
downfall. You can see pastorslosing their anointing because
(11:54):
they’re trying to make it tooeasy.
Dick Hardy (11:56):
Yeah, no, that's for sure. This has been great,
Bobby. Give these guys a quickrecap. You know, we've talked
about a variety of things, andif they haven’t remembered
anything, what’s the one thingyou want them to take away from
our conversation today?
Bobby Gourley (12:12):
That every week, God gives you a word that He
wants you to deliver to yourpeople, but He doesn’t want it
to stop there. He wants it to gothrough your people to reach
those outside the walls of thechurch who need it even more,
right? You know, CharlesSpurgeon used to have his
sermons printed on Sunday night,and they’d be in the paper by
Monday morning. Now, we can dothe same thing using AI to get
(12:34):
that message from our hearts,through the microphone, into the
church, and out into the worldquicker and faster than ever
Dick Hardy (12:41):
Wow, wow. That is so good. Bobby Gourley, I can't
before.
thank you enough for taking thetime to hang out with our
pastors here on the Church Tipspodcast. If they wanted to get a
hold of you, what's the bestway? The website is
wearechapel.org.
Bobby Gourley (12:55):
Wearechapel.org or on Facebook and Instagram.
It's @BobbyGourley.
Dick Hardy (13:03):
Very good. Thank you again, Bobby. Really appreciate
it, and thanks to all of you whotook the time to listen and
watch this podcast. It’s been agreat one, and I hope it brings
great value to you. Make it agreat day and be blessed.
Jonathan Hardy (13:16):
Hey, Jonathan, here real quick before you go,
everything in your ministryrises and falls on your
leadership. So investing in yourleadership is essential to
staying healthy and growing theministry, and that's why I want
to invite you to join us insidethe leaders. Dot church
membership, this onlinestreaming service for pastors
gives you access to more than300 videos plus training
material to level up yourleadership and improve your
ministry skills. If you'd liketo do that, I want to invite you
(13:39):
to go to leaders. Dot churchslash boost. Again, that's
leaders dot church slash boost.
Well, thanks again for joiningus on the church tips podcast.
We'll look forward to seeing younext time
Unknown (14:02):
you
Hey, friend, it's great to be with you on this
Church Tips podcast. I've gotthe privilege today to hang out
with a friend of mine fromFlorence, Alabama, Bobby
Gourley, from the great churchChapel in Florence. Say hi,
Bobby, to a bunch of greatpastors.
Bobby Gourley (00:20):
Hey, it's Bobby Gourley, great to be here with
you. It was great havingbreakfast with you last week. As
always, when you pay, it'salways better.
Dick Hardy (00:26):
Always! Guess what, they only want me because I pay
for the meal. But yeah, we had agreat time down there. Bobby's a
pastor in the town where mydaughter, son-in-law, and
grandkids live, so we'reconstantly making the eight-hour
trip to Florence. I always enjoytalking to Bobby about
(00:47):
church—we're church junkies.
We've had great rides, servingin great ministries. It's been a
real privilege the Lord hasallowed us to do so and allowed
our paths to cross. One of thethings we were talking about
recently was the future and whatAI is going to mean to the
(01:10):
church and the pastor. This isstill a relatively new topic for
lots of pastors, some trying toget their head around it. So,
Bobby, we're going to drop aquarter in you and have you talk
about what you see with AI andhow churches and ministries can
leverage it to advance thekingdom. What are your thoughts?
Bobby Gourley (01:35):
Ministry changes very quickly. I was talking to a
pastor friend of mine. It feelslike last year, I could get
ahead of what was going tohappen culturally in our church
and the surrounding area. Now,it seems like culture changes so
quickly, you're just playingcatch-up continually. One of the
things that emerged from thatwas AI. About a year ago,
ChatGPT launched publicly. I sawit on podcasts and Twitter, or
(02:02):
X—no one calls it X, it's stillTwitter—about ChatGPT writing
sermons for people. I ran into aworship leader who gave ChatGPT
a cue (02:13):
"Write me a song about God's love in a Chris Tomlin
style with a big bridge," andboom, within half a second, he
had a song.
That’s scary for pastors,knowing they could be replaced
by AI at some point. People hearAI and think of Matthew 24,
(02:39):
where Jesus talks about falseteachers, rumors of war, and the
like. I think AI could play arole with deep fakes and fake
news, producing things that lookreal but aren't. But on the
other side, AI can help usspread the gospel faster if we
(03:02):
use it correctly. There’s greatstuff being done with AI. In
Africa, it’s been used todetermine where food needs to go
in drought situations, ensuringno kids are starving. In medical
(03:24):
science, AI helps detect cancerquicker. So, while AI can have
negative sides, it can also be agreat tool for ministry. We've
started using it quite a bit,and it’s been amazing.
I first got into ChatGPT when Ineeded to write a recommendation
(03:55):
letter. A professor who helpswith our Dream Center asked for
a letter for her tenure board.
Normally, writing a letter takesme an hour, but I asked ChatGPT
to write one, gave it thedetails, and boom, it was done
(04:20):
in five minutes—much betterwritten than I would have done.
Dick Hardy (04:29):
How much did you have to edit it?
Bobby Gourley (04:33):
Not much. It was professional, way better than I
could have done. I'm just aNashville Southern, trailer park
kid, so it was a big help. Thenwe started using it for social
media videos. We were paying acompany close to $1,000 a month
(05:00):
to produce clips from oursermons, but now, with
sermonshots.com, for $89 amonth, we can upload our YouTube
video, and AI generates clips,captions, and even discussion
questions. It gives a fulltranscript, a short summary, a
(05:25):
long summary, and even a blogversion. We're about to start
releasing a full blog of thesermon. So that hour and a half
on Sunday is now becoming a 24/7message throughout the week for
(05:50):
little cost.
Jasper AI is another tool likeChatGPT, but for marketing. It
uses your language, learningyour church’s DNA to produce
content. So, for example, itwill generate Instagram posts
(06:12):
with our worship service detailsand songs. We don't write copy
Dick Hardy (06:19):
When you say it uses your language, does it start to
anymore.
learn your style?
Bobby Gourley (06:25):
Yes, it begins to learn Christ chapel, our
language, and our DNA.
It’s still our content, but itpolishes it for social media,
which is really cool. After Ifinish my sermon notes on
(06:53):
Thursday, I put them intoChatGPT and ask it to write a
YouTube description for thesermon. It writes the full
description, which we copy andpaste into YouTube, so before
(07:13):
the sermon is even preached,everything is ready.
Dick Hardy (07:25):
Another piece that jumps to mind here. I can hear a
pastor out there liking whatyou're talking about but
wondering about the issue ofplagiarism on the sermon side of
things. Do we have any concernsthere, or not?
Bobby Gourley (07:48):
Well, it's our content, so we're not asking it
to produce any new content.
We're taking our content,putting it in, and letting it
summarize for us, for whateverwe need it for. It's my sermon
notes. For example, this Sunday,Pastor Jason preached on Joshua
3. We took his sermon notes onThursday, put them in, and it
(08:09):
produced the YouTubedescription. We used that same
prompt to create a social mediapost for it as well.
Dick Hardy (08:18):
So in your case, you are not using AI to creat
sermons?
Bobby Gourley (08:24):
Correct, not at all.
Dick Hardy (08:25):
is that a conscious decision?
Bobby Gourley (08:28):
Yeah, it's conscious for us. We want to use
our own material. I have, like,asked ChatGPT to rephrase
something for me. It neverreally worked for my style of
language, but it may work forothers. For example, if I'm
struggling with a phrase in mysermon, I'll put it in and ask
for another way to phrase it,which is really cool. But it
(08:49):
just didn't work for us. So no,we're not asking it to produce
any language or content.
Dick Hardy (08:54):
I'm guessing if a pastor was asking it to help
with sermon content, they'regoing to have to give it a
critical eye to make surethere's no plagiarism involved,
right?
Bobby Gourley (09:07):
yep.
And then, even with socialmedia, for Passion Week, we had
ChatGPT write a social mediaschedule for us. It produced
content for Monday, Thursday,and Palm Sunday. It gave us a
starting point, and wecustomized it for our needs, but
the outline it provided wasreally helpful. It saves you a
(09:29):
ton of time. I had a buddy on atrip, and I asked him, "Have you
read this book?" He said, "Idon’t read books anymore." I was
like, "What? You're a pastor!"He pulled out his phone and
asked ChatGPT for a summary ofthe book Arrow Striker. It
(09:53):
produced a summary, and he saidif he wanted to dive deeper, he
could ask for achapter-by-chapter summary. It
cut out a lot of his time. Idon’t do that, but it’s
interesting how pastors areusing AI to save time.
Dick Hardy (10:05):
Yeah, it’s like a new version of the old
CliffsNotes. Some of the olderpastors will remember those. But
you’re seeing a lot ofpositives. If pastors harness it
properly, they could really do alot of good for the church, the
(10:26):
kingdom, and the message of thegospel.
Bobby Gourley (10:28):
Yeah, you're going to save money. We went
from spending $1,000 a month forsome social media videos to $89
a month. It cuts back on ourtime tremendously, but it also
maximizes the reach of thesermon. Now, we have video
clips, a blog, and we can copyand paste a summary of the
(10:49):
sermon in blog form. You couldeven potentially turn it into a
book at some point. It reallymaximizes the impact of your
Sunday morning message, gettingit as far as possible. It's
wild.
Dick Hardy (11:02):
Well, that's cool.
So what's the biggest cautionyou would give to pastors about
being careful with AI? Or maybethere’s more than one?
Bobby Gourley (11:12):
Yeah, I would say the biggest caution is, don’t
get lazy and let AI do the workof ministry for you. Let it be a
tool in your tool belt to helpyou do ministry better. That’s
what I would say. I would hopeno one would use it to write
their sermons or create worshipsongs. But there's always a
(11:32):
temptation to cheat if it'savailable. I’ve got four
kids—three in college, one inhigh school—and they use ChatGPT
to cheat on everything. Theywrite their paper with it, run
it through software to removethe plagiarism, then put it into
another tool to make it soundthe way they want. That’s the
downfall. You can see pastorslosing their anointing because
(11:54):
they’re trying to make it tooeasy.
Dick Hardy (11:56):
Yeah, no, that's for sure. This has been great,
Bobby. Give these guys a quickrecap. You know, we've talked
about a variety of things, andif they haven’t remembered
anything, what’s the one thingyou want them to take away from
our conversation today?
Bobby Gourley (12:12):
That every week, God gives you a word that He
wants you to deliver to yourpeople, but He doesn’t want it
to stop there. He wants it to gothrough your people to reach
those outside the walls of thechurch who need it even more,
right? You know, CharlesSpurgeon used to have his
sermons printed on Sunday night,and they’d be in the paper by
Monday morning. Now, we can dothe same thing using AI to get
(12:34):
that message from our hearts,through the microphone, into the
church, and out into the worldquicker and faster than ever
Dick Hardy (12:41):
Wow, wow. That is so good. Bobby Gourley, I can't
before.
thank you enough for taking thetime to hang out with our
pastors here on the Church Tipspodcast. If they wanted to get a
hold of you, what's the bestway? The website is
wearechapel.org.
Bobby Gourley (12:55):
Wearechapel.org or on Facebook and Instagram.
It's @BobbyGourley.
Dick Hardy (13:03):
Very good. Thank you again, Bobby. Really appreciate
it, and thanks to all of you whotook the time to listen and
watch this podcast. It’s been agreat one, and I hope it brings
great value to you. Make it agreat day and be blessed.
Jonathan Hardy (13:16):
Hey, Jonathan, here real quick before you go,
everything in your ministryrises and falls on your
leadership. So investing in yourleadership is essential to
staying healthy and growing theministry, and that's why I want
to invite you to join us insidethe leaders. Dot church
membership, this onlinestreaming service for pastors
gives you access to more than300 videos plus training
material to level up yourleadership and improve your
ministry skills. If you'd liketo do that, I want to invite you
(13:39):
to go to leaders. Dot churchslash boost. Again, that's
leaders dot church slash boost.
Well, thanks again for joiningus on the church tips podcast.
We'll look forward to seeing younext time
Unknown (14:02):
you
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