Angela Heck (00:00:04):
Hi, and welcome to the Ask the Pastors podcast, where our pastors here at West Hills Church answer your questions for the benefit of the church. My name is Angela, and I’m excited to be your new host this season.
Will DuVal (00:00:14):
Yes, you are. And I’m still… You’re supposed to say Angela heck, so I could say heck yeah. All right, whatever. Angela is, she’s just praying for a director of media person, so she won’t have to host our podcast anymore. But you know what? This is your hazing as being our newest staff member as you have to host the podcast for us. Thank you for doing that.
Thad Yessa (00:00:35):
You’re welcome. Thank you for working at the church and for hosting our
Will DuVal (00:00:39):
Podcast. We’re excited to have you. This is going to be fun.
Angela Heck (00:00:41):
Day two on my own on the job doing this. Pastor Will, as you announced last Sunday, we’re kicking the season off with a mini series of questions all related to artificial intelligence.
Will DuVal (00:00:51):
Who’s excited?
Thad Yessa (00:00:53):
I’m excited.
Will DuVal (00:00:55):
Where’s our clapping button? Come on, get with it. Okay, we’re good.
Angela Heck (00:01:02):
In this week’s episode, we are going to discuss AI and the church. How should we as a church here at West Hills be thinking about relating to and be wary of artificial intelligence? But maybe it would be helpful to start by defining our terms.
Will DuVal (00:01:17):
So what is artificial intelligence and how does it compare contrast with things like AGI that you’ve maybe heard of, super intelligence? This is the only thing that I actually used AI for, was to define itself and define it.
Thad Yessa (00:01:40):
To write this episode of the podcast. So
Will DuVal (00:01:41):
Here’s what Gemini told me that AI is/narrow AI. It’s code built to do one specific job really well. It’s capabilities. It follows patterns in data to chat, recognize faces, drive cars, et cetera. Real world status that exists today and limits. It does not have common sense, cannot adapt to task outside its specific training. Okay, so that’s what we have right now. AGI refers to artificial general intelligence. What it is, machine intelligence that matches the versatile cognitive skills of an average human. Capabilities can reason, learn new skills on the fly, solve problems across completely different fields without needing to retrain for each one. And so self-training or… Yeah, I forget all the fancy words they use to describe that. Real world status, it’s still theoretical at this point. Researchers are actively trying to build it and depending on who you ask, could be a couple years out versus decades and then limits.
(00:02:57):
It thinks like a skilled human but does not exceed human limits too much. Artificial superintelligence is a hypothetical intelligence that would blow past human capability in every single metric, can invent brand new science, master any skill in seconds, solve complex global issues far beyond human comprehension. Real world status, completely speculative, would likely emerge only after AGI achieves rapid self-improvement. So again, that’s that recurrent technology where it’s training itself. And then limits, none known as it operates on a level almost infinitely beyond human understanding.
(00:03:37):
So anyway, I don’t know. I think with artificial intelligence, if you’re going to understand it, you have to talk about things like LLMs, large language models that are used to train for those specific tasks, even with the narrow AI that we have now. Again, I’m not a tech person, so I don’t really understand any of this other than to say that I think when it’s time about training AI for specific task, there are real human beings at this point that are doing that training. Now again, with AGI, you’re talking about training AI to train itself and that’s already starting to happen some. But when you talk about training AI, you’re talking about giving it the parameters and the scope of which content out there of all the human created content that’s on the internet, I think it’s got to be on the internet that it can search and find and access.
(00:04:48):
But I mean if it’s on the internet –
Thad Yessa (00:04:50):
Or has been uploaded by a user because they can –
Will DuVal (00:04:56):
To a specific platform?
Thad Yessa (00:04:57):
To a specific platform, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot. You can upload and then it gathers the data from that as well, not just what’s out on the internet.
Will DuVal (00:05:06):
Oh,
Thad Yessa (00:05:06):
That’s
Will DuVal (00:05:06):
True. So for instance, I want Claude to make me a slide for the baby dedication we’re doing this Sunday. I give it a picture, I give it, here’s the baby’s name and how big it is and whatever when it was born, create me a slide. It’s not on the internet, but it’s on their platform now. So anyway –
Thad Yessa (00:05:31):
A little bit. That’s technically specifically generative AI. You’re using it to create some sort of image, video, audio, and that’s the specific use of generative AI that it’s using to create new content that doesn’t exist. The ML is what’s being up or the large language model LLM is taking massive amounts of text and predicting what words should come next. So even on your phone, your iPhone, as you start to do that, that is an AI LLM that’s suggesting the next word you’re going to use into that.
Will DuVal (00:06:18):
But it’s searching all of that data within the specific parameters that you gave it and that the humans train, okay, based on a prompt like this with these keywords or whatever, this is the part of the internet we want you to search to create your response. Okay. I don’t know if I understand any more than that or if we want to go beyond that in trying to describe what it is. I mean, most of our people I assume have at least that much probably understanding of what it is already.
Thad Yessa (00:06:56):
As long as anyone who’s listening doesn’t go to Google or whatever and search AI in the Bible, because what they’ll come up with is AI was a place in Canaan. It’s first mentioned in Genesis chapter 12 verse eight, so that’s not what we’re talking about. You get the
Will DuVal (00:07:13):
Periods with A. Yes. Period I period. Yes.
Thad Yessa (00:07:16):
So very different then. So don’t go searching where is AI in the Bible because you’re going to go down the wrong sort of trail with that. What does
Will DuVal (00:07:25):
The Bible say about AI?
Thad Yessa (00:07:26):
What does the Bible say about AI?
Will DuVal (00:07:27):
It’s destroyed, Joshua.
Thad Yessa (00:07:31):
It’s gone.
Will DuVal (00:07:33):
Cool. Okay. Is that maybe enough on defining our term? I mean, I’m sure there’s going to be some other terms we get to that we’ll need to define as we go along, but okay. So Thad, I’ll let you weigh in first on this next one then. In what ways should Christians use AI? I mean, let’s not come out of the gate negative on this. Let’s recognize if we can, to the extent we can, that artificial intelligence is an incredibly powerful tool, only getting more powerful by the seemingly day. And so does it have a place in the life of the Christian individual, the life of the church? How would we as pastors advise Christians to productively and responsibly use AI?
Thad Yessa (00:08:40):
Yeah, I think some productive ways is even just the acknowledgement of how much AI is already being used, whether you are explicitly seeking it out. So anytime you’re using Google, AI’s using that to get you search and you’re going to get the Gemini, “Hey, here’s your summary of it.” Most times you’re engaging with a online website that has some sort of chat bot that’s engaging with AI, so you’re using that. A lot of other ways. So all that to say is that it is really being used in more facets, even if you are not explicitly going to ChatGPT or Claude or using Copilot or whatever, that it is being used in all sorts of different ways. Anything you see on social media, that’s being produced by an AI bot that’s pulling all your data history that’s out there and saying, “Hey, this is what I know you want to see.” And so it’s being –
Will DuVal (00:09:46):
To create the algorithm.
Thad Yessa (00:09:47):
Yep. Create the algorithm and then you become a slave to the algorithm. So ways in which that a Christian can use ChatGPT or AI or Claude or whatever is helpfully in a way I recently did this is we have a spare bedroom, mostly finished room in our basement and I took a picture of it and said, “Hey, what would it look like to put a desk and a treadmill on this and give me an image so that I can help brainstorm with it?” You can use it for sort of creative problem solving or, “Hey, I’ve got this area in my backyard. What are some different options that I could do with this?” You can do it for, “Hey, I want to plan a vacation. How can I find the cheapest flights for this? Or what are some fun things to do in Nashville for fall break or different things like that?” So I think there’s a lot of real low level hanging fruits of just using it or –
Will DuVal (00:10:47):
We were just using it the other day, talking to Polly and I about fall break. We got a four-day weekend. We don’t want to drive more than four and a half hours from St. Louis, family-friendly vacations for under $3,000, whatever it is. You give it your parameters and it’ll tell you here’s where to go, here’s what you can do there, here’s where to stay, here’s the best place to eat. I mean, it’s powerful. It’s amazing. So I mean, we’re going to talk –
Thad Yessa (00:11:24):
You can use it to answer just the random questions that you have of life, like a Google search engine, but –
Will DuVal (00:11:29):
I was going to say, I think I was going to build up to that because I think with some of that, like you said, creative, critical problem solving thinking, there are other factors to keep in mind before you just automatically, just because we can use it to help plan a vacation or create a personal budget or whatever, I think there’s questions that we probably ought to ask, should we? I mean, we can, should we? What’s the cost of that? And I think there are various costs that, again, we can get to later in the podcast, both environmentally in time. They’re getting us to rely on this stuff now, but obviously they’re trying to upsell you on a literal financial cost to have unlimited access to any one of the platforms and whatever in time once it’s all proven and you’re totally a slave to it, like you said, there’ll be no free versions of it.
(00:12:37):
So anyway, there’s that. And then maybe biggest of all costs is your ability still to think creatively for yourself.
(00:12:56):
I don’t want to turn into someone who no longer has the ability to make decisions for myself about where to go for a vacation or the creativity it takes to design a room for yourself or again, the human cost. We’ll talk about this in a later podcast too with work and what’s that going to do for the interior designer who now you didn’t bring them in and pay them 150 bucks for the house call to drew a drawing for you of here’s what this room would look like with a ceiling fan and a hot tub in or whatever.
Thad Yessa (00:13:39):
Don’t put a hot tub inside your house just to be.
Will DuVal (00:13:42):
Debatable. Let’s ask AI what it says. I was going to start with, to me, the low-hanging fruit would be the obscure sort of just factoid trivia questions that aren’t so much creative or critical thinking. My wife’s kind of famous example was when she was seven years old or something, she remembers her family all at Thanksgiving getting into an argument debate about whether the reindeer’s name was Donner or Donder in whatever the song about the reindeer’s Rudolph is. And they called the local public library to ask the librarian to go –
Thad Yessa (00:14:40):
Find some book that’s got it.
Will DuVal (00:14:41):
Pull the book or whatever off the shelf. And it’s like, that’s just comical these days. Maybe dates my wife.
Thad Yessa (00:14:48):
I’m going to start trying to call the library and see if they’ll answer my
Will DuVal (00:14:51):
Questions. There’s no way they know. They’re going to type it in Gemini. Yeah. But things like that where… Now, I will say even with that, I’ll give my dad a hard time because my dad will text me like, “What was the drummer’s name for the Dave Matthews Band? Didn’t you used to listen to them a lot?” And I’m like, “Dad, by the time you asked me, you could have voiced the text this ended Gemini and you would’ve had the answer.” But then I kind of stop and I think about it, I’m like, “But was that just my dad’s excuse to text me today and get a reply from me and have some semblance of a human connection?” I was listening to a podcast in preparation for this and saying the same thing about his daughter was trying to make her this recipe and she had a question about it and started to pick up the phone to do it just to ChatGPT, like, “What am I doing wrong in this recipe?” And then it was like, “Five years ago, I would’ve just called my mom.
(00:16:04):
She gave me the recipe and she taught me to cook.” And so it’s slower and frankly, maybe already less reliable, less accurate, but what do you lose in the way of human connection even with that kind of just very benign kind of factoidal kind of searching.
(00:16:35):
And there’s various… I had other examples to discuss debate. We just had to have a plumber out for a thing at our house. Again, back in the day, you’d ask your neighbor, your family members, but now it’s like, of course, Polly’s first thought was, “I’m going to ask ChatGPT because it’s going to comb the internet.” It’s not just an anecdotal, “Who does my mom like as a plumber?” It’s thousands of reviews on Yelp and whatever that it’s combing. So again, you’re getting a more objective, widespread wide cast net in terms of your data points that’s probably going to frankly give you a better, well-rounded, more accurate answer as far as who is objectively the best plumber for my area for the cost and this and that. But again, what does it do to our social fabric, our relationships, our own ability to exercise those muscles to think and to pick up the phone and whatever?
(00:17:54):
So yeah, one maybe helpful way of thinking about this that I stumbled across in researching for this was, I can’t remember who it was I was listening to, who said that the question they asked, they try and make it biblical and take it back to Genesis two and Genesis three, right? So Genesis two, Adam and Eve created, put in the garden, and God assigns them with work, work the garden, cultivate it, till it. So work is good, work is meaningful, it’s God-given, it’s part of, again, what we’re created to do.
(00:18:43):
And then in chapter three, Genesis three, you get this new word introduced where part of Adam’s punishment for sin with the fall is now when you work the ground, there’s going to be thorns and thistles, and it’s going to oppose you, and the word used now is toil. You’re going to toil, which is kind of this idea of less productive work and the struggle and striving and work that’s not inherently meaningful probably and that sort of thing. I think, again, most of us that know English can even just hearing the words work versus toil. Although I would argue for a lot of people, the word work now has probably become so loaded that it’s a pejorative thing, sadly. But as Christians, work is inherently good if it’s good work worth doing. All that to say with AI, this thinker, talker, was saying a Christian should use AI for toil and not for work.
(00:20:07):
If it’s kind of the frivolous, already thoughtless, not inherently meaningful and edifying and character building and challenging in a good way, if it’s none of those things, and maybe some of that is personal and subjective too, like what’s one man’s work is another man’s toil. But I can certainly think of a lot of things that for me would fall in that category of toil, and part of the reason we hired Angela is because just answering –
Thad Yessa (00:20:51):
Too much toiling.
Will DuVal (00:20:52):
Answering emails, scheduling, budget review. I mean, I don’t know, just any number of things that if a computer can do it way faster and it’s going to, again, save you time and save that brain power for good, meaningful, productive work that a pastor in my case is called to do, then by all means use it. So I don’t know if you find that helpful.
Thad Yessa (00:21:29):
I do. And I think even with the work in toil, there’s a couple even just different filters to think through with them. I think at a basic level, information gathering is pretty low level hanging fruit of acceptable, but deeper questions like does this have a moral implication? Does this have a relational implication? Does this have, again, different levels to which just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And is this going to have a moral implication via vocation? Is it going to have an effect in that way? Is it going to have a relational aspect? I think of even your dad, his calling just to talk to you versus he could just do this, but I’m intentionally making the choice not to use it so that there could be a relational component or even just because AI can generate all of your email responses, does that mean we should because even in emailing, there’s a relational component or texting because there are different add-ons that you can put in your email inbox that they’ll clear your inbox out, have it all in your drafts, and you just have to look through and hit send and boom, I’m done.
Will DuVal (00:23:02):
Show me that button. Just kidding. I’m not using it yet for that.
Thad Yessa (00:23:10):
So again, there’s different… Does this require a wisdom decision? In one sense, you could even think with a plumber, there’s a certain level of wisdom required that just because there’s a lot of reviews, now we have to ask the question, are chatbots and AI bots just going in and building a bunch of reviews for different companies so that they can now have, look, I’m appearing at the top result because AI has made it so I can have 10 million reviews instead of just 100 reviews. And so again, couple different filters, even information, moral, relational kind of judgments, you got wisdom that you got to filter in for the average Christian.
Will DuVal (00:23:55):
Yeah. I thought the work toil was a helpful question to ask and think through. I don’t know, other filters or other questions that came to mind for you that Christians should be asking themselves as they think about a certain task and whether or not making that decision, whether or not to utilize artificial intelligence for it?
Thad Yessa (00:24:28):
Yeah, not as much so in the work toil category, more so in what I would say is the number one use of AI versus even though I asked three different AI platforms of what’s the number one use and they all put it at the very bottom of relational and therapeutic communication.
Will DuVal (00:24:54):
Well, according to the Harvard Business Review, their recent study just this year about it, and there was another one too, I can’t remember, but two major studies done polling that usage. So maybe that’s a good transition to the next question I want to make sure we talked about, which is in what ways should we be encouraging as pastors and encouraging Christians not to use AI? To me, that is the most obvious, what you’re already touching on. It should be the most obvious for us as Christians, but sadly probably is not. I don’t know. I mean, from what I’m reading and hearing, it doesn’t seem like, sadly, that Christians’ use of AI is really any different than non-Christians, which is, again, scary. And again, part of why we’re recording this is trying to disciple our people and be a church that’s different on that. Again, you’d like to think that our church, that they’re mature believers, most people, and that they’re going to come with a different worldview and a different framework for making those decisions.
(00:26:17):
And yet I know you at least, I don’t know if they came to me, but you’ve at least fielded one or two questions from folks already or they – No, they
Thad Yessa (00:26:29):
Had been using and said – They
Will DuVal (00:26:30):
Insinuated something in conversation about I’ve been doing this AI therapy or using it as a counselor kind of thing or even companionship because that’s the number one usage according to the surveys I’ve seen is for the relational connection, which should be, I think, the biggest no-no, the biggest obvious red flag danger. This is not a human being. And again, we’ll talk, I think it’s next week, we’re going to talk more this week, AI in the church and just in general more next week we’ll talk about AI and personhood and theological anthropology and what it means to be human and all that sort of thing. But suffice it to say, AI is not human, and even with the super intelligence stuff, I would say wouldn’t meet the Bible’s definition criteria for that. And so it just seems like they’re… And I mean, you don’t have to go any farther right now than just some of the even specific test cases that you’ve seen of whether it’s teenagers committing suicide and the AI like chatbot encouraging it and telling them to, “Yeah, if your heart’s telling you to do that, you want to be true to yourself or whatever and just terrible stuff.
(00:28:10):
We know that AI is sycophantic, that it tells you what you want to hear because it is programmed… I mean, it’s always about the money, right? So these platforms are designed for the purpose just like social media back… Again, why would anybody who knows the way the world works have been surprised about this? Again, the recent study about especially young girls, self-image and mental health and whatever with social media, and yet why would anybody be surprised that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, they’re designed to keep you on their platform, on their app as long as possible. It’s monetized. I mean, they are beholden to their shareholders.
(00:29:09):
It’s a company, it’s a for-profit company. They’re trying to make money. The way they do it is through advertisements primarily, and so they’re trying to keep you there. The longer they keep you, the more advertisements they can show you. So whether that’s the echo chamber content that they know you want to hear to reify your beliefs, or whether that’s the hate mongering and hate cells, and if they can get you angry, they’ll keep you there or violence or sex or whatever it is. Again, your algorithm, that’s what they’re going to play to, and they’re going to try and keep you there. Well, what do we love as simple humans more than ourselves? And so AI is inherently sycophantic. It’s going to tell you what you want to hear. It’s going to tell you you’re the world’s best person and treat you that way and whatever.
(00:29:57):
So again, if you’re asking it Which country had the largest GDP in 2025? That’s a pretty benign thing, non-personal. But if you’re asking it about anything, again, personal, relational, therapeutic, any of that kind of nature of content, then you just need to know that it’s designed to make you feel better and to stroke your ego and whatever else, because you’re going to unplug it if you don’t. And again, already seen plenty of cases of what that leads to and many people, romantic relationships with virtual sex, whatever. I’ve heard conversations, I think, I don’t know if there’s already court cases yet about the legality of marrying your AI bots and this and that. But I mean, if they’re not, there will be soon, people are already talking about wanting to marry. So it’s wild. It’s wild stuff. And it’s sad. And again, it’s sad that Christians would even, and I don’t say this to make anybody feel guilty who’s ever used AI for any of those purposes, but hopefully maybe again, while we’re recording this podcast, maybe it’ll cause you to rethink that strongly.
(00:31:45):
And you can see again why someone, especially your marriage gets difficult, you need to get stuff off your chest. Again, sadly it points to, I think the already… I don’t think you get all this stuff with AI without the social media because I think the social fabric is already, and the lack of relationships and community and all that, you had to have those 20 plus years of social media undoing our ability to have real person-to-person relationships. Because again, otherwise, if I’m mad at my wife, I’m going to go have a beer with a friend and complain about her, but I’m not going to log on to this ChatGPT and take it out there. And again, for me, that feels weird, but I think for young people, it’s already getting normalized. And I’m curious because you guys both, and Angela, if you want to jump in too, but obviously Thad, you’re still leading the youth group right now and Angela, you volunteer in it, but I’d be curious what you guys are seeing with Gen Z, Gen Alpha and how they’re already…
(00:33:09):
I’m sure if the ones in our youth group aren’t using it for a lot of these things, they know people who are. I mean, the kids who, again, get picked on whatever it is, it’s way safer than making a real friend because again, it’s going to tell you what you want to hear.
(00:33:26):
There’s little to no risk involved with it, but it’s way sadder and shallower and emptier. And so yeah, I’m curious what you guys are with the generational thing with the folks 15, 20 years younger than us.
Thad Yessa (00:33:46):
Well,
Will DuVal (00:33:47):
Not than you, you’re mid – 20s?
Angela Heck (00:33:49):
Yeah.
Will DuVal (00:33:50):
Okay. Yeah. You’re 15 years younger than
Thad Yessa (00:33:53):
Me.
Angela Heck (00:33:53):
20 years though. I mean, people are on technology younger and younger.
Will DuVal (00:33:57):
Well, yeah. I was going to say, I mean, 25 versus 15, people 10 years younger than you in the youth group, that’s a massive difference. But yeah, me and you 15, I mean, that’s a massive because you grew up in a totally different generation and set of assumptions and comfortability with all this technology. So yeah, what are y’all seeing, hearing with young people and their relation to all of this? I
Angela Heck (00:34:25):
Don’t know. This doesn’t, I guess, directly answer that, but as you were talking, I was thinking just the question of isn’t this just a slippery slope? If we’re talking about how social media has already taken over a lot of face-to-face connection, I don’t think people go on AI thinking this is going to be my husband. I’m going to want to marry this thing. But as you go to AI for the smaller questions of who was the drummer in this band and what should I add to my pasta sauce to make it taste better or whatever the small things, you’re sacrificing all these small human connections. So then when something big happens, do you have the base of foundation of relationships still to go to that? That might sound kind of dramatic, but I think there are a lot of people that live very isolatory lives and that’s what ends up happening.
(00:35:15):
And then I could just see as it grows. And then for the generations coming up now, that’s normalized. I knew a middle schooler that I was standing right next to her and she was like, “How long should I microwave this? Let me ask ChatGPT.” And I was like, “I’m standing right here as a human being you could ask.” It’s just such a normal thing. And my generation, we could Google things instead of looking up in textbooks. So I get that comparison of it’s just the new kids, it’s just the new Google. But also Google didn’t talk back to me. I had to read articles and synthesize information for myself and decide what was true.
Will DuVal (00:35:51):
It is a fundamentally different kind of technology. People are talking about what happened with the industrial revolution and just multiply that by a hundred in terms of the impact and the forces that it affects and changes in whether it’s the workplace or your own personal decision making and living your life. But yeah, you’re right. I mean, the internet was like a quantum leap and this is a whole nother quantum leap of just advancing technology, both in terms of the power and the potential, but also in terms of the danger, the potential danger. And anyway, you
Thad Yessa (00:36:41):
Were going to… Yeah, I think I got a couple different thoughts that I’ll try to navigate through. I think you are right in bringing up the effect of social media first, that what it did is it taught us that we don’t actually need human connections and we don’t actually need to treat people as human beings and fellow image bearers, that we can do whatever we want on social media and negate the need for in-person relationships, that we don’t have to actually know how to talk to an individual. We don’t have to know how to make a friend. We don’t have to know how to ask a question. We don’t have to know to look someone in the eyes when you’re meeting them for the first time or to shake their hands. And so social media –
Will DuVal (00:37:28):
Ask a girl out, risk rejection.
Thad Yessa (00:37:30):
And so social media started that trend for us. And just a quick plug, if any parents of middle schoolers are listening and you see that Instagram now has a teen safe account, I’m just telling you, don’t let them get on social media in general, even if Instagram says they now have a teen account that’s really safe.
Will DuVal (00:37:48):
Mark Zuckerberg’s definition of safe is different than mine and yours and should be different from our parents. Yeah.
Thad Yessa (00:37:55):
And so again, social media taught us that we can do that. And it also, with the integration of AI even further into it, has changed what it even means to engage with real versus AI generated content. For listeners who may not spend much time on social media, I don’t like to think that I spend much time on social media, but I try to be attentive to what’s going on, is that there’s a continually growing number of AI bot accounts where an individual will use AI to create content. They’ll take content that another person has created and have AI redo it and add in a different person so that they can create multiple fake profiles to gain more followers and then therefore get more money and all of that.
Will DuVal (00:38:50):
I think the last I heard, and this was maybe even a year ago on Twitter for instance, Jack Dorsey or whatever was saying that they did sort of a comb over of just a snapshot of the Twitter verse and it was like 10 to one, I think was the number of 10 bots to one human account on Twitter already a year ago or something. So
Thad Yessa (00:39:19):
Exponentially grown, Instagram’s the same way. And also people who, again, don’t have a care about how it’s affecting other individuals are using that to create sexually explicit content in very gross ways because they can. And they’re like, “This is how I can make more money by creating this AI generated video and it’s going to get more views and I’m going to get more money and cause more damage.” I grew up when social media was really kicking off and Facebook and all of that and Twitter and Instagram and all of that. And even now what used to be engagement on social media platforms with real individuals and real photos and real videos is now you have to ask the question of, “Well, is this even real or how much of this is AI slop?” Whether it’s a video or a picture or even books that people are now producing because anyone can say, “Hey, write me a book and here’s the slop that it’ll produce.” And so even you take that downstream of my generation of millennials who grew up with the social media and are now addicted to it and spent so much time on it, they are now becoming parents and they themselves are so focused in on technology and that they now let their children engage with technology and because they haven’t though critically about it, they’re now letting their children engage with it.
(00:40:55):
And when we give a children a powerful tool, it usually isn’t used as a tool, it’s used as a weapon and they find ways to harm themselves or others with it.
Will DuVal (00:41:06):
Yeah. To me, when I think about dangers that Christians should be very mindful of when considering their personal use of AI, talked about a lot of them already, the sick of fancy, the echo chamber, I think, and touched on this already, but we should probably say more about the danger of brain rot, not just the consumption of AI slop that you’re talking about, because that’s a huge thing. I’m thinking about, was it Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451 or both of them, the kind of dystopian, are we becoming more of that society where we all just are literally sitting on our couches all day long just watching video reels on little seven second reels on loop or not repeat, but I mean there’s content creation with AI. I mean, there’s an infinite number of seven second reels you can create. And so that’s part of what I’m talking about is the seven second is what are you doing to your brain by doing that too of…
(00:42:21):
I was listening to… Yeah, it was Cary Nuoff talking with Andy Stanley on his podcast because Cary Newoff’s coming out with a book here in just a couple weeks about the AI revolution. But he was just mentioning, I can’t remember what the stat was, but how many Gen Z and especially Gen Alpha physically cannot, will not sit through a two-hour long movie anymore because they don’t have the attention span. And that’s a movie. We’re not talking about a 300-page book. I couldn’t do that when I was in middle school, high school, because my parents let me watch too much TV and ride on my brain, play video games. But I would read Cliff’s notes and I wouldn’t read books because I didn’t want to and I was lazy and whatever. But that’s book. I’m talking about a movie, even a kid’s movie made for kids that is supposed to be engaging and colorful and scene changes and it’s like, no, I mean they want seven second YouTube shorts or TikToks or whatever it is.
(00:43:35):
And that’s alarming. God forbid they’d be able to sit through a 45-minute sermon or a 35-minute sermon at most or 25-minute sermon or a 50-minute science class at school. What are you doing to your kids? That’s kids’ brains too.
Thad Yessa (00:43:55):
Developmentally though, that’s –
Will DuVal (00:43:56):
Developmentally, that’s huge and that’s more important. I say more because they’re the future and because of how plastic their brains, the plasticity right now, and it’s brain formation. They still have until you’re 25, whatever your prefrontal cortex is still developing. And so what are you doing to your kids’ brains by… It’s a muscle. I mean, the brain is the most powerful, but it’s like any other muscle. And if you don’t use it, you’re going to lose it. It’s going to atrophy. And so you imagine getting double knee replacement surgery, not being able to walk for six months or whatever it is, and then trying to walk again and just how much those supporting muscles and all that atrophies. If you’re not giving your brain those chances to work out and stretch and be challenged and do hard things, then it’s atrophying, it’s growing mold.
(00:45:04):
I think that is hugely dangerous in terms of, again, just what does that hold for? What does that mean? The implications for the future, the next generation of… I mean, I think that amongst other things, there’s a reason that Zuckerberg and all his buddies don’t let their kids, their own kids, have social media accounts or use AI or have smartphones. They know something. Well, now we all, like Jonathan Height’s book, The Ancient Generation, it’s exposed, and there’s been plenty of whistleblowers that have left the companies because they’re like, “We can no longer in good conscience keep doing this to young people.” And so we should know. But like you said, some of this comes back on an incrimination of just how lazy we are as parents, that it’s easier to just stick them in front of a screen.
(00:45:58):
So yeah, the Brain Rot, that to me is huge. Just again, on a personal level, what does it do? And I want to transition in a minute to AI use in a church context specifically. But I mean, I can speak personally on that with the Brain Rot thing with something like sermon prep. And I think about how much greater mastery of the Bible a Charles Spurgeon had to have or even a John Piper who’s 40 years older than me or whatever he is, but cut his pastoral teeth in a day and age where he didn’t have this tool to be able to rely on and push the easy button. Even like you mentioned, information gathering is maybe mostly safe. Well, maybe, but again, this gets to the Brain Rot thing. I have the potential, and I’ll be honest enough to admit, I do it every week right now, for weeks I have.
(00:47:21):
Use AI.
(00:47:25):
I preached on Philippians two: 5-11 last week, and I want to make sure I’m not missing anything. So when I’m talking about verse 11 and ever knew about, every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, I’m going to put in AI, tell me every time the Bible calls Jesus Christ Lord, and I’m going to go through all those… Now, Charles Pershing couldn’t do that. Even John Piper, 30 years ago, couldn’t do that. Now, he might had Google, Piper, but like you said, Angel, you’ve still now got… You don’t know what… I mean, Google’s going to do its best to try and give you a good result toward the top so you don’t have to scroll to page two or page three to find what you want, because then you don’t like Google and you stop using it and you’ll go to Yahoo instead or whatever.
(00:48:18):
No one’s going to Yahoo. I’m going to Yahoo.You’re going to go to DuckDuckGo or whatever.
Thad Yessa (00:48:21):
Big Yahoo guy.
Will DuVal (00:48:23):
Well, whatever you’re going to do. But you’re going to find a new… So it’s trying to give you that top result to make it easy for you because that’s what you want. But again, even then you’ve got to do a little bit more thinking and discernment on, okay, yeah, are these hits actually the best cross references? Openbible.com, is it actually giving me this crowdsourced, democratically voted on sort of passages of what does the Bible say about Jesus Christ as Lord? And is that reliable? Is it good or nah? Why did I have to get all the way to page three of that before it gave me this passage from Acts two where Peter says it? So I have enough discernment that I’m still having to do that. But again, the more powerful that AI becomes, the less powerful my brain has to be to discern those things.
(00:49:32):
But again, it’s at what cost? How reliant now am I becoming on this tool and how much…
(00:49:46):
Even if it’s not brain rot, it’s certainly not brain challenge. It’s not brain growth. I’m not being stretched and grown as a pastor, as a preacher, as a thinker to have to put my finger on this page and flip through a physical Bible to another page and check that cross reference and then, “No, that’s not the one I was thinking of,” and then go find and hand write out a list of the top 10 best passages that I need to make sure I mention this passage in this sermon or else I’ve really missed something. The more I am hearing other people talk about, the more I am really thinking critically. Like I said, we’re going to have to hire a couple other people before I even think about stopping to use it to go back to analog, handwritten sermons or something like that. But I will say, man, I had at a pastor’s retreat just last month, we were just kind of going, “Hey, how’s the summer been for you?” And one of the guys said, “I did something over the summer for…” I think it was two or three months.
(00:51:01):
I think it might have been most or all of the summer. And as a family, we all did this. Wife and I agreed and the kids we forced, but we did no screens, no screens, period. He did this pastor friend, he gave himself one hour a week to check email because again, I mean, there’s a certain level at which as a pastor, living in this day and age, you cannot do your job if you’re not… Again, you can’t expect your whole congregation to learn a new, send you a carrier pigeon when they’re in the hospital or whatever. So I mean, obviously he told his congregation, “Try not to email me. I know you’re going to forget and newcomers are going to come and we’re going to have to do some things via email, but call me. No one text me, call me.” And he installed a thing on his phone that turns it into a dumb phone, so it’s like it turns it into an old analog phone.
(00:52:02):
Anyway, the point of the story is he’s like, “We were so much happier. We slept better. Our relationships with each other and our family were better.
(00:52:16):
We lost five pounds each.” It was just all these benefits of doing that. And he’s like, “I feel so much smarter. I had to actually think.” And he’s like, “So I’m doing a sermon series first thing this fall, and I’m going to challenge the church to do it, spend the next month doing no screens, and just if nothing else, I mean, the Bible calls us to fast. And to a certain extent, again, if nothing else, by giving up something, fasting originally, literally food, it makes you more dependent on God. It humbles you. It makes you more appreciative of what you’re giving up for when you get it back again or whatever. It makes you more thoughtful about how you use it and not just shoving anything in your mouth. So same thing with your screen. Anyway, I say all that to say, it’s really got me thinking a little bit more intentionally about how I personally want to use this stuff.
(00:53:25):
And I would really challenge our people to be thoughtful and to think the same. Is the most important question here what makes my life easier or is it something else? What makes my life better? What makes me a better person, more of the kind of person God wants me to be? Which means whole, heart, mind, soul, strength, body. And if your mind’s soul, strength, body, if it’s shrinking, if in every one of these kind of facets of what it means to be a human being, you feel like you’re shrinking and it’s making you less human and less resilient and less persevering and patient and smart and wise, discerning, all these things, peaceful again, the anxious generation. I mean, it’s making us less of all these good character formation and it’s all related. I mean, we’re holistic creatures, so what’s happening in our minds is having impacts on our body, vice versa, having impact on your soul.
(00:54:28):
It’s all interconnected.
Thad Yessa (00:54:33):
I was going to say, as you were talking, what we are… I think one of the sins everyone is tempted with when it comes to AI is sloth of what am I willing to lose? And we didn’t even touch on necessarily all of the different still early research shows of persistent AI use and how much your brain does atrophy and change and cause you not to be able to think as critically. And I think as a pastor, a sobering question to ask is who’s discipling the people of God? Am I allowing the spirit through me to disciple or am I using AI as the easy out to disciple people where, as you’ve already talked about, AI does not have our people’s souls on their mind. Nor does it have the Holy Spirit
Will DuVal (00:55:40):
Living with them. Nor
Thad Yessa (00:55:41):
Does it have the Holy Spirit. And so it’s relying on something else instead of on the Holy Spirit to make holistic, mature disciples of Jesus. And even, again, this is not to make much of me, but I’ve very much so resisted the idea of turning my library into digital books because I already spend so much time with screens and I need something tangible to hold onto that disconnects my brain.
Will DuVal (00:56:18):
It would be so much easier though in a lot of ways. It
Thad Yessa (00:56:20):
Would.
Will DuVal (00:56:20):
Like copy and paste. I want to pull this quote from this commentary. I don’t have to type it in, but totally agree. Yeah. The importance of getting your eyes and your mind off a screen even for that half hour or whatever hour that it is. So we talked about relational companionship therapy. We talked about sick of fancy brain rock character formation. The only other one that I wanted to make sure that I mentioned too on this discernment of not using is just the addictive component to it as well. I read a stat the other day about, I can’t remember the exact number, so I won’t make it up, Ask AI, but about how much more addictive AI is than social media. Even Jonathan Height’s thing and the whistleblowers and knowing how addictive the social media apps are for young people in particular, but just in general keeping you on it, that AI is like 2X or 3X, whatever, more addictive because it is responsive, because it’s not just a passive, you’re consuming content, but you can type and get a response and whatever.
(00:57:38):
And so it hooks people. And so I would just say regardless of how you’re using it, if it’s the kind of thing… I just think we as believers, I mean, like Paul says, Romans six, Jesus set me free from slavery. I’m a slave of Christ, but I don’t want to be a slave of anything else. I don’t care if it’s a good thing, value neutral thing, whether it’s caffeine or your family or whatever it is. And I think you can tell how addicted you are to something by how much the threat of losing it unsettles you.
Thad Yessa (00:58:20):
Or how quick you are to run to it,
Will DuVal (00:58:22):
Both of
Thad Yessa (00:58:23):
Those.
Will DuVal (00:58:23):
Yes, exactly. And in times of stress, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, whatever, where do you run? So yeah, I think for me, yeah, if I think about losing my family, if they all get hit by a truck today, what would that do to me? I mean, I’m addicted to my family. And again, that’s my idol, right? It’s a socially acceptable idol. But if ChatGPT got unplugged or they’re like, “This is too dangerous. We’re taking it down.” If there’s no AI tomorrow, what would that do for you? So I just think that’s a question that doing regular check-ins on how dependent on this am I, how addicted to this stuff am I? I know we don’t have too much longer here that we can keep going, but I do feel like there are so many other great questions and maybe we’re going to do a couple more episodes on this.
(00:59:19):
Whole season. But specifically on the church too. Let me ask another one about sermon prep. Let me ask you, Angela, as someone who’s never preached a sermon at West Hills anyway, what level of AI usage would make you feel uncomfortable to know that Thad and I here, one of your pastors had used? I mean, and be honest, and again, you’re just one congregant, but you’re speaking on behalf of the other 400 where – I’m not
Angela Heck (00:59:53):
Speaking on behalf of them.
Thad Yessa (00:59:54):
You the spokesman of the whole church, right?
Will DuVal (00:59:56):
Well, I imagine we have people who probably are not the tech who are listening to this anyway, but people who would say like, “Oh my gosh, you’re using any AI for any part of sermon prep stuff that’s unthinkable.” And then other people who they don’t bat an eye. But there’s levels to this, right? So I mean, I could literally write a prompt that would take me less than a minute to write and get it within under another minute or two, I could have ChatGPT write me a 45-minute sermon on Philippians two: 5-11 in the voice of Will Duvall at West Hills Church. Because I can add that prompt in and it will comb over all of my other old sermons that we load all online and it’ll put it in my voice too. So it sounds like me and it’s in my theology, but it’s also combing all the internet for commentaries.
(01:01:00):
Now, I think that, if I were to do that, that should extremely unsettle and everyone at West Hills should say, “Okay, there’s a line somewhere between that and where you should be that you crossed. We don’t want our pastor doing that.” Like you said that as far as just the Holy Spirit speaking through a person, a human being. But there’s a lot of stuff short of that. And even in between that and what I mentioned as far as give me… Or I used it to help write my sermon introduction this last week about truth because I knew you were talking about the joy of gospel doctrine. I wanted to talk about truth and about Paul giving us the most essential truths about Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth of life, the most important thing to have the truth right about is Jesus. So I knew I was going to go in that direction of truth.
(01:01:55):
So I just put in ChatGPT. Give me statistics about…
(01:02:04):
I can’t remember my exact prompt now, but basically about that point to the reality of people not knowing truth from fiction anymore, not believing in absolute truth anymore, whatever it is. Give me statistics to prove my point that I know I want to make that we don’t even know what truth is anymore. And it gave so easily, so quickly, so good. I didn’t have to scan… Bless you. I checked, I’m always, especially with studies and data and stuff, there’s still AI hallucinations are a real thing. So you got to click and make sure this Barna 2025 survey actually happened and it’s not just inventing something.
Angela Heck (01:02:50):
That’s exactly part of what I was thinking.
Will DuVal (01:02:52):
So I did that, but I still didn’t have to comb over and find the Barna 2025 survey. It just gave it to me and I just copied and pasted. But then again, I could have it be writing sermon illustrations. I could drop, I don’t do this yet, but frankly, maybe I should, drop my whole sermon, write it out, drop it in Claude or whatever before I go preach it and say, “Make this better.” Just give it a prompt, “Make this better. Clean up grammar issue, tighten up, cut out.” I mean, it’ll do that. It’s pretty smart. So for writing versus for editing versus for certain aspects of what go into writing a sermon, what would you…
Angela Heck (01:03:50):
Yeah, I say I’m a bad person to ask about this. Maybe I’m a good person. I don’t know, because I feel like I don’t use AI to the best of my ability. Of course, Google gives you the little things at the top and I Google things, but I’ve seen where that synthesizes the wrong information from an article I’m trying to find. And I’m trying to find research and it says, “Well, this says that it’s this and we’re citing this study.” And then I go and read the study. I’m like, “That’s not what this study is talking about.” So I tend to not. So as far as sermons, I’d rather it not be a part of any of it, to be honest. I’m okay with it because I’ve heard what parameters you put to it, but I still would prefer that it was not involved at all, especially when it comes to the church, but just like Christian life, we are created beings created by in the image of a creator.
(01:04:46):
And I think that can go down to the nitty-gritty detail of everything you do when you are creating, especially. And so you might not deem yourself a creative or whatever, but you are writing and you are disseminating that out and sharing that. And so even to sermon illustrations, I think those can be prompted by the Holy Spirit and AI is not going to get that. Even editing it, making it better off of what? What is AI standard when we submit to Jesus and the Holy Spirit and what we say and what we do? And so that’s kind of my perspective on it, but I don’t know. I probably could use it and maybe do some things better, but I just kind of choose to not. At what cost?
Will DuVal (01:05:31):
Yeah. No, that’s helpful. Thank you for being honest. What do you think?
Thad Yessa (01:05:37):
I think it depends. Again, if we’re talking preaching is a much higher level than an adult education class, which is probably a little depending on maybe a small group curriculum, kind of stuff like that. Times I have used AI for sermon, some grammar things like spelling, stuff like that, as well as I’ve never changed anything, but I’ve run certain sermons through ChatGPT or Claude and just ask what objections would someone who doesn’t hold to a Christian worldview have towards this text or this sermon?
Will DuVal (01:06:27):
Yeah. How’s the single 35-year-old mom going to hear this sermon? Like what?
Angela Heck (01:06:31):
Which I think that makes sense because AI doesn’t believe
Thad Yessa (01:06:35):
In Jesus. And so again, I’ve not necessarily taken any of specific things and add into sermon, but it’s helped me because I know my tendency and I know who I’m preaching to. I also want to know if someone’s coming through our doors who does not hold to the Bible or Christian faith or the gospel, what objections are they raising and are there any that I need to proactively be thinking about as I’m preaching or how this is communicated? So again, that’s one way in which I think in two sermons that I’ve used of I’m just trying to think through this text of how it’s going to be received in that. And one of those was a more topical sermon that I’m not as comfortable in topical sermons and just curious, how is this going to come across to someone who’s not a part of our church?
(01:07:31):
So that’s one way in which I’ve used it, which has been helpful. The one way I’ve tried that’s not been helpful is how long is this sermon going to be? Because regardless of my word count, I’m typically – You
Angela Heck (01:07:46):
Don’t even know how long it’s
Thad Yessa (01:07:48):
Going to be. We’re just letting it go. Let the spirit move. Take some tangents. That one way that I’ve, again, found helpful in those couple contexts of what objections would someone raise to this to just be cognizant of that. So that’s one thing. I think if you’re using it to generate your outline start to finish versus I think a little bit differently perhaps of I have my sermon outline, I know what I want to say, but I’m trying to find a word that’s going to help this flow together. I think that’s different –
Will DuVal (01:08:33):
That’s another one too.
Thad Yessa (01:08:34):
Than just saying create for me an outline on Philippians two: five through 11. That’s very different. Any sort of, would you write my conclusion? Would you write my prayer? Yeah. So I think once you are going to a blank page and saying, will you do this for me or a blank prompt, that’s where I’m growing very wary in questioning your motivation behind this that I think you’re falling into the sin of either sloth or the set of pride of I need to create something so that people will think well of me and so therefore I need to write the best sermon.
(01:09:17):
And I’ve done this, not that a sermon I preach, I preach a sermon and then I say, “Hey, write me a sermon on the same text.” I’m like, “That objectively looks like a better sermon than I could preach and yet it is missing the Holy Spirit. It is missing my own emotion and inflection and voice and that. And so again, as God has called me to serve as a pastor, he has also equipped me to speak to his people and constantly improving. And that’s who I think God wants his people to hear from, his servant versus a bot, an AI bot.
Will DuVal (01:09:57):
I think that’s a good place to end because I know you got to go pick up your kids. I got some people coming to meet with me anyway. So there’s still so much that we didn’t get to. Specifically, maybe there’s a teaser for, and maybe we can even pick up our next one with some of this before we get to the theological anthropology stuff. But it’s related I think too, again, practical usage even in the life of the church. Talked about sermon prep, but I wanted to talk more about things like small groups and practical. Should our small group leaders be using them to create discussion prompts based on the reading for the week or study outlines or interpreting the Bible. There’s some tough stuff in the Bible that… And again, I think you can come at that both ways. I mean, nothing against our small group leaders, but if you’re able to comb all of what’s ever been put on the internet, and especially if you know how to prompt things well and say, “Tell me what John Piper would say about this,” as opposed to Joe Congregant at West Hills, “I’m going to go with John Piper.” So again, I think you can argue it maybe both ways as far as maybe there is a place for using some of this to access interpretation of God’s word and commentary and whatever, as opposed to just, “Well, me as your life group leader who’s been a Christian for a couple years now, here’s what I think it means,” or whatever.
(01:11:36):
So church-wide AI policy, that’s one thing that everybody I’m listening to is saying your church needs an AI policy. And I know Eric Moppin, our chair of our elder council has tried to get this on our elder agenda for the last three meetings now, and we just keep saying, “Ah, it’s a bigger conversation. We need to carve out more time for it. We don’t have that time yet.” But I mean, we probably need to have a church-wide AI policy, at least for staff use, leader use, small group leaders, things like that, and all get on the same page about that. And then also I wanted to ask the question too that maybe we can pick up next week is how much of all these questions are like a meat sacrifice to idols kind of thing where it’s a matter of personal conscience, like Angela can have a more sensitive conscience, like, “I don’t want to use it at all.
(01:12:28):
I’d rather my pastor not use it at all, whereas I’m maybe a little bit more tolerant, comfortable, whereas somebody might be even more tolerant, comfortable than me using it a lot that makes me uncomfortable. How much of this is personal conscience and what are, if any, the sort of moral absolutes and ethical imperatives with regard to our use in relationship to AI that we ought to really hold one another accountable to in the church? Because we’re called to be our brothers and sisters keepers and to hold one another accountable, confess our sins to one another, all these things. And so I think we probably all could agree regardless of whether we disagree on what it is, there are ways to sin by using AI. So where are some of those lines? And again, we talked around it today, but I’d love to hear more of us talk about that.
(01:13:27):
I don’t know. There’s so much more. Weeks to come, I think I touched on the impact on the environment. That’s a huge issue. We need to talk about impact on epistemology and our understanding of the truth. And you touched on that, understanding truth from fiction and what’s AI generated and not reality. And we already have a crisis of truth and AI is only going to make that way worse.
(01:13:53):
The economy, politics, I mean, should we as Christians or just as humans be concerned about an AI president who can make way more well-informed, reasonable, objective decisions than certainly our current one? Or should we be excited about that? How utopian is your view of the future with all of this superintelligence versus dystopian and apocalyptic and all that? And then obviously we talked about, we’re going to talk about theological anthropology. What does it mean to be human in the age of AI? Vocation? How do we think about work with this eschatology? Is AI the antichrist? So all that stuff –
Thad Yessa (01:14:43):
Coming down the
Will DuVal (01:14:43):
Pipeline. Coming at tractions. So at least three more conversations, hopefully more if people submit questions.
Angela Heck (01:14:50):
Well, that is it for this week of Ask the Pastors. Thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure you get reminders about all the new episode releases. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend and leave us a good review that helps others find the podcast too. You can submit your own questions for the podcast at westhillsstl.org. Thanks again, and we’ll catch you next week.