Today we're diving into AI and how it can actually be a tool for good in our ministries. AI isn’t something to fear; it’s more like a hammer – you can build something great or break stuff, depending on how you use it. The key takeaway here is that we, as individuals and as a community, can influence the content AI pulls from the web. By creating and sharing good, solid biblical content online, we can help shape the information that people find when they search for answers about faith. It's all about flooding the internet with the truth of Jesus and making sure that light shines bright. So, let’s get our sermons and teachings out there and make a positive impact!

Takeaways:

1. AI is just a tool that can be used for good or bad, depending on us.
2. We can flood the Internet with biblical truths to combat misinformation online.
3. AI scrapes content from the web, so we need to provide accurate biblical resources.
4. The opportunity for ministries to influence AI responses is significant and urgent.
5. Younger church members can help share sermons and teachings online to reach more people.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. www.bible805.com

Welcome to the Ministry Miscellany Podcast, A collection of tools, strategy and challenges for Bible teachers from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's been teaching the Bible ever since. As a third grader, I started to teach the kindergartners at my church about Jesus.

I've never quit doing that, and along the way I've picked up some practices, strategies and resources that might be useful to you. Our topic for today is episode number seven, all about AI or artificial intelligence and how you can make a difference in how it responds.

AI is not a dark force to be afraid of. It's a tool. And like any other tool, it can be used to help or to hurt.

But it is very different in one way that is incredibly important for anyone in ministry to understand, and that is for you to realize that you, and I mean you personally, can make a difference. Big difference in the content served up by AI on the web. Now, please bear with me for a few minutes.

This is going to sound kind of crazy, but it really isn't. It's really very valid, very easy to do what I'm going to tell you to do.

And it can make a huge difference in the lives of untold multitudes around the world now and in the future if you do what I'm going to tell you to do. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a person given to exaggeration. I get excited about things, but I don't exaggerate.

But this is incredibly important, and here's why. First of all, you need a little bit of a review on how AI works.

Now, the re what's important to understand about AI is that nothing that it serves up when you do a search and you get it says like those little AI summaries and stuff, it is not original. The answers that it provides in whatever form they're in, is what it has learned from the collective wisdom of what it found online.

Now, what makes AI seem so powerful is it can answer in literally sort of milliseconds from thousands of bits of information that it's pulled together from here and there and here and there. But again, it doesn't make up that information.

Now, it might seem like it does because it can combine information in really sort of goofy ways in ways that aren't true. But it has to get that information from somewhere. Gets it from what? Where it gets it from is what is already on the Internet.

Now, that's where you come in.

That's where the Church of Jesus, his true disciples who believe his word and trust him as Lord, have an incredible opportunity that many of us have been blind to.

Now, let me tell you some of the negative results of this process, and then I think you'll understand a little bit more how you can change things in a positive way. I have a friend who is literally a genius computer person, and he would prefer to not be identified. So I'm not going to tell you his name.

But I was talking to him just to make sure I was thinking correctly on some of my ideas on AI and how ministries can use it. And he affirmed what I'll be sharing in a minute.

But he also agreed that the reason there's so much junk online and so many incorrect answers when we put in a question into the search box here is what people with bad intentions do because they understand how AI works.

They said when he said, whenever a big issue comes up, they flood the Internet with false ideas, with blogs, with web articles, with videos, with media of all kinds, because they know that AI will do what's called scraping the Web. And I'll explain that more in just a minute as a source for answers.

So I said, well, if bad people can just throw all this stuff online to come up with incorrect answers and goofy political theories and all this kind of stuff, I said, so could we do the same thing and flood the Internet with light, with true words, with the message of Jesus? I said, would that work? And his answer was, I suppose so. So here we are. Let's assume that this will work, and it will.

What you need to do is you need to prepare your ministry content for scraping. The process that AI uses to gather materials that will then make up the answers is what is called scraping.

Now, what this is, is it just means that the AI bots, the computer programs, will just go out and search the web and gather up everything that's there under a certain topic. Now, AI does not stop to see if something is fals, heretical, or just plain dumb.

If there are different ideas about biblical doctrines that have been floating around that aren't true, it will scrape those. It'll gather them up just like all of the true ones. And you see this the more you know about a particularly narrow area of knowledge on the web, the more you'll see it. I have a master's degree in church history, and I use a lot of historical data in the classes that I teach.

So I spend a lot of time looking up information on the web.

And it's very interesting to me because again, I'm familiar with, you know, this one little tiny area of scholarship, probably more than a lot of other things. But there are certain ideas that I believe that are false in the whole area of church history and particularly biblical interpretation.

I think they're false. I don't think they're true. But they have become very popular with people who do not believe that any supernatural events can take place in the Bible.

So I know about this whole area of incorrect scholarship and it's interesting to me how I might put in a question that relates to that and the false ideas come up because that's what's been spread about a whole lot more than maybe some of the true ideas that I get from books or whatever. So I know this process works. The web is flooded with certain groups of ideas. That's what AI will spit back now.

Now is not the time for hand wringing, but for action. We don't need to whine about the non critical nature of AI or that it should be more biblically correct or whatever. It doesn't care.

Our response though should be obvious. We need as much as is possible to flood the Internet with light with correct, good biblical content. Now don't panic. You're all able to do this.

You really and truly can. Now here's how you do it. You already have huge amounts of content in the form of your past sermons. Now, AI scrapes and collects every format, so.

And the more the better. Even if it's on the same topic, the more the better.

So be sure all your sermons and your sermons alone, not the whole service, but pull out the sermon and put it on YouTube. You can put it on other sites, but YouTube is one that they scrape a lot.

So YouTube then be sure the entire text of your sermon is on your website, with your church website with a clear title, devotions, articles, whatever content that you might have, put that on there also. And by the way, some of that material might be really helpful for your church itself.

If you've never sat down and articulated, how do you become a Christian? How do you have a quiet time? How important is prayer? A lot of these things would be very good for you to communicate. So get that down there.

But even if you don't have time to do those things, get your sermons and the text of them online. Now when I say you, when I'm talking to you, I don't really mean you.

Many of you are busy enough simply creating the content in the first place, and you don't have the vaguest idea how the Internet works. Don't worry about it. There are many younger people in your church.

Who I'm sure would just love being challenged to do this as a ministry for them to take your sermons and the sermon text and put it all online. They may not be able to serve the church in other ways, but they can do this. So don't. And don't worry too about making your content perfect.

AI does not grade on grammar. That that doesn't matter.

And now just a few final encouragements. How will we know if our efforts are successful?

Well, most likely this side of the kingdom we won't. But if many, many of us start doing this, we might see a shift in answers to some things. And wouldn't it be incredible?

I was thinking if in the future, in the not too far distant future, if anytime someone did a search with the words, with with any word having something to do with salvation, that information of Jesus would always come up. Just that people would know that that word is tied to Jesus, that the word peace, that the word hope, any of these things.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Christian viewpoint always came up when these topics were searched on?

It could happen. And finally, one more thing.

In his parting words to his disciples, when he told them in Acts 1:8 that we were to be as witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth.

Now being the eternal God he is, I wonder if part of him could have maybe just smiled a little bit at the confusion of the disciples who had no idea how they might reach the uttermost parts of the earth. But Jesus knew. And today any one of us can do that.

We have the ability to share online on the Internet our material that can literally go to the uttermost parts of the earth. So with that in mind, get busy and get it out there. I trust you found the content in this episode of Ministry Miscellaney useful.

For links to any resources mentioned and lots of free material to help you know, trust, apply and teach the Bible, go to www.bible805.com Let me close now with a reminder from the book of Daniel 12:3 where it says those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars, forever and ever. That's you, someone who leads many to righteousness.

And in doing that, may you be ever growing in your reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit, in the deepening of your friendship with Jesus, and in your trust in the goodness of God the Father. Never forgetting in all the hard work you do, that you have a glorious heritage where you will shine like the stars forever and ever. Amen.