I’m trying an experiment on Chat GPT – want to join in?

So, I’m going to conduct an experiment with Chat GPT, and I’d love you to join in. Before we get there, I’d like you to play, if you haven’t.  Just go to ChatGPT.com and start typing.  Treat it like a very helpful assistant who knows nothing but is super keen and never tires. Ask it to help you with anything, really – make it trivial.

Like most of you, I guess, I’m impressed by some of the capabilities of the platform, and I’ve also been struck by its limitations.  It’s great at generating options, and brainstorming.  It’s ability to fantasise research, though, is notorious.

I’m also spotting a uniform blandness in material it generates as well. Blogposts generated by AI are becoming common, and at this stage are very samey. The same will be happening with Christian books: I haven’t looked but I’d be very surprised if people weren’t already making a quick buck selling ChatGPT  books on Amazon.

I expect that blandness to increase in the next few years. Sure, ChatGPT is becoming better on an hourly basis, and the more you can give it content the more like you it will sound, but the number of people using it in a non-reflective way is growing far faster, and we will soon be knee-deep in material that has the same tone of voice, whether it’s about model railways or yoga.

We will soon be knee-deep in material that has the same tone of voice, whether it’s about model railways or yoga.

We can do better, and be more intentional.

I’m going to assume that if you’re a pastor or preacher, you want to keep a tight control on your ministry voice and content.  Although Psalm 23 is a universally applicable passage, the way you preach it in your church will be different to the way I do it here.  And the way you do it today will be different to the way you might have done it five years ago: you’ve changed, and so has the church.

So I don’t think most of us will want ChatGPT to do even our first draft for us. Most of us will still be uneasy.

That still leaves plenty of wiggle room, though.  Suppose you’re the kind of preacher who likes all the headings to start with the same letter, and only three of your four words do that.  Chat GPT is great at finding the missing one.  Or suggesting four others.  Likewise if you like, Rick Warren-style, for your headings to spell out a key word.

If you’ve never done that, by the way, it’s a good place to start playing.  Tell it something like this, and remember that the more precise the instructions the better:

• I’m a pastor at an evangelical church in the UK, and I’m preaching a one-off message on the theme of [insert your own topic of choice]. I need you to come up with headings that spell out the word [insert your own word of choice]. Give me three choices for each letter, and prioritise them according to how easy they are to understand. I’d also like you to suggest a relevant bible verse for your top priority.

How did it do? I said UK, by the way, because even that spins it away from a certain US style.

Or try this following instruction:

• Now write a worship song in the style of [insert your Christian musician of choice] It needs to match the order and words of the suggestions you have just made, with a chorus and a bridge, and to end on a note of praise.

And now ask it to write a tune for that song.

Has that got your attention?

Although the limitations are obvious, the space those limitations encloses is remarkable.  And alarming.  And amazing.

What I expect you’ve discovered is that although the limitations are obvious, the space those limitations encloses is remarkable.  And alarming.  And amazing.

And your mind is probably racing away with options and obstacles.  Would ChatGPT help edit my sermon for me? Answer, yes it would – ask it to reduce your material by 10%,  or later the educational level you’re pitched at, or remove long words, and it will do it for you. Ask it to make a rough article more professional, and it will do that too.

ChapGPT behaves like a favourite family Labrador: enthusiastic, happy, and without any sense of responsibility or shame.

Ask it to supply a relevant illustration, or quotation, though, and you’ve entered the Wild West.  At this point ChapGPT behaves like a favourite family Labrador: enthusiastic, happy, and without any sense of responsibility or shame. This is way beyond plagiarism (passing off someone else’s work as your own) or the kind of fake scholarship which lifts a clever quote from a book you’ve never read.  This is full-one fakery.  

If you want a powerfully moving story of how Bugs Bunny gave his life to Jesus when he was aged six, and found his faith on his deathbed after a life time of drunkenness in the dark parts of Hollywood, ChatGPT will make it up for you on the spot.  Complete with a reference to his autobiography. That’s, From Wabbit to Witness: The Life and Faith of Bugs Bunny (Carrot Press, 2032).  You will start to doubt your own sanity, I promise you.

So, I want to experiment on its usefulness, and here’s where you can join in  as well.

The experiment: Let’s find the Top Ten Disruptive Trends for Church Leaders in 2025

I gave it a simple instruction: 

• I want you to be my research assistant. I am the pastor of an evangelical church in London. From the vantage point of 2030, what will be the ten most disruptive trends for churches and pastors? Bear in mind that the UK, and London in particular, is very different from North America. For each one, give me some actionable strategies.

In the next few blog posts, I’m going to give those ten (because they’re quite good, actually) and some reflections on them.  I think they’ll be interesting, in themselves.

And at the end, I’ll give some summary reflections.  Throughout, I’ll make crystal clear what has been generated by Chat GPT, and what is raw, unfiltered Chris.  In this case, it was only the Bugs autobiography.

If you want to play along, do: I’d love to know if you change the place name in the question what differences emerge (I did that, and it was interesting, but I only changed the city: make it rural, or suburban, or on a different continent). And then pile in – because I think will bean interesting test of its capabilities and weaknesses.