The danger is not destruction. It is reduction.
Artificial Intelligence is no longer the stuff of distant imaginings. It is in the home, the parish hall, the hushed corners of conversation, and the hurried planning of liturgy. It moves swiftly now, quietly, like something ancient stirred from slumber, emerging not with wings but wires.
It writes sermons. It drafts prayers. It constructs bulletins and slides and parish newsletters. It remembers the verses we forget, cites the saints we haven’t read, composes hymns we haven’t sung. It never tires, never sleeps. And so the Church stands before it, not in a panic, but with questions. A threshold moment. How will we walk with such a thing? And will it walk with us, or ahead of us, or for us?
Some will say it is only a tool. A servant of speed. A helper in the dust and detail of ministry. Perhaps. But not all tools are innocent. Not all implements are passive. Some shape the soul that grasps them. The hammer drives the nail, but also hardens the hand. The tool that helps us think faster may teach us not to think at all.
A machine can mimic the form of law and gospel. It can thread theology into shape. But it cannot bless the child at the font.
There is an urgent temptation here. To quicken what was meant to ripen. To automate what was meant to be felt. To polish what was meant to be wild and cracked and honest. The soul does not move at the speed of light, nor does grace arrive by automation. The mystery of Christ is not a pattern of language or a construct of logic. It is not a product. It is a person. Christ Jesus. Crucified. Risen. Present.
He does not speak through simulations but through the faltering tongue of the called. Through voices that shake. Through hands that tremble. Through flesh that weeps and worships. A generated sermon may sound like truth, but it is not truth until it is wrestled from the soul’s dark night. The ghost of meaning is not the same as Spiritual meaning. The black mirror is not the God-man.
A machine can mimic the form of law and gospel. It can thread theology into shape. But it cannot bless the child at the font. It cannot preach hope at the deathbed. It cannot place its hand on the penitent’s bowed head and speak forgiveness that bleeds with mercy. It cannot mean what it says, because it has no soul from which to mean it.
There is something numbing about it all. The ease. The immediacy. Sermons that click into place like a box of tiles. Prayers that arrive pre-shaped. Words that have no weight. The roots dry out beneath them. The holy ache goes silent. Technologies change, but worries and woundedness remain the same.
A.I. may assist the broken-backed, gather the scattered, and hold memory for those too weary to remember. But it must not lead.
The work of the preacher was never about speed. It was never about polish. It was about waiting long enough under the text for it to draw blood. It was about praying until the silence answered. It was about writing with a cracked reed, not a silver stylus. The Word is not an algorithm. It is a wound that speaks. It is the ache of a tree still growing.
And yes, this thing we call Artificial Intelligence may yet serve. It may assist the broken-backed, gather the scattered, and hold memory for those too weary to remember. But it must not lead. It must not climb into the pulpit, nor stand at the Table, nor kneel at the bedside. The Word must still come from the lips of the forgiven.
The danger is not destruction. It is reduction. The Church made faster, brighter, smoother. And in the smoothing, hollowed. Flattened. Alive only in presentation, not in presence.
What feeds the Church is not content. It is Christ. And Christ is not composed. He is begotten. He does not arrive through wire, but through Word. Flesh. Breath. He is not what we generate. He is who is given with wild abandon.
We are not merely thinking beings. We are clay and breath. We weep. We stumble. We bury. We sing. The Gospel does not arrive with efficiency. It arrives like seed. Hidden. Buried. Broken. Open.
There is a tree planted by streams. It gives fruit in season. Its leaf does not wither. This is the image we are given. Not a flash of knowledge. Not a download. But a tree. Rooted. Patient. Alive.
So let the world chase brilliance. And let the church keep her bearings. Let her sing what cannot be predicted. Let her proclaim what cannot be imitated. Let her forgive what no machine can carry.
She is the Bride of Christ. Still being formed, still ripening, still full of slow wonder.
And for the sake of those who’ve not yet heard the good news, let it be slow. Let it be true. Let it be Christ embodied, bloody, wild, real.
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