The experimental church service was almost entirely AI-generated. A ChatGPT chatbot delivered a sermon at the church in Bavaria, Germany.

What happened

The sermon chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded man on a huge screen above the altar (pictured), told the packed congregation not to fear death, the Associated Press (AP) says.

"Dear friends, it is an honour for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year's convention of Protestants in Germany," the AI avatar said.

It reportedly focused on leaving the past behind, paying attention to the present, not being afraid of death and maintaining faith in Jesus Christ.

The sermon-preaching avatar was one of four avatars taking turns leading the service. They reportedly drew laughter at times for their monotonous, deadpan delivery.

The service lasted 40 minutes. Prayers and music were included, as well as the sermon.

The chatbot developer

A University of Vienna theologian and philosopher, Jonas Simmerlein, used the ChatGPT to create the service, AP reported.

Simmerlein says about 98 percent of the sermon - themed "Now is the time" - came from the chatbot's own writing.

The service was part of Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag (German Lutheran Church Day). The popular biennial event attracts thousands of Christians. Issues addressed at the event this year include climate change, the war in Ukraine, and AI.

"I told the artificial intelligence ‘We are at the church congress, you are a preacher … what would a church service look like?'" said Simmerlein.

He also asked the chatbot to use psalms, prayers and a concluding blessing in the sermon.

The ChatGPT provided "a pretty solid church service," he says. However, no human interaction was able to take place between the chatbot and the congregation.

"The pastor is in the congregation, she lives with them, she buries the people, she knows them from the beginning," Simmerlein says. "Artificial intelligence cannot do that. It does not know the congregation."

Mixed responses

Not everyone agrees with Simmerlein's assessment of the chatbot's effectiveness.

"There was no heart and no soul," one woman said after the service.

"The avatars showed no emotions at all, had no body language and were talking so fast and monotonously that it was very hard for me to concentrate on what they said.

"But maybe it is different for the younger generation who grew up with all of this," she added.

Another attendee - a young pastor - was there with a group of teenagers. He was more impressed by the experiment.

"I had actually imagined it to be worse. But I was positively surprised how well it worked. Also the language of the AI worked well, even though it was still a bit bumpy at times," he said.

But the chatbot missed any kind of emotion or spirituality - which is essential when he writes his own sermons, he added.

Source

• AP
• Fox News

A bit of simple math shows that I've probably listened to somewhere around 4,000 sermons over the course of my life (which undoubtedly means I should have far more knowledge of the Bible than I do and should be far holier than I am!).

I've also preached a few sermons of my own over the past 10 or 15 years.

Recently, and largely for my own purposes, I found myself thinking about some of the elements that can make a sermon difficult to listen to.

Having jotted them down, I thought I'd share them with you.

They have no obvious outline

Most people today are unaccustomed to listening to extended verbal communication.

Preachers can assist listening and comprehension by providing some kind of an outline.

It does not need to be a Lawsonesque alliterated masterpiece, but it is helpful to at least allow the congregation to know in advance how the sermon will unfold.

A solid outline also helps pull them back when their minds drift.

They can be pulled from daydream or confusion when they hear, "This brings us to the second great emphasis of this passage." (I think it's usually best to avoid using the word "point," as in "My second point is…" Try to find a more interesting way of framing a sermon than through "points.")

They include word studies

A sermon rarely improves from the point the pastor says, "In the Greek this word is…"

I suppose there are select occasions when mentioning and explaining a Greek or Hebrew term adds to the congregation's understanding, but that's rare.

Far more often than not, word studies are the kind of thing a pastor should do in his study and keep in his study.

The preacher ought to do his preparatory work in such a way that his sermon shows clear evidence that he has put in full effort and mined the depths of his passage.

But he doesn't always need to explicitly show that work. (And yes, we all already know that dunamis is related to the English "dynamite.")

They include extended quotes from commentaries

Commentaries are crucial when it comes to properly understanding a text.

Preachers rightly spend a good bit of their prep time learning from experts through their commentaries.

But there aren't many occasions when the preacher should quote these experts.

To read a quote from a commentary, and especially at length, is to radically change the voice of the person speaking—from his own voice to the voice of a scholar.

It is to radically change the form of communication—from a spoken sermon to a written book.

It is often difficult for the congregation to make that transition, and often difficult for the congregation to understand the point that is being made.

It's far better, on the whole, for the preacher to simply summarize in his own words.

They include citations

In college and seminary, it's extremely important that references are carefully cited.

If the idea comes from someone else, you need to make that clear.

But in sermons, it's not nearly so important.

If you are going to provided an extended quote or rigidly follow another person's work (which you probably shouldn't), it may make sense to provide a citation.

But otherwise, know for your own purposes which resources you relied upon, but don't feel that you need an academic-level of citation in a sermon.

A sermon is not a paper and a church is not a seminary. Again, it's typically far better to summarize than to quote. Continue reading

• Tim Challies is a Christian, a husband to Aileen and a father to three children aged 11 to 17. He worships and serves as an elder at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario.

Preaching at a packed Holy Sepulchre Church in Newton, Archbishop Justin Welby said the Church has "so often lived in fear and often does so now".

"Fear causes our quarrels, whether it is sexuality or the future of the Church, fear makes us inward looking and, frankly, pathetic," the Archbishop of Canterbury said.

Fear breaks down relationships within the Church and around the world and it blocks reconciliation, he said, adding that politics often, but not always, works through fear.

He said we need to pray for our politicians.

Archbishop Welby cited conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine as propelling the world towards fear, which leads to self-protection and worsening actions.

But for the Christian, "there is only one reason for courage, for hope, for love, and that is God, the God of cross and resurrection".

"And that one reason overwhelms every other reason for fear," he stated.

Therefore the Christian is called to action.

"Action must be wise, because it has foreseen the consequences, and it must be courageous, or it will fail," Archbishop Welby said.

"We find evil in people, in groups like ISIL, in economies, and we see fear to be confronted in privileging the local over the global, today over the next generation."

Archbishop Welby said listening to debate in the UK Parliament on climate change highlighted this intergenerational fear.

"The fear is giving up something now for a generation yet unborn, who, for all we know, might not be very grateful."

But action must be based on prayer, and Archbishop Welby said his first priority as Archbishop of Canterbury is "to encourage a renewal of prayer and communities of prayer".

"Because it is in prayer that we come face to face with that figure on the cross, and recognise him as God himself," he explained.

He said his other priorities are fostering mission and witness, as well as reconciliation in the Anglican communion and he is encouraged by what he has seen so far on all these fronts.

Archbishop Welby's short visit marked 200 years since the first proclamation of the Christian Gospel in New Zealand.

New Zealand is the 30th out of 37 Anglican provinces he has visited in his current capacity.

Sources

• Anglican Taonga
• Newstalk ZB
• Scoop
• Michael Otto
• Image: Anglican Taonga