AI and the Transformation of Church Leadership w/ Nils Smith

Frank Barry: 0:05

Hey guys, Frank here with another episode of Modern Church Leader. I was thinking ChatGPT, but this is an episode of Modern Church Leader not brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm here with my bud, Nils. Man, all the way from New York. How you doing, man?

Nils Smith: 0:19

Good, always good, to be on here with you. In the new studio.

Frank Barry: 0:22

We were talking about all this, you got a fancy new setup. Fancy new setup. It looks Brooklyn, New York. It looks good too like I mean, you got the New York buildings like, just you know, the brick, and like the modern, the old. How it's all brought together is awesome.

Nils Smith: 0:38

Yes. And this is you know, in New York, you get a lot of fake, you know, but this is lit legitimately, 120-year-old warehouse in Brooklyn and it might start shaking at any point because they're doing some filming some scene downstairs. Yeah, it's part of the fun. I've got wood floors that are Creek and probably mice running down the hallway.

Frank Barry: 0:56

Yeah, yeah, amazing. I mean, you've been in New York for a long time yeah, about a decade. You love it out there. Yeah, it's home, it's home. It's a cool city, man. I've never spent long periods there. You know we'll go for the weekend we went to. This was years ago. This was like pre-COVID, isn't it weird? Like I say that now as if it's like this milestone, it's like this thing where there's like pre and post-COVID world.

Nils Smith: 1:21

It is yes.

Frank Barry: 1:23

I kind of so, anyways, but we went to a Knicks game and the Knicks were terrible. We were able to get like really good seats for really cheap, like. So we weren't like courtside, courtside, but we were like down on the court, you know. So we were a few rows back and like, but like best, best seats I've ever sat in and I was like man, basketball players are huge and you're sitting at that level and you like see the size for real.

Nils Smith: 1:50

I was like man, but yeah Madison Square Garden is such a great venue to what take in a game. There's not a bad seat in that place.

Frank Barry: 1:57

We like just had to go do it Right, like I kind of became a pseudo-Knicks fan when Larry Johnson went to play there. Okay, Like I don't know if you're a basketball guy, do you remember Larry Johnson? Oh, no, I am.

Nils Smith: 2:07

So Larry Johnson. So one of my clients is Alan Houston, the old Nick, and so he and Larry Johnson are good friends of. Larry Just moved back to New York and he's working with the Knicks again. No, yeah, so he's a good guy. Evidently. I've not met him, but I hear you get that from my grandma.

Frank Barry: 2:23

Mom you need to get I don't know how we're going to work this out, but like you need to get some kind of meetup set up, and I'm from the flight of New York and meet Larry.

Nils Smith: 2:33

I'm from Vegas.

Frank Barry: 2:34

I'm like from Vegas when he played for the Rebels.

Nils Smith: 2:37

You and LV.

Frank Barry: 2:37

I was like cheering for that team. Like Tark Stacy, Larry Johnson, the whole crew, I have a basketball signed by the whole team because, like my mom knew a trainer somehow and like got me an autographed basketball.

Nils Smith: 2:52

Okay, we'll make it happy. Actually, this is so random and nobody else cares and I love that you care. Larry Johnson sent me an invite request like a year ago on LinkedIn and so we are LinkedIn and I was always like, why is it? And I think it's because of my connection with Alan, but we've never talked. He just sent me an invite request to our friends on LinkedIn.

Frank Barry: 3:10

Right, this is so weird. A basketball player, a former basketball player, is like LinkedIn. Who goes on LinkedIn? Grandma, mom does so good, I'll put we'll get hook it up If it all works out, if God wants to pick it up, and it will, and then I'll get an autographed jersey and I'll put it up here because that's right there. Okay, eat a slice of pizza, we'll go meet Larry Johnson and we'll get a signed jersey. So we're going to talk about social media, but we just figured AI is way more fun to talk about and we were talking about sermon writing and all this kind of stuff. But why don't you just real quick, like what do you do For the audience? Like, how did you get into helping churches? What was your journey into helping churches? What do you do for churches today?

Nils Smith: 4:03

Just so people have a little background on you and understand your credentials a little bit, yeah, and I was actually thinking about it on my way to work this morning. I don't even know why I went on this mind path, but I was just. We have this incredible view in Brooklyn of Manhattan, and one of the things that people say about New York is that it's at the intersection of the world. And so you have like we're not far from the UN. It's kind of the government having a significant presence. Obviously, you have entertainment, you have business in Wall Street, and so you really have this intersection of all industries in one place. And so where I feel like I find myself is at the intersection of ministry, marketing, and technology, and so I feel like God's uniquely wired me up. I'm a pastor at heart. I thought I would be in full-time vocational ministry for the rest of my life. It got just kind of pulled me out of that role, but I learned even in stepping out that I get to do exponentially more ministry now as a consultant. So I hope ministries do more ministry through technology. Yeah, I do that through social media consulting. I do that through just various different tools. I have a podcast, Social Media Church, where we talk about social media for church leaders, and so I feel like I've got to sit in some really unique, strange, weird seats Some of it's crypto helping churches learn how to donate crypto. And so, yeah, and AI, this conversation is kind of one of those things, too, where it's just like what do we do with this? How does this technology help us do more?

Frank Barry: 5:41

Ministry.

Nils Smith: 5:42

And that's what I'm trying to figure out churches figure out.

Frank Barry: 5:44

Yeah, yeah, it is crypto. Yeah, you've had the journey. Social media was this thing that churches were trying to figure out, maybe even going back before that. It was websites and email, and then it's social media for a long time, which is super. I feel like churches are still trying to figure it out. And then crypto hit. So that was kind of this interesting time, and now AI is just like steamrolling everybody in a different. It's like a whole different way. Yes, it's just here. So I want to get your perspective. The pastors I've talked to I've literally had two very different reactions. I've had the reaction of I'm like no way Not touching it. That stuff scares me. Yes, that's weird. I've had that reaction. And I've had the like oh, I'm all in. I'm not necessarily writing my sermons with AI, but I'm all in, I'm playing with it, I'm seeing what it'll do, I'm asking it questions, I'm into it. I've had very interesting both sides reaction. But it's so new Literally like a month ago, maybe two months ago, max like wasn't a thing.

Nils Smith: 7:03

Yeah, and the truth is, frank, and you know this, it was a thing. It just wasn't known by everything. It wasn't like mainstream. Ai has been in our world for years. We just haven't been able to literally type in to ChatGPT or these other things, find me this graphic or do this thing for me. And now, all of a sudden, this technology that's been working in the background is accessible to us like it's never been, and then it's opening people's eyes to what this is where you've heard about it theoretically and now you're seeing it tangibly and it's creating opportunities. I think, frank, as I look at it and as I think about the church, I think the biggest challenge right now is even how do we approach it? And then I think we got to figure out what we do with it, and I think the approach that I see just to your point of I think pastors in some ways are taking the wrong perspective, leaning one way or the other, of being against it, which is what we've seen generally with church technology, like with websites. It was like well, we're supporting porn. If we're going to have a church website, it's like no, you know, but that's what we perceived the internet to be. And if we go on social media, then we were supporting people having an affair. You know, because people had affairs on social media. No, people do bad things with everything. Everything, yeah, with anything, back machines with any innovation, and I think AI is the same thing where we can learn from the past of. We don't need to be fearful of this technology, but we need to be thoughtful with it, and so, while we might be resistant, even our insights might be like I'm a little bit uneasy with that. Maybe that's okay, but I think we need to be open to it and have that open mindset. And then the other side, though, is some churches are like oh, I can quit writing my sermons because this will just wrap my sermon for me. I can quit, like. I just need to. We need to go all in on AI and look, ai doesn't need to run your church. Ai should be another tool that helps you do more ministry, and do more effective ministry. So it's just another tool that I think that we need to be aware of, to be thoughtful with, but you don't need to go all in. You don't need to be spending thousands and thousands of dollars on some AI software. I think you just need to be thoughtful of like hey, this is another opportunity for us, and if we lean in in the right ways and in the right timing, this is going to be another helpful tool to help us do more ministry and hopefully, a tool that we don't really catch up with. We have an opportunity, I think, to play be on the forefront of this technology rather than being behind it.

Frank Barry: 9:47

I heard somebody kind of talk about it like back in the day when, like, word processors and email and things like that were starting to hit the workforce. Right, like you know it hit and it's like these are new tools that nowadays, like, everybody knows how to use Microsoft Word or Google Docs or Excel or any email Gmail, right, like they're just just part of what you do. Like for the most part, like, I'm sure there's plenty of jobs where maybe you're not doing that stuff but for any like information knowledge worker, right, you're using these things all day, every day. But, like, back in the day, the things hit the scene and you had people that were resistant to those, and if you didn't sort of adapt and start using that tech, like you were going to be out of the job, like because, because there's going to be people that were just better at doing what the job was, because they're using modern tech, right. So I mean, I think AI is new and interesting and we don't know and there's lots of things that could go wrong with it and all of that. Like. And someone is also asking me you know, like, oh, there's the kind of the right like regulation and this is like people have referenced like, oh, it's like nuclear back in the day, like there had to be regulatory oversight or else this could go terribly wrong. So to me I'm like there's people that have been thinking about this problem probably for 20 years, right, like they've been working on AI for a very long time, so they're much more knowledgeable and savvy, and it's like just hitting us. But like like, yes, the commoners, like we're all like seeing it because ChatGPT. And we're like, oh yeah, this is amazing. Yeah, people are going to figure out. I mean, I just believe people will figure out the right way to make sure it doesn't you know, I don't know become Terminator.

Nils Smith: 11:44

Yeah, let's all like but I think, though, frank, there's a there's a side of it that I mean I'm not so fearful of, like the robots turning on us, Like you see, and I do think that there's enough smart people working on that side, and I'm maybe even a pessimist with the government, but I but I don't think we need to approach it with fear. I think we need to approach it with with the lens of opportunity, but I do think that there is going to be, and this is just like social media, what one of the responsibilities I believe pastors have with social media is to help their congregants know how to have a healthy relationship with. Social media is make sure your spouse has their password and things like that, and learn to have a healthy relationship with it. And social media has affected our society and our culture, and we, from a pastoral perspective, need to navigate that. Ai will do the same, and I think AI is also going to replace a lot of jobs. And I think there's going to be a need in the church to help people learn new skills and learn new opportunities, and I remember we even when I was at a five, 15 years ago at a Baptist church, we had I would leave classes for our senior citizens to set up an email address and teach them how to do an email so that they could communicate with their families via email, and this was so new for them. And I think AI is one of those things where we have an opportunity to help people learn how to adapt and adjust to AI being integrated in their lives. And I think adapt and adjust to. You know the lack of purpose that maybe comes from their job being replaced by the technology, because that's going to be real. There's going to be negative effects of this, just like there are negative effects of social media, but it doesn't negate the opportunity that also comes with innovation.

Frank Barry: 13:38

Yeah, well, we were talking about our kids. Right, I have triplet 11-year-old boys and I mentioned to them that, oh, we're we've been, you know, building this tool called Sermonly at Tithely to help pastors write sermons, right, but I mentioned, you know, we've been doing that for a few years. It's a fun little project. But AI hits and the open AI API exists and we're like, great, let's, let's put AI into this sermon writing tool. And I was telling my kids and they were like, dad, you know about AI, like what on earth? They were losing their minds. But I knew about this thing and I was mentioning ChatGPT, which they obviously had heard of somehow, and where I don't know that they've used it yet, but they definitely were like they heard about it. So, like I mean, our kids are going to grow up with this now like early left you have kids and what?

Nils Smith: 14:29

and my kids, my kids, I mean they, they. I'm always like, go use ChatGPT and they're like dad's cheating. I'm like, no, that's like me using a calculator back in the day of like I'm not going to need to know how to do some of these things, because AI is going to do that for us. It's. It's just smart to, I think, use things to save us time, to be more effective, and and even I mean I think what you're doing with Sermonly is like look, use this tool to help create efficiency in your research process. It's not necessarily writing your server, it's helping you with research and that's going to save you time, which is going to allow you to count some more people, which is going to allow you to shepherd your people more actively and probably preach better sermon at the same time.

Frank Barry: 15:11

I mean you have it like ChatGPT, and then just to bring in Google, right Bard, they have there. Yes, it's just, your name is harder to which is my preference.

Nils Smith: 15:24

I've started in the last like two weeks.

Frank Barry: 15:27

It doesn't have the same ring, but they couldn't pick a better name. I feel, like I haven't. I got to look up what's the like. Why that name? I'm sure there's some reason behind it. It's like it's a bit intellectual, but you know, like to me, you know, again, talking to pastors, right, it's like, yeah, you're not going to use AI to write your sermons. Like that's, that's bad news, that doesn't. You're not replacing you know God and the spirit working on your heart, having something that you want to bring to the people, and all of that right, like, yes, but you know, we pastors use tools to help do research and to use Google, they use books, they use commentaries, they use all kinds of resources to help prepare something. Well, ChatGPT or barred or just AI in general, is kind of bringing all of that into a place where you can have a conversation with it and do that research, I don't know 50% more effectively and faster, 80% faster, like it's just making it, it's like giving you superpowers, like everybody's got. The way I'm thinking about is like everyone, every pastor now is like a whole sermon writing team that can help you take what you're inspired to preach and put it on paper and do research and connect the gods and all the things. Right, like I think it's incredible for that not to replace writing a sermon, just to help you to researcher.

Nils Smith: 16:54

Totally, and I think, too, this is where I think AI is going to infiltrate every aspect of every organization and I think that comes with the church as well of my stepmother's a lawyer and she was in town last week and we were talking about it and she was like, look, it's going to replace 95% of what lawyers do when it comes to creating contracts or viewing contracts and accounts. You know, you think about your accounting systems. Ai is going to do your bookkeeping, and I think AI can integrate into it, can do it can create graphics for your servants, it can create the slides for your presentations, it can. I think it's, it's, it's, it's not just one thing that this is going to do, and I think that's where we need to be thoughtful. Just like we learned Google and there's so many times, even as a consultant, frank, that that pastors like how did you learn that? I'm like I use this thing called Google and I searched it and I found it on the worldwide right, and I'm like I just learned how to Google, maybe better than other people, right?

Frank Barry: 17:50

Right, it's a real skill. It's a real skill and I think it's better than anybody Like they're going to know how to like yes.

Nils Smith: 17:58

Yes, my. So my kids know, like, with AI, they, like Alexa is a family member in our house Like they know how to, like they set all their alarms with Alexa. They turn off all the lights with Alexa they, they do. They ask her what the weather is going to be so they determine what clothes are going to wear. But they also, like Alexa, has now triggered learnings that it's always making recommendations as to what you'd like for me to do this for Right, and that's where AI is entering our day to day lives. But our kids, just like our kids, know how to better YouTube than us. They're going to better know how to AI with us. But, but I think too, if we don't want to be left behind, I'm 43 years old and I'm feeling the old, old man, old man when it's just like I'm not ready for this.

Frank Barry: 18:39

Yeah, I got the gray too, though if we was not watching, you know, we both got the gray beard going on. Yeah, I mean what I would do for the hair.

Nils Smith: 18:47

You know I didn't get those jeans, but I would. I would take a head of hair like Frank. For those that can't, can't see it's, but it really is. This is going to be a part of every aspect and going to to, to integrate into everything we do in some way and I think it can. It can either, you know, I think help us. I think it, in some ways it can hurt us. I think that the the caution that I want to give church leaders is let's embrace, let's let AI take away tasks so that we can embrace human-to-human connection because that's what only humans can do. Ai can't replace human-to-human connection and the more we can integrate humans to, to, to, to handshake, to talk, to have conversations, and to preach. But let AI research, let AI help with your accounting, let AI help with your graphics, let AI help with your emails, and let AI be a tool to help you do more ministry. And I think it can be just that if we let it be a tool and rather than a distraction or any, you know, something to waste time on.

Frank Barry: 19:54

You know, what's interesting too, is that you you mentioned this earlier, but as an example like AI has been around actually for a long time. Yes, think about, like auto-complete on your IFA or in your emails. Like that is AI, right. Like that's really kind of thing that these companies started putting into place. Yes, but they've been building these models because if they can do that, that means they've been learning language and right. Having things like these language models and machine learning and all that behind the scenes doing stuff to then make that auto-complete, or that spelling correction like, or that automatic entry of a sentence because it knows where you're headed, like all of that is kind of AI-powered stuff, right. And now we're. Now we're because to your point, because of this interface on ChatGPT and Bar, where you can just do anything, you can ask it anything, and all of a sudden got wild, right but, it's been happening behind the scenes for a long time. It has.

Nils Smith: 20:57

And I think and I think about even when that that auto finish came in, it was annoying, right, you know, I don't need that, it's fine the way it is. And if you think about the number of times when we're introduced to something new, we're like I didn't need that. But then, like down the road, you're like, oh, but now I didn't have it. Dream about not having it, yeah, and, and I think if I would have just embraced it earlier, all the time that I wasted in my stubbornness to embrace this new helpful resource, and I think that's it. I mean, I think that's really. I think to the other side, though, is like let smart people like Frank, that is, building up tools like this, let them build out the tools and, when they bring them to you, just start using that. Yeah, because you don't need to build it yourself.

Frank Barry: 21:46

I think that's probably. I think it's like yeah, be inquisitive, be interested kind of play around with it, like you know, I think that's, that's what I've, that's what I hear most people doing, like you brought up the legal example to make me think of two things. Number one I was actually working on a severance policy right for a new hire, and so, yeah, I'm not a lawyer like I don't write contracts right but I was just kind of getting some of the basics done. So I was like, what am I going to do? Well, I could go look at an existing one we have, or I could go to Google. But you know what I did is I went to ChatGPT. And I wrote down, you know, the five bullets of the terms. I was like any severance policy. Here's the five key points. Right me, a severance policy. Yes and then and then it was like it came back and I had another doc, like one that we already had, that I referenced and I was like, yeah, interesting, pretty close. And I was like Find the key terms in this, because you have to like define things. That that's what. Yeah, so it was really good. I was like this is pretty incredible, but there's no way I would use that right now because I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if what's in there is right. And then did you hear about that case? I feel like it was in New York. I read about it in the newsletter where a lawyer wrote up the whole like thing he was submitting to the court using ChatGPT, like a legit lawyer, like 20 years in practice, and it had fake cases referenced as it's like supporting facts. And the judge was like what is this? This is complete, but you didn't check your work. So like there are dangers, like you can't just go use ChatGPT or barred and expect it to be perfect.

Nils Smith: 23:42

You have to kind of still interact with it and know what's going on, and I think right now you need to, and I think this is where it even my stepmother was saying like please don't do your legal documents with this yet, because there's a lot of gaps in this technology and that's part of early adoption. But I think what more people are experiencing is like I can't believe it's this. And even her as a lawyer, she's like we're testing all the time in her firm. She's like we can't believe it's this good, but, but it's not good enough that we can, you know, replace. Basically because what they're looking to do is there's your place, kind of a lower level legal lawyer, and it's like it's not there yet, but it's getting there fast and I think that's like there's a startup I don't remember the name, but they're building, you know, ChatGPT for lawyers. Like they're right, so they're, and it will be that for everything, just like you're saying there will be ChatGPT for preachers, there be chad GPT for lawyers, for accounts, and it's going to be a great tool. I'll tell you for the one. This is this is getting into the really far. I set off technology, but it's not that far off, but it's deep fake AI and I don't know if you've seen this yet with like fake Donald Trump or fake Elon Musk, and Trump actually used it for a post he did recently. It's so good and it can, so we actually use this in a ministry context with you know, I think I can say they have the church with Transformation Church in Tulsa. We created a fake, my Todd. Now we didn't actually use it for anything, but we can create, literally translate any of his sermons to any language and use Mike's voice to preach his sermon in French, and it is a fake version. Now, what anybody else could do is you could take any because it's ingesting a thousand hours of Mike's voice.

Frank Barry: 25:37

Well, like Apple is doing something like that, where you can like speak to it for a few minutes, you certain words, and all of a sudden it has your voice.

Nils Smith: 25:46

And I could, so I could type out a sermon for Billy Graham to dead, billy Graham to preach today, and it could be terrible Theologically so. So there's going to be all kinds of like abuses of this technology, and I think that's even more reason to be ahead of it, because we're gonna we're gonna be able to better shepherd people and better guide people, um, and and how to use it in for good and for bad. Just like social media, like how do we? Our websites, you know, like websites weren't just built for pornography yeah, they were built for a lot of uses. And social media wasn't just built for people to, you know, have affairs. It was built for people to connect and build relationships, and some of those are good, some of those are. And AI is built, you know, for to help people, you know, accomplish tasks or do jobs and Move things, and there's going to be people that will abuse it. No, it'd be people that will use it effectively and even, like this deep fake, it's going to allow pastor Mike to preach his sermon to people in French and reach them, like he's never been able to do before.

Frank Barry: 26:47

That's actually what an incredible.

Nils Smith: 26:49

Yeah, but it's also going to allow people to create fake Mike Todds and have him preach his sermon that's bad theologically the lines to their beliefs and not his and Misrepresent him or probably ask for money and steal money and do things. I mean. So there's good with everything and we just have to be thoughtful and careful. And, um, yeah, I think it's, uh, it's an interesting day and, and I think Frank from as a technology guy, uh, it, this is moving faster though that anything I've ever experienced about, totally, and so that that's the probably exciting and overwhelming aspect of AI is it's. It's the social media was looking at Back then. It felt like he was going really fast, but it was really slow like a person sitting on my head.

Frank Barry: 27:39

My brain is starting with my space. I know there was stuff before that, but it's like you know you had that and it's like company by company. I mean I think ChatGPT was the fastest uh, we probably should look this up but like the fastest growth, like ever for any like app or internet product, like it just Exploded number of users on the product through the roof faster than anything ever. Right.

Nils Smith: 28:06

Ever. Yeah, there's. I don't know the exact numbers, but it is documented and just the what's coming. I think they're spending millions of dollars a day just to run their servers, uh, to power this free Uh platform. It's uh, yeah, it's unbelievable what they're, what they're doing, uh. I I will say too, just with ChatGPT, I've been watching all of the government, you know, when they interviewed the founder of it and even elan musk, you know, talks negatively about it. I think elan has his own agenda. I, I trust the guy behind open ai, uh and and the the intentions behind it, and I feel I feel good about, from my research around where the really the innovators are in ai, that their intentions are good and they're uh I. I don't, I don't have concerns in who's creating the technology right now, where it's social media. I don't know that I could have said the same thing, right, uh, and so I, um, I'm optimistic about the future, yeah and where it is today, and now we'll see where it goes, I mean I will be a better teller.

Frank Barry: 29:10

I was at Stripes conference a few weeks ago and sam altman, you know the, the guy behind open ai, which you know. I hesitate on that because I also hear that there's other people you know. So whatever he's the guy, there's two sides of those. Yeah, but, and then?

Nils Smith: 29:25

he goes and appears before I think like Congress right.

Frank Barry: 29:29

And and they have a whole like should there be an open AI. Regulatory framework put in place. And he's pro that because, yes, and they use like the nuclear I like concept from back in the day like nuclear power Was this amazing innovation that could do amazing things for the world. But also you the use to do really bad things, right, and so there's this whole thing put around it. So he was pro that, which I think is really interesting. You know, um, yeah, it seems like people are being thoughtful about, you know, the Potential of harm in the future versus the good and how to think about that and all that kind of stuff. But it is, it's going so fast faster than even I. You know, I'm 45. So we're about the same age. Like I've never seen anything go like this. You know, like where, like it seems like every week there's Like something new happening right, like some new thing. Whether it's ChatGPT or somebody else in the AI universe, there's always something new. Yes, and it's I don't know, but I'm I'm sort of like in the camp of like this is amazing, like ride the wave and let's see where it goes. Yeah, yeah, and I think this is.

Nils Smith: 30:39

Frank, we're also appreciative of your leadership because you lead a technology company that's serving the church and has served the church with both Affordable and powerful technology, and I think it just speaks to even your thought process, is even you're Transparently saying I don't fully understand it, I'm watching it, I'm learning from it and and you're innovating around it, even while you figure it out. So you're not waiting till it's all, like, okay, I fully understand ai and now we're gonna do this, but it's like, with what we understand, this is what we're doing to best.

Frank Barry: 31:08

I feel like fully the church, fully understanding ai might never happen. Like what, how, on earth. This is thing work. You know what I'm saying. Like, this is incredible. Have you seen it? Like?

Nils Smith: 31:20

Like, because you work with a lot of churches and you just mentioned one Transformation.

Frank Barry: 31:25

Is there any other things that you've seen people doing, like whether it's in the church or anywhere else, like Just you know, as you're out there?

Nils Smith: 31:38

Not, no, not really. I mean, I think that I think everyone is, and I'll tell you what. What encourages me is the number of questions. I'm getting around it that that Is if anything, and this is. I actually feel like some churches right now are going through a bit of a they're, they're recovering from their over-investment into Metaverse. Oh yeah, oh, I forgot to mention Metaverse and all of this like what.

Frank Barry: 32:05

So a lot of churches are like Metaverse is the future.

Nils Smith: 32:07

We better buy land in the metaverse. We better like Metaverse is is everything. I still believe that there is a future in the Metaverse, but it's Perceivably dead in this moment that we're having this conversation and, and I think there's a perception is ai like the Metaverse and Metaverse and it's? It's clear to me that it is nothing like the metaverse and the metaverse was somewhat new and and it was always weird. You know like where ai is. Very practically, it's in life, right, yeah, right, that metaverse.

Frank Barry: 32:41

I never I. I just could never wrap my brain around like, totally, you know, it's like it's too, it's too early, it's still, you know, yeah, um so.

Nils Smith: 32:52

So I think I think, though, frank, to answer your question of like Churches or organizations are leaning into it, I honestly, I don't see a lot of it. I see a lot of it. I see a good amount of experimentation, which I'm very happy with. Uh, and a lot of pastors I talked to the like yeah, I'm using ChatGPT for my servants, or yeah, we're, you know we're, we're using it to help with our graphic design and using this tool there. So I'm seeing, I'm seeing some churches, uh, experimenting with it a little bit, and I think what I'm encouraged by is openness to it. Like I haven't, I feel like I've had to sell technology, like this isn't the devil. I think this is just a tool that the devil, you know, gets a hold of Uh, but it can be a tool that you know, uh, the holy spirit can guide to uh, and so it's uh. I think there's there's been a good response to a healthy approach, uh to it. Um, but I, but I don't, I I haven't seen a. You know, here's a model for a church that's really using it. Well, and I think where, where I'm really interested and where I'm interested to see where, where, where Tithely takes it Is with our data, you know, and I think how, when we think about even, how do we, how do we use AI to better communicate With people maybe give weekly versus people that give quarterly, you know, or how do we use it to better, uh, communicate based on, you know, different data that we have, that this person actually needs a, a message, like I could, some, somehow the data is telling us that they they're serving, their marriage is struggling, or something you know, we've noticed that the dad hasn't been coming to church.

Frank Barry: 34:26

Regularly get the family is there a way to freak a lot of people out with this right here?

Nils Smith: 34:30

like You're a no-perfect, but it's going to help us better pastor. And the truth is like, the data is there, we just AI is going to help us use it in ways and I think we have to figure out of like, there are churches and I don't think I could say them, but that do use cameras in their services to do face ID to see who's there and who's not there, and I don't know how much they're using that data, but they're collecting that data, that where they perceivably could use it to follow up with people. And so there's some things that it's like what is healthy, what is violating privacy laws and some things. And this is where I think even the government is going to be valuable to help us be in this direction of what's a good use or bad use. And I think this is where even church apps I think church apps give a huge opportunity for, you know, customized data, customized experiences, surfacing it like the Amazon experience, but different and better.

Frank Barry: 35:33

You know, like that's all they've. You know they've been doing that for years and years and years and I don't know if it's AI powering it on. You know, I'm not sure, but it's personalization, which has been happening for a long time. But all of a sudden, with this, if you have so much data, sometimes you just don't even know how to get to the insights because there's just so much there. And if you have a tool like AI that you can plug into your data, that can kind of you can ask it questions or have it automatically tell you things about groups of people or individuals or whatever. I mean I even just think really practically just surfacing. If you know a bunch of things about your people because it's in the database, right, kids checked in giving serving. You know small groups, you have all this data, right? If you, if something just told you hey, your church has this you know need right now, based on you know knowing about all your people, like whatever, this is a terrible example, but like kids are going back to school, so you should be helping them with that transition out of summer like that's not actually very useful, but right, it can just start feeding you back information, that's like, hey, based on all the things that we know. Let me surface some ideas to you pastoral team on what maybe you should be preaching about, or teaching team what you'd be teaching about, like you know, like helping with that.

Nils Smith: 36:55

And it can even mix in, because it can learn, like based on your geographic area and where people live. We're seeing that you know. We're seeing, maybe, that drug addiction is higher than it has been, you know, in the past. Or we're seeing in your area that there's this hot topic that maybe you didn't know about. That you know, and I'm not thinking of good ideas at this moment. Or we're seeing that people in your area are really getting into beanie babies. You know, and we can actually give you that information. It's like I don't know what you do with it, but you could just know that beanie babies are really hot in your area. And you might because you don't care about beanie babies. You, you know, wouldn't have even been alert to that, but maybe you can encourage your women's ministry to do a beanie babies today, or something, or incorporate it into your sermon because you're using a sermon. Or incorporate it into your sermon. Yeah, no, because it's relevant. But this is what AI can do, and I think it's, and I think to Frank, this is where it'd be fun just to even spend the whole day. I was like, what can AI do for your trash? And just brainstorm all the possibilities, because it is endless, and I think that's also the problem with it, where I think churches need to rely on you and people like you to spend that time, and I think what they just need to be confident is that you are spending that time to understand this technology and, when it is ready to be used, you're going to be packaging it for them in a way that it can be yeah, and it's just, it's gonna be such a powerful tool. It's so many aspects, and I'm getting so fired up for this conversation of like just dreaming of what's possible, and, at the end of the day, what it's gonna do, though, is help ministries do more ministry. Right, and it's just, it's gonna be really exciting.

Frank Barry: 38:44

We need to do another podcast and get like I don't know, a handful, two, three, five like pastors on and like have a chat, like have this chat with a crew and just talk AI, what are you thinking about? What are you doing? What are you scared of? Like that would be a fun little show to do, just to you know.

Nils Smith: 39:03

Yeah, yeah, and maybe freak them out a little bit, because I think it's healthy to be like what do you think about taking a picture of your congregation and doing facial scan and using AI Is that good or bad? Why, why not? And really processing some of these you know tensions that we're gonna navigate with these technologies, or storing this kind of data on your congregation? I think one of the things that churches that I remember even as I work with churches, they share passwords with me. Sometimes I'm like you really like just emailed me your password and like to your database, Right, and it's basically just the password is password.

Frank Barry: 39:44

With the one, with the one at the end.

Nils Smith: 39:46

Yeah, I put both, and so it's you know, I think pastors and church leaders have a they have a huge opportunity in front of them, and this is I mean, this is an exciting day, shouldn't be a scary day. Yeah, I believe that. Yeah, and the truth is I can't wait to have this conversation a year from now, I know right, because this is gonna move fast. And a year from now, this conversation is gonna be very different. It's not gonna be what could we potentially do in the future. It's gonna be what are we doing and what do we need to be doing? That even more or less of with this, because it's the next year is gonna change a lot.

Frank Barry: 40:22

Yeah, as fast as it's moving, guaranteed a year from now it's gonna be night and day in terms of what's yeah, just what's possible, what people are actually doing with it. Right now, Nobody's really doing anything super, super significant in the church space that I know about. There actually probably is people doing stuff. I just you know church is big, but I haven't heard of any super interesting stuff just yet. Well, man, this has been awesome. Yeah, thank you. We're gonna talk social media and we talked AI. Wait, wait, this is better, Super fun. Where can folks go just to connect with you, find out more about you? If there's anything consulting around all this stuff, Obviously that's your world, so where's the best one?

Nils Smith: 41:03

So if you just Google, there's this website Google.com . And Google Nils Smith N-I-L-S, you'll find me. Nilsmithcom is our website at Nils Smith on all the social media channels.

Frank Barry: 41:15

Have you typed into ChatGPT and barred your name to see what it was? Yes, okay.

Nils Smith: 41:22

I have it's. You know what is funny, frank around ChatGPT is Jay Crandon did the same and he's the online pastor at Saddleback Church and he and I have done a lot together for years. It lists my books as him, as the co-author on my books, and it actually half of my bio it lists as his bio and he's like why am I Nilsmith on the internet? But it just lists him as Jay Crandon, so it knows who I am, but it doesn't necessarily fully know who Jay is and so it isn't 100% accurate, which has been interesting to learn. But yeah, yeah, so chat, you can ChatGPT as well, or Bar me, you can Bar me, it'll tell you a lot about me, man.

Frank Barry: 42:03

This has been awesome. Guys, thanks for joining Nils, thanks for coming on, spending some time with us. Appreciate you, appreciate your insight, thoughtfulness around this topic and you know, if you're catching it on YouTube, make sure to ask questions in the comments and we'll poke around on those. But thanks for joining us. We'll catch you next week on another episode. See you, guys.

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