PreacherBot ain’t got no soul.
But people really want him — or rather, it — to have one. This is bad, as was demonstrated by a recent New York Times profile of Justin Lester, a California Bay Area pastor who has created an AI “twin” of himself using “almost two million words of his sermons, podcasts, books, text messages and emails.” This AI facsimile is “available on his website and Facebook page for online chats or phone calls … to provide advice around the clock.”
Lester is not the first to do something like this — a Catholic parish in Switzerland even installed AI Jesus in a confessional for a while — and he won’t be the last, in part because he is encouraging and assisting other pastors in following his lead. And though his efforts are concentrated among historically black Baptist churches, everyone from Catholics to Pentecostals to Presbyterians will be tempted to create a PreacherBot of their own.
The incentives are simple: There are not enough pastors, and pastors don’t have enough time. As his life and ministry got busier, Lester, a longtime tech enthusiast, turned to AI, first as an assistant, then as a substitute. He won’t use AI to write his sermons, but otherwise he adopted AI as a way to multiply his ministry, first by using it to handle some mundane tasks, and then by multiplying himself via an AI doppelganger that is always available for in-depth conversations, even with “people he’d never met who had questions he’d never been asked.” He thought this AI “twin” captured not only his views but also his voice, and he became comfortable with it dispensing advice in his image.
But using AI in this way seems to further increase the distance between Lester and his congregation. For instance, The New York Times related that “he shook a young woman’s hand after church and then watched her walk to the car and begin chatting on her phone with his digital twin.” In this case, Lester’s efforts to expand his pastoral role shrunk it, as a congregant who could have taken time with him in person instead turned to the ersatz digital self he had commissioned. Yet he still pushes other pastors to build PreacherBots of their own.
The purpose of these AI chatbots is to make ministry more efficient, to optimize a pastor’s time and talents by artificially extending them. But this misunderstands the point of ministry. Church isn’t meant to be optimized because people aren’t meant to be optimized. We were not created for efficiency but to love and be loved. And PreacherBot ain’t never loved nobody.
The young woman who walked away from her flesh-and-blood pastor to chat with his digital facsimile needs much more than advice. An AI chatbot can synthesize phrases similar to those her pastor might have used; it cannot substitute for him saying them. And though the chatbot can always conjure up words, it will never be able to sit there in silent presence with her. It cannot rejoice with her or weep with her, let alone pray for her.
Thus, though PreacherBot may seem like an answer to the problem of not enough pastors with not enough time, it will only further vitiate the church and worsen the very problems it is supposed to solve. The solution to a shortage of leaders is not for a pastor to artificially expand himself via AI, but for other leaders to be raised up. Using an AI “twin” will get in the way of developing new leaders in the church, from associate and assistant pastors to elders and deacons to small group leaders and Christian counselors.
A PreacherBot is convenient, cheap, scandal-free, and always friendly and available for a chat — and it will destroy the interpersonal ecology of a church by bypassing a multitude of relationships and personal growth in service and sanctity. Building the kingdom of God isn’t always efficient because building people up isn’t always efficient. Parents know that teaching children to do a chore will initially take many times longer than just doing it for them, and the results probably won’t be as good when the kids try it on their own. But a parent who never taught a child to do her chores would be a bad parent. It isn’t just about the chores, but also about raising the child right. The chores of church life do need to get done, but doing them is also a large part of how people grow to be more like Christ.
A pastor who is raising up AI copies of himself, rather than fellow believers, is failing his congregation, no matter how successful he might appear by other metrics. Indeed, his successes may be the source of this failure, if he comes to believe he is indispensable and that it is better to rely on his AI “twin” than other Christians. In such cases, PreacherBot makes the senior pastor bigger and everyone else smaller as, rather than building up others, he literally extends beyond himself via AI. This might look like expanding a ministry, but it will diminish a church’s future.
AI is not the future of the church. Rather, the future of the church will be found in remaining a refuge of the real in an artificial world. Being known as authentically human will attract people in a world populated by digital machines pretending to be human. More importantly, remaining authentically human is deeply rooted in core Christian doctrines.
Clayborn Lea, a megachurch pastor who, in The New York Times story, was uneasily setting up an AI “twin” of his own with help from Lester, reached for this truth in observing, “There’s a reason Jesus broke bread with his hands, touched lepers and healed with mud.” He added, “You can’t send an avatar to the bedside.” Lea was on the right track. But you kinda can send an avatar to a bedside with a video screen. Indeed, Lea’s reflections prompted Lester to think “about all the bedsides and all of the people searching for answers at 11 p.m. He could be present for only so many crises at once.”
Well, yes. This is why churches need to raise up more leaders who, following the example of Christ, will be servants of the church. The imperative of providing personal help arises from the Christian understanding of, well, the person, who is a union of body and soul, both of which must be cared for and ministered to. Christianity proclaims truths about the body as well as the soul. Indeed, the central doctrines of Christianity are about the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which is to say about the physical body of Jesus. The astounding claim of the gospels, articulated mostly directly by the Apostle John, is that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us — that God became man. And the salvation we are promised is physical as well as spiritual, a resurrection and glorification of the body.
Christianity cares about bodies because the body is essential to who we are, not just a vessel for a soul to pilot around for a while. Our bodies are as authentically us as our thoughts and words and ideas. PreacherBot lacks soul because PreacherBot does not have a human body. AI can mimic a person, but it can never be a person. And people are what — or, rather, who — we really need. This is part of why Christians are commanded to gather together and observe physical sacraments.
The church should stand apart as a place that really cares about people, which means caring about what is real, including human embodiment. The church should never try to minister by putting a digital skinsuit over a machine that artificially imitates human conversation and connection.
Churches should not follow the lead of a world enamored with illusions, but should instead stand out for being real. They can offer real conversation with real people and real sermons written and preached by real pastors. They can worship God with real people really singing and playing instruments. They can strive to glorify God through beautiful art and architecture, created by real people. They can offer resources, from books to recorded sermons, prepared by real people. When someone interacts with the church, they should be getting the truly human so they may be directed toward the truly divine.
