we had a conversation over dinner the other night with my high school senior and we were having this conversation about week to week everything is changing so quickly in the AI space and the implications of that are I don't want to say severe but they're very large and material I don't know about you we can get into it a little bit but like my day-to-day workflow is completely Chang I I I use AI tools all day long for all kinds of different stuff I was reading a 70 page document on technology product licensing today and
I threw it into like Google's notebook LM and it gives me a brief and it does the um have you seen the feature where you can like make an audio oh no I haven't seen that no it's like an AI generated podcast it was a 17 minute podcast style conversation between two fake people AI generated people talking about this document and kind of teasing out what are the highlights that you need to know I have used a tool like that I forget the name of it but uh we have somebody on on our staff at
our church that sends us those and they're crazy because they sound like real people and it's helpful it's very helpful but it's like um oh yeah so that's a good point and you know there's all these verbal pauses yeah the verbal pauses are very off-putting when you realize it's it's a it's not real you're like oh they're mimic human behavior [Music] welcome to the digital Ministry podcast I'm your host Nick runan and I'm here with a good friend Jay Kanda Jay welcome back thanks for having me I'm excited to get in we got some fun
topics to cover today I think so I think we'll we'll have a good time or we'll expose ourselves as the fools that we are so one or the other Jay like we chat all the time kind of offline from this public conversation of course but I think you know there's a lot of stuff that's changing right now actually I've been this is a this is a dilemma I have my oldest is in college just he's a freshman I got a kid going to college next year I've got a sophomore in high school so I'm gonna
be broke for like 10 years but we had a conversation over dinner the other night with my high school senior and we were having this conversation about week to week everything is changing so quickly in the AI space and the implications of that are I don't want to say severe but they're very large and material I don't know about you we can get into it a little bit but like my day-to-day workflow is completely changed I I I use AI tools all day long for all kinds of different stuff I was reading a 70-page document
on technology product licensing today and I threw it into like Google's notebook LM and it gives me a brief and it does the um have you seen the feature where you can like make an audio oh no I haven't seen that no it's like an AI generated podcast it was a 17 minute podcast style conversation between two fake people AI generated people talking about this document and kind of teasing out what are the highlights that you need to know I have used a tool like that I forget the name of it but uh we have
somebody on on our staff at our church that sends us those and they're crazy because they sound like real people and it's helpful it's very helpful and but it's like um oh yeah so that's a good point and you know there's all these verbal pauses yeah the verbal pauses are very off-putting when you realize it's it's a it's not real you're like oh they're mimic human behavior right right so who knows maybe we can make this whole podcast just AI generated in the future and you won't need to listen to me but so the conversation
with my kids is like okay 4 years from now try to imagine what work is going to be like four years from now so you're choosing a major as an incoming College freshman How Deeply do you need to think about one spending the money on this education and two like is the major that I'm selecting even going to be valuable or viable four years from now have you thought about that at all yeah I mean I think it's it's it's interesting because obviously you know I have a kid about to go into high school and
then one in and the two in uh two that are in elementary one's about to go to middle school and so I kind of have I'm a little little younger in the stages and it's interesting to watch even how you know still teachers in classrooms are kind of this anti you know I would say using Ai and you know I remember about a year ago my I think my wife was sick and they came to me for a question typically they don't come for me for help for homework generally my kids and I said well
why don't you just ask you know CP or Gemini and they're like Dad we can't do that and I was like why can't you do that like I don't understand it's well we have to show the work and blah blah well you can do that and you know yeah and it's this it's this interesting approach where again I think generally when you introduce anything new it's very easy to kind of say no to it but I find it interesting that I I hope schools and there's some thinking that hey as an adult I'm not for
example writing out equations I'm using these tools and we would we should use it like a like the tool we're going to use for the rest of our life but I I definitely feel I I have the perspective generally and I'm pig piggybacking off of others but there's this idea of like you know white color and blue color types of jobs right and there's a Mark Andre quote that's very famous like in the future you will be told by computers what to do or you will tell the computers what to do and I think that's
generally going to still be true in the coming decades but I think the idea is that you hope our kids understand their role like I hope my kids and myself I understand what's the value of my work the value of my work is not pushing the buttons keeping the seat warm my value of the work is solving the problem and the question is is there either will technology and AI for example will it just increase our productivity by 25% or will it rewrite all of our jobs I think that's the tension of the degree of
difference because you can look back at the last 20 years and it's very different the types of jobs that exist now the idea is that I can do so much of my work from home you know while still needing to be in the office but it's just different I don't need to be as much and so I think I've had a lot of conversations with my kids of around that like I want you to know like for example I need you need to know how to type you need to know how to problem solve around
some of these things I want you to be using Gemini you know uh perplexity you know uh chat I want you to be aware of this but I definitely think school is going to be important still but the question to your point is like what degree is a is an interesting question because I don't know I don't use a lot of my degree stuff day-to-day anyways I don't know about you but I'm curious do you push back back on some of those thoughts as I kind of framed it or are you kind of align I
think you framed it correctly I have a hard time imagining which degrees align with which jobs over the next four years I think that's my problem because like I was on a trip last year and we had these college kids with us and they were asking me they're like oh hey you know we had lunch together and they're like man you've done like a bunch of stuff and like if you were me what would you go into school to do and I was like honestly I said the reason I was a business major I was
like Business Systems computer science and business together it's like the reason I did that is because I couldn't hack it as an engineer like I really wanted to be an engineer and then like the math just buried me I was yeah I'm not smart enough to do this and kind of my advice to them was like if you can specialize and especially if that specialization leads to like a high grossing job like a doctor or lawyer or something I was like you should do that I was like I went into business because I felt like
I couldn't do any of those things maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough or whatever but it's much more General the advantage to like a business degree and this is what my son is enrolled as a business major I think that I think you're going to share this experience like there's if you want to be your quote about like being told what to do or telling the computer what to do it's really interesting because I think that that's true like it's either entrepreneur versus employee true you know it's like I'm either gonna kind of be
hacked something together and figure out a way to make a living you know and use some of these core principles that I learned you know through a business degree and figure out how to go apply them that might be running a lawn care company you know which I'm kind of in love with landscape and lawn care companies and like local service businesses right now yeah or if I'm trying to go find a job in an office where you'll just hire to do some kind of business thing I think those get overrun immediately you know because
you're 25% productivity comment Y I've seen that in the last six months like my productivity is way up like I can crank out so much more product or output day-to-day using some of these tools and using all of them like just exploring all of them than I ever could before so with a a kid graduating with a you know tens of thousands of dollar price tag on a degree that's General like business like I'm having a real conversation with my son right now saying like I don't know like what are you what are you willing
to do with that like what links are you willing to go to to try to monetize that degree in the future when you get out with it based on what we see happening right now today like it's some tough choices and then throughout that conversation my other son was like you know he goes I've I was thinking about this the other day and he goes I was thinking about like what are the real people focused relationship focused types of jobs you know so like doctors with bedside manner maybe even lawyers with like empathy and guidance
like law is just the application of written you know precedence basically that's captured in law that's perfect for AI but is there still a human element that's going to be needed you know to engage with people about contract law or whatever the case may be maybe but another one that he mentioned was pastors he was like pastoral care is incredibly relational and like you know I don't think that ever gets replaced by a machine so any anyway interesting conversations I agree with you on um teachers not allowing it I think I think we should open
up those well and and it's it's I was listening to somebody talk about this at some point the last couple months and and they kind of were alluding to the fact we we kind of referenced that that tool of summarizing meetings if you think about like sports radio for example or Sports podcast there's two types of things there's like the ESPN like here are the facts and then there's the take and the argument is I think AI can summarize for example like I can go into Ai and go like who won the World Series in
1987 sure and maybe there are analysts for example at an ESPN company that are going to be less needed like data analysts in the future because you just before you would have to keep all the archives and you'd have to you know index it there might be less need of that but to think like there are people I listen to because of their take and that's very human like the way they analyze the data and spit it back out so to say I don't think AI is going to be able to replicate those takes and
so like one of the other counters is yeah you can go down a very specialty route which again if you're motivated and you're excited to be a doctor a lawyer whatever that's important but the other thing is like I I think a lot of my job for example I find myself pulled between technical realm and pastoral Realms and I kind of like and really what I do for the you know orgs that I engage with is I translate both of those spaces to each other and so it's almost like I have a I am not
an an engineer I'm not a high I'm not a back-end developer or even a frontend developer but I can I can Bridge those worlds and so I have enough awareness and then I in my human you know Consciousness translate those into something that's helpful and so it's almost like again it's that blue collar work versus white collar work are you actually solving problems or are you just pushing buttons because if you're pushing buttons there's a chance that percentage of your work over the next 10 15 years will be gobbled up into some kind of it's
the same thing with like you think about this with uh you know it's the story with the Tesla factories of wanting to go full AI you know I mean not AI but like robotic AI type of of activity and then they realize that they need still humans on the ground and so it's this hybrid and so like you still need somebody real time because I I think I personally I know we might disagree on this I think the sen like the fully conscious type of you know they call it generative type of AI work where
like they're solving problems like across devices versus like application specific I think the generative AI stuff is actually going to be really hard to crack and I think it's not that it's not going to happen think what we think it might be might be more like flying car promises and so I think that there'll be versions of it but again we look at Apple Apple intelligence is not this super helpful thing I think people don't realize how hard this is and so I think I think there's more need for humans in the future but I
do think people shouldn't Bank on I'm like your expertise should be solve like actually uh critical thinking more and I think that's that Gap I actually think AI will push like I I think about this if I was born in a different era my efficiency as like a farmer isn't as good as my efficiency with a phone and I I know how to op like I'm able to be way more productive and valuable to an org because I have the internet and I'm able based off of like my wiring yeah if I was born in
a different age I don't think I would have been as efficient and so it's that tension you would have learned to be or you would have starved probably I me yeah hypothetic Al you would you would assume but I I also think that like I'm very good with the internet and technology and I've been able to figure that out and so I I actually do agree with that I just don't think you're going to need a 100 people I think you need one and so like it might be a job scarcity issue that we run
into so here's a quote I saw today that you just what you were saying reminded me of this imagination is more important than knowledge for knowledge is limited whereas IM ination Embraces the entire world stimulating progress giving birth to Evolution that's a great quote you want to take a guess on who said that Steve Jobs I don't even know Einstein so oh that was my second guess Albert Einstein it's a good guess though given the imagination heaviness of that quote but the line imagination Embraces the entire world that could be imagination is rooted in your
collective experience and AI might surprise us get really imaginative like looking at stuff from different angles so well and and really AI is typically iterative it will take an idea and it could spin out five other ideas the question is can it come up with the original idea and I think or can it generate original idea can can it gener and I think that I you know and we can get theological but I think this is where people are under playing or at least you know in the tech space or let's say in the general
like zy of this conversation I think people don't don't believe a lot of people don't believe the idea that you know I the difference between I think us and the animals are the idea that we have the spirit of God like and I think it's that I believe that and so like I think to think that we're just gonna have this conscious thing that is going to come up with ideas and solve problems I think I still think we're gonna have to tell it and I think it will get more efficient at these things but
I think that jump now this is where I think we are we are guessing about the future and I know somebody listen is like I'm I'm just a I'm just a Ministry leader and this you're overwhelming with these thoughts but I I think these are the conversations and it's going to be fun to figure it out well for the ministry leader listening or watching I would say you can't replicate you know Flesh on flesh that human interaction you know people want to be known they want to be connected with and I think that becomes incredibly
even more valuable in in the future and I think we've already seen that even since Co with the like some of the disconnectedness and loneliness that people are you know that's another conversation for another podcast probably but my kids were theorizing the other day about their classmates and even themselves to some extent like don't know how to just engage in a normal conversation because they had like a two-year you know foundational years two years were robbed from them of that experience so okay so to continue down the AI path a little bit like one one
thing you and I were talking about before we hit record was the big news this week is with deep seek deep seek AI coming out of China so open AI has been I'm going to attempt to give like a little landscape here and you tell me if if this is right or not but open AI You know despite the name it's closed uh it's closed source code can't you know you can build some custom gpts and things on it I've been using it a ton I've got the pro version and right now I think that
it's still worth it although I'm finding some limitations annoy me about paying $200 a month for it but incredibly expensive Nvidia has been you know like this huge takeoff kind they've been around forever I mean 20 years or something but their stock has gone crazy because they make these gpus that were in high demand and they can't fill the supply and they're charging a lot for them they use a ton of energy you know so this starts to impact like all these different sectors um but the AV India stock price dipped I mean they shed
billions of dollars this week in their value with the introduction of deep seek because the story out of deep seek was we figured out how to do this without access to these high processing gpus we did it cheaper and we trained the model in a in a more effective but a more efficient way and I'm not sure if I believe it I'm not sure if I believe the the pr well it it is clear that there was a like this group that funded deep seek they they were like a think tank in China prior and
they had boughten a bunch of of these of these chips and so I think the qu you know the hard part to somebody listening this is that there's also this like metal a going on of like politics and international law around China like the US has this huge lead with AI and everything that touches the internet has a computer technology needs a chip and we have the best chips or have have control of the best chips and so they put some they put some international law where China couldn't get access to certain chips and now
this is where the tension is is they thought the US had this three to five year jump on this and now deep seek was able to create something around a lot of people think that they they actually bought a lot of these prior to the law went in 20 INF fact and so now there's a lot of rumors we were talking about this that people don't really know but it is crazy that this came out and it like the stock market in the US just takes this huge hit and it's because the stock market is
a a bet on the future and now yeah now it takes a hit but it's a it's an interesting play and so I guess from your perspective what do you think it actually means to the average Ministry leader that this is what why is deep seek important from your perspective I think uh that's a great question I think there's a couple of things and it depends on probably what you think or maybe what the people you're ministering to think and how they view this there there is a group of people and I'm I'm hearing more
and more I mean you and I both listen to a ton of podcasts a bunch of news and all this stuff and people are saying things that sound a lot like this John Carr book that I read earlier last fall called Red Sky morning it's the same guy that wrote terminal list which is you know a series on Amazon and in that book there's an AI that was developed by the US government in order to kind of respond automatically to the threat of nuclear war so it's basically the AI speeds the decision-making cycle and does
whatever it needs to do in order to protect you know the US in case of a nuclear attack there's people that are kind of talking that way and they're saying things like the race to build and monopolize or like own the best AI is really correlated with our national security and kind of the future prosperity and the F you know a lot of like Doomsday kind of stuff and so the reason why I mentioned that that kind of it it matters what the people you're ministering to are thinking about because it because that can create
a ton of anxiety worry concern and a lot of what typically would tend to be pretty negative reactions you know if people are looking at it like oh this is the end of the world um that's one side of it the other side is that I think um even if it's not kind of going down the Doomsday path so people aren't kind of zeroing in on that it's getting really really hard to know to kind of test um authenticity and the validity of some of the content and the information that's coming at us every day
and so that's shaping people's opinions it's shaping people's worldview it's shaping people's um kind of reason and values you know and there's extreme examples there too that we we could explore but as as all of these things uh kind of Ratchet up you know open AI grock uh Gemini from Google deep seek like the race is on that is clear and I feel a little bit like a guinea pig you know it's like this is real world testing on a live audience and I don't know if we can accurately predict or anticipate what the what
the implications are going to be but the people that we're trying to connect with are wrestling with those those same anxieties and questions as well it's interesting how you frame that because I think that is definitely like I I I'm I joke a lot with my friends about this because I have a couple friends that are really like Health nuts and um and that's a very like that's something like you just watch one Tik Tok video and now you have this opinion it's a whole rabbit hole it's a whole rabbit hole and you know I
have a friend who I love dearly and um has gone through some health things and kind of blames it on some things related to some of these meta conversations and I have kind of jokingly said I'm not saying I disagree or agree I'm just saying like I just don't know if Plastics in this is killing me I just don't know because there's so many things and I think to your point the ministry the Min the ministry leader has to understand this deep seek thing reacted because of this like cycle we live on and everybody panicked
and I think it shows it does show this idea that because the way social media is and the way news stories are like kind of decentralized that we have we have people both in two camps we have people that are di hards believe everything they read and we have people that are super skeptic and so like when you present the gospel for example I think we have to understand that there are a lot of people searching and open to the truth and then there's a lot of people that just they saw one Tik Tok video
One YouTube video and they totally think you're dumb and I think we have to learn how to engage in this environment this is why I think sometimes I feel like it's really helpful especially in online conversations not to come off as arrogant I mean not that we purposely do this but I think there is a tactic like just share the gospel and that's it but I think you get a lot of ground online to say like have you have you ever thought about this or have you seen this and ask a lot of questions you
know you used to call this in like apologetic Realms like the Columbo thing you kind of question them to death and I think have you ever watched Columbo like you're young I've seen Clips I've seen Clips that's an old show it is a it is the guy who referenced it Greg is it kok he's like a a popular uh evangelist he's the one that kind of I know this from but but I think it's like we were talking about this like this really interesting dynamic happening on the one of the most popular podcasts on the
internet right now online uh Joe Rogan there's all these Faith conversations and really regardless of what you think of Joe Rogan Joe Rogan is a normal dude just asking questions he he literally like he would be like a guy you would just run in at a party and he would just start talking about anything and he doesn't think he's being recorded and millions of people or listening but they're talking about Jesus on this podcast and it goes wow what world are we in the populist conversation now like just about a couple years ago it was
kind of very negative to be a Christian now there's this conversation but I think it's because people are looking for truth and I don't think there's Clarity of what truth is and that means we have an opportunity to engage people because people are searching and coming walking into our churches and our ministry asking questions and we have to be ready to engage that in a very strategic way yeah I think you're right and I wonder if if the lack of transparency with some of the content you know and then all of this stuff about AI
kind of taking over the world it prompts you know questions of meaning you know like what's the point if I'm concerned about not having a job when I get out of college like what's what's even the point of life you know like how do I anticipate even four years down the road how I'm going to like support myself and raise a family and do all you know whatever I want to do what does existence even mean yeah I wonder if maybe that's where some of these questions are coming from yeah yeah there you know it's
funny I was watching a show I just watched a show on Apple Plus and uh it was very depressing and Severance it wasn't sance I have been watching that but uh but the severance is definitely depressing too but what's I only saw the pilot what what I what it's just lost this all it is and and in so the lost with a good ending with a good I well we don't know it's the problem and so the the thing that I realized is this idea that like I you know I'm a pastor at a church
I have a deep faith I am very grounded in my belief in God in my experience with God but I got at the end of this at the show and I was just upset about just thinking about this world this show is like portraying as a possibility in the future it's kind of alluding to nuclear war and it and it and it one of the things that was kind of hitting me is this idea that as a like you know La a terrible phrase but a religious leader let's just call me that in my community
sure U I was having doubts about potential future and one of the things that I think we can do in the transparency and authent authenticity is that I think sometimes leaders present themselves like they have it all together and I think what we can do in some of these spaces is to talk about some of the things that like sometimes when we doubt things or things we have questions about and I think the era of acting like you're the expert and you know it all potentially in an internet age when we can't know it all
has to kind of come to an end and more come to it like this is what I believe this is what I know but here's some things I'm asking and I think the people that do really well online ask questions that's what Joe Rogan does he doesn't act like he's the expert I mean I actually get really annoyed when people attack him to act like he's an expert he's no he's he's the complete opposite he's very knowledgeable on things but he doesn't act like he's a doctor or whatever he just like this is what I'm
thinking and it's it's like pointing out things that just don't make sense and then when he's corrected he's corrected and I think I think and this would be my encouragement to a pastor a Ministry leader you have doubts about things and have questions about things and we need to engage people walking into our ministry and our churches very authentic like hey like if you have doubts and they have doubts and those are probably the doubts you have or the questions you have are Great Bridge points to connect with them on a human level and now
you're going to have more clarity on these things but it's connect with them and I I just it's it's this idea that like I know it come to me this is the answer but like hey like people don't want they they want to know that uh you have more answers but they also want to know like you're human and I think that's where these I don't think it's it's crazy that these people that ask a lot of questions they're so popular because they're very normal you know and I think I think there's there's a learning
there for us especially in that meta lever are the people that they're most popular because really if I think about the most the podcast I like listening to yeah they're very brilliant and smart but they're very human and they're raw and that's what I like about them because when I hear them ra what's that mean well what I mean by raw is that they're very uh they show their their faults or when they're wrong like and so it's just it's not a uh it's it's not a I know it all it's like oh I was
wrong on that or like like it would be here in the political cycle like people I follow like I totally got that wrong I didn't think Trump was going to win you know and you're like you more relate to when somebody confesses you know you kind of like oh and so I think it's this we gota it's that I think to that point and we've been hearing this for I think five years like people want people who are authentic and I think we got to be authentic as Ministries about some of these things I think
when you say when you admit that you were wrong about something it builds trust oh yeah yeah I mean it's especially when you get to Faith conversations like there's some deep things like to be honest that you know I think about things that I've changed my mind on the things that I've evolved on again like I talk a lot even this is something I think a lot you probably do as well like I think a lot with my kids as they become older I want it not to be my faith I want it to be
their faith sure and there are parts of the Bible that I've had to wrestle through in different seasons and I have understanding but I can't I don't want them just again they're not a computer like I don't want them just to recite what I say I think a lot about like when I when I die at one point like I want them to really believe it and you have to wrestle with it and I I don't think people realize that because of these conversations on Joe Rogan and all these things people are wrestling through and
the question are we able to actually engage them authentic and I and it's not just sending them a Bible verse I think it's like actually talking to them and kind of making full circle that's where like yeah they can ask like CP a question but when they walk in or message you on Instagram again it's like Jesus sitting down having a meal with people you know and I think we got to be able to have that and I I think I I I just I think there's a lot to learn from that and I I
know you believe this too it's just it's it's I think ministry's got to understand it's not just creating a Bible verse and putting it up on social media it's contextualizing and I always go back to what res resonates with you like what and usually it's it's human conversations usually getting coffee or tea with somebody and and then how can we be that more in our social presence in our online presence I think is is important to wrestle through I shared a clip with you earlier of an interview that Billy holwell did with Lola Sheen so
Lola is the daughter of Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards so the Jin xers and and older Millennials will know who I'm talking about uh when I say those names but there's a girl that grew up in the spotlight you know she's Hollywood you know the daughter of two famous actors and she's been very vocal this past week about her experience with Jesus and she talks about just to hearing people share their testimonies like some influences that she follows that are um Christians and just how they're talking about their faith anybody who watched uh like the
Ohio State football game you know there's um just tremendous displays of from coaches to players to throughout those organizations people giving the glory to God you know that's a very public conversation Montana State here our local College they you know they're in the FCS division of the NCAA but they were at the um national championship game and uh you know what I love kind of getting a local like a behind the- scenes look at that since they're here in town you know that team has completely transformed in the last couple of years every game they
kind of run out of the tunnel you know through the thing and the whole team goes into the inzone on the far end of the field takes a knee and they pray together before every game so it's just like these things are on display and people are watching that and they're wondering about it and they're having some pretty honest conversations about yeah but what about all this other trash that I see you know being done or has been done in history in the name of Jesus so the authenticity that you're talking about like what what
advice would you have for somebody that kind of feels that tension it's like I don't know if I want to be so vocal because of this very loud and very frankly kind of difficult conversation what's what's happened with you know everything from the Crusades to sex abuse in the Catholic Church like all of that stuff kind of comes crashing down on people or it has in the past you know what what would you say to people about how do I balance kind of this desire to be authentic and engage my culture and my community when
I know all these other issues exist yeah I mean that's that's definitely one of the harder things and I think this is why there are you know they say this like they thought the internet would bring everybody together but really it just solidifies F our communities our local communities more it's not really the internet obviously is global but it's actually more like it's very localized and even more so it's like India's online culture is very tight versus us and then within the US there's all these subcultures so it's like it didn't necessarily bring us together
just allowed you to connect with your people and your are you talking about like my feed is only stuff that I'm interested in yeah your feed is only your stuff you know where to go to connect with your people if I want like basketball stuff I go to and if I want this I go to and it's like it's just we have Gamers go to Discord we've kind of segmented ourselves even deeper and I think this is why the one of the things is I would say to any Ministry leader is is understand you know
you are called to your generation and the people God's put on your heart here at Mi we talk about the idea of the Persona that you have a Persona do not worry about the big eye internet culture the whole world worry about the people that God's put on your heart and talk about those issues that are important to that person do not worry about I think we we can't worry about pleasing everybody I think we we know that um but focus in on the people you're called to and then talk about those things and be
ready to engage you do not I I think one of the things people Mis understand about being relevant is that you have to have an opinion about everything I don't think you need to have an opinion about everything I think you need to have opinions about the things that are important to your community and so like if we're hanging out you can ask me who I voted for and how I think but at the end of the day you're never going to see me talk about that online because I don't that's not important to me
in what I'm doing it might I might have opinions but it's not important to my ministry right and so now if I was doing Ministry in Washington DC and there might be different because if my group of people were Congress people and you know what I mean like it might be different and so I think understand your persona understand who you're going after and care about those things and then I think this is where the model of Jesus I I think this is why talking about Jesus is always an amazing Bridge into these conversations I
think one of the most compelling things about following Jesus is um the idea that we do have a perspective and a worldview that we can filter all these through and I think most people are looking for principle based way to live I think they don't want to just go here to there and I think this is why like like it's interesting there's some of these states here in in the United States that are blocking uh blocking like porn on like websites yeah well so one group that doesn't believe in God might think of this as
like uh abusing kids and all these things and they have this whole method why why does a why does followers of Jesus care about this well we believe sexuality is best expressed in the context of marriage and we believe this because it comes from God and what scripture teaches we actually have a root to this principle and so I think and Jesus teaches about marriage and so I think I would I would go to talk about the things that are important to your community and that's going to be different from my community and then I
would always look at the example of Jesus and come at it not like a Pharisee but as somebody who comes to the table and helps people understand again it's kind of like it the the last thing I'll say on this is kind of like talking to your kids you know sometimes like you know especially if you have teenagers they'll just walk in and I remember one time my oldest who's only 14 and this has happened recently but he'd be like I think I can beat up Mom what and and and what he meant he wasn't
meant like he would I want to he didn't say but he didn't say that what he meant is he thought he was stronger than his mom right and I was like laughing I'm like he he is you are not stronger and I I could come out of this two ways I can I can go let's arrange this I want to watch your mom like get you into it or I can be like why do you think that and I'm helping him because I know my role as a parent is to help him be uh everything
he can be instead of me squashing him like a boss who's evil I can help unpack what's the logic that has led him to believe this or his logic and experience well he he just grew a little right and he got a little stronger and so my job is to help him be successful and so I would say people coming into your ministry and engaging like don't be a boss that squashes but help educate and Bridge and ask questions and again I think I think we see Jesus's model in scripture this is what he does
14 man such a great age do you wrestle with him I do yeah like uh he can't beat you no so what do what no no no but but so no but this is I'm taking this in a totally different okay okay this is like a dad question because I've thought about this like I want to always win against my boys yeah yeah and it's like especially my oldest it's getting close to where I don't know I might I might get hurt so it's like last time we kind of tussled and you know it's all
in fun but I like made sure that I put him down I made sure that he felt it and then I have not engaged again because I'm scared it's like but I want that last memory to be like no I still won you know it's just do you think about that at all or oh no I totally do no my son has this funny thing where he's very stubborn in a good way I think he has like he can be very principle based like he'll just lock in yeah and I think he's gonna be I
think life is going to be generally easy based off of how he functions um he just has to be in the right organ setting I think to kind of Thrive but one of the things is he'll like he won't he won't tap right he won't tap out in a wrestling match and and then I'll eventually like like you know let go and he thinks he wins he won nice and and I'm like no because I'm not gonna make you pass out right so so I have like you know what I mean but it is funny
but it's I remember somebody told us in our Middle School Ministry they said that in middle school that range from like you know 12 to 14 they said the brain does the most growth since like one to like zero to one yeah like you go from like you know concrete thinking to abstract thinking and I see it with the 14 like he is like having these thoughts but they're not fully connected it's like the brain hasn't fully and I could see like the but yeah I'm like what am I supposed to do you want me
to like like pass you out no like I'm not but it's like so I do think about that like should I push it a little I'm like no I can't I can't he knows but I don't think he knows but that's the fun part of uh of having a teenager yeah it's um they keep me they keep me connected to what's uh what's going on in the world too you know some of the conversations that they're having at school are very very oh yeah no kids are the most helpful to keep you relevant and aware
because I I definitely don't you know even when I listen to my music I I realize that he thinks this is classic rock even though it's just early 2000s and I'm like that's funny but it's true like we age and it's part of it so kids are a super helpful tool for sure so you know we've talked a little bit about kind of like the public discourse around Christianity we've talked a little bit about AI let's bring these two ideas together because I know that a lot of Ministries you know in mi does a ton
of work with digital Ministries and followup is always the constraint and you're a big online groups guy like yeah getting people you know into conversation eventually you know in person but happens remotely at first tell me about your thoughts on the use of AI and that could be as simple as chat Bots but like how do we are are there any good tools for kind of providing some of that initial response or does that kind of defeat the purpose you know if somebody's reaching out with a question they want to go deeper than whatever you
know you post it on your website or whatever video they watched is it disingenuous to kick him to a automated tool I don't think it's wrong to do that I do think we're getting into the era where we have to educate them that they are interacting with AI um on some level and I think most of these tools do this by on purpose already but I think people do feel at least at this stage they feel tricked if they're not educated that they are interacting with some kind of AI content I have found that it's
interesting one of the one of the ways and I think most people that are in this space and use AI um what catp and all these tools are really good at is asking it iterative questions so for example like I might think of a followup conversation one way and how I might respond what's really nice is to build a throw like this is how I respond to this question about Jesus and to ask chap B what are three other ways to answer this or how do how would I answer this if they were an unbeliever
and they were 17 years old and allow almost like it's almost like a friend sitting there and you're just you're just like bouncing ideas off and I would say a coach a coach yeah and so like I think if you're doing followup I think that's one of the things is just like or like if you're creating a like I you know um business ad manager started doing this on on meta platform where you'll put in an ad you'll create an ad it will iterate on the the title in the text and I think it's 80%
there but I find those ideas as interesting Sparks because I think you know I've been walking with Jesus for 20 plus years to think that I relate I can relate to somebody who doesn't know Jesus like I'm not I'm very distant from that I'm very much in my own bubble and I think you can you can frame ads or conversations and you can say hey what are three other ways to think about this and you can prompt it to say hey how should I what's a way I can say this that might relate to somebody
who's 15 years old and doesn't know Jesus or maybe somebody who's 28 year old and and you it will give you really interesting words and phrases especially in messages and you know in ad strategies and content related it's all about keyword words and Sparks and so I think that's that's that's one of the most effective ways that I I use it dayto day like I'll write an email and I say can you say this in a gentle way or uh what's a creative way or how would you say this if you're talking to somebody who's
newly married uh those are the ways that I would really recommend using it now uh in a very effective way and in a daily kind of way that's good I like that good tips well Jay it's always fun to talk to you thanks for being back on the Pod you're regular our podcasting career goes way back it does it does um yeah we and what what we got to do like if you're watching this or listening this on YouTube you got to drop a comment of something we got to talk about the next time we
meet so yeah for sure that'd be good otherwise otherwise we're just GNA talk about whatever we want we whatever we want yeah it'll be you know cars or something thanks hope you have a uh a great time exploring all of these AI tools as they let me know what you're what you're learning what you're finding out of course and you survive your snow storm storm that's coming here oh man I'm going to I'm going to try to go play in the snow this weekend we'll see what happens all right buddy we'll talk to you later
see y [Music]
