ChatGPT and the End of Digital Ministry

I thought I would write about artificial intelligence and digital ministry, until I realized that ChatGPT could write on my behalf:

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Since March 2020, most Christian communities have tested new models of digital and hybrid ministry. We sought to bring the church online because we saw the web as a place where faith could be nourished through content and conversation. We imagined that Christian community could flourish in digital spaces where real people were increasingly focusing their time and attention.

The goal of these models was not to replace in-person forms of church but to convene and revitalize new expressions of community. During the pandemic, the goal was simply to create some semblance of church community for a time of distress and distancing. More recently, the goal has shifted towards inclusive outreach, with digital seen as an accessible entryway into the life of the church.

Yet underlying this experiment in digital ministry was a core assumption: that the conversations we had, that the stories we encountered, would reflect the real, lived experiences of other human beings striving to express the inexpressible.

We inhabit a world where the concept of authority is murky and misunderstood. Still, we know that digital content and conversation from our church is authentic and trustworthy because it emerges through real relationship.

The online prayers and perspectives, the digital stories and the sermons, they work to edify communities because they come from people who we know and trust.

This, incidentally, is the reason why we watch online worship with low quality production value, or why we'll listen to a podcast episode with scratchy audio. Because the content originates from a familiar source, we understand it to be authentic and trustworthy.

For all of the patchy audio and shaky camera feeds, digital ministry carried the church through a pandemic because it brought together real people to express and respond to concrete encounters with a living God.

But what happens when a chatbot can write a sermon as effectively as compelling as the most gifted preacher, in a fraction of the time? What happens when AI-generated words can masquerade as someone's actual creative work?

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Chat GPT should not push us away from ministry in digital spaces. But this technological upheaval should force a reckoning with the purpose, or the ends, of digital ministry.

In an AI-infused world, content creation and consumption cannot be goals, or the ends, of digital ministry. As AI comes to create better content than we can, such an approach will create a vicious cycle: more and more high quality content leads to more individual content consumption, which drives us away from lived encounter with the neighbor. The view, the like, and the retweet can no longer be key performance indicators to the digital minister.

The world is about to be bombarded with technological changes we still cannot understand. All we know for certain is that this new technology will be captivating, addicting, even all-encompassing. In such an environment, digital-only forms of church community will only turn us further inward. Moving forward, the goal of our digital ministry must be to nudge an outward turn from a self-absorbed world.

In this model, digital ministry will offer an inclusive word that pulls us back to human relationship. When done well, digital ministry will become a lifeline that pulls us back to the face-to-face and the analog. In that sense, we have reached the end of digital ministry as a separate alternative to analog, offline church.

As I write this blog post, I am looking ahead to Sunday, May 21st, 2023, when I will preach a sermon on the 17th chapter of John at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Madison. Given how busy I've been lately, maybe it's best that I outsource the creative process.

Or maybe, I'll crack the spine of my Lutheran Study Bible and try to understand what all of John's talk of spiritual unity means for today's church.

Maybe I'll try to find relevant stories from the congregation, or anecdotes of my own experience. I'll likely turn to my usual preaching resources - podcasts from Luther Seminary's WorkingPreacher, and aging Bible commentaries my grandfather left me.

Perhaps I'll even include a joke about Lutherans and coffee. It might take more time. It might not be as clear or succinct as what AI could generate. But it'll be authentic.

Whether watched in-person or on the church's YouTube feed, my prayer is that the sermon may lead to real conversations with actual people. Whether viewed on Facebook or recapped in our email newsletter, my hope is that will tell a specific story of what God is up to in our world. And in the post-pandemic, post-AI church, that must be our purpose.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes" and "The Holy and the Hybrid." Neither were written by a chatbot.

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The church guide to digital content curation

Digital content is becoming more important to hybrid ministry, especially with waning attendance and participation in livestream worship and events. As the world continues to emerge from the pandemic, digital ministry will become increasingly asynchronous, where digital content anchors conversations and communities. We will see fewer attending events, and more reading stories, watching videos, and discussing ideas.

As we observe this shift, the content we share becomes a new form of Christian witness for a digital age, a way to engage and welcome the neighbor.

At first glance, the demands of digital content may seem to be too much for church leaders already struggling to keep up with worship services, staff meetings, council meetings, weddings, funerals, and youth groups. It is certainly true that church leaders do not have time to create enough content to do digital ministry well. There simply aren't enough hours in the week.

So today's church leader must figure out how to balance content creation with curation, or the act of re-packaging and re-distributing content.

We take up the work of curation not just because it saves us time, but because the church already builds considerable original content each week: sermons, children's messages, prayers, bulletins, announcements, and more. Plus, the broader web is filled with thoughtful (and sometimes not-so-thoughtful) faith-based content. The task of the digital minister in 2023 and beyond will be that of a theologically-trained librarian, selecting and surfacing resources for discussion in their community.

An example of email curation from Faith Lead: Book descriptions and reviews

Step one: Create or curate?

High-quality curation begins with the decision that it's more useful to repackage something existing than to create something anew.

Generally, creating new content is more useful in unique circumstances, or when you're seeking to circulate novel perspectives from within the ministry. In most other circumstances, curation will be just as impactful.

You should create new content when:	You should curate existing content when:
You want to lift up the stories and perspectives in your own community	You want to share expert perspectives from highly-regarded thinkers
Your community is facing a unique challenge or opportunity (ie, a special event, or a transition in staff leadership)	Community is facing a challenge or opportunity shared by many others (ie, a global pandemic)
You want to broadly share an idea that is original or brand new to your community (ie, a work of art or a new piece of music written by a parishioner)	You want to broadly share an idea already circulating within your community: from a sermon, from a discussion group, etc.

Applying this logic, curation ought to be more common than creation in most Christian communities.

Churches tend to use similar source material (doctrines and scripture). Most churches face similar challenges (such as pandemics and declining attendance). And all churches have ideas that are shared via preaching and formation.

Once you have decided to curate an idea, the next step is to determine whether to curate internally or externally.

An example of curation on Facebook, sharing a post from the denomination

Step two: Internal vs external curation

To curate something internally is to repackage what your community has already created, reigniting its usefulness by posting to social media, including in a newsletter, or publishing in a blog or podcast.

Internal curation sources	Curation example
Sermon audio	Publish in a podcast feed
Confirmation lesson	Instagram Reel video
Prayers of the people	Social media post

To curate external content is to share a resource created outside of your community. External curation is the act of embedding quality resources within your ministry's digital platforms, like a newsletter or blog.

​External curation sources	Curation example
Short video (ie, from The Bible Project) explaining context behind weekly scripture passage	Embed the video in weekly newsletter
Podcast episode exploring a question of what it means to be the life of faith (ie, an episode of Another Name for Everything with Richard Rohr)	Post to social media channels and encourage comments on a discussion question
Idea shared via Tweet or other social post	Re-tweet or re-post, with a 1-2 sentence description of how it applies (or doesn't apply) in your community

External curation requires some filtering on the part of the digital minister. Before re-sharing an external idea, think about the author's original objective. Was it to inspire a conversation? Attract eyeballs to their profile? Boost attendance for their worship services? You'll also want to make sure that the author is a real (and reputable) thinker. Relevant Magazine made headlines in 2021 when they reported that four out of the five most shared Christian Facebook pages were run not by ministers but by foreign troll farms. As librarians evaluate the reliability, validity, and accuracy of a resource, the digital minister evaluates its integrity.

Then, consider the author's theological commitments, both those that are explicit in the content and those that are implied from the author's institutional affiliation. The thoughtful curator sources information from a broad spectrum of denominational commitments, but is able to filter, contextualize, and editorialize to align with the needs of a specific ministry context.

Step three: Crowdsourcing as curation

Finally, we lose something if the process of creating and curating content becomes a staff or pastor-driven task. Digital content curators should act as crowd-sourcers, collecting stories and soundbites to share across the community. Digital ministry can only be the work of the people if we draw in more perspectives than rostered leaders, paid staff, and professional Christian content creators.

This is why blogs and podcasts are so important to digital ministry.

Curation in a video: Rev. Jim Keat (@ideasdonedaily) demonstrating how to embed Tweets in a YouTube message

These digital sources are perfect for adding written or recorded reflections from parishioners and community members alike. Whether in response to a specific discussion question, or as a reflection to a text or liturgical season, crowdsourced soundbites give your parishioners a voice.

More importantly, they provide the means with which to articulate God's action in their lived experiences. Digital ministry is at its apex not when it leads to content consumption, but co-creation. We do digital ministry effectively not when we invite someone to watch something, but when the content we create together helps someone to reflect at how God is at work in their world.

Content curation resources:

• Digital Literacy Toolkit: How to Create and Curate Faith-Based Artifacts

• InverHills Community College Guide to Evaluating Sources

• ConstantContact: How to Curate Content

• How to Credit Someone Else's Social Media Post

• The Ultimate Guide to Church Blogging

• Dave Daubert on how to curate stories within your congregation

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Ryan Panzer is the author of "The Holy and the Hybrid: Navigating the Church's Digital Reformation," now available wherever books are sold.

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What good is digital ministry if nobody shows up for the livestream?

The trajectory of digital ministry has looked something like this:

According to Google Trends, a handy barometer of cultural trends, there was a meteoric increase in church online searches during the early stages of the pandemic.

Then there was a similarly steep drop-off in searches for church online.

And today, there's almost as much interest in church online as there was before Covid-19 - which is to say, not much interest at all.

If online search data is a leading indicator of cultural trends, online church attendance is a lagging indicator. Some congregations continued to see strong online attendance and participation throughout 2021 and into 2022 as the Delta and Omicron variants spread. It was only in the second half of 2022 that online church viewership for these parishes moved from stable to shrinking.

One of the churches whose churches I occasionally watch saw their online participation drop from hundreds each week (in 2021) to dozens (in early 2022) to low single digits (late 2022).

And as congregations struggled to staff digital production roles for livestreams viewed by few if any people, a question emerged. What good is digital ministry if nobody shows up for the livestream?

In the "Holy and the Hybrid," I argue that hybrid ministry is less about livestreams than it is about inclusion. Combining the online with the offline is not the point. Instead, the goal of hybrid ministry is extending a wide-reaching invitation to life in a Christian community while forming individuals for lives of discipleship and service. We do effective hybrid ministry not when we livestream everything, but when we discern the ideal methods for inviting and equipping using the digital and personal tools available to our community.

If we understand digital ministry in this way, then our attendance metrics are irrelevant. The question we should ask ourselves is not whether we should cancel the livestream moving forward. Instead, the question is how we should best utilize digital tools to be inviting and inclusive.

This might mean pivoting away from streamed services and moving towards more content creation and curation. It might involve developing a set of KPIs that is less focused on viewership and more focused on hospitality.

2022 Barna Group data indicates that Millennials, and particularly non-white Millennials, are more involved with church communities than they were in 2019. 22% of Millennials have even started attending multiple churches, in a pattern of digital church-hopping. As congregations become more fluent in digital content and online forms of hospitality, people are becoming more connected to the church, and to the Gospel message.

And so, as we start a new year of digital ministry, perhaps it is time to discard the 3-year-old playbooks we started to write in March 2020. Maybe it is time to focus less on how many are watching, and focus more on digital ministry practices that are consistently available, original, and hospitable.

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Join Faith+Lead and I for a morning of digital learning focused on online visibility! Registration is now open for this January 26th, 2023 workshop!