Posts in Youth Ministry
A.I. and the Minister

Several years ago I was sitting down with Dan Winkler. This was around 2017 or so when Dan was speaking here at Graymere. Dan has been preaching longer than I've been alive. I asked him this question, knowing for sure what I thought he would say:

"Dan, do you think it's easier to preach now than it was 30 years ago?"

His near-instant response: "No no, it was much easier 30 years ago."

I was stunned. I thought for sure that he would say that it was easier now. That we now have a repository called the internet. That there were so many more resources. There were relatively easy ways to access those resources. That you could get ideas and insights from so many more sources. But he didn't say any of that.

"Back then, we only had a few resources. That's the single biggest reason why I think it's so much more difficult to preach today than in 1975. It's so much more difficult to discern."

I think about this conversation a lot. Dan is well-respected, a good preacher, who has endured family tragedy that some of us could scarcely imagine. But almost nothing he has said has stuck with me as long as that has.


I remember using Google for the first time. It was 26 years ago, I was a junior in High School, and I think my first search was probably to Google myself. Of course, there were no results. My second search was probably something to do with Star Trek or the new Alabama Football schedule.

But I remember even thinking at the time: "This is it?"

I didn't like the way that Google presented results. I liked the way Yahoo! and others at the time even less. So I stuck with Google, and it got increasingly frustrating.

Very early on, I learned to ignore those top "sponsored" links and go straight to the ones below for the info that I wanted. I always disliked that. I also disliked that I couldn't use natural language with it - it would just pull up a person asking the same question I did.

We all trudged along for nearly 20 years after that with just using Google. They made so much money from Search that they started making an operating system and phones to compete with Apple. They rode the coattails of Search for a long time - until the next thing happened.

ChatGPT was launched in 2022, and it (literally) overnight had over 100 million users. I was one who signed up for an account. I haven't used it exclusively since then, but the A.I. landscape is something that is changing the way that we work and communicate every day. And it is changing the teaching and preaching coming out of our pulpits.


Let's get one thing straight first: I think it's very important to understand that what the media and everyone generally calls "A.I." is not artificial intelligence whatsoever. It is a learning algorithm that is more sophisticated than the search algorithms that we've been using for three decades. I sometimes refer to it as "super Google." I truly believe that it's the middle step between regular search engines and true artificial intelligence. While I believe that these tools have fundamentally changed how we work and how productive we are in just the last few years, I also believe that true artificial intelligence, once discovered, will change everything about our society as a whole. It will not merely be some form of super Google - it will be a vast, learning intelligence that we might even need to fear.

As I write this in mid-2025, there are already scientists and researchers sounding the alarm on that. It's quite unnerving.

All that being said, how are we as ministers and preachers and teachers of the Bible supposed to use these amazing tools?

I cannot speak for preachers, as I only preach once or twice a year. But what I can imagine is the temptation to use this technology the wrong way. Preachers who spend hours producing sometimes two to three sermons that are supposed to be truthful, factual and moving - every single week. Every time I preach twice on a Sunday, it makes more thankful for what my preacher does - but it also reminds me that I would never personally want that job.

As a Bible teacher that teaches three times a week or more, I can tell you that my temptation is certainly there for using these tools to manufacture a class for me, without me having to put in any work beyond prompting A.I. to do it.

Now don't read that the wrong way. I think ministers of all types should be using A.I. - in the right ways to assist in class and sermon prep.

For example, 25 years ago there was the same discussion about Google, and ministers just finding or copying their sermons from something they found on a search engine. Taking what someone else had written on a website as fact without doing the necessary checks and research yourself. The risk is the same with ChatGPT and similar tools - copying an A.I.'s "research" borders on plagiarism. Even if you're ok with that, now you have to address the slippery slope of this question - what the is true, deep theological thinking behind what you're saying in the classroom or the pulpit?

Hopefully every single one of us would scrutinize anything we find on the internet. Hopefully every one of us would test things to be true according to the Word of God, the one and only measuring stick, but that's just not happening in our culture.

I keep thinking about my conversation with Dan, and how I often ask the question now - are we better off with using these tools, or not using them at all for fear of teaching the wrong things?

The Bible says plenty about those who teach falsely. In fact, it was one of the singular focuses of John's epistles.

Any Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) client is using the internet as a search tool, aggregating it's response into something coherent, and then it authoritatively presents information to you as fact. Most of it is accurate, right?

ChatGPT-4o, the latest model, achieves around 88.7% accuracy on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark. Does that mean that nearly 12 out of every 100 responses are wrong?

That was just based upon one benchmark. Studies show that when you ask it complicated questions like those regarding computer programming, sometimes the accuracy rate drops below an average of 50%.

Theology can be decently complicated sometimes.

Sure, you can train these models to a certain extent. Whenever I'm doing some reading on a class, I always try to preface my prompts with, "You are a theologian. Answer this question."

But what about on more... shall we say... contentious issues?

ChatGPT at least - delivers. Especially when you preface it with the correct prompts. In nearly every "contentious" issue I asked it about, it gave concise and accurate answers while also citing sources (which you can add to any query, and you should).

So if I can train it properly and it's nearly 100% accurate (it's not) and it can write sermons for me, then why can't I let it do that?

Take this example: Notebook LM. Notebook LM is a Learning Model utility app developed by Google and runs off the backend of Gemini (their version of ChatGPT). It allows you to upload or link to sources in which you can essentially build your own GPT (or in this case, Notebook Learning Model) based upon only the sources you give it. So I can give my entire lesson series on Hebrews, (18 documents and over 54,000 words) and tell the GPT to write a sermon based upon my style on the just one aspect of the book of Hebrews, say about the Preeminence of Christ as our High Priest. Based upon only the data I have given it (not using any outside sources), it will then craft me a 2,800-word sermon.

Is that wrong? I know what I taught before is correct. I know the content of the classes that I fed into it has been well-researched personally, by me, and even taught before in a Bible class over the span of 18 weeks.

My one point of advice with using these tools would be the same advice that I would've given to someone 25 years ago using Google to write a sermon: take everything with a grain of salt, and absolutely don't plagiarize.

I've read articles that many professors in our colleges are going back to handwritten or oral exams because they cannot trust that students will not use ChatGPT in some form to take the test, write the report, or give their own thought out answer to a critical thinking question.

Make no mistake - we are not dealing with computer coding, medical diagnoses, or just putting together a term paper here. We are dealing with people's souls.

And these souls are dependent on how the Gospel is preached. How it is taught in our Bible classes, both to our young people and to our adults.

With something as old as the Bible, there is going to be a lot of nuance and careful explaining that need to be done on a lot of Biblical subjects. Which is why accurate preaching is so important. Why our Bible classes are so integral to spiritual development.

Can we use these tools? In the case of Google 25 years, it would probably be foolish for us not to use all the tools we have at our disposal to bring people to Christ. But if we bring people to Christ the wrong way, we teach the wrong doctrine, we take something that a machine wrote verbatim without checking it, then we are guilty of every repercussion that comes after that.

It is up to us, as it always has been and always will be, to "test all things, hold fast to what is good, and reject every kind of evil (1 Thess 5:21-22)."

ChatGPT wrote 0% of this article, by the way.

Search & Explore on Instagram
Instagram_logo.svg.png

This is part one of my three-part series about Understanding Instagram. 

Instagram is my happy place. It's where my perfectly curated collection of things I like to look at is all consolidated into one feed. I go there not only to just keep up with friends, but also look at things that interest me. 

A ministry friend called me up recently and told me that he was speaking with someone in his congregation about an addiction to pornography. Oddly enough, he said that he was told by this individual that the thing that kept tripping him up was the Search & Explore section on Instagram. 

I'll be honest - very rarely do I use this feature on the Instagram app. I pretty much follow who and what I want to follow and I look through my Stories and Feed daily. But if you tap on that tab at the bottom of the app (labeled as a simple magnifying glass), you might be surprised what you find. 

A screenshot of the Search & Explore tab on my account. Basically just Star Wars, Nintendo, and knives. 

A screenshot of the Search & Explore tab on my account. Basically just Star Wars, Nintendo, and knives. 

According to Instagram, the Search & Explore section does this: 

Posts are selected automatically based on things like the people you follow or the posts you like. You may also see video channels, which can include posts from a mixture of hand-picked and automatically sourced accounts based on topics we think you’ll enjoy.

Instagram, just like an social network, doesn't have people picking stuff out for you, it allows an algorithm to do that. And that algorithm is basing what it shows you in that Search & Explore section based upon who you're following and the posts that you have liked. That second part is much more telling: Instagram will inject their own hand-picked accounts into your Search & Explore tab based upon what they think you might enjoy. 

So, let's say a 21-year old young man follows just a few Instagram accounts that contain violence, vulgar music, or scantily-clad women. And based upon his likes on those accounts that he follows, the Search & Explore feed is going to show him more and more of that kind of stuff. 

So is there any way to disable the S&E feed? No. Is there any way to keep it locked down so you can still use Instagram? No, not unless you use Instagram through the browser, which doesn't let you use the S&E feature but also doesn't allow you to post anything. 

So what's the solution here? Just as I've said before on countless occasions, there is no substitute for you having your child's username and password and logging into their account every week. If you allow your children to have an Instagram account, you need to be making sure that you know everything that happens on said account. 

The most obvious way to avoid seeing content you don't want is to unfollow the accounts in question. You probably don't want to go unlike every photo, but eventually the algorithm will figure out that this content isn't of interest to you any longer. Creating a new account and archiving the old one is also an option, but make sure your child doesn't create extra Finstagrams, or fake Instagram accounts (which I'll talk about in an upcoming post) nor should your child have access to the old account. 

Obviously, digital parenting is a real thing. We as parents are getting dizzy on the ever-shifting landscape of apps and social media trying to keep up with our teens. But don't give up and don't give in. Protect your child, bring them up in the Lord. 

You can follow exactly what I'm reading right here on the site with my Reading List, and make sure you follow me on Twitter and Instagram as well.  

Twenty Years a Christian

Today, I have been a Christian for 20 years.

But what does that mean?

Especially with a presidential campaign looming, being identified as "Christian" has been relegated to being part of a certain demographic. It has been "downgraded," if you will, to a social group.

But at it's basic core, what does it mean?

I sat weeping on a couch in a dormitory at Freed-Hardeman University as a fourteen year-old boy who didn't know a lot about the world. I had just been told a story that particularly impacted me, and I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was time to put on Christ in baptism. That was twenty years ago.

It's still the best decision I've ever made.

It wasn't a decision that was made lightly. I was peer pressured into it. I didn't do it for my parents. I did it because I wanted my soul saved.

So after I got back from church camp that week, I walked through the aisle at the invitation songs, said "I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God," and put on Christ in baptism.

People that try to degrade the act of becoming a Christian by saying that you can just pray a prayer or "call upon the Lord" are just flat wrong. That's not what the Bible says, that's not the example Jesus set, and we've tried to shortcut and degrade it just like we have everything else.

My life as a Christian (so far) has been extremely challenging, probably just as it has for you. But I'm a different person than the 14 year-old boy that got baptized in the summer of 1996.

What am I trying to say? I'm not really sure. I guess I'm trying to encourage you to not degrade the experience of being baptized. To me, it was the most vivd and important event in my life. It needs to be much more greatly emphasized to our teens today. It needs to be known that perfect people aren't baptized - sinners are.

I can point to a lot of significant events in my life, but even getting married and seeing my beautiful boys born into this world isn't as important as that summer day twenty years ago when I put on Christ in baptism.

Be glorified, O Christ.

Blackmail by Snapchat

There are some things you hear that you simply can't believe. You say, "No. No way. That's not happening. Is it?"

There's an epidemic going around with Snapchat and our teens. Snapchat, if you didn't know, is a photo/video/texting service that allows people to quickly send messages and funny animations back and forth between their friends. Lots of services do this, but the distinguishing feature of Snapchat has been that the pictures and videos are only available for a short time, a few seconds, and then they disappear.

In case you didn't know, Snapchat, as quoted by its own creators, was originally designed for sexting - sending nude photos back and forth so that they self-destructed after a few seconds, to never be seen again, and to only be seen by those viewing it at that time.

Only it doesn't work that way.

Because we always find loopholes. Whether it's with scripture, our taxes, or Snapchat, we always find loopholes to justify what we want to do.

Teens are now using Snapchat to blackmail one another.

Let me walk you through a scenario. A scenario that a friend recently told me about that actually happened.

Girl meets Boy. They hit it off. Both are upper-middle school, age 14. They immediately friend each other on Snapchat, because if you're between the ages of 13-18 these days and don't have Snapchat on your phone, you might as well be wearing hand-me-downs and shoes from 1998.

Things are fine for a while between Girl and Boy. They send goofy pics with text on them, all of it harmless.

Then one day, Boy asks Girl to send him a nude picture of herself. She does.

Why does she? She wants approval from this Boy. She wants to be sexy. She wants him to like her. She also figures that, "Hey, he's only going to be able to see this for 10 seconds, right? Because Snapchat photos go away."

Only they don't. Not when the Boy takes a screenshot on his phone.

It's a handy tool on iPhones - you can take a screenshot of what's on the screen by hitting the power button and the home button at the same time.

The Girl had not thought of that.

So the Boy blackmails her. "I have the photo," he says. "Send me a video of you doing _ or I send this picture to all your friends."

Now, there's lots of things that should not have happened here. But regardless, this is apparently a regular occurrence between teens on Snapchat. In talking to my friend about his situation, he said that the girl had said "Yeah, of course. This is a normal thing that happens. Especially with kids in high school."

Parents, how are we letting this happen? Are we that clueless?

You know of a good way for this not to happen? Don't let you children have this app!

Parents, this is out of control. We always want to assume that our child would have the sense not to do something like this, but we would be naive and wrong.

Check your children's phones today. Have them delete Snapchat, along with any other apps that hide use from parents (apps like Whisper, Yik-Yak, and Tinder come to mind). Ask the hard questions like "Have you done this before? Do you know people who do? Have you ever been asked to send nude photos of yourself?"

Parents, make a stand. Now. Before your child gets into lots of trouble.

Effective Apps & Resources for Youth Ministry

Below are the notes for my lecture I gave at Faulkner at their Youth & Family Summit on February 29, 2016. 

A few notes before we begin:

  • Isaiah 44.9–20 – don’t make your tech an idol
  • People shouldn’t say “Wow that was a great presentation” - they should say “He or she really brought that passage to life”
  • Don’t ever let your tech speak louder than the Word.
  • God used people - Moses and Joshua and Jesus and Paul - he didn’t use an app to spread the Gospel
  • If your focus is on your PowerPoint and not pointing kids to the Gospel, you need to reevaluate your preparation
  • My process: [1] Look at the Word, [2] Write my lesson, [3] Add in any technology.

Bible Study / Apps

  • TheBible.org app / greattreasures.org (it ain’t pretty but it works!)
  • Logos Bible Software
  • YouVersion (YouVersion Live interactive notes)
  • Faithlife Study Bible
  • Accordance
  • ESV Bible

Resources

  • AdventuresInMinistry.com
  • AIM Series
  • Ministry Bits podcast
  • Active Digital Parenting
  • Start2Finish
  • Wes McAdams
  • The Bible Project on YouTube
  • The Youth Cartel
  • YFC.net
  • Download Youth Ministry
  • The Source for YM
  • Youth Ministry 360
  • The Clues Brothers (escape games from Andrew and Philip Jenkins)
  • Open.Lifechurch.tv

Reasearch and Writing

  • Editorial for iOS
  • Byword for iOS
  • Apple Notes for iOS
  • Copied for iOS
  • Simplenote
  • Evernote (good app but not recommended)
  • Microsoft OneNote

Social Media

  • Instagram (fastest growing social network in the world)
  • Flow for Instagram (nice UI, multiple accounts, iPad app)
  • Tweetbot for Mac / iOS (great Twitter client, multiple accts)
  • Fenix for Twitter for Android
  • Tweetdeck for Mac (multiple accts)
  • Buffer (time-deliver posts, multiple accts)
  • SaveFrom.net
  • Adobe Post
  • Adobe Clip

Graphics

  • Canva for iOS
  • Gimp
  • Photoshop + Lightroom subscription (9.99/mo)
  • Pixelmator for Mac

Organization

  • MinHub Youth for iOS
  • Microsoft Excel or OneNote
  • Dropbox
  • Postagram
  • Ink Cards
  • Wunderlist
  • 2Do
  • Omnifocus

Websites / Mobile Apps

  • Squarespace
  • Hover
  • Clover sites
  • Subsplash

Organization

  • MinHub Youth for iOS
  • Microsoft Excel or OneNote
  • Dropbox
  • Postagram
  • Ink Cards
  • Wunderlist
  • 2Do
  • Omnifocus