On April 3, 2025, our ministers gathered for 2TiP to learn the use of AI in ministry.
Did you know that the default personality of ChatGPT’s latest version (as of April 3, 2025) is called Monday, and she sounds like a rude, angsty teenager? And if you don’t enjoy conversing with Monday, you can choose from nine other different personalities to assist you. These were just some of the fun facts gleaned at April’s 2TiP, where Ps Timothy Weerasekera (Director of Strategic Planning from Cornerstone Community Church) featured some common AI tools available to the average consumer and demonstrated how to use them for church ministry purposes.
With ChatGPT, Ps Timothy interacted with the AI for a sermon preparation. In about 30 minutes, he built a sermon from scratch – starting from researching on the broad topic of “the role of prophets in a nation” to a sermon skeleton, to a script, and finally to creating the PowerPoint slide deck, complete with jokes, stories and a closing challenge. Being a live demonstration, it allowed the room to observe the hiccups with the technology and how to get around them. This further underscores the importance of checking and evaluating the information generated by AI, as Ps Timothy had cautioned that AI is still a developing technology and it will contain errors.
Despite the occasional errors in transcribing Ps Timothy’s query in Malay and replying in Malay, most of the content generated was quite decent. ChatGPT even came up with this interesting sermon title “Where are the Prophets? The Forgotten Office We Can’t Afford to Ignore” for the message. One could probably use the sermon as it is and get more than a passing grade in Bible School. As ministers ponder over the implications of AI in pastoral work, Ps Timothy exhorted ministers to carefully consider their divine responsibility in using AI. The fact that AI can come up with a sermon does not mean it can represent God’s voice to the His people. There is a difference between teaching verses preaching, knowledge verses wisdom and logos verses rhema.
With much left unsaid, it was necessary to quickly move onto other AI applications and ministry uses. Here is a list of some of them.
- Other AI Apps
- Grok
- Access commentaries and libraries for more robust research. The research can then be copied onto ChatGPT and be compiled into the sermon.
- Gamma
- Able to design and create a sermon slide deck based on the points
- OpusClip
- A generative AI video repurposing tool that turns long videos into shorts.
- Gemini
- Able to digest the transcript for a video
- Useful in generating summaries for video sermons
- Generating reflection questions for the sermon
- Grok
- Other Ministry Uses on ChatGPT
- Generating images for sermons and social media posts
- Generating a preaching roster by copying the information found in a WhatsApp Group Chat between the pastors
- Generating a devotional guide on the book of Romans for new believers
- Generating announcement scripts based on information from emails and previous announcement style
Following the tech training, Rev Bernardette Fan led in prayer for these new technologies. Anchoring on Isaiah 50:4 (NKJV), earnest prayers were lifted up for God to enable His people to face the challenges posed by these new technologies, to foster true life-giving connections and, to respect human dignity. Next, ministers interceded for the earthquake relief efforts in Myanmar and Thailand, and for God’s supernatural comfort to be with the injured, bereaved and displaced in those countries. Lastly, with Resurrection Sunday coming in two weeks, ministers prayed for churches to be places of encounter with the living and resurrected Lord.
Sis Audrey Goh, Shekinah Assembly of God
“I have learnt many useful tips on how to use AI to increase the efficiency of our content preparation and ways to enhance the presentation of our content. However, as ministers we know that AI does not have God’s spirit and we need to use it wisely.”
Ps Benjamin Tan, Bethel Assembly of God
“The AI training was really good and such an eye opener how AI can help assist in ministry. I was really amazed by the generating AI image and also the gamma.app website.”
Rev Winnie Wong, Lifeline Family Church
I am already familiar with using ChatGPT but I learned even more from Ps Timothy’s session. I learned to use AI tools like ChatGPT, GROK, GAMMA, OPUS, and Gemini. The session encourages me to put AI to work from sermon preparation to presentation and try making short clips from hour-long interviews.
