AI Church Toolkit

In our first interview episode, we sit down with Fr. Lorenzo Lebrija, Executive Director of the TryTank Research Institute, to discuss faithful innovation, the creation of Ask Cathy, the challenges and promises of AI, and how the church can thoughtfully engage this rapidly changing landscape.

Topics covered:
  • Introduction to Ask Cathy: An AI resource trained in the Episcopal tradition to assist congregations, especially small ones.
  • Plans for future Cathy updates, including liturgy support, pastoral resources, and administrative help.
  • Using AI to strengthen—not replace—human relationships in ministry.
  • How AI can support spiritual growth through journaling, faith coaching, and pastoral care prompts.
  • Discerning faithful innovation: How Tri-Tank evaluates which ideas to pursue.
  • The polarization of attitudes toward AI and why thoughtful church engagement matters.
  • Ethical considerations: bias in AI training, capitalism’s impact, and the church’s role in shaping AI ethically.
  • Practical advice for using AI tools to support inclusion, learning, and community life.

Homework:
  • Reflect: How could AI tools like Ask Cathy support your ministry or your congregation’s pastoral care needs?
  • Explore: Visit askcathy.ai to see how Cathy works.
  • Experiment: Try prompting your AI tool to offer more inclusive or diverse perspectives and reflect on the results.
  • Prepare: Think about ways you can frame AI conversations with your congregation if you haven’t already started.

Resources:

Creators and Guests

Host
The Rev. Mercedes Clements
With a unique blend of expertise in technology and ministry, Mercedes Clements brings a forward-thinking approach to her work in the Church. Before entering ordained ministry, Mercedes built a successful career in IT management, strategic systems design, and compliance. Now serving as an Episcopal priest, she draws on her technical background to explore innovative ways technology, including AI, can support and enhance ministry. As the co-host of the AI Church Toolkit Podcast, Mercedes combines her passion for faith, systems thinking, and collaboration to equip church leaders with practical tools for navigating the evolving digital landscape while staying rooted in the mission of the Church.
Host
The Rev. Peter Levenstrong
Peter Levenstrong is the Associate Rector at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, a vibrant congregation known for its liturgical creativity, intergenerational worship, and radical hospitality. With a passion for blending ancient traditions with innovative practices, Peter is dedicated to helping church leaders navigate the complexities of ministry in the digital age. As a co-host of the AI Church Toolkit Podcast, Peter believes in the opportunities created by AI to deepen, not replace, human relationships. His other projects include Living Stories Sermons, a participatory preaching model that is all about human connection and communion; yet much of the content is made possible by the use of AI. Grounded in his commitment to community and inclusion, Peter believes that when thoughtfully applied, technology can deepen relationships and expand the Church’s mission in transformative ways.
LR
Producer
Loren Richmond Jr.

What is AI Church Toolkit?

A podcast on AI and the Church

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Foreign. Mhm.

>> Peter: Lorenzo, welcome to the podcast. So thank you for

having me.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Good to be here.

>> Peter: Yeah. So, uh, as we've given you

a preview, we're. This is our first time doing an

interview and we're going to keep on doing

interviews, uh, in our future episodes. And we

thought it would be fun to start off with a

standard question, uh, for all

our interview guests.

What sci Fi world are we

living into in this present moment of AI

development? And why do you think so? And how should we feel

about it?

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Wow. All right, let's just go right to the deep end. Know

like, hey, how was your summer? Or how. Any plans for vacation?

Lorenzo, let's just go. Okay. And where is God in that,

Lorenzo? And what theologies, three theologies are you quoting from?

All right, all right. No, you see, I think

it's fundamentally all of us

approach the future in different ways.

And at the Institute for the Future, they teach you that

it's very important to recognize this because there are some who

see a future that is going to be

better and there are some who see the future that

they're afraid of. And so they, they have that

fear and they're reluctant to make any

changes. And it is interesting because

it's, it's kind of part of our character.

So I'm leaning it, uh, should become,

as no one listening to this is going to be like, oh my

God, that is so surprising. Lorenzo leans towards the

optimistic future. I see a future where

technology is helping us, where technology will

help us reach breakthroughs in medicine

that we, we were probably like centuries away

from, from reaching without it. Uh, I think that

technology will help us actually reverse

some of the climate change problems that we've ourselves have cost.

I think the climb, all of these things. So I, uh, lean

towards a future that is better

because of the technology and that actually to make it a

little theological, I do believe that because of

that, it. I, I can, I can make a

case. I think that this, that technology

as we see it is very much part of God's

creation. That it is not apart from God's creation,

but it is part of God's creation. The same way that

once upon a time God created a tree. That

these are just parts of God's creation. That it just so happens

that this is when we have discovered it,

but that these are part of what God put into the

earth so that we could live in it and uh,

and have lives that are full.

>> Peter: So we were techno utopia than techno

dystopia. I like that. Absolutely. Um,

are there particular Sci fi worlds like, uh,

you know, I don't know her. IRobot, whatever else you think

of.

>> Mercedes: Oh, you want a movie reference? He wants a movie

reference.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay. Uh, what mine would be

again, very much related to what I just said. My,

with one major caveat, but mine would be

Star Trek. I've always liked Star Trek because in Star Trek they're

always looking, uh, out to meet new people to,

to sort of discover new worlds. But they, they have

the Prime Directive that you don't mess with them that. So they're always looking

out for the best interest of whomever they're meeting with. Right. So.

And they're literally going to the edges of the universe, which

I think we as a church are always called to go to the edges of where

society is to meet God there. And,

and that's the one caveat though is that they do

a very good job of taking any

sort of deity out of, of the human experience

as on board. And I think that that would,

I, I see the opposite. I think that technology will actually

help us get closer to God. The, the further studies

that are being done on quantum mechanics and quantum physics

I think are getting us closer to, to the point where

we're going to get to, to the mystery that is

God. Not, uh, that we will understand it. We will

never understand the mystery that is God. But I think it's getting us closer to

understanding that they're not separate again, that they're part of it.

So I think that in that future we will still

have spirituality of robust spirituality

and religion, uh, in our case Christianity as part of

it.

>> Mercedes: And that was always part of Gene Roddenberry's image

for the show anyway. Right. That he

wanted to have this best possible

future answer.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Very candide. The best of all possible worlds.

>> Mercedes: Yes.

>> Peter: We have a history on this podcast of cultural,

uh, references being shared that go over my

head. And I unfortunately never watched Star Trek

either, although I've read enough about it to

get what you're talk out. I know about data and all that. Um,

but I always just found it like by the time

I was like interested in it, it was, there was

just too much to like feel like I could

commit to catch up and.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, so you're a Star wars guy is what I'm hearing.

>> Peter: Oh yeah.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Generally, have you noticed it's either Star wars or Star Trek where people

tend to go. I'm a. Although Star wars, by the way,

is also a very positive view of the future where they're.

>> Peter: I mean if I were to start one of Them now as an

adult. If I could redo my

upbringing, I would be a Star Trek person because

I'm more interested in that, like uh,

more hard science, more philosophical approach.

Um, but, uh, yeah, it's just,

uh, I haven't found the time to go

back.

>> Mercedes: Y'all are too self limiting there. Because

I am all of the above and

many of the authors and producers in between.

It's all right. Yes.

Yep. Okay.

>> Peter: We need to move on. Sorry for taking that thing back.

>> Mercedes: Yeah, I know. No, no, but it is funny. We love

to see what references Peter Desit hasn't heard of

before. So

we, uh, did sheltered. Um, I wonder if Ask

Kathy has ever heard of Teddy Ruxpin.

So that's who

we go next is, uh,

to talk about the project.

Ask Kathy.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. So let me. For, for anyone who's

listening, who's not familiar with what Ask Kathy is, and we just,

from here on we can just refer to, yes, I will say

her and Kathy. Uh, because those

two. I just want to begin by saying those two were intentional

choices. One is that Kathy stands for

churchy answers that help you. And two

is that Kathy is on

purpose a woman's name. Because AI,

the AI field is so filled with, with

bros, with just tech bros and men, that it

was important to me to make sure that we lift up

a, uh, name of a woman that could be, that there could be a

female name that goes associated with it. So

what Kathy is, is a

robot. Basically. It's a bot that has all

this knowledge, uh, that we have put in it. So the

way to explain it for those that know a little bit about artificial

intelligence is we built Kathy on top of

ChatGPT. So whatever the latest version of

ChatGPT will be is where Kathy will be sort of

nestled. But on top of that of ChatGPT,

we put, for all intents and purposes, it's a rag system, but we put, think

of it as a bookcase. And in that bookcase we

put, uh, all this data

that is about the Episcopal tradition, the

Anglican tradition. And we said you can

use all of the data, all of the knowledge

from ChatGPT. However, if at any

time you encounter a disconnect

with the data that is on this bookshelf, then this

bookshelf is your primary source. You do not ever

contradict this bookshelf. This is it. This is the one that you want

to go through. And on there we put theologians, we put the Book of Common

Prayer, we put the blue books from the General Convention of the Episcopal

Church, we put all these things so that

Kathy could have all these answers

readily available. Kathy, uh, is not

meant to replace a minister. Kathy will

not, like, absolve you of your sins. But

Kathy can certainly offer you the prayers from the prayer

book that you can pray yourself as a

human being, uh, reaching out to God for forgiveness of

any sin that you may have. So that's what she can do. Uh,

so we're very much a sacramental

liturgical people, right? So she doesn't do that, but she can

help you create a good liturgy. She can help you create

a sacrament or a ritual for something in

your life that you want to, uh, add significance

to. And the reason why we created Cathy,

because you can sit there and say like, well, that's kind of cute, right? Why do we need

a Cathy? Is because when you look at the reality of the Episcopal church,

there are 6,757 congregations in

the Episcopal Church, of which something like

2200 have 25 or fewer people on

a Sunday. And of those

425 never see a

priest. Even the worship is lay led.

So for these small congregations where there isn't a

seminary trained person, we wanted to create, remember,

churchy answers that help you. We wanted to create a

resource that one of those lay leaders could go to and type

in like, hey, listen, uh, Peter's a member of

my congregation and his uncle just died. I'm not wishing that

your uncle dies. Please don't. But you know, his uncle

died. I'm going to go visit him this afternoon. What do I do?

I've not been trained in pastoral care. What do I do? Kathy is smart

enough to tell you, here are some prayers from the prayer book. Here are some

scriptural readings. Here's even maybe a song like that

might just bring some comfort. But since she's also been trained on

sermons, she has the pastoral sensibility enough to

say, and by the way, remember that M. The

most important thing that Peter wants is for you to be

present. You don't have to say the right words. Just

you being there is enough. And that should, we

hope, give confidence to this lay leader that they

can go out and do this work, be a good Christian

leader as part of this small congregation that may not have

a priest and still be able to sort of

share the good news in that way. So Kathy can do that.

Uh, we have a. That was Kathy

2.0 is the one that's out in the world right now is AskCathy

AI. That's version 2.0. In the very near

future that we're Recording this, you know, in late April

2025 in the near future, we will

have Kathy version 3.0, which will have a lot

more data that will be part of it, including

videos. So all of the videos, for example, that the

Episcopal Parish Network has done as part of their

webinars, including the one that you all did together.

Right. All of those videos will become part of a knowledge base.

The conversations that Bishop, former Presiding Bishop

Curry did about, uh, reparations

and racial relations in the Episcopal Church, that

will become part of her, her knowledge base. All the

articles from the Episcopal News Service will become part

of her knowledge base. So she will have so much more knowledge

so that at any time any lay leader or

ordained person can go to Kathy and say, like, oh, what do I do about

this? And Kathy will be able to have even more knowledge. And

we're hoping in the not too distant future with it to

also get given, created, uh, so that it can

actually reduce some administrative burdens

of the parish. Everything from helping you produce the

parochial report to uh,

uh, maybe putting together a bulletin. You just say, here's my one

license number and I need an eight page bulletin. These are

the songs that I want. Or you pick the songs. I don't, I don't have a

musician. Just pick the songs and we'll go with it.

Uh, and out comes a PDF that you just

photocopy. The goal being that even if you do

have a priest that's very part time, it's better to

use that time for them to be with their parishioners than it

is to be doing administrative tasks. So

that's my, that's my talk on.

>> Mercedes: Cathy, all of that.

And I have to tell you, you know what my first question to ask

Kathy was? It's the question I always get from

newcomers. And I left it completely. So

I put, gave it no context whatsoever. I just

said, do I stand or do I

kneel? And

what did she say?

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I'm m curious.

>> Mercedes: Uh, she quoted one of, uh,

our source books on how,

uh, you really have the option to stand or kneel

based on your preferences and your uh,

abilities. And even though it says sometimes

that you have to do it, really, you know, there's only

certain places where the

Book of Common Prayer really

officially says you should be kneeling.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So there you go.

>> Peter: Well, yay for Kathy,

right? Well, yeah. One of the things that I

am really excited about with this

is the possibility

to uh, assist and augment in

that sort of technology, uh, term,

um, the ability for

folks who maybe haven't spent a Lot of

time in seminary or studying how to do

pastoral care, to still be able to show up and be there

for each other and offer pastoral care, you know, because as

you said, as Kathy says, the most

important thing is to just be present. But

sometimes, you know, often people will have questions like, okay,

what do I do about this thing that's going on

in, uh, going on in my life? And, you know, how do I

wrestle with this? And is there a scripture that will relate or all these

other things? And, you know, it's. It's

helpful to have someone who is,

uh, more trained in that sort of thing, um,

there with you. But, you know, the

priest's times are limited. And it would be so great

if, you know, parishioners can be present for

each other and also ask these sort of questions to

Kathy and get answers from it about,

um, you know, these particular questions. But the main

thing is being present for each other. And I

think that just increases our ability to do that and show up for each

other, by the way. Also, um, I. I'm gonna try

to stick to saying it for my own personal

reasons. Um, I may slip

up. We've talked in previous episodes about how I feel

strongly about bots should be. It's, um. But

anyways, uh, yeah, I'll. I'm sure I'll make mistakes

in that.

>> Mercedes: After. After that episode, I renamed

all my custom GPTs to

be random, uh, car names just.

Just so they didn't have human names.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: There you go. Like, you will not be a human. You will

be a Focus. A Ford Focus.

>> Mercedes: That, that. That had to do, though. Uh, again,

with. As we were recording, struggling with the

AI over there that everybody knows the name of

across the room and realizing

how. How interactive I've gotten with that

one. And, um, so

it. It was kind of revealing in our

conversation.

>> Peter: A, L, uh, E, X, A. I have a toddler, so I spell

everything out when I want it to be heard.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I was talking to a sociologist who says, actually the

opposite should be what we should be doing. We should be encouraging

people to treat. Because of the fact that

we're going to. Because of the fact you can use natural language

questioning into a. Into a GPT. We

should. We should as much as possible, treat

them as a person. Not so much because we believe that they

are a person, because the amount of

interaction that we're going to do with it is going to only continue

to grow. And if we're not doing it with id, which is

responding in sort of human way, we might

lose some of our own Ability when we are with

other humans, to have that. So if. I mean,

I always. I, uh, always say, you know, thank you and please

in my. In my prompts and queries. I think the number one reason

is because if they do become the overlords, I want them to remember me as, oh, he

was. He was a nice guy. He was always polite. But I think

also because that's what I do with people, and I

don't want to get out of that habit that if I put a

question in an email or something, that I always say thank you, please,

whatever it might be. So I tend to agree with that part, which

is think of them as. I think most of

us have the ability to still be able to say, like, I can think of it as

a human being. But I also recognize that Kathy is not

a human being. Right. She has no conscious. She is a

predictable machine. And actually she's all. That's all

she's doing. Right. Predicting the next best word to use.

So I do think that I have still the

consciousness to. To separate those things. But.

>> Mercedes: Yeah, yeah, well, and then.

>> Peter: I mean, I understand those reasons as well. Um, Yeah, I don't know. Let's

see.

>> Mercedes: Oh, no, it's okay. Because, uh, the other. The other perspective

because, um, we use please and thank you in

the house because I was raised in the

south, and that is

very well ingrained in me. And so when we

are speaking to the devices in the house, we

say please and thank you because our children are listening.

And so it is, you know, also

that part of, uh. It's just kind of ingrained

in, uh, my culture.

So. But there was. It was somewhere in

the conversation we were realizing that some of it was

funny. Yeah.

>> Peter: There could probably be a theological paper written

about Paul saying not to eat meat

for, you know, the fear of distracting, uh,

others from the faith and, uh, relating that to

this very topic.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You know, I do believe, though,

just this week, earlier this week, I think there was an article in

Harvard Business Review that talked about the top

uses so far in 2025 of

ChatGPT. And it seems that the number

one use was that was for, like, deep,

therapeutic conversations. And people are

like, is that going to replace therapists or something? Well, if you think

about it, that'll never happen. The humanity, the

human touch. A, uh, human can certainly do

a gazillion things.

>> Peter: Ah.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: About a relationship that a bot cannot.

Especially because it. Although we name it artificial

intelligence, we all know that it is not. It's a predictability

machine, though. However, we also

know from studies that have been done for a long

time that there's this, uh,

it. That in parasocial

relationships that are not symmetrical, you can still

gain benefit. So the reason why,

when Pope Francis died, people cried

was because even though they never met pop Pope Francis,

they still saw him as a moral leader. And they learned

from Pope Francis that's, that's a completely

asymmetrical relationship because they never gave

anything back to Pope Francis, but they were still able to

learn and, and gain that from it. So the same thing in a

therapeutic conversation that someone may be having with

a bot about religion, about something that perhaps

they may never want to discuss with the priest for fear of embarrassment.

Right. Uh, if you're a, uh, if you're a young person in

rural Arkansas, you may not want to go to your local priest

and say, hey, I'm having these feelings that I might be gay.

What do I do with it? And is God okay with

it? They can still gain a lot of

benefit from having conversation with a bot that is well trained, well

put together, that's able to tell you this is how the

Episcopal Church sees it, you're a gift of God, all these other

things. And they're able. So they will receive benefit from

it. Even if it's completely asymmetrical. They're not

giving anything back to Cat, to Kathy in that,

you know.

>> Mercedes: And I'd even take it a little further, uh, as

I'm thinking about it, that

um, a, ah, lot of

therapeutic practices and techniques

now. You know, there's usually a book that goes with it

and there's often a workbook that goes with

it. And if the person buys

the book, buys the workbook and chooses to

work through the

workbook, which is drawing out

is basically a script on paper,

then that one would not be

critiqued if that's the

resource that they have. Uh, if that same

script is in AI

but now you're interacting with it

via your keyboard,

there is actually a pretty fine line there,

um, in terms of seeing how it's

kind of evolving, assuming that it has

again, the healthy resources behind

it.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And keep in mind, even for example, a journal,

we all know there's tons of research that

tells you the therapeutic benefits of journaling.

Uh, and that's an asymmetrical relationship.

You're not giving anything back to the book, but you're able to what

therapy. Right now we're veering totally off

into what we're talking about. But therapy is really about you

processing. And you can process by typing, by

talking, uh, so if this allows you

an ability to process, then certainly the

therapeutic effects will be there.

>> Mercedes: Okay, I'm going to go really old now. This is just a

random, uh, theory I've had, and I'm pretty sure somebody

else has written an article about it. But it occurred to

me at some point that before

electricity, it was a

regular activity for family members to sit

down in the evening and write a letter

to their other family members processing

the day. And you, you know, you even get these lines

in there like, oh, the, the candle is burning out.

I'll have to end here for now. I'll pick this up

tomorrow. And so again, it

becomes a, it's not real time.

But in this way, in order to stay in

touch with family, the person was having

to process their day enough to

put it in language,

paraphrase it, get it shorter. Um, and

so that's always been kind of an interesting thing to

me to think about what we actually lost in that

letter writing and, uh, that I think

journaling picks up on that. So

now I'm gonna have to ponder it.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We are developing right now an AI faith

coach. And so some people, they're like, wait,

what? Say what, what, what? And what we've done, right? So

the general convention, a couple of conventions ago, there was

a task force on faith formation and they wrote

an amazing report that takes

in a, ah, lot of data. But basically what it

does is it puts together sort of four

archetypes of someone's faith where you, where you can be

on a spectrum. Not that one side is better or one archetype is

better than the other, but these are just four different. But

by placing you in one, we kind of

sort of know now what are some of the steps that you can take if

you wanted to go deeper, right? And ultimately,

theoretically, what you want to do is end up in a place where you're sharing your

faith with others, that you're so impacted by your faith that you're

sharing it with others. Uh, again, it doesn't mean that

if you're just still in scripture, you just want to spend all your time in

scripture, then that's perfect. Let's go deeper into scripture and that's

where we'll meet you. So this faith bot, what we're calling, is kind of

like duolingo, but for your faith, where it

can prompt you with questions during the day, like,

hey, look around you right now. Where do you see God? That is a

deeply theological question. And a bot

can ask you that question and you can type it back in.

So I'll go back to the statement

I said uh, earlier, uh, in our conversation, which

is these are tools that we have that I

believe that we can use for very good. Because

helping. We don't have that many spiritual directors in the world

right now where we could offer that to everyone. Right. But that

somebody could gain access to deep and

rich spirituality and a deep and rich

spiritual conversation, even if it's at 2am in your

underwear. Uh, and that you know that it is backed

by something good. Right. It is backed by the theology of the, of,

of the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion. So,

uh, so we're developing that again as a

tool because we believe that that can help people move further

along in their spirituality, go deeper and become better.

>> Mercedes: So that leads me to wonder. I want

to bring this back up kind of to the 10,000 foot

level and uh, wonder in general,

um, when we're talking about these new

innovations. How do you

discern what is a, uh,

potentially good idea or a gimmick

or Holy Spirit inspired? How do you take the

ideas and decide which one to run? Run

down.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Wow.

So, so you're asking me about the Try Tank process.

>> Mercedes: The, uh, is it the whole process?

>> Peter: And it can be.

>> Mercedes: I know how to try. But how do you

discern when you're the one that has them all coming at

you?

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Uh, yeah. So here's the thing.

Um, some

of it is just gut feeling. You know, you just have to

go and try. I think this is a faithful thing. I think a lot of it just showing up in

a faithful way. It takes you a long way towards the goal.

But here's what, here's what I do as, as the

executive director of Tri Tech to, to figure out because

anyone who's been following our work, you know that we're focused on four

distinct areas rather than just scattershot everything

out there, which is how we began. We began more as an action

research laboratory and now we're doing deep research which

um, impacts and influences the experiments that we're

doing. But every time that an idea comes through,

the key is to measure the idea.

And I, so I, uh. This is mentioned in the book. Not,

not that I'm shamingly plugging my book here, but on page

77 of how to Try, Written by me. No, but on page

77 there's a thing. You can also just go to the website. I

create a website where this is available mission

compass.org and it

is, it comes from the business world, the lean, uh,

lean canvas, uh, not Compass Canvas,

Mission Canvas.org so it comes from the

lean canvas, which it allows you to look at it

holistically. Like, I know that this is our solution. Is there anything

else out there? Do, uh, we have a path to get to the people that

we're trying to get the solution to? And so it makes you look at it

from nine different perspectives, just so that you know you're looking at it from all

areas. And then what I do as Lorenzo, because

resources are limited, always is. I put it

aside and then I come back. And then

obviously, we try to figure out what's the minimum viable prototype to try something

and realizing how much that's going to cost, both in

actual resources of money, but

there's also the opportunity cost. If I'm doing this, I'm not doing

something else. So is this the

cheapest, best way to still achieve the outcome?

And that forces me as an individual to

say, although I came up with this idea, I have

to not be so enamored by it that I'm

not willing to think, is there a cheaper way of doing this?

Is there another better way of achieving this

outcome? Because if there is, then I need to

go look at that, even if I really like this idea,

and I do that, and that allows us to say,

okay, this seems like a sound idea. We now have a

minimum viable prototype for it. And let's go forward. And I do

have, certainly have conversation partners that we could

talk about different things. So I try to find, especially if I can find

subject area experts on something, I'll be like, okay, is there anything

else out there for this? How can this work? What do you

think? And because we're a research institute, we now

also have the ability to host focus groups. So if it's going to be a

big investment, if it's going to be something that we're really going to go deep

into and going to spend a lot of time, energy, resources

in, then we will run it by a focus group.

>> Mercedes: All right, Peter, I'll let you take it back to a high.

>> Peter: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, what we're, what we're focused on in

this podcast is really the, I think, like,

the culture change around, uh,

integrating AI into our ministries.

You know, the technology is already out there,

and it's going to take years for

our culture to adapt to this different

technology. And we're trying to figure out how we can

faithfully do that and do it well.

Um, one thing that, you know, I'm

curious to talk to you about, since you, uh,

interface with a lot of different churches all around The

Episcopal Church.

AI seems to be getting a little bit

polarized, uh, there, you know,

folks who are more

liberal in my experience, tend

to have many

more, uh, questions, hesitations,

you know, um, and in my experience are

also just much more likely to say like, oh, we shouldn't be

touching AI with a, you know, 20

foot pole or whatever the phrase is.

Um, and, and

there are legitimate questions and all along

we've been trying to, you know, figure uh,

out how to answer those questions and still faithfully

engage with this new technology. Um,

but how do you see

that polarization that's happening

and is that a bad thing and you know, what

should we do about it?

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, that's, that's a deep question,

right, that, that, that you're asking because it's, it, it

you can give a really, uh, you know,

easy answer and just say, you know, the future is what it is and we just have

to learn to adapt to it. And that's, that's just that, right.

I think what, what, what we're seeing with AI is it's a

technology that came so fast. I mean just think

back to November 2022 when, when we finally heard about

this thing called ChatGPT. Uh, before then the world

was just moving along as if nothing was

the Internet. Facebook, uh, meta was

still just focused on the metaverse, right? Nothing was, was being done

or talked about AI. Nobody, I mean what we

knew about. If you ask people about AI, they would tell you what they saw in

some sci fi movie perhaps or read in a book. We

would not even dream that we would have something that

can write letters that can do all these things for us so quickly.

So, but I think it's happened so quickly,

a little bit over two years that everything seems to be

uh, AI based and it's being applied to

so many things and we keep hearing about jobs that will be

lost to it and all these other things that I think

it is. Society as a whole

takes time to move from one place to

another. It's just natural how we are as people. That is

why we have the adoption curve. Right? You will have the early

adapters who are always going to be there and those are the ones that will stand

outside of an iPhone, Apple, uh, store to get

the latest iPhone just because they think they're

the laggards all the way at the end who are like, I only get

an iPhone because I can't get my flip phone anymore, you

know, and, and that's sort of how it works. And I think with AI,

we, we, we sort of by virtue of

it. IT business saw the

possibility of significant cost

savings by utilizing AI, uh, not just the

investments that they're making into it to try to get rich from it,

but just the actual savings that can come from it

in, in, in brute cost of a business.

So they've invested heavily into it and to try to make

it in every process that we do to try to make it better, faster and

everything else. And that's happened so fast. And so what you have,

if you look at the adoption curve, is sort of like a normal

bell curve. What you have is in

two years, most of,

of the world seems to be saying all of you

have to be early adapters. You can't wait,

right? We're pushing you to it. And

so, uh, we, I sit on the task force

for AI Artificial intelligence with Mercedes, uh, for

the Episcopal Church and we did a survey of

perceptions of AI and they're not good. And I

think part of the reason.

>> Peter: Yeah, the survey was eye opening for sure.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Why people are so afraid of it, I think is because

people are. You're the final, you're the one who actually asked

me. So I'm going to tell you. McDonald's didn't ask me when they added

AI to their ordering system or certainly I didn't

hear about it from Citibank or I didn't hear about it from the bank on how they

do my loans or this other. But you asked me, so I'm going to tell

you. And I just think that sociologically

speaking, trying to move the entire

population of the world, not the world, because we know that we're

way advanced than many other countries who aren't

there. Right. And they're not going to be there for a while. And that's another concern that we need

to have. We need to use AI, uh, ethically and

its development particularly. But we're trying to

put everybody into this early adapter and it,

and the world saying, hold on, no, no, look at all the other

concerns. You're playing with fire. We really don't know where

this ends. I remember when I was first reading, when it first came

out, some of the things that the Defense Department

put out, the lowest number that I

saw was a 95%

probability. That was the lowest. All the other ones were higher,

like 97, 99% probability that AI would kill

humanity. At some point I'm like, well that's,

that's, that's something I want to wake up to.

Everybody is like knowing that there's a 95% chance that there's

going to kill us. So these are the first words we're hearing about

it as is being put out into the world. And then you're saying to everyone,

and now it's part of everything.

Yeah, I think it's a natural reaction to say, no, no,

no, no. I take a cautious approach to it and

how do I do it? And then of course you have the church, which is

even. You know how there's the laggards on that adoption curve. There

would be like a little further behind. They're like on the start of the next

curve, whatever that would be over there on the other side be

behind the laggards.

>> Mercedes: Right.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: The church's always slower. So I think that that's why there's

polarization. There are those who are gun ho. It's like, yeah, let's

go forward. The early adapters, generally the ones doing that. And because

there's so much money involved right now, and then there's the rest of the world

saying, let's chill it out for a moment.

>> Peter: Um, yeah, thank you for that.

And also, um, I felt myself

having, ah, a little bit of an emotional

scared reaction to that thing you shared about the defense, um,

department saying 95% of um,

basically they have a very high p doom, the probability of

AI doom. Um, you know, and

we, in this podcast, we're very focused on the

here and now, the technologies that are available to us

now, and trying not to predict the future because

that's way above our pay grade. But there are

some very shocking, um,

opinions written in either direction about what the future is going to

look like. So that is out there for people who want

to, um, read some nightmare

fuel.

>> Mercedes: I have to throw, ah, this thought

in, you know, and again, it goes back to being Gen

X, that we.

It's not the first time we have lived

through what you call p

doom. Uh, I would call, uh.

What is the name of the clock, Lorenzo? The end of

the world clock.

>> Peter: Right, the nuclear clock.

>> Mercedes: The nuclear clock. Right. I mean, for 40

years at least, they've been

ticking this thing closer and you know, back and

forth seven, uh.

>> Peter: Times midnight or whatever we are.

>> Mercedes: Right. Um, and so, uh,

I think that we can temper again

some of that with we go, we go through

moments like this in culture

and wonder how we ultimately

will come out of that as well.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But this is unique one. This is a unique one. Uh, right. You look at

uh, how, uh, the adoption rates of cable television, television as

a whole, the radio, all these other things. It was

so gradual and slow before.

It was just if you were to look at

whether you or I are involved

with artificial intelligence on a day to day basis, that

number is probably,

at least in the western world is

probably close to like I would say

90% of the things that we touch or interact with are

using AI. Everything from Autocorrect on your, on

your phone, which seems to for my case get wrong a lot more than

I dare to admit to. The algorithm

by which Netflix picks your next thing or the, or uh, the

addictive algorithm of Tik Tok. Right.

All those are artificial intelligence. Right.

>> Peter: Talking about these big social media companies also

uh, brings up the whole uh, idea of

capitalism and

which when you supercharge that with AI, there

are also some, you know, complex, um,

ethical things, scary uh, things to think about

with that. Um, you know, and so you recently

shared, you know, an article with us that we can talk briefly

about, uh, about, you know, is using AI

cheating? How does that impact our, you know,

our, our relationship to capitalism? But

also um, there's the, the centralization

of power involved with these AI companies

that are just getting all our personal information and are

really able to communicate, compete for intimacy with each of us as they

know our, you know, not just our um, our searches,

but our actual intentions about the things that we're doing.

Um, so yeah, let's talk a bit a little about

AI and capitalism and how,

but again, you know, it's really tying it back to how do we

as individual users, how can we faithfully

engage with these products that are out there

and um, faithfully serve the

gospel?

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I actually thank you for that question because I think

it goes to the underpinning of why

it is important that the church utilize the technology

and be involved with the technology. Because the technology as

we know it is still being developed. You're right. We don't know what the

future holds. We don't know at this moment what

stealth things that haven't been

OpenAI didn't start in November. 20, uh,

22. They had been working for many years and then

they finally released it to us and told us about it. Uh,

so we don't know what's out there that's still being developed. Uh, what happens

when robotics, right, takes into it and it's able,

they're getting better and they now have AI as

well. So there's a lot of things that are still coming. So

this is why it's important that the church be involved now. Because

if we leave it to others,

it's going to be made in their own image. You know, the Old saying, God

made us in God's image. Since we return the favor. And

that's what we're going to do. We're going to make AI in our

own image, which means we're going to be

primarily Western, white,

heterosexual. All the things that you. That I know

I shouldn't say, but DEI was trying to, to address.

Right. Um, and so we need to be

the ones at the table to say the reason why we do an

AI conference, uh, with other denominations is so

that when we call, for example, Google and say we'd like to have a

conversation with you, it's not just Lorenzo from Try Tank, you

know, at Virginia Seminary, but rather it's this

group of people that represent four denomination of,

uh, something like 48,000 congregations

and 12 million people. That's a. That you're more

likely to get that message, to get that meeting so that you can

come in and give the message, which is you cannot just

build it with the same errors that our society

has now. Think about it. LLMs

are, are trained on the knowledge

that is out there. Imagine if you were to just grow

out into the. Into and say, I'm going to train my new, uh,

AI on everything that's in my local public

library. I, uh, can tell you what you're

going to end up with. A lot more books by white people, a

lot more books by men, a lot more books that talk about

heterosexual relationships, a lot more books that talk about,

uh, the American experience. Right? All these things.

So we need to be the ones to go there and say,

this is an opportunity for us to get it right, for us

to be able to say, although there may not be as many

voices from African Americans at the local library,

we need to give them a little bit more weight because there hasn't been an

opportunity for many of them to get into the local library. So

how do we do that? How do we make sure that those voices are being

heard? How do we make sure that. Just, uh, think

about the cost of building an AI

model. If we take. Nobody

really knows whether or not Deep, uh, SEQ was able to do

what the Chinese say that they were able to do for $5 million

versus the hundreds, uh, of millions of dollars that

OpenAI had to train its thing on or how much

power it uses. Let's put those things aside. Because if

you think about it, other than the United States and perhaps China, the world's

second largest economy, who else can build this?

There's no way that in Africa they can build an

AI model from scratch. And Build their own servers and have

it. Same with Latin America. That's just not a possibility.

So since once again all of

this power will be centralized

in very specific

geographic places, we have a

responsibility as a church to make sure as it's being

built out that we don't forget yet again,

we don't forget those at the margins.

>> Peter: Yeah, that's very um, true. And uh,

I think it's always uh,

interesting to figure out how we as individual

users can engage with these stories. I mean you can

on our own. Uh, when I have uh, when

I'm using it, I'll often give it the instructions to like

add, you know, focus more on uh,

perspectives from the margins or whatever, you know,

whatever uh, language you use. And, and so you can

like prompt it to tell it to like uh, to

then go back and prompt you as you're interacting

with it to look in these other directions that it might not naturally

go for. But yeah, so it's a helpful

reminder that, you know, if it's basically just trained on the

Internet, then it's going to do what is most common on the

Internet.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Correct. And think about it, if you are a preacher, if you're a

pastor or priest out there, you can take several of your sermons.

It's very easy. Even if you don't have an actual transcript that you preach

from, you can have it transcribed now very easily.

Uh, and put those into ChatGPT and say,

what unconscious bias do I have? Yeah, it

tell you for example, like it seems you really go more towards

the male pronouns when you're talking about God or when you're whatever

it might be, right. That it can tell you like I want you to. And it's just

between you and the machine, right. So you don't have to feel like, oh my God, I'm being

shamed. It's just you and the ChatGPT and it's like, how

do I get better at that? This is one way that people can do that.

Also if you get an answer, if you ask for an answer and you get an

answer that only again because it is looking at the

Internet or perhaps the training materials that it has, tends to be only

white to your point, Peter, you can ask

it for more. And uh, I said and

say what would be a more well rounded answer to this question

that I've given you? But you can also say, I think your information is

incorrect. I think you're missing these people. So if you happen to know

that uh, you know, let's say you ask about, I don't know

liberation theology. And I'm sure it's going to

mention Gustavo Gutierrez, but it may not mention a lot of the people

that came after him. John Sobrino. Right. Another

Jesuit who was down there. So you want to make sure that you

say, hey, you know, within your knowledge base. Keep in mind that John

Sobrino added a lot to what we know about

liberation theology. And you can itself train it a

little bit on that.

>> Mercedes: Right. And so, you know, that's something Peter and I talked about.

We didn't go into detail, but we've Both worked with

GPTs to facilitate, uh, our

sermon writing. Uh, and we

asked those questions. The funny thing was that

when we asked about the

biases, uh, it actually,

uh, it's like an interviewer. It was, uh,

rephrasing them in the positive, most positive light

it could. So I had to go back around and ask

it. Yes, train to please. And so I had to go

back around and say, okay, what about my blind

spots? Let's, let's go for. And then it

finally, you know, hit and. And they were. I, I

was commiserating with Peter when I got that list.

I was like, oh, that hurt.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, here's another very simple one for us in the Episcopal Church, by

the way, we tend to preach these sermons that Peter, uh,

I know you do living stories. So this m. That certainly doesn't apply to

that in the way that those are done. But most

sermons in the Episcopal Church are at a

graduate sort of level or a college level.

And uh, a nice little insight to have is

the best and most read business books

in the world are written at an eighth grade

level. So just put one of your sermons in and say,

what level am I reaching? Because if you're, if you're preaching at

a 12th level or college level and most people are

receiving you at an eighth grade level, you are now just

separated completely. It doesn't mean you have to dumb, um, down the content, by the

way, way you can still do deep theology, but do

it at a level where people will understand it.

>> Peter: Right. I mean, that's such a great idea. Like, uh, just take your sermon

and say, okay, like rewrite

this in, you know, 8th grade reading

level, but keep the meaning the same. And it would be

amazing to see what it comes out with.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We're so proud when we quote Greek or when we

drop a Hebrew word in there and we go into that.

Yeah. And people are like, oh, that's great. Look, he went to

seminary, obviously, right?

>> Mercedes: Yeah. So I'm feeling that personally because I, uh, just

finished about to finish the backstory mentorship. And

so backstory had originally trained me.

Shout out to backstory. I'll put a link in.

And these simple sermon ideas.

But in the mentorship, for some reason I decided I needed

to go big. And the feedback was like,

what happened to your sermons? And so

the last three where, uh, they came back

into. And we were actually talking in a meeting last week

with one of my evaluators and some lay leaders

and saying, accessible to my

congregation. It, it still has good theology,

but it's one point, it's one idea. And then

one of my, one of my guys says, and it's under 10

minutes, so there's that.

I have one funny question to end on.

>> Peter: Okay, but before we do that, Lorenzo, um, you mentioned

a while back the. The AI summit that's coming up. Do you want to

just give a quick synopsis of what that is in case

anybody who's listening wants to hear more about it?

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thanks. Yeah. Last year we held the first one. This year we'll hold the

second one. What we do is, uh, in this case, the we

is four denominations. The Episcopal Church,

the Presbyterian, uh, Church usa, the

Methodist Church, and the elca

gather together some people from their

denominations to come together to talk about the

practical implications of AI, the theological

implications of AI and the ethical implications

of AI, along with the. What's the sort of

one on one, how do you use it type. And the reason

why we do this is because, again, uh, we cannot

let the church not be part of this conversation. And this is

sort of what, what coalesces us around. But before

we go and talk to someone like Google, we kind of have to know what,

what we actually mean when we say AI and what is the

theology that we have of AI and the imago they

in there for us.

So it's coming up September 2nd through the 5th in

Minneapolis. It is by invitation only,

but, but this is a great part. Uh,

anyone can sign up to get the video, uh, version. We're going

to broadcast it live so that people get the keynotes and whatever

the big things that we'll, we'll put out there for people to

see. And that's, uh,

available@aichurchconference.com.

>> Peter: All right, cool.

>> Mercedes: I am going to drop this on both of y'all without

warning. AI had

a question for us.

If Jesus showed up today with

Chat GPT in his pocket, what would he do?

You think he would do with it?

>> Peter: Um, Lorenzo,

you first.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: If Jesus showed up with ChatGPT today, uh, you

know, the funniest thing is that in my mind I'm imagining Jesus stolen

like his clothes from 2,000 years ago. So I'm like,

where's he putting in his pocket?

>> Mercedes: Does he even have a little right.

Is it translating to Aramaic, Hebrew, what, What

language are we.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Here's, here's what I think Jesus would do. And what we know of the

arc of Jesus's story is that Jesus would use it to love

more. So Jesus would use it as a way. How can I

be the most loving in this exact moment to these

people that I may not know? So you can actually use

CHAT GBG to translate stuff.

Uh, in fact, artificial intelligence is a program called

worldly that translates at the same moment. So if you're putting out your

services and you want more people to be able to act, access them, they have it available

in 144 languages. So somebody could actually hear it

in 144 languages if you're preaching. So you can

expand your reach by doing that. And that's more loving,

bringing more people in to hear the good news, the progressive good news of the

Episcopal Church. Right. So I think what Jesus would do is like, how

can I use this tool to, in my

everyday life, be a more loving person?

>> Mercedes: Ha.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Uh, Peter, you're going to wish you hadn't let me go first.

>> Peter: Yeah, well, I

think, yeah, my imagination has taken me in a

different direction. I don't think, I don't think Jesus would use

ChatGPT, uh, Hot Take for a AI

podcast host. But um, if

I, you know, if I.

So I'm imagining like, okay, what is, what is Jesus's

job if I were to define it as such? Well, I think he would

be, um, going around, uh,

teaching blessing people, uh, loving

them and leading

people. And you know, he would like,

I don't think he would be sitting around answering

emails, uh, which is a lot of what I use

ChatGPT for. I don't think he would be like

figuring out program for a

church. Uh, I don't think he would

need a whole bunch of sermon prep.

Like he, he already knows what to say. Like

I, I need ChatGPT because I'm a sinful human.

>> Mercedes: Okay, I got it, I got it. Here we

go. But the sign of

Jesus's ministry throughout the

Gospels is feeding. We recognize

Jesus in the breaking of the bread and the feeding of the

people. So I think that uh,

Jesus is going to use ChatGPT to

figure out the calculations to feed

not just the 5,000, but whatever the world

population is right now. How about that

we can hope, right?

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Amen.

>> Mercedes: All right, well, we always end, uh, with

uh, some reflections on the baptismal covenant because that

is our language, uh, and guide for living faithfully

in the world. So, uh,

Peter and I will run, uh, through these. You're

invited to participate or not.

Not gonna put you on the spot, uh, too much here.

I think we have. But so we, uh, we

begin with will you continue in the apostles teaching and

fellowship and the breaking of the bread and in the

prayers and based on our

discussion, where, where are we feeling

this one today? I really

liked hearing about how Ask Kathy has the

opportunity, uh, in the future iterations

to be a technological

ministry to congregations

that don't have full time pastors

and priests. And so that

to me is a very direct translation

of the technology into

being useful,

um, uh, without crossing

the line into the sacramental making

space for relationship, uh, enabling

relationship, removing barriers, but

not, but not getting into our sacramental

space.

>> Peter: Yeah, I think, uh, in terms of continuing in the

prayer, it's like, uh, Ask

Kathy is a great tool. You know, it can

help us pray, uh, it can help us,

uh, be together and reflect on scripture and

on theology. Um,

and so, you know,

back to my own opinion about this,

I don't think it can do any of that itself, but it can help us do those

things. And yeah, I'm excited

about a future where people can,

um, teach each other, can learn,

can pray together, can break bread together,

all these, um, in ways that are

assisted by A.I.

okay, so will you persevere in

resisting evil and whenever you fall into sin,

repent and return to the Lord?

>> Mercedes: Uh, well, I'm gonna jump on this one because I actually got an email

last week from a listener who said,

um, how do you

reconcile the fact that AI was

trained often on stolen materials

and uh, that the creators were not

compensated? And so I find the

words for that and um, and so I

acknowledge, yes, that is a concern

of the LLMs. And I

recognize that any one of

us stopping to use it is not

going to change that. Uh,

that the better answer for resolving that,

uh, is going to be through

regulation and a

broader approach. Uh, and so I kind

of, I don't want to throw out the baby

with the bathwater, although I don't think that's the right metaphor

today. And so the way I

classify that, and we've talked about some

of these is personally I don't use it for

materials that I don't own

or won't buy. Um, but I also

recognize the fact that

the Car that I drive isn't great for the

environment. Eating sugary foods is

not great for, for God's creation,

my body or the environment. And yet

we still do these things. Uh, and

so it is this ongoing confession

of sin and doing my best each day,

but also recognizing that the

benefit offered here

may ultimately lead to a greater good.

And that is what I hope for.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I would just add on that one that I don't think that's going to be the end of

it. Uh, I do believe that there will be. This is why I believe

the New York Times vs OpenAI

lawsuit continues forward is because the industry does need

standardization. Wherever there's money involved, they will come up. This is what

happened with Napster before. And there will be an answer to

that. There will be compensation for that knowledge.

>> Peter: Yeah, yeah. We're living in this gray area where there isn't yet

a legal answer for this. And they're figuring, but it's

coming, and thank God I don't have to be.

It's not my responsibility to figure that out again.

Uh, all right, so.

>> Mercedes: So instead figure out how to proclaim by wor

example, the good news of God in Christ today.

>> Peter: Yeah, that's the next one. And, uh,

I mean, I think we've, uh, talked a lot, a lot about

it.

>> Mercedes: Huh. And I've heard some great ideas from. Well, I do want

to lift up because I heard some great ideas from Lorenzo

today about, I mean, not just, uh, ask Kathy,

but some of the new initiatives that incorporate it.

So it's really neat to see that those things are coming out.

And they are. They're where we're

interfacing evangelism and proclaiming the

good news with technology to reach.

>> Peter: People where we are, and then seeking

and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as

ourselves and striving for justice and

peace among all people and respecting the dignity of

every human being. I think that

really ties back to, you know, some of our early conversation,

earlier conversation about, uh, how to engage with

AI in this capitalist system that.

>> Mercedes: We'Re in and, uh, overcoming the

bias and the lack of diversity in the training.

Um, absolutely.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um, people can't see this right now, but I'm nodding yet.

>> Mercedes: You're nodding, you're nodding. We know you're nodding.

We put you on the spot there with these. So,

um, I am hopeful and so,

um, I see these

opportunities for not only just

seeking and serving Christ in all persons,

but, you know, really reaching people that

we haven't been able to reach before, or at

least speaking into

a space that hasn't been spoken before

and uh so that people know

they're loved.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Amen.

>> Mercedes: Because that's what Chat GPT and Jesus are going to get together and

do as they're going to love the world.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well Lorenzo helps us love more is.

>> Mercedes: Better everything that okay thank you so much for joining

us uh ah and our uh our little uh

chaotic uh uh Brainstorm space.

We uh we really appreciate uh

all that uh you've been able to share with us and we look forward to

hearing more and I'm sure we'll

we'll uh we'll be uh plugging and asking

more because uh I want to see what's up next

so.

>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Excellent. Thank you all right for having me.

>> Peter: I really thanks for being our first interview uh

guest and thanks again also to Try Tank for

sponsoring this podcast as always.

>> Mercedes: Oh thank you so much. All right.

>> Peter: Mhm sa.