Progressive Church Creates Worship Service Using ChatGPT. Unsurprisingly, It Sucks
A Texas church has used ChatGPT to create an entire church service and worship experience, but even the power of A.I could not make them less heretical or more theologically sound.
Violet Crown City Church in Austin, TX, LGBTQ-affirming ‘church’ associated with the United Methodist. Though masquerading as Jesus-followers, a quick perusal of their statement of faith shows how off the wall they genuinely are.
“Jesus is the lens through whom all scripture is interpreted. For example, if Jesus is God, and the God we read about in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) seems really angry and violent at times, but the Jesus we know isn’t angry or violent at all, then we probably need to take another look at those stories and question if they are actually reflective of who God is. Spoiler: they’re not.
Jesus is like a colander for truth (but not pasta). When you’re reading the Bible, pour it through the Jesus colander. If it’s small and ultimately inconsequential for a life of faith, or not something Jesus would have said, thought, believed, or done, then it’s okay to let it pass through.”
Last week, impastor Jay Cooper, who is keen on finding new and novel ways to lead his congregation to hell, created a ChatGPT generated worship service, explaining:
He notes:
“We are entering somewhat uncharted territory by celebrating, offering a worship service that is entirely generated by artificial intelligence. Before we let A.I. take the wheel, so to speak, let me share a few human generated words, especially for our first time guests.
So the order of worship today was generated by chatGPT which is an A.I.-powered large language model, a chatbot. To generate the service I used the following prompt:
Create a Sunday morning worship service for a church that values sharing life and belonging to one another, inclusivity for all, working for justice, and following in the way of Jesus. Include four familiar hymns or contemporary worship songs, a call to worship, pastoral prayer, children’s message, offering time, communion, liturgy and a sermon, and one original song to reflect the message of the sermon. “
Cooper noted that ChatGPT only created a 15 minute service, and so he had to supplement it with further prompts. His sermon, which is cold, dead and lifeless, reads in part:
The rise of A.I. poses challenges to our quest for truth. With deep fake,s manipulated information and biased algorithms, discerning what’s real becomes a digital maze. As Christians we are called to be discerning in our choices and stand firm in the truth that God’s love and justice are unwavering. We must not let A.I. lead us astray from our ethical and moral compass grounded in faith.
If only ChatGPT would have issued them a stern rebuke and call to repentance. Now that would have been something to see.