Since we have moved to Nashville, Lisa has gone from what I call her internal oven to saying almost every night, Jeff, I'm cold again. And she's not kidding. Maybe it's the Nashville weather. Maybe her hormones are finally regulating again. But the moment the cozy earth double bubble cuddle blanket arrived, say that three times fast, all that changed. Every evening that she had in her home, They curl up under that blanket in front of the fireplace with the Christmas lights glowing. Sometimes they're doing devotions. Other times they're watching a show or just enjoying time as family. But I'll be honest, when Lisa calls something her go-to for warmth and comfort, that means something. Number one, I'm not used to her trying to get warm. She's normally sweating, which is why she likes the Cozy Earth pajamas as well. But, you know, Cozy Earth products, they have the viscose, crafted with viscose from bamboo, designed to create a calm elevator sanctuary at home. Their bedding keeps you at the right temperature. Their fabric is incredibly soft. Their products are just built with a 10-year warranty and 100-night sleep trial. so if you're looking for the perfect Christmas gift this Christmas something that wraps the people you love a real comfort their bamboo sheet is set as an easy win their double bubble blanket will keep you warm and snuggly in front of the fire or even if you don't have a fire but go to CozyEarth.com and use the code ECHOES for an exclusive discount 40% off Again, that's discount only for Echoes Through Eternity listeners. And if you get a post-purchase survey, just say you heard about Cozy Earth from this podcast. It helps keep bringing partners like this to you. Again, Cozy Earth wraps the ones you love in luxury. Marcus Aurelius said, what we do in life echoes through eternity. What is your life echoing through eternity? Welcome to Echoes Through Eternity with Dr. Jeffrey Skinner. Our mission is to inspire, engage, and encourage leaders from across the globe to plant missional churches and be servant leaders. So join us and hear the stories of servant leaders reverberating lives as God echoes them through eternity. Brought to you by Missional Church Planting and Leadership Development and Dynamic Church Planting International. The church is not ready, but we can be. Welcome in to Echoes Through Eternity. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey D. Skinner. What is God echoing through your life today? Today we're beginning a new series that's going to span several podcasts. I think probably four episodes, maybe more. We'll see how it evolves over time. But regardless, I believe it's necessary. for this moment. It's not trendy. It's not reactionary. It's necessary. I want to speak plainly today, calmly, pastorally, but also with conviction because we're living in a time of rapid change and most churches are still responding as if the ground is stable beneath us. It's not unstable in the sense that the gospel has changed. The gospel has not changed. The good news remains the good news and will always be good news. If the gospel ceases to be good news, it is no longer gospel. Christ has not changed. The mission of the church has not changed. It continues to be to multiply the kingdom and make disciples, period. We can come up with fancier terms and phrases, but the reality is, in basic terms, the mission of the church is uniform. Make disciples. Multiply the kingdom of God. But the environment in which we lead in disciples has shifted, and it's shifting quickly. I read an article recently actually if you're listening to this podcast I'm recording this podcast on February 11th and I read this article this morning and it got my attention in fact it was something I was sensing but it kind of solidified what I was already thinking and I don't mean to say it's confirmation bias because I listen to a lot of voices on artificial intelligence and discipleship and church leadership. A lot of voices shaped me. And not just within the church planting community. I listen to voices in even the secular community as well because I think that when we live in a bubble, that we begin to lose perspective. And so this article was written by someone deeply involved in the world of artificial intelligence, Matt Schumer. And I'll post the article in the notes for you as well. And just kind of an FYI, coming soon, the podcast is beginning to get a lot more popular. And as a result, I've got to begin to scale. And so the podcast will remain free, but there's going to be portions, show notes, transcripts, things like that, that will begin to be monetized and for only particular subscribers. It's not going to be a lot, a couple of bucks a month, probably two nights a month. Still working on all that, but just a heads up on that. Again, none of this is designed to make money. It's designed to pay for the podcast. And it's beginning to happen, but it's not just a podcast. It's book writing, authoring. just it is all the things that I do in the leadership space cost money and they were beginning to drain my budget significantly. And so I had to begin to monetize some, some portions of this, not to exclude people. I always want to, I believe in, in faithful sharing and look, any resource I have, feel free to share. Even if you have to subscribe to get future content, I want that to be freely shared. I do that. Again, I want to always be a means of grace to people. But anyway, Matt Schumer described the pace of change in that field in the sense among those closest to it that something significant is already underway. That field being artificial intelligence. That confirmed what many of us have been sensing quietly for some time. We are not waiting for a future disruption. We are living inside the early stages of one. This article, again, it's a long article. I invite you to go and read it, but it will blow your mind. I don't want it to scare you because I don't believe in living in fear. When we're living in fear, we don't make good decisions. We're in fight or flight mode. We're using our lizard brain, as some people call it, reptilian brain. And that is just that basic thought. There's no higher order thinking. It just how do I escape or how do I survive right But what I do want you to do is pay attention And one of the things he says is that there was a key shift on February 5th And that shift was that artificial intelligence, Codex 5.3, I think he says, was released. The key for artificial intelligence has always been coding. They believe that if you could code it well, or if it could learn to code, that would be kind of an event horizon, turning point, so to speak, a place of no return. And so February 5th marked that moment for him. Lots of moving people residing in that field right now. The head of Anthropic resigned. And Elon Musk, two of his key engineers that have been with him from the beginning, resigned. It's all over the ethics and the development of this artificial intelligence. Musk is really pushing them hard to continue to improve it. Of course, Musk would. The thing that scares me about Musk is he doesn't operate from a biblical worldview. But he does operate from a worldview that says we need to win at all costs. and I don't know that he particularly cares for humanity in the way that you and I do. I'm not trying to cut on Elon Musk. I think he does a lot of good, but I don't know that he does good purposely or at least he's not doing good in the interest of all of humanity so much as he's doing good in his own self-interest or his own interest. I guess self-interest would be a double entendre there. But the bottom line is that he says, Schumer says, that within the next 5 to 12 months, and then beyond that, the next 1 to 5 years, that probably 50% of white-collar, entry-level jobs will be replaced by machines. The church is not fully prepared for what's coming, but we can be. This conversation is not about becoming technology experts. It's not about turning pastors into programmers. It's not about chasing trends. is about formation because the deeper issue is not whether churches will use artificial intelligence. It's going to be inevitable. It's going to be like arguing, I think, a couple of years from now. We will look back, and if we're still having this conversation as a church, it's going to be like pastors standing in a committee arguing whether or not we should drive a horse and buggy to church or whether or not we should drive a car. That's how irrelevant and silly that we will sound. So what that means is that our conversations as humans, 50% of the time, will be interfaced with machines and not humans. So the deeper issue is how human beings will be formed in a world where machines increasingly shape attention, learning, and trust. Think about this as the early stages of Facebook and social media where we didn't know what we were getting into. They branded it as, hey, this will keep you connected to friends. What they didn't tell you was the algorithm would then begin to choose and feed you information and friends that only agreed with you, which expanded your bubble and created confirmation bias to the point that you feel like that your perspective is always the right perspective. A pastor friend of mine, Brad Bellamy, always said, if you think that God is always on your side, you'd better think again. Because the question is not, is God on my side? The question is, are we on God's side? People are already asking devices questions before they ask pastors. They are processing life through systems that respond instantly and confidently. They are forming opinions in environments that's designed to keep them engaged. Think algorithms here. Not necessarily grounded. We want instant responses. We want instant pain relief. And artificial intelligence is going to bring that. And it will bring it not necessarily from a Christian perspective, not from a biblical perspective. It's going to bring it. It will hallucinate. It will bring it from perspectives that are shaped not by your voice, but by the millions of voices that are media and the bubbles. And it doesn't have access to only your bubble. It has access to every bubble. And the information it gives you will be from there. they're receiving advice from tools that feel responsive and immediate as well i was just saying that the shift is not natural it will shape how people understand truth it will shape how they trust it will shape how they respond to authority and it will shape how they approach faith so the question for us is not whether this affect whether or not this will affect the church it already is. You may not recognize it, but it is. The question is, how will we lead people faithfully in this moment? There's a growing awareness across many fields that we are entering a period of acceleration. Artificial intelligence is advancing quickly. Cultural trust is fragile. Political division is shaping how people see one another and how they process information. None of this sits outside the church. It walks into our sanctuaries each week. It sits in our pews. It joins our small groups. It shows up in the questions people ask and the assumptions they carry. Many leaders will think of artificial intelligence as a tool, helpful, but optional. Something we will decide to use or not use. But what we are witnessing is a deeper shift. We are watching a change in how people learn, how they seek guidance, and how they decide to trust. Lisa and I, my wife, have talked about this at length. And that is how artificial intelligence is going to shape education. Because I think this will dismantle our current educational system. When you have access to instantaneous tool that can, and not just a tool as we've talked, but just embedded that can solve complex equations and do engineering math for you on the spot. Why do you need an engineering degree? So the role of teachers is going to be changing like pastors, and it's going to be able to shape thought and help people discern, which is really going to be a major portion of how we disciple. In fact I in the process of creating an entire curriculum a three three curriculum for pastors on helping a discipleship of discernment In other words helping people learn because artificial intelligence discernment is going to be the key tool the key, not even tool, the key component of our spiritual journey that we will need in an age of artificial intelligence that is almost indistinguishable. and the voices you hear, they will be able to mimic the voice of your pastor, voice of your parents. And so discernment is going to be key, and it will be like the voice of the servant in the garden, where it sounds like it's logical sins, but it's not what God wills for us. The church can afford to panic. Like I told you earlier, I don't want us living in fear. Panic leads to reaction and fear-driven decisions. The church cannot afford denial. Denial leads to drift and irrelevance. We need clarity. We need formation, not information, formation. Again, with AI, information, we thought Google gave us the Library of Alexandria at our fingertips. No. The problem with Google was finding the information. With AI, you can find any information you want. The key is how will that information be shaped? And for us as a church is how will we use that information and help our people discern and shape that information for formational purposes for Jesus, for the church's mission, for the kingdom of God. We need leadership that is steady and rooted. Our authority is shifting. In the past, pastoral authority often flowed from position, training, and experience. Theological degrees were of utmost importance. Even beyond that, learning social skills. And then just simply being the pastor held a position of authority. Those things still matter, but they are not enough on their own. Today, authority flows from trust and proximity. I talk about this in my book, Reachable, Seven Keys to Loving, Leading, and Mentoring the Church of the Next Generation. Trust and proximity were key, a key, to reaching the Church of the Next Generation, Gen Z, and even Millennials and Gen X. I mean, today, because we're all being shaped by the same algorithms. People trust voices they know. They trust leaders who are present. So this is why proximity becomes important is because the better they know you, leaders will no longer have the privilege, especially pastoral leaders. And I think this is where a church plant really can thrive is because the pastor is accessible. And being a pastor of a church plant requires absolute authenticity, absolute transparency, no hidden corners of our hearts, no hidden gems in our lives. We have to be fully transparent as leaders. And to do that, we have to be present. We have to invite people. The age of the pastor who sat aloof in the pulpit and interacted from a distance is over. Artificial intelligence will necessitate us being and sharing spaces with our people. And that's what I argue in the book I was talking about. You can find it on Amazon.com. You can even listen to the audio book. It's in my voice. But leaders, I mean, parishioners are going to trust, people are going to trust leaders who are accountable as well. I talked about this in the last episode. If the church relies only on positional authority, it will struggle. If it builds relational authority, grounded in presence and integrity, it will endure. The leaders who will serve well in the next decade are those who are known, not just seen on a platform, but known in real life. known in conversation, known in community, your people would know your voice. Like God says, my people know my voice. It's going to be the same way for the pastor. We'll be known in the community, not just within a church. But if we don't want to build our church as a bubble, as an anomaly within the community, but to be invaluable within that community, we've got to be known in that community. And that might require some pastors to be bivocational. Again, church planters are almost always bivocational. They're known for accountability. Authority that is embodied will endure. Authority that is distant will weaken. Let me put this in pastoral terms. People are not primarily asking who has a title. They are asking who do I trust. They are asking who knows me. They are asking who is present in my life. That means leadership must become more relational, not less. More accountable, not less. More transparent, not less. Discernment must be formed. The next decade will not primarily be a battle over information. It will be a battle over discernment. People today encounter more information than any generation before them. Some of it is accurate. Some of it is misleading. Much of it is persuasive. As artificial intelligence becomes more capable, the line between what is real and what is manipulated will become harder to see. If the people know your voice, they will not be deceived. The church must teach discernment, not suspicion, not cynicism, discernment. I'll confess that I probably created more cynicism and suspicion among our children when I was trying to teach discernment. And that's a failure on my part as a parent. And again, I'm just telling you that this is a reality that I have lived. I'm trying and listening to a lot of voices out there to learn how to form discernment in people and not just create suspicion or even cynicism, which is rampant with our culture today. And that's a side effect of not being able to trust what you see. Discernment is wisdom shaped by Scripture, prayer, and community. It is the ability to slow down, to test what we hear, again, biblical, and to respond with truth and love. Churches must teach people to verify before they share, to pray before they react, to test everything in light of Christ. If we do not form discernment, something else will form our people. This is not abstract. This is daily life. Everyday people scroll through information, headlines, videos, and opinions. They absorb messages about identity truth and even belonging If the church is not intentionally forming discernment people will be formed by whatever reaches them most consistently That's why presence matters. Technology connects people quickly, but often leaves them isolated. Many people live in constant digital interaction with limited face-to-face relationships. The church has an opportunity to become one of the few places where people are known by name and story. This requires intention, shared meals, real conversation, prayer that happens in the same room, testimony that allows people to be seen and heard. When people experience real presence, trust grows. When trust grows, discipleship deepens. We are not building audiences. We are forming communities. Holiness must be heard as healing. Many people today hear moral language as condemnation. If holiness sounds like control, it will be resisted. If holiness sounds like restoration, it will be received. I had this conversation with a pastor friend of mine this morning. Judgment is seen as punitive, but God's judgment is not punitive. God's judgment is salvific. It is always aimed at repentance, and repentance is aimed at giving life. And I don't mean initial life. I mean more life, abundant life. That's what we mean by abundant life, is a life that is thriving despite the realities of which we exist. Repentance is invitation, is a call to life. God's judgment sets things right. It restores. It heals. Churches that communicate holiness as healing help people move towards transformation. Leaders must speak with truth clearly and with mercy. They must model repentance themselves. When correction flows from love, it leads to growth rather than hiding. Something I've learned about myself, I continue to learn things about myself all the time. I'm almost 60 years old, and I have never received correction well. And I'm trying to learn to do that and not take everything personal when somebody corrects me to learn that they're not correcting me. And part of it just has to do with some wounds I have. I'm learning to work through those. But we have to learn that correction flows from love, and it leads to growth rather than hiding. Leadership must be resilient. The coming years will test leaders. Cultural tension, rapid change, and constant information create fatigue. Isolation will weaken, meaning leaders more than opposition will. No leader should stand alone. Shared leadership and honest relationships are essential. Pastors need people who can speak truth into their lives. They need rhythms of rest. They need structures that sustain calling. We need to prepare and not panic. Preparing the church for the next decade does not mean becoming more technologically impressive. It means becoming more deeply formed. It means cultivating communities marked by trust, discernment, presence, and holy love. The church that will remain steady in a changing world will not necessarily be the loudest. It will be the church that forms people who know how to live in the truth, love their neighbors, and remain rooted in Christ. We are not competing with machines. We are forming disciples. And let me just, let me leave you with this as well. This is not an invitation for the church to draw inward and completely abandon the online space. I don't believe in ceding ground to the enemy in any way. So what this becomes is a dual invitation, is an invitation for us to be present in our communities and to have more and more face-to-face conversations. But in order to do that, we must go out into those digital spaces and invite people into that face-to-face. We have to get, and they'll be hungry for that. Because their conversations, it will seem awkward for many in the beginning because they're so used to interacting with a machine. But the church will be holy. We will be set apart because we're inviting people for that face-to-face conversation and not just an algorithmic discussion. Right? And so let me leave you with a question. Are you preparing people for the world that is coming or the world that is fading? In the next episode, we'll talk about authority after the algorithm and what it means to lead when trust is shipping. Shifting, not shipping. It may be shipping. It's shipping responsibility, shifting responsibility. But until then, pay attention. Stay present, lead faithfully. And finally, I'll leave you with the same question I always leave you with after every episode, and that is, what is God echoing through your life today? If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe. Since we have moved to Nashville, Lisa has gone from what I call her internal oven to saying almost every night, Jeff, I'm cold again. And she's not kidding. Maybe it's the Nashville weather. Maybe her hormones are finally regulating again. But the moment the cozy earth double bubble cuddle blanket arrived, say that three times fast, all that changed. Every evening that she and Hayden are home, they curl up under that blanket in front of the fireplace with the Christmas lights glowing. Sometimes they're doing devotions. Other times they're watching a show or just enjoying time as family. But I'll be honest, when Lisa calls something her go-to for warmth and comfort, that means something. Number one, I'm not used to her trying to get warm. She's normally sweating, which is why she likes the Cozy Earth pajamas as well. But, you know, Cozy Earth products, they have the viscose crafted with viscose from bamboo designed to create a calm sanctuary at home. Their bedding keeps you at the right temperature. Their fabric is incredibly soft. their products are just built with a 10 year warranty and 100 night sleep trial so if you're looking for the perfect christmas gift this christmas something that wraps the people you love a real comfort their bamboo sheet is set as an easy win their their double bubble blanket will keep you warm and snuggly in front of the fire or even if you don't have a fire. But go to CozyEarth.com and use the code ECHOES for an exclusive discount, 40% off. Again, that's discount only for ECHOES through attorney listeners. And if you get a post-purchase survey, just say you heard about CozyEarth from this podcast. It helps keep bringing partners like this to you. and again, Cozy Earth Wraps the ones you love in luxury
