“However his delight is within the legislation of the LORD, and on his legislation he meditates day and evening. He is sort of a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf doesn’t wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”
— Psalm 1:2–3, ESV
“Write a transient worship transition that connects a track about God’s faithfulness to a track of give up, evangelical tone, 80–100 phrases.”
I used to be engaged on a brief devotional thought to tie collectively the worship set for Sunday morning—the form of thirty-second spoken transition between two songs that’s speculated to land with some weight, the sort that helps the room perceive why we’re shifting from one track to the subsequent. I’d been staring on the clean web page for twenty minutes. The phrases weren’t coming. So I opened ChatGPT and typed: “Write a short worship transition that connects a track about God’s faithfulness to a track of give up, evangelical tone, 80–100 phrases.”
It got here again in about three seconds. And it was wonderful. Genuinely wonderful. Theologically strong, appropriately humble, usable rhythm. I may have dropped it into the service order and no one would have recognized.
That’s after I stopped and sat with what had simply occurred. Not the output. The output was not the issue. The issue was the trail I’d taken to get there: twenty minutes of sitting with God, then twenty seconds of letting the machine do it as a substitute. What had these twenty minutes been? Failure? Heat-up? The precise work?
I pasted what ChatGPT gave me into a brand new doc and closed the tab. Then I went again to the clean web page. It took one other forty minutes. The transition I ended up utilizing was not as clear. However I knew each phrase. I’d wrestled it into existence. And after I stood up Sunday morning and spoke it, one thing in me was already there.
The Distinction Between Output and Formation
Religious formation is a site the place the method is the purpose.
This isn’t an essay about AI being harmful. I work in community safety. I exploit these instruments on daily basis. I run Claude for code, ChatGPT for first drafts of technical documentation, Copilot for the tedious components of scripting. I’m not coming at this from a Luddite nook. I’m coming at it from the within.
However religious formation is a site the place the method is the purpose. And that makes it categorically completely different from nearly all the things else LLMs are helpful for.
Once I use AI to summarize a protracted contract, the output is what issues. The hours I might have spent studying it aren’t formative—they’re simply hours. The contract doesn’t change me; understanding its phrases does. AI accelerating that could be a web achieve.
Formation doesn’t work that method. The Psalmist didn’t write “meditate on the legislation of the LORD” as a result of the content material of the legislation was laborious to entry. He wrote it as a result of the meditating was the purpose. The return visits. The gradual absorption. The second when a verse you’ve heard 2 hundred occasions all of a sudden lands in another way since you’re carrying one thing new into the room. That doesn’t occur at era velocity.
What We’re Really Shedding
Three practices. Identical story every time.
Scripture memorization. I grew up an AWANA child—and later a Royal Ambassador—so memorizing passages wasn’t non-compulsory. It was the task. It was awkward and repetitive and it required a form of boredom that’s more and more laborious to fabricate. However someplace within the third or fourth day of operating Romans 8:38–39 by means of my head, it stopped being one thing I knew about and have become one thing I knew inside. It moved from content material to reflex.
The instrument is just too useful. It solves the discomfort earlier than the discomfort can do something to you.
Now I can ask GPT for the verse and have it in two seconds. And I do, after I want to substantiate a reference mid-sermon. That’s wonderful. But when I by no means do the memorization work, the verse is rarely inside me. It’s in my search historical past. These should not the identical factor.
Sitting with a tough passage. There’s a form of studying that’s nearer to arguing. Habakkuk. Job. The laborious half of Psalm 88. Passages the place the trustworthy response is I don’t perceive why you’ll permit this. That’s not snug, nevertheless it’s formative. The friction is the characteristic.
Ask an LLM to summarize Habakkuk’s lament and it’ll provide you with a clear, structured clarification of the prophet’s grievance and God’s response. It’ll be appropriate. And it’ll have fully skipped the half the place you sit within the discomfort lengthy sufficient to appreciate it’s additionally your grievance. The instrument is just too useful. It solves the discomfort earlier than the discomfort can do something to you.
Writing the phrases that tie worship collectively. That is the place I really feel it most immediately, as a result of it’s the place my very own temptation lives. A generated transition will be theologically correct. It might probably identify the suitable attribute of God and bridge cleanly into the subsequent track. However writing one your self—actually writing one, not modifying one—forces you to find your self. What’s God truly doing in our church this week? The place is our congregation proper now? What thread is the Spirit pulling by means of these songs that I’m supposed to call out loud? A generated paragraph bypasses that excavation solely. It fingers you one thing that seems like worship with out making you do the work of listening for what worship is meant to be on this specific Sunday.
Why This Isn’t the Identical as Each Earlier Expertise
An LLM performs the cognitive work. It doesn’t provide the substances for synthesis—it fingers you the synthesis.
The usual counterargument is: each era says this about new instruments. Socrates frightened writing would erode reminiscence. The printing press disrupted Bible copying. Research Bibles and commentaries provide you with someone else’s interpretation as a substitute of working it out your self.
True. However there’s a significant line that LLMs cross that earlier instruments didn’t.
The printing press gave you entry to texts you couldn’t in any other case learn. A commentary provides you a scholar’s perspective, which you continue to must weigh and settle for or reject. Even Google simply retrieves—you continue to must learn, consider, and synthesize. These instruments serve the cognitive work. They make extra of it attainable.
An LLM performs the cognitive work. It doesn’t provide the substances for synthesis—it fingers you the synthesis. The excellence issues when the area is one the place synthesis is formation. The commentary says “right here’s how Calvin learn this.” The LLM says “here’s a reflection on this passage.” One places you in dialogue with a thoughts. The opposite removes the necessity on your thoughts to interact.
That’s the road.
What I’ve Modified in My Personal Follow
I don’t declare to have this found out. However I’ve constructed some guidelines for myself.
Each phrase I communicate in worship has to come back out of me, imperfect syntax and all.
Once I get the prospect to take sermon notes, I want to write down them by hand. Pen on paper. Not as a result of I feel handwriting is holy, however as a result of the friction makes me decelerate sufficient to listen to what I truly suppose. Once I sort, I edit as I’m going, and the modifying is usually a method of smoothing out the tough locations the place the actual work occurs. On paper, I can’t transfer that quick. The roughness stays seen longer.
I don’t let AI write the phrases I communicate from the platform. Not transitions, not devotional ideas, not the quick reflections I share between songs—nothing. Not drafted, not “polished,” not “enhanced.” Each phrase I communicate in worship has to come back out of me, imperfect syntax and all. It is a laborious rule and I’ve damaged it precisely as soon as. I felt it Sunday morning.
I learn laborious passages with a bodily Bible and the pocket book I maintain with it for devotional reflections, no tabs open. If I don’t perceive one thing, I sit with not understanding it. I’d look it up later. However I let it’s troublesome first. That window of problem—ten minutes, typically twenty—is the place many of the formation occurs.
I nonetheless use AI for nearly all the things else in my life. Ticket drafts, coverage documentation, analysis summarization, code. I’m not making a blanket argument towards the instruments. I’m making an argument for shielding particular domains from them.
What This Means If You’re Forming Somebody Else
Friction is the mechanism. Take away sufficient of it and also you don’t have a extra environment friendly formation course of. You don’t have any formation course of. You may have content material supply.
If you happen to’re a father or mother, a pastor, a small group chief, a youth director—you might be within the formation enterprise whether or not or not you’d use that phrase. And the temptation you’ll face is identical one I face: when a child asks a tough query, it’s quicker to provide them a solution than to take a seat within the query with them. When somebody in your group wants a verse, it’s quicker to tug it up in your cellphone than to ask them to seek out it. Whenever you want a devotional for Wednesday evening, it’s quicker to have ChatGPT draft it than to write down one your self.
Each a kind of shortcuts is okay in isolation. The sample is what prices you.
The formative moments in my very own life—those which are nonetheless doing work in me now—have been nearly by no means those the place somebody handed me a solution rapidly. They have been those the place a pastor sat with me in a textual content lengthy sufficient for me to seek out my very own footing. The place I used to be anticipated to memorize one thing as a substitute of look it up. The place I needed to deliver my very own phrases right into a room as a substitute of borrowing another person’s.
Friction is the mechanism. Take away sufficient of it and also you don’t have a extra environment friendly formation course of. You don’t have any formation course of. You may have content material supply.
The soul doesn’t develop at era velocity.
This piece was initially printed on Wired Christianity on Could 31, 2026. Republished right here with the creator’s permission.
