“However his delight is within the legislation of the LORD, and on his legislation he meditates day and night time. 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 transferring from one track to the following. 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 high-quality. Genuinely high-quality. Theologically stable, appropriately humble, usable rhythm. I may have dropped it into the service order and no person would have identified.
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
Non secular 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 take advantage of 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 virtually every part else LLMs are helpful for.
After I use AI to summarize an extended 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 exhausting 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 out of the blue lands otherwise since you’re carrying one thing new into the room. That doesn’t occur at era velocity.
What We’re Really Dropping
Three practices. Identical story every time.
Scripture memorization. I grew up an AWANA child—and later a Royal Ambassador—so memorizing passages wasn’t elective. It was the task. It was awkward and repetitive and it required a form of boredom that’s more and more exhausting to fabricate. However someplace within the third or fourth day of operating Romans 8:38–39 via 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 simply 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 verify a reference mid-sermon. That’s high-quality. But when I by no means do the memorization work, the verse is rarely inside me. It’s in my search historical past. These will not be the identical factor.
Sitting with a tough passage. There’s a form of studying that’s nearer to arguing. Habakkuk. Job. The exhausting half of Psalm 88. Passages the place the sincere response is I don’t perceive why you’d permit this. That’s not snug, but it surely’s formative. The friction is the characteristic.
Ask an LLM to summarize Habakkuk’s lament and it’ll provide you with a clear, structured rationalization of the prophet’s criticism 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 comprehend it’s additionally your criticism. The instrument is simply 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 instantly, as a result of it’s the place my very own temptation lives. A generated transition will be theologically correct. It may well title the suitable attribute of God and bridge cleanly into the following 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 via these songs that I’m supposed to call out loud? A generated paragraph bypasses that excavation completely. It arms 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 Know-how
An LLM performs the cognitive work. It doesn’t provide the components for synthesis—it arms you the synthesis.
The usual counterargument is: each era says this about new instruments. Socrates fearful writing would erode reminiscence. The printing press disrupted Bible copying. Research Bibles and commentaries provide you with any individual 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 need to weigh and settle for or reject. Even Google simply retrieves—you continue to need to learn, consider, and synthesize. These instruments serve the cognitive work. They make extra of it potential.
An LLM performs the cognitive work. It doesn’t provide the components for synthesis—it arms 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 in your thoughts to interact.
That’s the road.
What I’ve Modified in My Personal Apply
I don’t declare to have this found out. However I’ve constructed some guidelines for myself.
Each phrase I converse in worship has to come back out of me, imperfect syntax and all.
After I get the prospect to take sermon notes, I favor to put in writing 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 assume. After I sort, I edit as I am going, and the modifying is usually a method of smoothing out the tough locations the place the true work occurs. On paper, I can’t transfer that quick. The roughness stays seen longer.
I don’t let AI write the phrases I converse from the platform. Not transitions, not devotional ideas, not the brief reflections I share between songs—nothing. Not drafted, not “polished,” not “enhanced.” Each phrase I converse in worship has to come back out of me, imperfect syntax and all. It is a exhausting rule and I’ve damaged it precisely as soon as. I felt it Sunday morning.
I learn exhausting 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 tough first. That window of problem—ten minutes, typically twenty—is the place a lot of the formation occurs.
I nonetheless use AI for nearly every part else in my life. Ticket drafts, coverage documentation, analysis summarization, code. I’m not making a blanket argument in opposition to the instruments. I’m making an argument for safeguarding 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 haven’t any formation course of. You could have content material supply.
When you’re a mother or father, a pastor, a small group chief, a youth director—you’re within the formation enterprise whether or not or not you’d use that phrase. And the temptation you’ll face is similar 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 telephone than to ask them to search out it. If you want a devotional for Wednesday night time, it’s quicker to have ChatGPT draft it than to put in writing 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 virtually by no means those the place somebody handed me a solution shortly. They have been those the place a pastor sat with me in a textual content lengthy sufficient for me to search 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 haven’t any formation course of. You could have content material supply.
The soul doesn’t develop at era velocity.
This piece was initially revealed on Wired Christianity on Might 31, 2026. Republished right here with the writer’s permission.
