Jason Moore / Author "Ai and the Church". Church Consultant. Speaker. Trainer "Hybrid Worship"

Churches often struggle to create welcoming environments that connect with modern visitors, while also facing the challenge of integrating new technologies without losing their authentic ministry focus.

Imagine a church that seamlessly combines warm hospitality with cutting-edge technology, creating an environment where both first-time visitors and long-time members feel valued and engaged.

Today's guest, Jason Moore, reveals how to evaluate your church through fresh eyes while leveraging new tools like AI to enhance ministry effectiveness. Stick around to discover how to create authentic connections in an increasingly digital world.

5 Key Takeaways:

1. AI can streamline sermon preparation and creative projects.
2. Hybrid worship is essential for modern church outreach.
3. Visual storytelling significantly boosts engagement and retention.
4. Guest readiness begins with a well-designed website and thoughtful in-person interactions.
5. Ethical AI usage is a tool, not a replacement for human creativity.

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Jason Moore is the author of "AI and the Church" and a creative ministry consultant with over 20 years of experience. As a professional "secret worshiper," he helps churches identify and fix hospitality blind spots. His unique background combines traditional ministry expertise with cutting-edge technology integration, making him a leading voice in modernizing church communication and engagement strategies.

Buy the book: https://amzn.to/3D5KbUO

Link:  https://www.aiandthechurch.ai
Link: MagAi
Promo Code: wineskin30

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (15:59.906)
Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. My name is Paul Povolni and I am excited to have another misfit with me, Jason Moore. He is the author of AI and the Church. He's a creative consultant speaker, trainer specializing in hybrid worship, guest readiness and AI integration with over 20 years of ministry expertise. Jason, welcome man.

Jason Moore (16:03.217)
It's okay.

Jason Moore (16:28.193)
It is good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Paul Povolni (16:30.774)
Yeah, thanks for joining me. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I've had several conversations with AI gurus and experts and always fascinating. And with AI being such a hot topic, always evolving. One update from one of the AI giants and suddenly everything changes and gets better and better. And, you know, the whole five fingers and warped faces that we had just a short time ago.

Jason Moore (16:57.242)
Yes.

Paul Povolni (16:57.39)
is no longer a challenge and now we're getting stuff that is truly amazing. So I'm looking forward to talking about AI with you. But before we go there, I'm a fan of superheroes. I love hearing origin stories. And so I wanna start with your origin story. What is the origin of Jason Moore And you can go as far back as you want to kind of let me know a little bit about you that led you to where you're at now.

Jason Moore (17:19.035)
Sure. Absolutely. Well, I am going to go way back, just to say that when I was in about third grade, believe it or not, I had this dream of becoming an artist when I grew up. I didn't know exactly what that meant. I thought maybe I'd be a cartoonist or, you know, draw pictures for a living or whatever. And, and so as a kid, I did like to draw all the time. A of people would, ask me to draw pictures for them. And then when I got a little older, I got commissioned to do

various portraits and things so I can draw fairly photorealistic and that kind of thing and then and then I had a dream to go to art school and become a commercial artist and while I was in art school a large mega church in my area needed some design work done and that ended up turning into an internship and while I was in college I started working

pretty regularly for this church and they were doing a national search for an art director. And they said, well, we're going to interview you as well. And they were like flying people in from all over the country and decided to give me the job as a fresh out of college student. so God sort of got a hold of my career at that point. I wanted to move to Hollywood and make movies and that kind of thing. That was another part of my dream as a kid. So.

Paul Povolni (18:41.176)
Yeah, yeah. Now, were your parents creative? Where did that creativity come from?

Jason Moore (18:47.737)
you know, not really. my dad was a machinist, you know, he, was a mold maker. and my mom was a nurse, but they certainly encouraged my creativity. They, pretty much if they saw that I had an interest in something, they, supported it, full, full on, oddly enough, I did, you know, grow up in a, a Christian household and that sort of thing. But when I was in art school, my, the, director of my school.

Paul Povolni (18:55.47)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Moore (19:16.893)
came to me when he found out that I was going to take a job at a church and he tried to talk me out of it. And he was like, you're too talented to waste your talent in the church. And, and my parents, they didn't discourage me from working in the church, but it was, there was almost this like, well, gosh, you know, your dream was to go work in Hollywood and that kind of thing. So they didn't say, don't. Yeah. They didn't say, do it, but, but it, you know,

Paul Povolni (19:25.166)
wow.

Paul Povolni (19:37.108)
Why are you settling? Yeah.

Jason Moore (19:43.789)
I eventually decided that was the route I was going to go and I gave up sort of the Hollywood dream. I've gotten to dabble. I've gotten to do a little, little bit here and there with some friends in Hollywood and some productions and stuff like that.

Paul Povolni (19:55.596)
Now there is a difference between being an artist, know, drawing pictures and things like that and being a designer. How was that transition? Was it easy for you? Was it something new? Was it revelatory? What was that like?

Jason Moore (20:06.135)
Yeah, it was sort of all those things. It scared me quite honestly, which will sort of preface what this AI conversation looks like. But I was really afraid when I went to art school that you're right, I was a traditional artist. I was not a designer. And then when I went to art school, of course, they want to put you in front of a computer and they talk to you about programs like Photoshop and Illustrator and

Paul Povolni (20:08.952)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Moore (20:32.771)
I was really afraid I was going to lose my skills as an artist that could draw and paint and do those sorts of things. What I eventually figured out was that the computer was just another paintbrush. It was just another pencil. It was just another tool. And the fears eventually went away. I figured out that I could render, literally render out what was in my head in a different sort of, sometimes an even better way than I could with traditional

Paul Povolni (20:46.861)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (21:02.193)
And I kind of had that same experience with AI where it really kind of scared me when I first saw that you could use words to prompt images. And I thought, I just witnessed my extinction here. And then I kind of figured out that, this is just a way more sophisticated toolbox that I can play in. And there's still artistry and creativity and all that kind of stuff involved. But real quick, back to the origin story.

Paul Povolni (21:15.106)
Ha ha ha.

Jason Moore (21:31.353)
went to this, went to be on staff at this mega church, started consulting and writing books and things like that. And eventually I felt like my call was not to serve one local church, but kind of the global church in a sense. And so I stepped away from there to start some ministries to resource churches around creativity and media and image. spent the first 20 years of my career really trying to convince churches that technology was okay.

Paul Povolni (22:00.174)
All right.

Jason Moore (22:00.399)
And that screens in worship spaces could enhance the experience of worship for a very visual and creative culture. And so that's sort of been my bent for all these years. And how do we communicate our message in a way that is full of artistry and imagery and creativity and all those things.

Paul Povolni (22:19.47)
And so now you're full time in the consulting. That's what you're doing now.

Jason Moore (22:23.127)
I have been, in 2002, I started my ministry. co-founded my company, midnight oil productions. I do about 30 to 40 speaking engagements every year. do a lot of consultation work. I have a few different areas that I focus on, one of which is hospitality. So a lot of churches bring me in as a secret worshiper, which is sort of like being a secret shopper, except you don't buy anything. And I I'm sort of like a.

Paul Povolni (22:48.364)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Moore (22:50.883)
a professional church visitor and I share all of my impressions, the things that I'm learning, the things that where they missed it, you know, that kind of stuff. I'll write a big report. So that's one of the things I help churches with kind of collaborative worship design. So how do you, how does a pastor and a musician and an artist and various other people work together to create an experience where from the beginning to the end,

Paul Povolni (22:58.347)
Wow.

Jason Moore (23:18.299)
You're telling one big idea, one big story, and you're doing that in all of those different ways. Kind of the idea of a narrative worship experience or where there's one thread that kind of goes throughout all of the elements. So I do some of that. And then I'm also a media producer, graphic designer, motion graphic artist. So I do a lot of kind of boutique style work where churches and organizations will hire me to do that kind of thing. And then I do work in the secular world too.

Paul Povolni (23:42.56)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:48.172)
Right. So tell me a little bit about the secret shop or the secret saint or secret visitor or, what, what are some, some of the, the, interesting stories or interesting experiences? Cause you know, churches can have blind spots and they could also, feel very, tribe famous, you know, that they think that they are the best thing going. They are better than, you know, everybody else are doing a fantastically. And so having somebody come in as a.

Jason Moore (24:02.51)
Absolutely.

Jason Moore (24:08.158)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:18.402)
a secret visitor that's untainted by the politics, untainted by the culture, you know, and all of that and look at it with fresh eyes is pretty awesome. So tell me some stories. What are some of the some of the experiences that you've had helping in that space?

Jason Moore (24:29.137)
Sure.

Jason Moore (24:34.799)
Well, you know, there are so many, it's so interesting that, without meaning to, are very, very inwardly focused. often say that secret worshiping feels a little like I've never done this, but it feels a little like crashing someone's family reunion where everybody's got the shirt on and they all know every, you know, know each other and they all know the secret handshakes and all those kinds of things. And you're an outfight. Yes.

Paul Povolni (24:51.16)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (24:58.538)
Right. They have their own chair that nobody else could sit in.

Jason Moore (25:02.969)
So there's one story that's pretty interesting. I walked into a worship service a few minutes before it was to begin and I sat down and I was just kind of looking at all of the stuff in front of me, the printed bulletin that they gave me when I came in and this older lady and her husband came over and they looked at me and they, the woman said to her husband, I guess we'll sit somewhere else this morning. And then she went and sat on the opposite side of the pew and just.

Paul Povolni (25:27.568)
wow.

Jason Moore (25:30.465)
scowled at me the entire service like I sat in her seat, which was kind of uncomfortable. I got to share that feedback with with the team that brought me in. Another time I had when I

Paul Povolni (25:36.536)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (25:41.122)
Were they surprised or were they, were they like, yeah, you shouldn't have touched sister Betty's chair. We should have warned you about her.

Jason Moore (25:46.513)
Well, when I just when I described what happened, they immediately knew who it was. And they're like, yeah, yeah, we that. OK. So they had to, you know, I said, I think you have to have a gentle conversation with her to let her know that like that is very off putting like if if if you hadn't paid me to be here today, I certainly wouldn't have come. I wouldn't come back because that was very uncomfortable.

Paul Povolni (26:09.878)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (26:12.943)
I was sharing that one time at a training and this woman told me a story about how she went to sit down at a church and someone said, excuse me. That's my seat. And she said, okay. I'm sorry. So she got up and he moved somewhere else was just getting ready to sit down. And this family came in. They're like, excuse me, ma'am. That's where we sit. And she said, I wasn't going to give it a third shot. So I went and I stood by the back door or the entryway into the worship space.

Paul Povolni (26:31.214)
Jason Moore (26:40.317)
And this guy comes over to me and says, excuse me, this is where I stand. And that was an usher. And he's like, there was nowhere I could sit or stand in this church. She said, I just went and got in my car and went home. And then one other story that is pretty unbelievable. I was at a church in Waterloo, Iowa. And I walked into the building and this greeter was there. And she said,

Paul Povolni (26:49.621)
Jason Moore (27:06.659)
You have a strange face. And I was like, I do. I'm like, well, and she's like, I just mean, I don't recognize you. I'm like, I like the sound of that better than you have a strange face. so the things that we say to people, could really kind of shape their entire experience with us. And I'm helping, I'm trying to help people see themselves from an outsider's perspective. I, I talk about the idea and you've probably heard the phrase nose blind when you go nose blind to something like you can't smell it anymore.

Paul Povolni (27:35.051)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (27:35.365)
So like I built the home that I live in back in, in 2014, and that sounds fancier than it is. There's like 20 houses in my neighborhood that look exactly the same, but they have different colored shutters or whatever. but for the longest time, when you'd come into the house, you'd kind of smell that new house smell. And eventually we couldn't smell it anymore. But when we go on vacation for a couple of weeks, you'd come home and you'd open the door and it's like, there's new house smell and you could smell it for maybe 10 minutes. And then it was gone.

Paul Povolni (27:44.238)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (28:04.397)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Moore (28:04.505)
And I think that many churches have gone nose blind to what it's like to experience their, what they do for an outsider who doesn't know what they're supposed to say when they don't know those secret handshakes that we have where everybody does this thing at this time, or the signage is often very poor. You know, we don't know where to take our kids. There are all sorts of different things that we don't mean to, but we're inwardly focused and we kind of lose sight of what an outsider would experience.

Paul Povolni (28:33.134)
Right. So how far back from the experience do you start evaluating? And what are some of the things that you look at for the person that listens to this, that's maybe in ministry or on a church team or even the pastor. How far back in your experience of evaluating do you start and what are some of the things that you start looking for?

Jason Moore (28:46.673)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Moore (28:53.967)
So I try really hard not to get overly invested ahead of time because I want to experience it the way a guest would experience it. usually when a church asks me to come do this, I do it both in person and I do it online. I'm usually at least three months out, but sometimes as much as maybe a year out where I'm going to come and do a visit. What I try to do in that time is know enough to.

to know where I'm supposed to go and when I'm supposed to go there. But I try not to dig deep into kind of who they are. What I'll do the night before in my hotel room most of the time is I will do kind of an evaluation of the website from an outsider's perspective. do I know what time and where to go and who these people are? I talk a lot about the idea of moving our hospitality from what I would call transactional to relational.

We don't mean to be, but sometimes we're very transactional in the way that we present who we are. When someone walks in the door, if you hand them a piece of paper, you might call out a bulletin or a worship folder or a prompt or whatever, whatever the language is in your church. Just simply handing someone a piece of paper is a transaction, but having a conversation with them and saying, by the way, this will help you through your experience this morning is a relational approach. Even many

Paul Povolni (30:06.848)
Right.

Jason Moore (30:17.371)
churches will give out a first time guest gift or first time visitor gift or whatever. Sometimes that can be a complete transaction where it's like pick one up on your way out or stop by the welcome center and you'll find them there. It's like the whole purpose of that is that you are trying to build a relationship with someone. don't, don't hand them a mug and that be it or whatever. You really need to have a conversation. And I do a whole thing on, I'm not a big fan of white ceramic church coffee mugs with

Paul Povolni (30:28.407)
right.

Jason Moore (30:45.456)
with one color logos on them because I think people sniff out that you spent as little as possible. But it's all about making good first impressions.

Paul Povolni (30:47.544)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (30:53.432)
Yeah, I think, I think where you started there talking about the website, I've seen so many church websites that fail in the basics. Like how easy is it to find the church times? Like when church starts, how easy is it to find the address? And how easy is it to find a picture of somebody that goes to the church or a staff member? Like I've, I've, I've visited church that I do church sites and stuff.

Jason Moore (31:02.427)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (31:16.238)
Yes.

Paul Povolni (31:20.2)
And I've visited church sites and it's like, I can't find a picture of anybody on staff. I can't find easily your church times. I've got to drill down menus and click on stuff here and click on stuff there. And your address isn't clear. And for me, like those three other basics, and maybe, you know, about you and what you believe, you know, cause you know, everybody kind of has their preferences of, know, where they lean, you know, doctrinally and stuff. And so they want to find somebody that aligns with that.

Jason Moore (31:32.944)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (31:39.876)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (31:49.518)
What are some other things that you look for?

Jason Moore (31:52.475)
Well, some of my kind of boilerplate, like this is what you always should do. I talk about having the times be above the fold, high on the page, you know, and location information. I remind churches all the time that post COVID, you're all multi-site churches now because you have a physical location and a digital location. I shouldn't have to dig all over the place to find where you stream your worship online.

Paul Povolni (32:01.582)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Moore (32:19.875)
A lot of people will transition from being a, an online worshiper to an in-person worshiper. If you do a good job of creating an experience where they're not simply spectators or observers. So, those are two things. Here's one that's really, I think a lot of people miss this, but we don't do a good job of describing the worship that we offer, or we'll use really simple terms like traditional worship or contemporary or modern worship. Well, what does that mean? You have an idea in your head of what that means, but

For me, it might mean something completely different. So I really encourage churches to create a robust description of what it is that you offer. And then when I see, you know, worship is at 9 a.m. or 10, 10 30 a.m. or whatever, to have the whatever style of worship that is clickable so that I can click on that and find out what you mean when you say traditional worship, which also includes maybe giving people some suggestions on how to dress because.

Paul Povolni (33:11.916)
right.

Paul Povolni (33:16.151)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Moore (33:16.559)
If I show up in flip flops and a t-shirt and everybody else is wearing suits and ties and dresses, and I'm probably gonna feel a little out of place, you know? and then one of the... Yeah.

Paul Povolni (33:21.802)
Right, right, right. And you can do that with photographs too, right? You can show, you know, if you're like, there are some churches that raise their hands, other ones, others that don't. And so if you're a hand raiser and you go to a church where they don't, you know, you're going to, you're going to feel a little out of place. So even sometimes photographs can communicate that too.

Jason Moore (33:32.826)
Yes.

Jason Moore (33:36.378)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (33:41.583)
You're so right. And I always encourage the churches I'm working with to avoid the overuse of stock photos. I want to see what your people look like, what your worship looks like. I don't need the stock photos that look like their elevation church, which has smoke machines and lights. And then I come to your church, and it doesn't look anything like that. yeah. And then the other thing, and you kind of touched on this too.

Paul Povolni (33:52.3)
Right, Yeah.

Paul Povolni (34:00.27)
Right, right. And it's a little storefront. Yeah.

Jason Moore (34:11.141)
the pictures of the people, not only in the congregation, but the staff. Like I think a robust staff or team section is where we really can start relationship development. So I always encourage four things, photos that are consistent because I have gone to church websites where it's like the pastor has a really professional headshot. And then like the musician or whatever has some selfie from a church picnic and

Paul Povolni (34:17.379)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (34:22.487)
Right.

Jason Moore (34:38.235)
Somebody else has their glamour shot from the mall in the 90s or whatever. Yes. You've seen those photos. So consistent photos, a way to contact each person. I mean, that's the other thing is sometimes I'll just see like there's a general phone number. And I don't want to have to like navigate your system to figure out how am going to actually get to the youth pastor or whatever the case may be.

Paul Povolni (34:41.518)
or they're up against the wall like a prisoner, know, just... Absolutely.

Paul Povolni (35:03.51)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (35:05.603)
The third one, which is maybe the most important one, is what I would say I would call a vision statement. What's your vision for ministry? Not your bio, like where you went to school and what degree you have is great, but tell me why you're excited about being the pastor or the family minister at this church or whatever. I get way more excited about bringing my kids when I read a paragraph about how you are passionate about raising up children in the way of Jesus, you know.

Paul Povolni (35:14.829)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (35:19.533)
Right.

Paul Povolni (35:32.396)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (35:32.785)
And then the fourth one, which is sort of more optional, but I really encourage this during COVID, was the idea of having a short little video from each team member. And I mean, that could even be shot on a smartphone, but like 30 seconds. And the reason for that is that you can capture a sense of personality on a video where you can't, I mean, we've all read text and we've read something tonally in there that's not really accurate. So.

Paul Povolni (35:44.493)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (35:59.702)
Those are the kind of the four things that I recommend that people would include in their staff or team section. And that, I think, begins the relationship even before people arrive.

Paul Povolni (36:09.612)
I love that. Love that. Okay. So we've, we've looked at the website, we've approached the church. I'm guessing you probably look at the, drive experience driving up, you know, what that experience is like, right.

Jason Moore (36:19.215)
Yes.

I do talk a lot about curb appeal, that it's important that your campus, and even if you're a small little country church, like are the bushes trimmed? Did you cut the grass recently? Have the windows been washed? That's one that's a big thing. Like sometimes it looks like you're prepared for Halloween, haunted house season, because nobody's cleaned up or the cobwebs that are hanging out in front of the church or whatever are still there.

Paul Povolni (36:24.598)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (36:48.881)
So curb appeal and then another thing that I always encourage churches to think about is To take your own GPS directions in like First of all on the website your address should be hot-linked to GPS coordinates And you should have a mobile version of your website because I don't want to have to copy and paste I want to be able to click on the address and it takes me there. But sometimes what happens is GPS will take you

Paul Povolni (37:04.492)
Yeah. Right.

Jason Moore (37:14.715)
to the backside of the church, or it'll tell you you've arrived before you've gotten there. You really want to drive those directions. And then everything from the parking lot into the building really does start that first impression. Signage is a huge one. We've got to have good, accurate signage that is consistent. I work with a lot of churches that have lived for many, years, a long life. And

Paul Povolni (37:28.877)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (37:40.195)
Most of those churches that have lived, you know, 100, 150, the buildings that have lived 150 years, we have a hodgepodge of different eras. People don't take down the old signs, they just add new ones in the new part of the building. And you'll see, you know, 20 different fonts and colors and shapes. And you should have one information system that guide people around your space. So that's always a big one that I talk about. And then

Paul Povolni (37:51.248)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (38:01.442)
Brian.

Jason Moore (38:04.707)
A clearly marked welcome area, welcome table or somewhere that I can go to get information about the church that I'm visiting. I think even if you're in a place where you don't have a lot of kids having a well marked children's ministry space and a formal check-in, like even if you only have a couple kids, leaving your child with somebody that you don't know can be a very trauma inducing experience.

Paul Povolni (38:29.9)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (38:30.993)
I want to know that like nobody else can pick my kid up but me. So do I have a card I can fill out or some app that I can access and so on.

Paul Povolni (38:39.574)
Yeah, wow, that's so good. So, before we continue, I've got something keeps dinging. Do you have your notifications on or is it me?

Jason Moore (38:49.113)
I think it's you.

Paul Povolni (38:52.002)
me make sure because I keep hearing a dinging but I've got my do not disturb on.

Jason Moore (38:55.427)
Well, okay, wait my

I guess my email is open, but I haven't heard it on my end, but I did just close it.

Paul Povolni (39:04.43)
Yeah, I've been here in dinging and I'm checking to see if mine was doing it.

Jason Moore (39:10.639)
Let me just make sure I'm closing everything.

Paul Povolni (39:14.446)
Yeah, I just double checked that I had stuff closed too.

Jason Moore (39:28.621)
Okay.

Let's see.

Again, didn't hear it, but my daughter did send me a text. I did just close the Messenger app. hopefully that, if that was it, everything is closed now that alerts, I think. Sorry, I didn't, I wasn't hearing it on my end.

Paul Povolni (39:44.566)
Okay.

All right, man. Yeah. Yeah. I heard it in my earphones and, I mean, I I closed my email, but I didn't have any email things or text things. All right. We'll continue. Okay. So we've talked about, you know, the, the web experience we've talked about a little bit of the approach experience before we head off to your book, which I really want to talk about AI and the church, cause that's a whole different experience, internally, externally, and everything else.

Jason Moore (39:55.184)
Okay.

Jason Moore (40:02.577)
Alright, sorry about that.

Paul Povolni (40:17.85)
What are some of the other big mistakes that surprise churches that they're not considering when it comes to that Sunday experience that people might have?

Jason Moore (40:28.281)
Yeah, I kind of talk about what I would call three secrets. We have secret identities. We have secret handshakes. And then we have sort of what's the third one that's not popping into my head at the moment? Well, there's a third one. I'll think of it at some point. I haven't given this presentation in a while. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (40:47.682)
Yeah, let's talk about the first two.

Jason Moore (40:54.893)
Well, anyway, secret identities. I mean, the first thing is that we don't think about the fact that for somebody that's brand new, they don't know who anybody is. So the folks up front really need to be doing introductions every week from the pastor to lay leaders who are reading scripture or leading a prayer or whatever the case may be. And I think this is really important for online worshipers. If I'm not in the building, I don't have that physical

piece of paper that you give me when I come in the room that tells me who everybody is. So I think it's really important that we help people know who is leading them in worship. The secret handshake piece is that we have all sorts of little rites and rituals that we do that outsiders don't know. I grew up in the United Method, well, I grew up first in the Assemblies of God denomination and then

got invited to United Methodist Youth Group and I didn't really care so much about it being United Methodist. It was just a great youth group. And I remember their weekly practice was when scripture was read at the end, the person would say the Word of God for the people of God. And then everybody would say in unison. It sounded like this to me the first week, because I had no idea what they said. I'm like, what was that? And it took me like three or four visits to realize

because they would, they, the response is thanks be to God. But I always joked that, you know, on the second week, I thought they said, thanks be to Todd. Is that the pastor's name? Like who, who's Todd? and it was never, it wasn't written down anywhere. It wasn't in a bulletin. They didn't have screens at this church, but if they did, it wouldn't have been on the screen. So what are all those little things that you say and do that you just know that when this happens, we all say this thing or, whatever. My, my wife, grew up in a Catholic family.

And the one mass that I have attended was her grandmother's funeral. And I felt like a fish out of water the entire time because they would all kneel and I'd go to kneel and they'd all stand up and then I would stand up and they'd sit and then I'd go to sit and they'd all stand back up. And, you know, I just felt out of sync the entire time. So what are those rites and rituals that you do that somebody would not know if they didn't know, you know, so don't assume that people know the drill is what I often say.

Paul Povolni (42:59.57)
hahahaha

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (43:14.616)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (43:19.235)
And then, you know, little things like, where do you, where do you put those new people? Like having someone to help ushers don't just need to take the offering, but can help me find a seat. know those spots where someone might tell me that I'm sitting in their seat or, some churches that I visit. this is very awkward. The, the door to go into the space is sometimes at the front of the worship space, like in these older churches. So you're actually, if you walk in,

Paul Povolni (43:33.102)
Right, right, right.

Jason Moore (43:48.129)
minutes into worship, it feels like you're interrupting the worship experience. So like having people that would stand by the door that would let you know that, or signage that would help you know that this is the front of the sanctuary or the worship space, whatever you call that, and directing people to other ways to enter, you all those things really matter. And then I guess the last one I would say, my wife is, she's an introvert. I'm an extrovert. And for her, it's a little taxing.

Paul Povolni (43:52.547)
Right.

Jason Moore (44:16.015)
sometimes on a Sunday morning to participate in all of what she would call forced interaction moments like turn to your neighbor and say or go shake three hands this morning or whatever and Yes, I went to one church that ended the service with a hug circle I'm like, my gosh, if I'm a new person I don't want to hug 30 people that I don't know and I'm likely to not come back. So to try and look at what you're doing from the outsider's perspective

Paul Povolni (44:26.862)
Well, let's hold hands together as we pray.

Paul Povolni (44:33.735)
my goodness, yeah.

Paul Povolni (44:41.089)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (44:44.971)
is really helpful. the third one is secret code language. That's the one that secret identity, secret handshakes, and secret code language. I knew it would pop into my head at some point. But again, we have certain little phrases and things that we say that outsiders just they don't know what we're talking about. Even something as simple as fill out your Connect card today. Well, if I'm new, that's a common phrase that I hear sometimes when I visit churches.

Paul Povolni (44:50.622)
yes, yes.

Paul Povolni (44:55.874)
Yeah, it would come back.

Paul Povolni (45:13.962)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (45:15.109)
What is a connect card? And by the way, if I'm worshiping online, are you going to put that in the mail to me? Because if it's a card, that's a physical thing, right? So just our language really matters. I'll throw one last one out at you here language-wise. And that is just to remember, my most recent book before this one is called Both and Maximizing Hybrid Worship for Online and In-Person Engagement. And I talk about language really mattering. We don't want to...

Paul Povolni (45:22.924)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (45:45.401)
say thank you to the people who worship online by saying, if you're watching at home today, we want them to worship at home. We don't want them to watch us worship. And so I talk about that language. They're not viewers. They are participants only if you will invite them to participate. So can you invite them to participate in prayer by putting it in the chat or can you make whatever that piece of paper is that they get downloadable as a PDF document so they can

Paul Povolni (45:54.54)
Right, Yeah.

Jason Moore (46:13.945)
they can participate along with the things that we're saying and doing. And if we're going to welcome each other in the room, let's wave a welcome to those who are at home. How can we make an experience where people, both physically and digitally gathered, are all a part of the experience, just spectators and participants that are physically present?

Paul Povolni (46:17.164)
Right.

Paul Povolni (46:34.016)
Wow. That sounds so amazing. And there's so many, I'm sure you could probably go on for a couple of hours in just sharing all the things to consider. mean, even to consider that a lot of times, first time visitors are probably there early, you know, because they don't know that, you know, they don't know. and so what do you do for those people that come early? You know, do you have a way to make them not feel weird? Do you have a way for them not to feel at a place?

Jason Moore (46:52.613)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:58.754)
that you have considered and I think that's pretty important. Are you finding that as well that visitors usually come early or are they usually late or?

Jason Moore (47:05.423)
Well, find, I think that does happen some. I find though that most visitors want to remain anonymous, so they'll slip in at the last moment. And one of the things that I often will talk about my consulting is that you want to have your greeters in place five or 10 minutes into the service so that when somebody does slip in at the last minute, you still have someone to open the door for them, to welcome them, to answer any questions. I'll tell you another pet peeve practice of mine that I've been seeing more often than not recently.

Paul Povolni (47:27.021)
Ryan.

Jason Moore (47:35.395)
is that people will try to get some bonus time in before the service starts to do things like announcements or whatever. So the posted time might be say 10 AM, but I walk in at 10 AM and there's already somebody on stage and they're giving some announcements or they're talking. And I look at my watch. I'm like, am I late or what? When you do that, you really kind of prevent any opportunity for conversation with a new person. So if I'm brand new and I walk in and you've started two minutes before the posted start time,

Nobody can welcome me, say good morning, because they feel like they're interrupting a service that's already in progress. So I just always tell people, start late and don't start early. Start on time, because it's disconcerting for a guest to feel like I'm interrupting something that already started.

Paul Povolni (48:11.458)
Right.

Paul Povolni (48:24.15)
Right. And I think you've brought up some interesting things about, you know, culture and the way things happen within a church service. And certainly you don't have to remove those things or stop a lot of things, but make sure you communicate for that person that maybe is visiting for the first time that doesn't understand the language, doesn't understand the cues, doesn't understand the way things happen, that you are not over-explaining, but you're at least informing them of this is

Jason Moore (48:37.73)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (48:52.524)
what we're doing now, fill out your connection card in the seat pocket in front of you, you know, things like that. You don't have to necessarily become generic and change everything about your culture, but just inform people in a way that makes sense and makes it a little clearer for them so they don't feel so lost, right?

Jason Moore (48:57.094)
Yes.

Jason Moore (49:11.309)
I agree, yeah, 100 % with what you're saying. We don't want to remove our rituals. We just need to explain them in a way that people can participate and understand. I'll give you one quick example. A few years ago, I did a trip to a church in Charlotte, a very well-known church called Transformation Church, Pastor Derwin Gray.

everything about the experience was pretty incredible. spectacular hospitality, people wearing shirts that say, how can I help? You exactly who you could talk to. They gave this really nice first time guest gift, a couple of books and some other things. everything about the experience was really, really strong, really good. But I'll tell you the last thing they did in the service was a little off putting to me as a guest. It wasn't like terribly off putting, but,

Transformation Church is the name of the church. You are probably familiar with the old cartoon Transformers. In the show Transformers, the leader of the, there you go, the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime, had a sort of catchphrase when they go into battle, he'd say, Transformers roll out. So at the, yes, exactly, you have a good voice for that.

Paul Povolni (50:06.488)
Yeah.

More than meets the eye.

Paul Povolni (50:19.842)
Yeah, roll out.

Yeah.

Jason Moore (50:25.281)
So at the end of the service, they said, are you ready? Transformation Church? Are you ready? And I thought, ready for what? And then somebody pointed up and they said, Transformers roll out. Now they didn't say Humminemma. I don't know what they were saying because it was like this ritual that they did every Sunday. And, and for me, it was like the only thing you would have to do to make that something where an outsider could be a part of it to say,

Paul Povolni (50:39.662)
Wow.

Jason Moore (50:52.347)
Friends, we have a little ritual. end every service by pointing up and saying, we serve an awesome guy, pointing right. We go into the world, we whatever the thing is that they say, are you ready? Transformation church, let's do it. And then you say all the stuff or you put it on the screen so that people know what those things are rather than leaving me feeling like an outsider at the very end where you've done a great job all throughout. And then all of a sudden, you know, I'm, I'm an outsider and I don't know the secret language, the secret handshake or any of that stuff.

Paul Povolni (51:00.087)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:04.759)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:08.117)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (51:20.631)
Right, right, right.

Jason Moore (51:22.181)
So, you know, it's, it's, trying to identify those things. And you're right. You don't want to be cumbersome and explain every single thing that's happening and have a bunch of language that, makes it feel like exposition the entire time. But, but there's little things we can do to include people.

Paul Povolni (51:30.487)
right.

Paul Povolni (51:36.108)
Right, Yeah. Man, I'm so glad that church didn't go like, roll out.

Jason Moore (51:42.225)
That would have been pretty cool. I might have liked that, but yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:46.81)
that's hilarious. Okay. Before we talk about AI in the church, pet peeve of mine, and maybe I'm totally wrong in this, but when it comes to guest gifts, I think one of the dumbest guest gifts is a t-shirt with your name on it because they're not a fan yet. They don't care. That's going to end up as a painting shirt. They're going to end up, it's going to be their PJs. They're not going to wear it out. They don't even know whether they like you yet. You know, they don't know whether they're ready to commit yet. They don't.

Jason Moore (51:56.549)
Yes.

Jason Moore (52:01.293)
Okay. Yeah.

Jason Moore (52:09.68)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (52:14.189)
Right. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (52:14.67)
care about your logo, you know, it doesn't matter to them. am I totally wrong in that? Cause I think the better gift would be something that's either inspirational with your logo kind of in there, but not it, you know, something interesting, something inspirational, but if it's going to be a t-shirt, but not necessarily a t-shirt with your big logo on it, they, they're not ready for that. Right. Am I wrong? Am I, am I crazy? Am I being finicky here?

Jason Moore (52:29.178)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (52:38.585)
Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't think you're wrong. I think that if you're going to give a shirt away and this is what my church does, they have a, our tagline is better together. So they have a shirt that says better together, really huge on it. And then on the sleeve is the logo for the church. And it's like this big, it's tiny. so I tell people all the time, your visitors don't love you yet.

Paul Povolni (52:56.746)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Paul Povolni (53:02.007)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (53:08.066)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Moore (53:08.187)
That doesn't mean it. So like the most common gift that I see when I'm out and my wife actually has banned me from bringing any more home are ceramic coffee mugs. And people buy the cheapest one. They get the white ceramic coffee mug with the one color logo on it. It's like, first of all, I think most of us have a cabinet in our homes that's already filled with too many coffee mugs and we rotate the same four that are our favorites and we don't even use the ones in the back.

Paul Povolni (53:17.784)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (53:23.163)
my goodness.

Paul Povolni (53:32.012)
Right.

Paul Povolni (53:37.581)
Ryan.

Jason Moore (53:38.009)
Your church's coffee mug is going to mean more to your regulars than it is to a guest because they don't they don't care yet, right? They don't even know if they're coming back as you said So I'm a big fan of trying to create a guest gift that would be meaningful and useful to a guest So one of the best ones I ever saw was kind of a medium-sized church in Charlotte, North Carolina They had this little bag that they gave out that they called a family night

Paul Povolni (53:45.271)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (54:06.641)
in a bag. They said, we value family. We want you to be a part of our family. We want to send you home today with a family night in a bag. And what it had in it was a little card that had a coupon for a free extra large one topping pizza from a local pizza place. Now, the brilliant thing about this was that if they didn't turn in the card, you weren't out anything. The pizza place would just send a bill to the church once a month for any pizza, and they'd give them good deal on it.

Paul Povolni (54:29.346)
Right.

Paul Povolni (54:36.643)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (54:36.739)
It also had a bag of microwave popcorn in it. And then it had a coupon for a Redbox gift code. you could go and get a Redbox. Now, Redbox is defunct now. But at the time, that was pretty cool that I could go rent a movie, pop popcorn, have a pizza night with my family on the church. The only thing, the suggestion I had for them is once I pop my popcorn and use my Redbox code, I don't have anything to remember you by. What if you put a

Paul Povolni (54:45.581)
Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:03.437)
Brian.

Jason Moore (55:04.881)
a deck of cards with your church's logo on it with some family friendly, family friendly card games that we could get those cards out and play every once in a while. But to me, that is a gift that's more about you than it is me. And I think too many churches are giving away a gift that's more about them. You are trying to make a first impression, but if it's just sort of a tchotchke with your logo on it,

Paul Povolni (55:19.703)
Right.

Paul Povolni (55:32.54)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (55:32.753)
It doesn't really mean anything. One other one that I saw that was just very impressive to me was a church had a card, their connect card for first time guests. And they said, we want to donate $5 in your name to one of four charities locally here. So if you will pick which charity that you would like for us to donate to, then bring that by the welcome center. We also have a physical gift we'd like to give you, but we want to donate money in your name to a

charity. And on the wall, they had these four plexiglass boxes that were filled with ping pong balls. And it was orange, the color of their church's logo. And they had the four charities listed. And the ping pong ball represented every time a guest had filled out a card, and it was filled with ping pong balls. And it showcased the ministry that they were doing in their community. So we got to see a physical representation. They also gave them a nice coffee mug, not a not a

Paul Povolni (56:23.232)
Nice.

Paul Povolni (56:26.826)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (56:31.694)
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Moore (56:32.049)
cheap one. But I thought that was a pretty cool thing because it, I do think there's some evidence to suggest that young people are like, why are you wasting money on these things when you could feed the hungry or you could house the homeless or, you know, give clothing to people who don't have enough. The idea that you're going to give away five dollars, what you would have spent on a coffee mug and my name to a local charity is a pretty cool thing. So

Paul Povolni (56:48.364)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (56:59.757)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (57:00.753)
My encouragement to your listeners is to think about what could you do with your gift, your first time guest gift, to make it about them and to make an impact and not just give them a tchotchke that means more to your regulars than your visitors.

Paul Povolni (57:14.402)
Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Love that. I love that. And I think even, you know, if you have a church coffee shop, you give them a free coffee. If you have a book, an inspiring book that you can get in bulk and cheap and somehow imprint your name or put a sticker of your church on there, that's a devotional or something to inspire or whatever. I definitely think things like that have more value because it's something that they'll keep. Like you said, a tchotchke, a pen, a...

Jason Moore (57:24.323)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (57:29.402)
Yep.

Paul Povolni (57:44.846)
a mug with your logo on it, they're not ready for that yet. And the funny thing is, is you don't make that available to your church members who actually would take that to work and show it off that they're proud to be a part of your church. so.

Jason Moore (57:48.858)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (57:55.747)
Yeah. That's what I tell people all the time. We're sometimes so focused on the first time guest experience. We really ought to have a first time guest gift. And then we ought to have like the fifth time or the, you know, you're committed now for a month or whatever. We've, we've seen you this many times. Hey, we've also got a t-shirt that has our logo on it that now that you're a part of our community.

Paul Povolni (58:10.018)
Yeah. Right, right.

Jason Moore (58:20.613)
We thought you might like some swag. You know, it'd be nice to have something like that that I'm now proud to wear around your logo. I will say this about shirts. I did visit Elevation Church a few years ago and they did give me a shirt and I'm already, you know, I'm already bought into the church. So I, don't mind. And they give me, they spend a little extra money. They give a nice multi blend shirt. That's not like the, hard chafie, you know, cheap shirts that you would typically get, but here's, here's what happens.

Paul Povolni (58:22.485)
Absolutely.

Paul Povolni (58:37.59)
Right.

Paul Povolni (58:46.112)
Right, right, the Hanes shirt.

Jason Moore (58:50.307)
Every time I wear that shirt out, many times that I wear that shirt out, people will say, what's elevation church? Cause it says elevation church right on the front of it. And it's, it's a nice design and all of that. And you sort of create walking, walking billboards. But again, you, that's not, I agree again, wholeheartedly with you that a first time visitor who's not yet bought in and doesn't even know if they're coming back, they're not going to wear your shirt around. especially if it's not very well designed, if it's not a

Paul Povolni (59:19.0)
Brian.

Jason Moore (59:19.427)
If the design isn't catchy and it's just your church's logo, it's likely to going to be that painting shirt that you talked about or a night shirt that I wear to bed or whatever the case may be.

Paul Povolni (59:27.82)
Right.

Yeah. Well, and think, I think even with the example of Elevation Church, Elevation Church is a brand name. Like it's, you know, it's, it's known within church circles at least. And so, and plus the quality of the shirt was good. So there were two reasons you probably were confident and happy to wear that shirt because it was a church that had a good reputation, has good brand, is making an impact. And then also the quality of the shirt. And so you, you proudly wore it out there, but if it was

Jason Moore (59:36.24)
Yes.

Jason Moore (59:47.002)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (59:58.71)
a church you'd never heard of, you'd probably be a little more hesitant in just wearing it out there. All right, so this has been amazing. This has been awesome. And we have talked about some stuff where some people is like incredible head smacks around the church experience. But I want to talk about your book, AI and the Church. And so how did that, what was your first experience with AI? was your first reaction? You shared a little bit about it.

Jason Moore (01:00:00.634)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:00:04.208)
Yep.

Jason Moore (01:00:24.976)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:25.922)
And when did that head smack moment happen for you around AI and the church? You you probably saw it as part of creativity and design and some of the other things that you were doing. When did those two meet and, and what was that like?

Jason Moore (01:00:33.275)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:00:38.138)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:00:41.871)
Well, the really interesting thing when I started to write the book is I was doing a little research on AI and just the history of it. And the crazy thing is AI has been around for a very long time. We all probably know about chat GPT, which was the revolutionary new technology that came out in November of 22, the chat bot that could chat like a real person. The first chat bot

that was developed in the late 60s called ELIZA. And it was very simple, but you could give it a query and it would come back. it didn't do a whole lot, but AI has been around for a really, really long time. So I was a huge fan growing up as a kid of anything having to do with AI, the way it was depicted. So I'm a big Star Wars fan, so R2D2 and C3PO and...

Paul Povolni (01:01:30.562)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:01:32.547)
And I used to watch a show in the 80s called Knight Rider. I if you ever watched Knight Rider, yeah. Yeah. And that seems so far-fetched in the 90s that you could have a self-driving car that could talk to you, that had every bit of information you could ever want at a query. You just asked it, and it knew. We don't have jet engines that can fly over things and all that in our vehicles. Yeah. But.

Paul Povolni (01:01:36.282)
absolutely, Kit and David Hesselhoff, yeah yeah absolutely.

Paul Povolni (01:01:47.852)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:01:57.622)
Or missiles, yeah.

Jason Moore (01:02:00.401)
But we've arrived at that place, right? So I've always been into technology. And in August of 22, OpenAI, which is the company that created ChatGPT, put out a new feature for an image generator that had been around for a while. The image generator is called Dall-e which by the way, for your listeners, if they've heard of Dall-e, they may not know that the name of Dall-e was inspired by

Paul Povolni (01:02:02.883)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:02:30.159)
Salvador Dall-e, the artist, and Wall-e the robot. So it's D-A-L-L hyphen E. That's where the name comes from. And so they had put out this new version of Dall-e Dall-e 2, and it had a feature that had never been seen before called outpainting. And basically, you could upload a photo, take a little box, and put it next to the photo. And it would look at the photo, and then it would extend that photo beyond the frame.

Paul Povolni (01:02:37.443)
Nice.

Jason Moore (01:02:59.331)
And it would do it in a way that was pretty like realistic to whatever already existed. So I took Mona Lisa, I just took a little, not even the whole picture, but just like a square Mona Lisa, put it in, drew a little box next to it and said, mountain sky clouds. And it drew in everything. And it looked like the same brush strokes and the same colors. And my mouth dropped open.

Paul Povolni (01:03:21.187)
Wow.

Jason Moore (01:03:24.537)
My heart started to beat a little bit faster. I started to sweat because I thought, did I just witness my extinction, as I mentioned a minute ago? And it scared me a little because I've spent 30 years working on all these skills to be a designer and to create things like that. And the thought that I could just put words in and an image could appear, that was pretty incredible. I could have done what Dall-e did, but it would have taken me a half a day.

Paul Povolni (01:03:28.258)
Ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (01:03:34.893)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:03:53.061)
to do it as well. So that initially kind of freaked me out. But then I got really excited about the church because in my coaching and consultation work, I work with some really small churches that don't have money. They could never even fathom hiring a guy like me. And so the thought that a pastor could learn how to use this technology and talk to it

Paul Povolni (01:03:53.422)
Right?

Paul Povolni (01:04:11.031)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:04:17.969)
There is a really incredible study that they did back in 2008 that they continue to update. They continue to look at the data. This study found that we are 65 % visual learners as a culture and that learning increases by a whopping 400 % when you use image to teach. So not every church has screens, but many churches do have screens. I think too often we treat the screen as if it's a giant piece of paper.

Paul Povolni (01:04:36.631)
Wow.

Jason Moore (01:04:47.417)
and we take everything that used to be in the hymnal, the book we sing out of everything that used to be in the Bible. We put lots of Bible verses on the screen and announcements. So we'll do we'll take the bulletin or the newsletter or whatever, and we'll put all that stuff on the screen. I don't think that's the way we ought to think of the screen. The screen is more of a canvas that we can paint new pictures. I'm not saying don't ever put text on it, but if you really want to inspire people into remembering what they experienced on a Sunday morning or whatever day you worship.

Paul Povolni (01:05:09.707)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (01:05:17.617)
give them these visual touch points because according to neuroscience, image is the native language of our brain. I'm more likely to remember if you give me a picture of what you're talking about versus just the text and the words that are there. So as I think about those two things, I think about the increase in effectiveness that we can have in the church. The head smack moment for me was that, gosh, now pastors

when they're telling that story can bring it to life through image. I've had moments where when I'm working with a pastor, I've gone in search of the perfect stock photo to illustrate whatever they're talking about. And you might spend a day looking for it and you might never find it or you might find something that's sort of it. And maybe if I Photoshop this and this image, I can kind of make what you're describing in this story, but that's going to take a lot of time.

Here's the crazy thing. Now we can say to a program like Dall-e or Mid Journey or Ideogram, these are some of my favorite image generators, I can say, you I want a picture of Paul on a horse riding through, you know, a snow covered mountain meadow or whatever, and it can make it and it looks pretty incredible and it's getting better at having five fingers instead of six or eight or whatever.

Paul Povolni (01:06:38.647)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:06:45.999)
So that was kind of the moment for me where I saw the potential. And then the more I started to dig into what the technology could do, once I discovered that there is a way to talk to it, and when you learn how to talk to it, you can get pretty consistent, good outputs. It really changed everything. And then I was like, I want to help the church navigate this moment in time because while...

AI is a double-edged sword. There are negative, lots of negatives and downsides. I think there's lots of positives. And so I think of AI as a tool that is neither inherently good nor inherently evil. It's how we use it that can be good or evil. And I tell people all the time, the only way to fail at AI right now is to ignore it. You don't have to love it. You don't even have to use it. But you do need to understand what it is and what it does so that you can

Paul Povolni (01:07:33.976)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:07:40.325)
better be equipped for what's happening in the world around us.

Paul Povolni (01:07:43.574)
Yeah. So you've mentioned, you know, being able to generate images to use on the screens and, and, you know, on website, social media, things like that. What are some other ways that the AI and the church can merge?

Jason Moore (01:07:58.245)
Well, there's lots of them. In fact, there's one whole chapter where I have 10 different ways. That's just getting people started. In fact, if your listeners are interested, you can download that chapter for free at AI in the church.ai. You just follow the form and it'll let you download it and it'll give you these 10 ways. One of the ways that I really enjoy using it is for series development. So if you're brainstorming and you want to have it help you

identify like in the book, I actually have this demonstration where I said, I want to create a series based on Jesus life, but I want to focus on his miracles. can you help me brainstorm this? And it immediately comes up with six different miracles. And, it's really important that we're doing the driving and that AI is not doing the driving. So I always say that it's a do it with you not to do it for you. And I think we have to remain in the driver's seat. If you're not careful, you can let AI do all of.

the wrestling with Scripture. It ought to not be writing your sermon. It can help you write a better sermon. But anyway, in that demonstration, I ask it for help with constructing the series. I always tell people you're the decider. So you're a co-creator with Christ, not AI. But Christ threw you for the skeptics out there who say, well, I just don't believe I think this is the devil or I think that God can't use this technology.

Paul Povolni (01:09:00.75)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:09:10.851)
Ryan.

Right.

Jason Moore (01:09:25.347)
Remember that God spoke through a burning bush. God spoke through Balaam's donkey. God spoke through a disembodied hand that wrote a message on the wall, right? God says that God will speak through the very stones themselves if we don't do our work. So why would we believe that God couldn't arrange the bits and the bytes and all the stuff within this technology to speak to humanity as well? But anyway, back to the...

Paul Povolni (01:09:28.172)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:09:39.916)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:09:54.289)
series design, you can use it to help you pick out songs. You can use it to help you with branding. So in the demonstration, I asked it to help me write a bumper video and then to provide all of the descriptions for the images and voiceover for the narrator. And then I used other technologies to generate the images and the voiceover. And then I put together this whole bumper video that really was about 65 % AI.

creating the various things and then me adding my own touches to that. This is something that would have taken me probably about 80 hours the old-fashioned way and now I could probably do it in about five, which is really incredible. So I tell pastors all the time like it can save you time, it can help you sharpen your content, it can give you ideas, it can get you outside of your own head. know, sometimes we get stuck on our own

Paul Povolni (01:10:38.211)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:10:50.391)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (01:10:53.541)
point of view and perspective. one of the ways is serious design. Another way is to analyze your data. So you can take your attendance data or whatever, put it all into ChatGPT, and then chat with your data. Which Sunday of the month over the last three years is the best attendance Sunday? Or out of the potentially five Sundays that occur in a month, which Sunday is the best attended? What if you discovered through chatting with your data

that the third Sunday always is the best attended Sunday. Maybe we shouldn't start series on the first Sunday of the month like we might typically do, but maybe because we've got the most people there on the third Sunday, maybe we ought to use that data to inform what we're doing with how we plan worship. Another way is translation. There's a software that is just completely incredible that I can deliver a message in English.

Paul Povolni (01:11:29.047)
Right?

Jason Moore (01:11:50.093)
It can then take that message using my voice, cloning my voice, turn it into Spanish or French or another language, and then even like deep fake my mouth to move in a very convincing way that I am speaking it. Now, I don't think we want to fool people into thinking, wow, Jason learned Spanish overnight. But I could very easily say through the power of AI, I want you to hear this message in your own.

native language. We have a lot of Spanish-speaking folks in our congregation. So today, let me read the scripture for you in English, and then you're going to hear it in Spanish. And it could be in my voice with my face for both of those things. But disclosing that AI was used. Yeah. Bible reading plans. If you want to give people a 10-week study, of course, you can do that the old-fashioned way and spend

Paul Povolni (01:12:17.621)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:12:29.652)
Right. Right, right, having that transparency, yeah.

Jason Moore (01:12:45.539)
a day or more, you know, looking up all the scripture and cross referencing and all that kind of stuff. Or you can spend five minutes having a conversation with chat GPT and saying, this is the subject that I'm talking about. Can you help me find, you know, 10 scriptures that go with this? And can you write some reflection questions? And again, you're doing the driving, but it's really good at that kind of thing. There are just so many ways.

Paul Povolni (01:12:56.77)
right?

Paul Povolni (01:13:05.24)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:13:12.209)
to bridge our conversation from earlier. If you're trying to get into the head of an outsider, somebody who doesn't know anything about your church, have a conversation with ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, one of the chat bots, to say, I'm putting together this series. How would somebody that didn't grow up in the church, what might some of their responses be, or how would they need to hear this? One of my favorite ways to use it in sermon development is to ask ChatGPT to be a foil.

to your ideas. So I want you to take on the opposite perspective. I'm preaching on on tithing or stewardship. Can you take on the role of a skeptic who thinks the church is always asking for too much money? And then it's going to help give it your whole sermon. It's going to come back and say in your first point, you lost me here when you might consider and it's going to help you take take in a whole new perspective, which I think can help you clarify and sharpen your content. It shouldn't write your sermon for you.

Paul Povolni (01:13:44.204)
Wow, okay, yeah.

Jason Moore (01:14:10.555)
but it can help you to take that sermon and make it more accessible. So I could go on and on and on. There are just so many ways you can use it.

Paul Povolni (01:14:16.616)
my goodness. mean, it's so good. Yeah. Well, and I think, I think the key is also to trust, but verify too. cause you know, it, as much as we like to think that AI is totally unbiased, untainted by human, preferences and bents and, and, you know, all of that stuff, we do need to just double check it. Just, just read through it. Don't be ignorant and don't just think.

Jason Moore (01:14:23.002)
Yes.

Paul Povolni (01:14:45.602)
Hey, done, you know, I'm off to play golf, you know, but actually take time to read through the stuff that it outputs and verify it because, you know, it's not 100 % pure, if I could put it that way.

Jason Moore (01:14:47.235)
Yes.

Jason Moore (01:14:59.953)
Yes. I actually make that advice, that very phrase I put in the book that we have to trust but verify. A lot of folks don't know this technical term, but it is actually a technical term, and it's hallucination. That's the technical term for when AI makes stuff up or is inaccurate. The reason that that happens is that these chat bots were trained on sort of a reward system. Like when they're training it,

You answer the question right, you get a reward. And I don't know exactly how that works technically, but it basically, yeah, there you go. We pump in a little, a few extra, yeah. And so it really wants, and it doesn't have a will, but it's programmed to get that little reward. It wants to do the right thing. It wants to provide you the answer. So sometimes it will actually make up an answer that it doesn't have.

Paul Povolni (01:15:33.922)
get a little extra jolt of electricity.

Jason Moore (01:15:57.263)
because it wants that little jolt of whatever. Again, it's not sentient. doesn't have an agenda or anything like that. But the programming, the algorithms, are looking to get it right. In the book, I write about a few different instances where this has been real problematic. One Texas lawyer actually argued a case that he used chat GPT to prepare for, and it cited fake case law.

that he brought into the court. trusted it, but he didn't verify and ended up getting into a lot of trouble around that. And there's some other instances where that's happened. I had a pastor that I was working with who was using an earlier version of ChatGPT had it make up some scripture. He's like, I really liked the scripture and I went to look for it and I couldn't find it. And it turns out it made it up. So you do have to be careful about

Paul Povolni (01:16:30.605)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:16:48.555)
Wow.

Jason Moore (01:16:52.107)
what you're using from it. typically, it's gotten better and better as time has gone on. But you're so right about the bias issue. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini it is not biased. But it did train on data that human beings created, and human beings are biased. So that is true with Chatbots, but it's also true with image generators.

Paul Povolni (01:17:13.09)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:17:19.125)
Two of the things that I wrote about in the book, one was that I do these AI cohorts where over six months I lead a process where each month we talk about different aspects of AI and I kind of help pastors learn and other leaders learn how to use AI, kind of a primer on AI. And in promoting it, I typed into Dall-e, which is an image generator, create a far side style cartoon of a pastor.

in the pastor's office considering signing up for an AI cohort. And it generated this image of a kind of a middle-aged male, slightly graying hair on the side, ended up having like a priest collar and all of that. Didn't give it any thought, just posted it on Facebook and said, hey, sign up for my AI cohort. Now, I know that we probably have a lot of different types of listeners and some folks.

probably have a different theological perspective on female pastors. I'm in the United Methodist Church where that's a pretty common thing. I'm supportive of women pastors in ministry, but I know that's not true for all of your listeners. I posted that and of course some of my women clergy friends were like, so that's what a pastor looks like?

And I was like, well, you know, I just let AI do the driving. And they're like, see, this is the problem with AI. It's biased. I'm like, no. I just wasn't thoughtful enough in the way that I prompted it. So then I immediately went and I prompted African-American female pastor and older aged male pastor and Hispanic. So then I generated like four or five images and I uploaded them. And it was a great learning moment for me that I have to

Paul Povolni (01:18:40.44)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:19:04.763)
prompt around the biases that are there. There's one other demonstration I did in the book where I said, and you can see all these pictures in the book. I said, give me an image of Jesus standing by the Sea of Galilee midday. And of course, when I just say Jesus by the Sea of Galilee midday, I get a European or white looking guy. Maybe it looks like he's from Alabama and he's got a mullet and his skin is very much like mine and all of that.

Paul Povolni (01:19:07.182)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:19:29.848)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

right.

Jason Moore (01:19:34.661)
But then I found that if I said, give me an African-American Jesus by the Sea of Galilee, it would do that. Or if I said, give me a Hispanic or Korean, and here's a novel idea, what if we said a Middle Eastern Jesus? And it created somebody that looked like they were from the region that Jesus grew up in. My favorite way, though, to represent Jesus is silhouette. Because then you can imagine what Jesus looks like. Rather than creating Jesus in our likeness, you can kind of

Paul Povolni (01:19:51.478)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:20:00.109)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (01:20:04.463)
you know, imagine what Jesus might look like. So I prompted a Silhouette of Jesus by the Sea of Galilee and it can do that. we do have to be mindful of the biases. I will just say that the three principles that will sometimes drive what I'm doing when I think about AI are really John Wesley's principles. John Wesley talked about do no harm, do good and stay in love with God. Those three things. I think those can guide us very wisely.

Paul Povolni (01:20:11.022)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:20:31.181)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:20:33.125)
Do no harm. So let's make sure that we're being intentional about the way we prompt so that we're including all sorts of people in the way that we represent Jesus and in our photography and all of those kinds of things. Get inside the minds of other people that you might not think about very often when you're writing a sermon and so on. Do as much good as we can. I think being able to translate our message into other languages and deliver that in a compelling way

Paul Povolni (01:20:54.796)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:21:02.415)
does lots of good. think that there are, when you brainstorm with chat GPT, it'll give you ideas for ministries and fundraisers and, ways to reach people that maybe you hadn't thought of. And the last one to me is the most important one of all. And that is stay in love with God. And we've got to be careful because this technology is so good that I could see pastors and leaders unintentionally really kind of treating AI as a proxy Holy spirit that

Paul Povolni (01:21:18.412)
Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:21:31.661)
I'm not wrestling with the text. I'm going to chat GPT and saying, I'm preaching on this. What should I take from it? And rather than you doing the soul work to say how in the human experience with a human condition present in this moment, how do I respond to this rather than letting chat GPT do all of that work? I will say that I had one day that I was writing and I disclose in the book that I used chat GPT and Claude and

Paul Povolni (01:21:31.982)
Hmm.

Paul Povolni (01:21:38.253)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:21:50.232)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:22:01.453)
And Gemini, I felt like if I'm writing a book about this, I want to use the technology so I know how to advise people. And people often say, so ChatGBT just wrote your book for you. It doesn't work like that. I would guesstimate that maybe 40 % of what's there might have been there in outline form, or I used it for research, or whatever. still doesn't do it for you. But anyway, in.

Paul Povolni (01:22:14.476)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:22:26.168)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:22:29.711)
going back and forth with ChatGPT, there was a day that I logged into ChatGPT and the screen was blank. And all of my previous stuff was gone. And I'm like, my gosh, where? And I went to another browser and I opened it and it's gone. Then I went to my phone and like, ChatGPT is just down today, or right now. So here's what I did. I closed my laptop and I said, well, I can't write today because ChatGPT is down. And then I had this serious gut check and I'm like, this is the 14th book I've written.

Paul Povolni (01:22:46.518)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:22:51.438)
Hahaha

Jason Moore (01:22:58.211)
I did not need chat GPT for the first 13 books. Am I already too addicted to this technology and what it can do for me? And I opened my laptop back up and even when chat GPT came back, I didn't use it for a day because I thought I don't want to be so. Yeah. So what we have to do is just my mantra is embrace the technology, but restrain the way that you use it. Do not give up your agency.

Paul Povolni (01:23:13.794)
I'm not gonna become a slave to it, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:23:25.752)
Right.

Jason Moore (01:23:28.283)
to AI and if you're not careful, your spiritual muscles will become so atrophied that you won't be able to do much of anything in the future if you rely on AI for everything. I talk about that scene in the movie Wall-E where all of the passengers on the Axiom who float around on carts and have AI deliver food and clothing and all that, take them around the ship for quote recreation.

When they get back to Earth, can't walk anymore because they haven't had to do anything for so long and they floated around on carts and AI's done all this stuff. If we're not careful, we're going to end up in the same place. So I love what it can do for us, but I also think we've got to be really careful about how far we go with it.

Paul Povolni (01:23:56.76)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:24:10.102)
Yeah, I definitely agree. think we can augment and not replace, you know, and so I think we can definitely augment things that we're doing, make them better, faster, smarter, but not replace the human element, not replace the Holy Spirit, not replace study and wrestling and all of that. But we can definitely augment and even speed up and even supplement and add to it and all of that stuff, but not replace some of the

Jason Moore (01:24:14.222)
Yes.

Paul Povolni (01:24:39.426)
the wrestling that we need to do. There's probably tons more that you can share from your book and I encourage everybody to check it out and I'll have a link in the show notes for it. And I definitely encourage you to get a copy of it, read through it, wrestle with ways that you could possibly use it and then implement it and try it out. what you mentioned, ChatGPT Claude and Gemini, are those the three?

Jason Moore (01:24:41.339)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:25:06.112)
If somebody was like, okay, I'm ready to give it a shot. You know, I've kind of hesitated now I'm ready to do it. Are those the three that you recommend people diving into?

Jason Moore (01:25:13.361)
Well, offer, ChadGPT tends to be my default. Part of it is that it came out first, but I've had enough time with it that I really love what it can do. I will mention that there is another app called Magi, M-A-G-A-I, who was written by a friend of mine. He is a former youth pastor, worked at a church and all that. Not necessarily a church app, but just to know that he has some background there.

What I really love about Magi is that it incorporates about 25 different AI tools in it, including ChatGPT and Claude and all those things. It includes several image generators, some video generators. And so for less than you would spend on a professional ChatGPT subscription, you can get a Magi. And in fact, Dustin.

who wrote the app gave me a code that people can use if they want to get 30 % off to try it out. It's wineskin30. I think of this as a new wineskin opportunity. So if you put in wineskin30, you will save 30 % off of a subscription. You can just try it for a month if you want. But what's really neat is I can actually have Claude talk to ChatGPT and Grok and the other Gemini, all of the different chat bots, because I can begin a conversation with one.

Paul Povolni (01:26:12.46)
Awesome. Yeah.

Jason Moore (01:26:37.635)
and then switch in the same conversation. And it doesn't really know that I've switched. So why would you do that? Chat GPT is sort of, again, a more kind of boilerplate style of chatbot. But Claude tends to be a little more straight and narrow. It's a little less creative, but it tends to hallucinate less. So I might do some brainstorming with chat GPT and then switch the conversation to Claude.

I mean, you could do this by copying and pasting out of ChatGPT and then going over to Cloud and all that. But Magi does all that for you. Grok is X or Twitter. It's their chat bot. And it tends to have a little bit more of a hipster attitude vibe. So it's got a different personality. So each chat bot has its own strengths and weaknesses and all that. I would say if you're just trying to get started, though,

Paul Povolni (01:27:08.834)
Right, right.

Jason Moore (01:27:34.097)
Chat GPT would be the place that I might suggest that you go. There's a free version of it that's really, really powerful. And then for $20 a month, you can get a professional version, which gives you some additional tools and the ability to generate images. So I guess that's where I would start. But again, you get a lot of bang for your buck with Magi, and you get all of those different tools. I think there's 25 or more tools that are built into

Paul Povolni (01:27:59.384)
And the URL again.

Jason Moore (01:28:01.457)
You can go to, hold on, give me one second here. think it's Magi, goodness, MagiSignUp, I think. He gave me a link. OK, yeah, sorry about that. I should have that memorized, but.

Paul Povolni (01:28:18.542)
Yeah, I could just put in the show notes. no, that's cool.

That's all right. So as we wrap this up and I do recommend you get his book. Where's the best place to get your book, Jason?

Jason Moore (01:28:32.465)
If you go to AI in the church dot AI, that will give you an opportunity to click on a by link which just takes you over to Amazon. But it's easy to remember AI in the church dot AI. And again, you can get that free chapter if you want to download that to learn 10 different ways that you can use AI in the church.

Paul Povolni (01:28:51.284)
Awesome. So a final head smack that you'd like to share something I didn't ask you or something that you just really feel would be an incredible head smack for somebody as we wrap this up.

Jason Moore (01:29:00.897)
that's a good question. You know, I think that we are six or eight months away from video being completely possible in a convincing way, which is both scary and not scary at the same time. Right now, can kind of tell video, AI-generated video is AI-generated video. But I think the head smack is that in maybe eight to 10 months, something like that,

We're going to be able to do things that we can't even imagine right now. And the upside of that is that imagine what you'll be able to do to tell biblical stories, to bring illustrations to life. Of course, the other side of that is that people will be able to make the president say whatever they want to make the president say or do. It can be used in nefarious ways as well. I wrote about in the book, Tyler Perry was going to build a brand new studio.

Paul Povolni (01:29:49.794)
Right, right, right.

Jason Moore (01:30:00.473)
And when he saw the pre-release version of a new resource that's coming soon called Sora, he decided not to build his studio because he said AI is going to be good enough in the future. We don't need these buildings and lights and cameras and all that kind of stuff. We're to be able to generate things in the computer. So I just think the idea that you could create your own version of The Chosen is a pretty cool thing if you're thinking about how do I create a really great sermon. So the head smack, think, for me is just that.

Paul Povolni (01:30:27.501)
Ryan.

Jason Moore (01:30:29.809)
The things that I wanted to do as a kid, as a third grader thinking I want to grow up and be an artist, I'll be able to achieve now from my laptop in my living room, which is a crazy thought.

Paul Povolni (01:30:41.954)
That is a crazy thought and it's an incredible thought. so thank you so much for this conversation. Like I said, I encourage you to get his book. Even the secret worshiper is a great resource for somebody to come to your church and just come and visit and give you some great honest feedback about what their experience is like and that can change your church. But also don't be afraid of AI.

Let it augment what you're doing and you'll find it'll help you to do things faster, better, smarter, and make your ministry a whole lot better. Jason, thank you so much, man. This has been great.

Jason Moore (01:31:20.699)
Paul, I have really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for having me.

Paul Povolni (01:31:23.756)
Alright, take care man.