I don’t mean to shock you with this revelation first thing in the morning, but there is no such thing as the perfect pastor. Much as I hate to admit it, we all have room for improvement. That is why every pastor needs leaders who will hold them accountable. Most pastors are grateful for honest, constructive criticism. But, like any leader, sometimes pastors get less-than-helpful feedback from their people.
Thom Rainer is a church consultant and former pastor, so he has been on both sides of the pulpit. He understands the reasons that people complain about their pastors and the reasons pastors sometimes think those complaints are bonkers. On his blog, he listed some of the more unusual complaints people have brought to their pastors:
“I don’t like the brand of donuts in the foyer.”
“Our expensive coffee is attracting too many hipsters.”
“You need to change your voice.”
“Your socks are distracting.”
“We need to start attracting more normal people at church.”
“Did you see me waving in the back of the worship center? You preached too long. It was time to eat!”
And my personal favorite. . .
“Not enough people signed up for the church golf tournament. You have poor leadership skills.” (1)
One day, technology may solve the problem of imperfect pastors. In fact, it may become a reality sooner than we think This year, there was a major religious convention in Germany at which the sermon was delivered by a digital avatar powered by artificial intelligence.
Every two years, there is a convention of Protestant clergy and lay people in Germany that attracts tens of thousands of people. At the convention this year, a theologian named Jonas Simmerlein used ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, to craft a sermon on “leaving the past behind, focusing on the challenges of the present, overcoming fear of death, and never losing trust in Jesus Christ.” According to Simmerlein, the chatbot delivered “a pretty solid church service.”
One woman who attended the service was displeased, claiming “There was no heart and no soul.” A young Lutheran pastor who brought his youth group said he was “positively surprised how well it worked.” But he also said he missed any sense of emotion or spirituality. A woman who studies ethics in technology said she thinks artificial intelligence could be used to bring religious services to people who couldn’t otherwise access them. However, she said, “The challenge that I see is that AI is very human-like and that it’s easy to be deceived by it.”
Jonas Simmerlein, the theologian behind the chatbot pastor, says it’s not his intention to replace pastors, but to show them how to use technology to be more productive. For instance, he envisions a day when pastors regularly use artificial intelligence to help them write their sermons. But he doesn’t see technology replacing spiritual leaders anytime soon. As he said, “The pastor is in the congregation, she lives with them, she buries the people, she knows them from the beginning. Artificial intelligence cannot do that. It does not know the congregation.” (2)
And I’d like to add one more concern to this list: artificial intelligence doesn’t know God. It doesn’t have the Spirit of God guiding and shaping it. No matter how well-organized or relevant its message might be, a chatbot has never wrestled with its faith. Does that matter? So long as it says the “right things” about God, does it matter if the chatbot has never experienced God?
This article on the chatbot pastor made me think of our Bible passage today from Exodus 32. Last week, we looked at Exodus 20, the story of God giving the Ten Commandments through Moses. After delivering the Ten Commandments, Moses went back up on the mountain to receive more of God’s Law for the people. And in this absence of leadership, the people got restless and took matters into their own hands. Our passage reads, “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’”
And that brings me to the first insight I get from this passage: Sin is always the result of choosing a shallow substitute for God or God’s will. The problem started back in Exodus 20, the passage we studied last week. The people saw the thunder and lightning on the mountain where Moses spoke to God, and they were afraid and “stood at a distance.” They told Moses to tell them what God had said, “But do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” (vs. 19). Moses told the people not to be afraid, but verse 21 reads, “And the people stood at a distance as Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”
We’re not so different, are we? We like the idea of spirituality, but we don’t like the idea of God. We are afraid of an actual encounter with God because an encounter with God will change us. It will change our priorities. Our relationships. Our agenda. God asks hard things of His people. Who needs that? It’s so much easier and quicker to make gods we can control, gods that fulfill our agenda. The Israelites had no qualms about worshiping the golden calf because they’d never had an actual encounter with God. That means they had no foundation of faith to sustain them when they were stuck in a time of waiting, uncertainty or fear.
Pastor Tony Evans has visited Universal Studios, the movie studio behind blockbusters like King Kong, War of the Worlds, or the Fast and Furious franchise. He describes riding a tram through the movie lots and seeing the sets from famous movies. Although the sets look realistic and sturdy, most of them are just facades, lightweight, external front pieces with no actual building behind them. They have an impressive appearance, but no lasting substance.
Pastor Evans makes the point that many Christians are like those movie lots. They may go through the motions of attending church, but they have no relationship with God. There is no reverence for God, no relationship with God, and no responsibility to God. There is no solid foundation of faith. (3)
Sadly, when we choose a shallow substitute for God or for God’s will, we throw away blessings that God intended for us.
Notice that Aaron agreed to the Israelites plan, even convincing them to give up their gold earrings in order to make the idol they would worship in the place of God. In Exodus 12, God placed in the minds of the Egyptian people a fear of the Israelite God. When the Israelites left Egypt, the Egyptian people gave them items of gold and silver to help pay for their new life as free people. So the gold earrings the Israelites gave up represented God’s goodness to them in the past and God’s provision for them in the future. They also threw away God’s blessings when they chose a shallow substitute for God.
A few months ago, the staff at the Carowinds amusement park in Charlotte, North Carolina had to deal with an unusual situation. A 13-year-old boy got stuck inside a claw machine, and medical personnel had to unlock the machine to set him free. How did a 13-year-old boy get stuck inside one of these machines? He was trying to steal a prize. He didn’t want to pay to play. He didn’t want to put any effort into getting the prize. He just wanted the prize. And he ended up trapped in a situation of his own making. (4)
The good news is God is merciful and will restore our relationship if we turn back to Him. Because of His people’s idolatry and sin, God told Moses that He would destroy them. And Moses pleaded for mercy for the Israelites, not because they deserved it, but because of God’s character and God’s promises. God had made a covenant relationship with them, and God is always faithful to His promises.
So how do we give up our fake substitutes for God and find the relationship God made us for? Evangelist Billy Graham said there are three steps to conversion: repentance, faith and new birth. Repentance is turning away from our former life. Faith is turning towards God. And new birth means becoming a child of God, which will cause us to “love the good (we) once hated and hate the sin (we) once loved.” (5) Repentance is always the first step.
Pastor Johnold Strey writes, “. . . the call to repent is a message we all need to hear. God desires that we come to repentance, not to control us with his law, but to console us with his grace. God wants us to come to him in sincere repentance so that he can come to us with the forgiveness his Son came to win on the cross, and the promise of eternal life that his Son came to win by his resurrection.”
That has been God’s plan since the beginning of creation: to lead us from slavery to sin and death into the freedom of eternal life with Him through the merciful sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. When we repent and turn back to God, we receive the fullness of God’s character and promises, God’s mercy and grace. And there is no substitute in the world that can compare to the joy of knowing and serving God.
I think this truth is exemplified in the life of Costi Hinn, the nephew of televangelist Benny Hinn. He was raised to work in his uncle’s ministry. His uncle’s worldwide preaching and faith-healing ministry brought in millions of dollars, and the Hinn family lived a luxurious lifestyle. They stayed at expensive resorts, traveled in a private Gulfstream jet, bought homes worth millions of dollars, and shopped at high-end stores. His uncle taught him that their extravagant lifestyle was evidence of God’s blessing and the abundant life that Jesus promised to his followers. In an article for Christianity Today, Costi wrote, “Our lifestyle was lavish, our loyalty was enforced, and our version of the gospel was big business. Though Jesus Christ was still a part of our gospel, he was more of a magic genie than the King of Kings.”
But Costi remembers having some questions about his family’s theology and practices. When a childhood friend was diagnosed with cancer, Costi asked his father to visit her and pray with her. In spite of the family’s world-renowned faith healing services, his father said they could just stay home and pray for the child from afar. Unsuccessful attempts at healing were blamed on the lack of faith of the sick person. When Costi questioned why his family spoke in tongues without an interpreter, he was told that he was quenching the Holy Spirit.
After college, Costi met Christyne, the woman who would become his wife. But he almost didn’t marry her because she didn’t speak in tongues. When she showed him Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 that not all people have the same spiritual gifts, it shook him to the core. Slowly, with the help of Christyne and a pastor friend, Costi began studying the Bible and realized that much of the theology his family embraced did not align with the teachings of Jesus.
He recalls the day he studied John 5—Jesus’ healing of a man at Bethesda—that completely refuted his family’s teaching about healing. He writes, “I wept bitterly over my participation in greedy ministry manipulation and my life of false teaching and beliefs, and I thanked God for his mercy and grace through Jesus Christ. My eyes were completely opened.” Today, Costi Hinn serves as a pastor in California. (6)
We can spend our lives in church and still not know the God who created us in His image, the God who loves us with an everlasting love, the God who gave His own life to save us and restore us to Him. There are plenty of shallow substitutes we can choose to give us some sense of control or happiness or security. But when fear or trouble comes, those substitutes will be revealed for what they really are—empty facades. We will only find abundant and eternal life in our relationship with the one true God.
1. “Twenty-five Really Weird Things Said to Pastors and Other Church Leaders” by Thom S. Rainer, Churchanswers.com, August 19, 2015. https://churchanswers.com/blog/twenty-five-really-weird-things-said-to-pastors-and-other-church-leaders/.
2. “Hundreds attend church service generated by ChatGPT” by Kirsten Grieshaber, KTLA.com June 10, 2023. https://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/hundreds-attend-church-service-generated-by-chatgpt/?_hsmi=262015339&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_7DA-pBerOmw3_NcCcsHU93XFxzgQfd7YYrBAVnCeAbwAdD0nzsulKuXIcCwM4Kh9UwjcU8lQczdw4F8BQR9BEeb8OKA.
3. Anthony T. Evans, Tony Evans’ Book Of Illustrations (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009).
4. “A boy was trapped in a claw machine after he climbed in to get a prize at a North Carolina amusement park,” April 18, 2023, by The Associated Press. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boy-trapped-claw-machine-climbing-get-prize-north-carolina-amusement-p-rcna80167.
5. “Convert loves the good once hated” by Billy Graham, Chattanooga Times-Free Press, July 14, 2023.
6. “Benny Hinn Is My Uncle, but Prosperity Preaching Isn’t for Me” by Costi Hinn, Christianity Today, September 20, 2017. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/october/benny-hinn-costi-uncle-prosperity-preaching-testimony.html.