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On The Rise: Do Christians Over-Trust AI? Probably. + Grief Retreats and the Battle for the Soul of a Spiritual Giant
Published 16 days ago • 4 min read
Welcome to the On The Rise newsletter, where I feature fascinating, helpful, and sometimes curious content that caught my attention this week.
Today, some fresh data on what practicing Christians think about AI v. what church leaders think about AI, the rise of grief retreats, the battle for the soul of a spiritual giant and what all your achievements are really for.
Christians REALLY trust AI
Have you started the dialogue around AI at your church yet?
Guess who trusts AI more than the average person? Practicing Christians. And they’re embracing it to help them understand scripture and as a spiritual guide.
Barna’s most recent datashows a gap between how pastors see AI and how their congregation does.
Among the findings: parishioners are more likely to think that AI could replace their pastor than pastors are.
Um….
If you haven’t started talking about how to use AI and it’s impact in a thoughtful, helpful way, now’s a great time to start.
You Already Have It. Now Use It.
A nudge to dive back into The Art of Preaching.
You already have the course. That's the easy part.
Preaching is a craft you sharpen for a lifetime, and The Art of Preachingisn't a one-and-done course. It's a tool to keep coming back to.
This week, pick one module, apply it to next Sunday's message, and come back next week and pick another.
People are trying new experiences to figure out how to deal with death.
Of all things that have changed in the three decades I've been in ministry, the way the culture approaches death has changed the most. Funerals were a pretty somber, traditional affair in the mid-90s, but no longer so. A lot of people don't hold funerals at all, others reinvent them, and now this trend: Grief retreats.
As the culture comes to terms with death, and as more and more people stop turning to the church, this is where they're turning instead.
It's crazy to see what's happening with death and "resurrection." AI powered apps also allow you to upload a few minutes of video of your deceased loved ones and then conjur them up for a FaceTime like chat long after they're gone.
We as Christians probably know this subject best. It's a good idea to share what we know in the face of a constantly changing culture.
The Story Behind Every Data Point
What do you do when the giving stops?
Before people stop showing up, many stop giving. The data is trying to tell you something.
When a faithful giver goes quiet, it is rarely a verdict on your mission. It is usually a life story you have not heard yet. This article shows how giving data can become a pastoral alert, maps five common causes, and equips pastors to respond well in delicate moments.
Read the full articlehereand share it with your team.
This is the by far the book I have recommended most often, and now that we’re doing a ‘best of’ summer series, I have to mention it again.
I’ll be re-reading this book this summer. As the culture changes faster than ever (see the above articles) there will be a battle inside you for leadership.
The book is simply Henri Nouwen’s journal entries for six months in 1974. You can see the battle for his soul happening in real time as he pivots from a rising start academic and priest into the Henri Nouwen he would become, the one so many of us treasure.
Father Ronald Rolheiser on the spirit you leave behind.
As I put it out in the last On The Rise, Father Ronald Rolheiser's book Insane for the Light is one of the best I've read in years. Here, he reflects on the impression or spirit we leave behind after we die.
“Sigmund Freud once suggested that we understand things most clearly when we see them broken and that is true here. We see this writ large, for example, in how a long-term alcoholic parent affects his children. Despite trying not to, he will invariably bring a certain instability, distrust, and chaos into his family and it will stay there after he is gone as the spirit he leaves behind in both the short term and the long term.
The opposite is also true. Often until later we do not sense the real gift that people who carry a positive energy, stability, and trust into a room bring and what that gift does for us. Mostly it is often felt as an unspoken energy, not consciously perceived, and only later in our lives, often long after the people who did that for us are gone, do we recognize and consciously appreciate what their presence did for us.”
I hope I leave the latter spirit, not the former. I know you do too. Which means there’s much work to do on my character today.
Cheering for you,
P.S. Weekend Watching
Matt Chandler
The Death of Secularism: Matt Chandler on Why Pastors Shouldn't Wear Capes and When the Church Is All Wood and No Fire
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Don’t settle for an impact smaller than you’re called to make. It's time to unlock your potential and lead confidently into a future filled with growth — for yourself, your church, and your mission. Get access to some of my best leadership content, only published in my newsletters.
