AI, Innovation, and Ministry : Rusty Rueff

Full-Text Transcript

What are healthy ways for ministry leaders to approach innovation and engage with advancing technologies such as artificial intelligence?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Rusty Rueff. Rusty is a devoted Christ follower, a well-known technology executive, and a startup advisor. He is the co-founder and co-host of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast and the co-author of his most recent book entitled The Faith Code. Together, Rusty and I explore some of the impacts that technology can have on church and ministry. Rusty also gives some insights into artificial intelligence, both the benefits and also warnings of some of the dangers. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of FrontStage BackStage, I am your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the distinct privilege to sit down with a trusted ministry leader. And we dive into a conversation on an effort to help you and ministry leaders just like you embrace a healthy, sustainable rhythm for both your life and your ministry. And we are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve network. And each week, not only do we have a conversation, but we create an entire toolkit that you and your team at your local church can download and dive into to really dig into the conversation. And within that toolkit are lots of different resources including a ministry leaders’ growth guides. We encourage you to check that out. You can find the toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. Now, Pastor Serve we love walking alongside of pastors and ministry leaders and our trusted coaches are offering a complimentary coaching session. And you can learn more details about that at PastorServe.org/freesession. Now, if you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better. And we’ll be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe, to follow. We do not want you missing out on any of these great conversations. Now, I’m very excited about today’s conversation. At this time. I’d like to welcome Rusty Rueff to the show. Rusty, welcome.

Rusty Rueff
Hey, Jason, thanks for having me.

Jason Daye
Hey, thanks. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for making the time to hang out with us on FrontStage BackStage, really excited about this conversation. We’re gonna be diving in and talking about innovation and technology and artificial intelligence, and all these things and how they impact the church. But, before we get started, you have a very unique perspective, Rusty. You’re a devoted Christ follower, a faith-driven entrepreneur. You’ve spent years and years in Silicon Valley as an executive in technology. I would love for you just to share with us a little bit about your background, about that perspective that you’re bringing into this conversation today.

Rusty Rueff
Sure, sure. Well, let me start first with – I’m a church guy. I love the church. I think church is the, you know, part of God’s expression of His Kingdom here on Earth. And so I start first there for your audience, and for you. I came up through, actually,  consumer products in my… well, let me back up. Radio and television was my first love because my father was a radio disc jockey and television news personality. And I wanted to be a radio disc jockey. And so I was always fascinated, believe it or not, by what we would have called technology back then, because my dad was an audiophile. And you know, he had reel-to-reel tape recorders and turntables, and built his own speakers. And so I was always fascinated with all these things. And then how entertainment would actually inform, you know, through technology, and then I got into being a lighting guy for theater and doing all these kinds of stuff. So, all these things that I would see that we would call technology, that would come forward, that you could make some kind of visual and performing arts better. I was fascinated with, including the church. I mean, even as a teenager, in our church, my father actually ran lighting and sound design for a big church in Southern Indiana. We would call it today a mega church. I don’t know what we call them back in the ’70s and ’80s. But they were big. It was big. It was big. It’s a Southern Baptist Church. And so you take that sort of background, and I ended up doing consumer products. And then in 1997, I got a telephone call from a recruiter that said, “Hey, Rusty, you’ve told us forever that, you know, really the only thing that’s gonna get you out of consumer products (that was  PepsiCo at the time) would be entertainment media or in the last three to four years, you’ve started to talk about high technology that would enable entertainment or media, because the internet had shown up. And I was like, “Yeah, that’s right.” And he goes, “Look, I think I have a company for you.” And I said, “What’s that?” And he goes, “It’s Electronic Arts.” And I said, “What’s an electronic art?” He goes, “It’s a video game company. They do this thing called EA Sports.” And I was like, “Wow, there’s entertainment, there’s media, there’s technology.” And so, my wife and I took a left-hand turn. We were living in Connecticut at the time, I was working for Pepsi International. My wife was working for PepsiCo. And we were sort of the PepsiCo family. Nobody ever believed we would leave. We left, we came out west, and showed up here in Silicon Valley. And just to give you a mark in time, I was recruited in ’97. I came in ’98, which is 25 years ago now, which seems like a long time ago, but I came here the same month that Google was funded.

Jason Daye
Wow.

Rusty Rueff
Right, that Larry and Sergey brought it out of the dorm room out of the little apartment and finally got some money and Google was funded. And so it was early, early days, it’s only been about four years since Marc Andreessen brought Mosaic to the market through Netscape. And so, you know, we were all AOL dialing up with a “heek!”.

Jason Daye
Right!

Rusty Rueff
You know, those days back then, right, couldn’t use the telephone at the same time you’re using your computer. So I got a chance to come out here and start to see the beginning of this thing that we now know is sort of the innovation technology hub of the country, if not of the world. And at the same time, I was running in parallel with, “Okay, now we’ve moved to the West Coast, where are we gonna find a church in San Francisco, Silicon Valley that we’re going to feel comfortable with?” And we were very blessed to run into this church in the Mission District of San Francisco, called Cornerstone, now called Cornerstone SF. And after going there for about a year, I told my wife, “It’s time for us to start getting connected into the church.” And we got connected into the church and I got to meet Pastor Terry Brisbane, who’s the co-author of my book, “The Faith Code” that we just published together. And I was just very, very blessed to be able to have a personal relationship with my pastor, that I could and we met, every week, we still do with another brother, David Bruckner, who’s executive director of Jews for Jesus. And it’s an accountability group, but it’s also a sharing group by which I can talk about things that I see in the marketplace. And Terry can hear those things. And together, we can say, “How might we apply this to the expression of the church?” Because we know we’re competing with, you know, it’s an attention, economy, right? So we know we’re competing with, alright, when someone makes a decision to intentionally come to the church, what are they, what are we up against? Well, we’re up against all of the weekend activities and things that the world schedules — kids’ soccer games, and all those things on Sunday mornings. We’re also competing with the experience that someone has had, either watching Netflix or going to a concert, or being in the theater, or what they get online from different entertainment forms. And then we expect them to go into the church and not evaluate that this expression is competing with my time. Is it relevant? Is it up-to-date? Is it using technology like everybody else does? And my pastor, Terry is very open-minded when it comes to all of this. And so, you know, we’ve just had a great 20 plus-year conversation, if you will, which has led us to trying to say, “How do you merge technology? How do you merge our faith and integration into our work and into our everyday lives?” But at the same time, figuring out how to use that technology to integrate it into the church, into the expression of church. So it’s a long way of telling you how we’re sitting here talking right now, but, that’s how we got here.

Jason Daye
Yeah, yeah. No, I love that, Rusty. And it’s fascinating. And one of the things I love about your story with Terry, a dear friend of yours obviously, is that, like you said, for 20 years you guys have been hanging out together and you know, iron sharpening iron, and you’re diving into these conversations, and he’s speaking into your life, and you’re speaking into his life. And it’s just a beautiful thing. And just as a side note, every pastor ministry leader who’s watching or listening, we all need those types of relationships. We don’t need to isolate ourselves, we need those types of relationships, which is just beautiful and that I just love. And out of that relationship, birthed the book that you guys recently released, “The Faith Code.” And Rusty, we’re gonna dive into talking about innovation and technology and all those things, its impact on the church. But before we get there, one of the things that you do in “The Faith Code,” you and Pastor Terry is you talk about these foundational teachings of Christ, that regardless of the whirlwind of technology and everything else spinning around, these are like anchor points, this is a framework that is true today, was true a thousand years ago, that will be true a thousand years down the road.

Rusty Rueff
That’s right.

Jason Daye
So, before we dive into the innovation conversation, Rusty, can you talk a little bit about some of these core teachings of Christ that we need to, you know, be hanging on to, so that we don’t get swept one way or the other? With the whirlwind that’s all around us.

Rusty Rueff
Sure. Well, we like to think about it this way and it’s in the book, “The Faith Code,” that, you know, Archimedes, who was a mathematician-scientist in the Greek time, he left us with a quote. He said, “If you give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, I can move the world.” A lever long enough and a place to stand, I can move the world. And you look at that, and you say, “Oh, I get that, you know, if I have this strong foundation, and then a tool that I can use, then with my own strength, how I put those two things together, I can move, I can make movement. Well, Jesus told us the same thing. Jesus said, “If you have the faith of the mustard seed, that mountain you can move.” And so what Jesus challenged us to do was to take our lever, which is the faith and His teachings, and to find our place to stand which is in Him and on His teachings. And we can, we can move the world, if we so choose to do so. And He gives us these choices. And He gives these teachings. And so what we have done in the book, the way it’s constructed is Pastor Terry takes a set of parables of Jesus’s teachings, and says, “This is our platform. This is our framework.” We use the technology metaphor, since we both are here in this innovation hub and we both speak the same language all day long to everybody that we talk about. You know, you can’t sit at a Starbucks without overhearing somebody talking about their next startup. And what framework they’re going to use and what platform they’re going to build the app on. So we use this and hopefully there’s a little byproduct, by the way, of reading “The Faith Code,” is you get sort of an inside look at what these things mean and how technology works. But we start with a framework, a platform by which we can stand, and in the software world, what that means is you must design and utilize code — computer code. Well, the beauty of it is is that what God has given us, He’s given us His source code. His source code is His Word, His scripture, that we can constantly go back to and build a foundation for our lives — a platform and framework for our lives. And then we can build applications on top of it. And so in “The Faith Code,” I explored the different applications of life that we have. And applications I look at this way: There are jobs, there are some of our relationships, where we work, the car we decide to drive, the kind of entertainment that we bring in, the sporting team that we loved one year but don’t love the next year because they lose or because they win. All these things in life that we go into and we apply, well, they must sit on a strong platform, a strong framework that is consistent and dependable and unshakable. You know, when we pick up our phones every morning, to look at them for the first time, we don’t question whether or not they’re going to work. Right? We just pick them up. We have faith that platform is going to be consistent and dependable. And then what do we do? Then we start scrolling our apps. And we get our news. And we get our sports and we get our entertainment. And we check up on social media. And then we look at the stocks. And we go from app to app to app to app to app, knowing that sometimes those apps are going to be wonky, right? Sometimes they’re not going to load the way we want them to load, sometimes they’re going to be really slow to get to. Well, if we’re building our life as an application, and not as a platform or a framework, then we’re building our life on the wrong things. And so what we try to do is try to come back and remind ourselves through the teaching of Jesus, which by the way, even our apps, our platforms have to be updated every now and then, right? It says right here, you plug this in, and tonight, iOS is going to update to the next dot dot dot number, number number, dot dot dot version. Well, as God tells us, give us this day our daily bread, we must also update the platform at all times as well, which is why we can go back to the source code daily, open up God’s scripture, find something that’s revealed to us in this time and life circumstances that we’re in, that will illuminate something to us that, you know, we’ve read that verse a thousand times, but yet, why today? Why today did it speak so? Well, because the life that we’re living, the applications that we’re running, need that source code today. They need that source code, in order to be able to run the way that God wants him to run. And God wants our applications of life to be abundant and flourishing, and to get the most out of this life that He has given us. But you can’t count on those unless you’re going back. And keeping that framework and that platform up to date. Being back in God’s source code.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And that is powerful. It’s a great analogy, coming from Silicon Valley, for people to kind of think and wrap their mind around. And there are those foundational things, it is God’s word, and you know, how the Spirit speaks was through the word and in staying plugged in, as you say, staying connected. And that’s what gives us life. I absolutely love that. Now, let’s talk technology, because this is always fascinating, especially technology in the church. And throughout the history of the church, and even today, it seems that the church is… you know, leaders within the church, ministry leaders, pastors have reacted to technology in a variety of ways. And so I’m just going to share some of these ways. There’s a vast spectrum, but some have acted, you know, they just basically stick their head in the sand, and figure, “Hey, I will do my 50 years of ministry, I’ll retire,  I’m not gonna pay attention to technology, I’m just gonna do what I’m doing today. I’m gonna do it for the next 50 years and be done with it.” There are some who actually are anti-technology, right? It’s kind of… almost demonizing technology, right? They used to say, “Devil under every rock,” “Devil under every microchip or whatever it might be,” they’re like demonizing technology. There are some who, who actually, maybe swing the opposite extreme. They get so caught up in technology, you know, I mean, what’s the newest, the latest, the fastest, whatever it is that they’re being kind of pulled away from the foundational framework as you talked about. And then there are those who, you know, have a healthy appreciation for technology, they see technology, and recognize technology as a tool. And most tools can be very useful if used in positive ways. But tools can be dangerous if you’re not careful. Right. So you need some kind of healthy appreciation. And there are probably others, but we have the spectrum, Rusty, of how ministry leaders have approached technology. I would love to hear from your perspective, kind of thoughts on: Today, how we as ministry leaders and pastors can view technology and should mean or look into technology and view technology for ministry.

Rusty Rueff
Sure. Yeah. So, not being a pastor, I want to be careful how I speak into this. But again, remember, I’m a church guy, and I love those who’ve been called to ministry, that God says this is your calling. And so I want to be careful when I speak about this. But let me say, for those who have decided that they’re going to put their head in the sand, and go about their 50 years of ministry, and ignore technology — I don’t think that’s a wise decision. And the reason I say this is because if your ministry is to meet people where they are, to meet them where they are, how can we ignore technology? Because technology is where they are, and it’s what they use to make this life of theirs work. So I just don’t think that’s a strategy in today’s world that we can do. Now, for those who are very leery of technology, who are worried about the evil that can come from technology, or the bad that can come from it, I actually applaud that perspective, because the unintended consequences of technology is not something that technology creators have spent a lot of time with. Right? So all you have to do is watch the social dilemma. And see, you know, watch that on Netflix, I mean, everybody should watch it, because the unintended consequences of the like button, you know, it has turned out to be something that no one really could have imagined.

Jason Daye
Right.

Rusty Rueff
No one really could have, you know, I mean, you would have had to be such a futurist to go, “Oh, this thing, when I see someone reacting to it, it will give me a dopamine hit in my brain that will make me want to do this more and more and more, and I will, irrationally and artificially change my persona online to get more of these. You just wouldn’t have predicted that.

Jason Daye
Right.

Rusty Rueff
And so, we have to be careful about that. And really, the responsibility is not only on the creator, the responsibility is also on the consumer of technology, to not let these things happen to us. And so the pastor who is leery and cautious, that’s a good thing. That’s a really good thing. And I would not encourage anyone to delve into the use of technology in a new form without doing what they would do in any other new or innovative thing inside of the Church, which is try to seek God’s will, get good advice and counsel. Right? Look around at all the things that you can imagine that could be good and all the things you imagine be bad. And listen for the Holy Spirit to say, “Yes, we should, or we shouldn’t”.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good.

Rusty Rueff
Okay. So, but it is there for a lot of productive things. Now. I’ll talk about the other side of that, you know, the other guard rail, if you will, which is what you talked about, was the pastor who wants all the new and shiny toys.

Jason Daye
Right, right.

Rusty Rueff
All right, I caution people from doing that as well. Because the new and shiny toys won’t always be what you expect them to be. And there are some things that are left better undone than done and then disappointing to people. Right? So when you come forward, you say, “Hey, we’re gonna have this new, you know, digital online discipleship program. And we’re rolling this out, and it’s going to be fantastic. And we want everybody to sign up.” And then the technology doesn’t deliver the way you thought it was. Or it’s more cumbersome than you thought, or the person that was actually going to run the thing, you know, decides to go someplace else, and now you’re stuck and you can’t deliver on what everyone’s expectations are. That’s a bad thing. Because that’s how you get cynicism. Next time you show up they go, “Oh, I remember last time that thing didn’t work, you know.” And look, it happens all over, when our government tries to roll out new technology, probably the most infamous one was when we’re rolling out the Affordable Health Care Technology, and the administration rolled out this, you know, when you sign up online for all of this health care unit, and you couldn’t get through and the site was crashing, and it was an embarrassment for the administration, for the government. But worse, another message of, “Oh, those government people, they’re so ineffective, there’s no efficiency,” and that’s not what we want, right? What we want from the church is an understanding that says, “Hey, when we bring you something, it’s going to work; when we bring you something, it’s going to be beneficial to you, it’s going to further what we’re trying to get done in a more productive or more efficient or better cost-efficient manner.” So you just don’t run for the next shiny object, you know, you want it, it’s okay to be on the cutting edge. You look around, you go, “Wow, we’re doing something good, that other churches are not doing. That’s really good. But I’ve seen other churches do it well, it just hasn’t shown up here yet. So we’ll be on the cutting edge, but leave the bleeding edge to somebody else.” Right, let the bleeding edge. I mean, if like, if somebody comes to you from the church and says, “Hey, look, this is really the coolest thing, Bitcoin is going to be the way that you’re going to get every donation from this forward, and let’s go deep into crypto,” and you would have been really sorry you did that. So sometimes, it’s better to let things show up first someplace else, and then bring that technology in. But, in order to know sort of where it is, in the lifecycle, I would encourage everyone to find someone in their congregation that’s working in some form of the technology world. Now, they may not be a software engineer, or what you would call a pure entrepreneur who started a technology company, but there are people no matter where you are, somebody’s working with technology in their work, whether in finance, or in marketing, and create a group of those people, call them an advisory group. I mean, look, this, this is one of the little, and I’m sure your audience knows this so it’s gonna sound pedantic, but let me tell you, for those of us who are sitting in the congregation who go to work every day, and we know we have things in our head, we want to share those, we want to help. You just need to give us a way to bring that knowledge forward. Because it’s a little intimidating, talking to your pastor about something that the church might want to do is a little bit like telling your doctor, “I think maybe you should do it this way.” I don’t care what the pharmaceutical companies try to tell us that, tell your doctor that you want to be on this drug till you die. It’s still an intimidating moment to say, “Hey, Doc, have you thought about this?” It’s just as intimidating to say, “Hey, Pastor, have you ever considered that we that we might want to put the bulletin in a digital form, that people can actually interact with it all week long. And be able to upload it back, to this is what I learned from last week’s message, and be in community with each other all around your teachings. So, you think we could do that?” You know, it’s still intimidating to have that conversation, right? Because you know on the other side, it’s either they’ve thought about it, but maybe we just don’t have the capacity to get to it, which is a tough thing for somebody to say that we just don’t have the capacity to do it. Or they haven’t thought about it, right? And is it invented here or not invented here kind of reaction? Or they thought about it, and they think it’s a bad idea? And they don’t want to tell you it’s a bad idea, which is okay, too. So that’s one of the things I’ve learned in my relationship with Pastor Terry is, I’ll give you a perfect example. So I feel like because I work in the technology world, and I get a front row seat of what is new, I have a responsibility to bring that back to the church. I feel like I have a responsibility and I encourage entrepreneurs to feel that responsibility as well to at least educate. So in 2014, I put together a presentation called Cloud Church. Being that that was in 2014, the language was, you know, everything is going in the cloud, salesforce and everything’s in the cloud. And, whether we like, know it or not, we all untethered, and we stopped downloading those software programs onto our computers. We didn’t have to put the little stick in or put our CDs in and download our Quicken instead, now it sits in the cloud. And all of our financial data is going up and coming down. And in that transition happened. And so we’re talking about the cloud and so what could a cloud church look like? 2014, I made that presentation. In 2020, a whole bunch of that stuff became irrelevant, because now we had to move because of the pandemic. And we had to deliver all of these things digitally, that we couldn’t, that we didn’t have to do before. But because we’d been thinking about it, because it had been on our radar screen, the menu of opportunities that we had, we weren’t starting from scratch. But we weren’t ready. And so as an entrepreneur, you know, I could sit there and I could go, well, look, I spent all these hours and I put this presentation together. And you know, I’m trying to get you, I’ve taken the horse, you’re at the water, why won’t you drink? Why wouldn’t you drink? And I could get frustrated and I could walk away and say, “This is ridiculous, church moves too slow, there’s no innovation, they’re gonna do that,” you know, let God check your spirit when you’re doing that, let God check your spirit. Because, God’s timing is God’s timing, not Nance timing, right? And so as entrepreneurs, you know, lots of business people: better, faster, cheaper, right? It’s what we do: better, faster, cheaper. And when it’s slow, and maybe the same, and maybe the cost structure is not getting better, we can get frustrated with people and in the business world, we’ll either fire someone who thinks that way, or we’ll leave a company that thinks that way, we’ll go somewhere else. Well, you can’t carry that mentality into God’s timing. You do that, you’re making a big mistake. So you know, the church, if you can find a group of people who have this kind of at least early knowledge of what’s coming, or what’s being utilized inside of the world that could be brought into the church, and they are trusted advisors and people of God, that you believe their spirit is exactly what they want, which is to service the church and service the Lord, you can get a pretty good thing going, and you can start to figure out, “What should I do? And what should I not do?” But I think, technology, obviously, we’re made in the image of God. God was the great creator, we’ve been given this thing that, you know, to be able to create. God knew technology was going to be created long before we did. He knows what the next expression of artificial intelligence is going to be. Because, He created all of us and knew that this would happen. You know, I think God probably wants us to use everything we got. Otherwise, why would we be given it? So let’s figure out how do we use it to the best purposes?

Jason Daye
Yeah. No, that’s helpful, Rusty, and great reminder for pastors to be looking into their congregations and looking for those people who are, you know, have expertise in different areas, different fields and inviting them into the conversations in the church.

Rusty Rueff
Don’t be shy. Don’t be shy to talk to people. You know, the one the one holiday we’re missing in the United States is Take-Your-Pastor-to-Work Day. I mean, if we had to take your pastor to work day, or any of us invite our pastor into our workplace, and it’s a great education. Just like you know, whenever we get a chance to actually have the inside view of what it takes to get the weekend ready, to do all of the things to be… I’m fortunate enough that Pastor Terry asked me to speak in the church a couple times a year and a church that I attend in the summertime when we’re at our place in Rhode Island, I speak there once a year. And, you know, to be on the inner side of all of that and watching how that works, and getting yourself ready and prepared and understanding that, when people are praying over you for that moment that you’re getting protection, and that they’re asking for God to speak through you. Well, you walk out of the backside of that, and you go up with a brand new appreciation of what it means. We just think, “Oh, they worked on their message, they got up, they did this, it’s all under control.” You know, a pastor is an executive producer at the same time, they’re a teacher, right? You know, all of these things that have to come together to give us this moment, and this hour or a couple of hours, where God can feed us. You know, we should understand how that all works. At the same way, it would be awesome for pastors and ministers to understand what we do on Monday.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s great Rusty, I love that. Let’s talk a little more innovation technology. So one of the big conversations right now is around, you mentioned, artificial intelligence, AI. And this is the hot topic right now. How do you see AI integrating into church and ministry? You know, and maybe what are some positives, what are some potential negatives? Talk to us a little bit about this, because innovation technology, as you said, is something that we want to recognize, be aware of, and then say, “Okay, are there ways that we can use this technology for the advancement of the gospel, to draw people closer to Christ? So talk to us about artificial intelligence.

Rusty Rueff
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, AI, or we could call it, you’ll hear it called generative artificial intelligence, you’ll hear it called large language models. There’s a lot of different names for machine learning, what we call AI. It’s been around for a while. It’s really been around for a long time. And people have been working on these models, and the reason that all of a sudden, suddenly it’s hit our Zeitgeist is because Sam Altman, and the Open AI team figured out how to put the language side on top of the technology so that we can easily access it, and be able to, quote unquote, speak with it, chat with it. And that the knowledge base could understand us. IBM’s Watson has been around a long time. And we’ve watched it play Jeopardy, we’ve watched it play chess, we’ve watched it do all these different things. But you weren’t able to talk to it. You and I couldn’t query it. So Chat GPT showed up, it became a query that it could understand because it’s a large language model, and it could figure out these words really quickly, so when you ask, “How many colors? Are there cats? And how would I breed a cat to make it a black cat?” I don’t know where that one came from, but it may be because we’re getting close to Halloween, who knows? But it could understand us, right? And he could spit back that. All right. So it hits. As we record this, we’re only about less than a year since Chat GPT came and we’re already on Chat GPT 4. And so we’re starting to see, not only can it hear what we say, but it can also recognize pictures and different sounds. And it’s amazing, it’s absolutely amazing, because it truly puts the full power of technology at our access as the non-technology people. Okay. So what we don’t know, is in what direction does this veer? Does this technology get utilized in a lot of good forms and therefore stays there? Or does it start to get utilized in bad forms, and then starts to move in that direction? Well, if we were a perfect society, if we were not sinful by nature, if we weren’t already broken, we could have high level of competence that, “Oh, this technology is going to be fantastic for all of us without worry.” But we know that’s not true. All we have to do is look at the when the internet showed up and when we had this access, what did we start to do with it? Well, what we started to do with it was we started to watch pornography. And so you know, porn grew the internet faster than any usage form, very sadly. Right? Not as bad but just as nefarious. We used it to steal music, right? Napster, “Oh, look at this access, everybody can share files, let’s just steal a bunch of music as fast as we can.” And so these utilizations of technology, and particularly in AI, will likely go more towards the dark side than the bright side. And if the technology is constantly learning from all of these inputs and things that it gets, the more we input the bad stuff, the more it might skew itself into those things. So when we begin to ask for recommendations, it may take us into places that we would scratch our heads and say, “No, I don’t think that’s really good for me.” And then we have to have our own guardrail to say, “No, no, no, I’m not going there.” Right? Or, you know, tell me what I should write on this topic. You know, make me a persuasive speaker on this topic. And what will come back out of it may not be what really, our own values and principles and ethics are. And so we’re going to have to guard ourselves against that, because it’s being taught more of the things that we don’t believe in, than the things that we do believe. And so that’s going to be on us to guard ourselves. So, let’s come back to practically what that means. What that means is, is that as we utilize this technology, and AI in the church, we have to be very grounded and centered in what is right and wrong from what we would do before we had the technology. So I’ll give you the example: I’m preparing a message. A real life example. Actually, I’ll tell you the example. So I spoke last summer at Cornerstone, Pastor Terry had me speak and we were doing a whole summer series on the power of God’s Word. And I did a message on the power of God’s promises, the promises of the Bible, you know, some people say there’s 300, some people say there’s 800, depending upon how you define a covenant versus a promise. But who might know how many there are? Well, I could go over here to my Matthew Henry’s commentary. And I could spend probably the better part of a year going through and looking for every word “promise” and Matthew Henry’s commentary trying to figure out each one was, right? I can Google different references of people that are theologians that I trust, and other people trust, and I could get their versions. But now I want to compile all of these, I want a promise for every book of the Bible. And this is not my full time job, you know, to put this message together. So I went to Chat GPT. And I said, “Give me a promise for every book of the Bible.” And it did in about 10 seconds. It’s fast as it could go. I could just take that and say, “Hey, this is really cool. Let’s put a handout together, I’ll print this thing up. And you’ll have a promise for every book in the Bible when you read the book. And I could just go and I could do that. But I would never have done that before. I wouldn’t check that reference, I would understand, I would think through and say, “Okay, if I’m going to pull a promise out of the book of Isaiah, which is the right one for me to pull out in the context of what I’m speaking about?” And I would go through and I would figure that out. I wouldn’t leave that to somebody else. I would leave that to my discernment of what God is trying to ask me to teach on. There is where we have to draw the lines, so if we rely on the technology to the point that we allow it to, and it will by the way, it’s going to not only guide and instruct us, it’s going to go as far as, at some point, if you don’t use this verse, you’re not telling the whole story. It will begin to tell us that. And we will have to stop and say, “Are we going to let that machine tell me that? Or am I going to rely on what I know God wants me to rely on, which is His wisdom, His guidance, through prayer and fellowship and through my own discernment through the Word.” And so that’s a cautionary tale. So, don’t give up those things that you already know inside of you are right, wrong, needed, necessary to do what you do as a pastor or minister, don’t give that up to the machine. It’s okay to let the machine augment you and help you be more productive, that you should definitely do. Because, listen, if I came in, and I sat with you, and you’re a pastor, and you’re going through the church’s finances, and I’m sitting next to you, and I’m watching you, long hand multiplication and division on a piece of paper, not using a spreadsheet, not using a calculator, not doing all of that, I’m gonna sit back and I’m gonna go, “I’m not sure this is the place that I should be making this big, extra tithes to.” So, use the technology that we’ve been given to be productive, but let’s be careful in how we use it. But listen, it’s phenomenal technology: create me a 10-week lesson schedule for a weekend time, that relates to the fall season, and it gives me themes that I can thematically do this lesson process weekend by weekend. And it comes back with, “Oh, yeah, this is a great fall season, look at the way that they’ve tied this in with the falling of the leaves and the turning of the colors.” For sure, for sure, let’s get that help. But when it comes to those ethical things, those values and principles, let’s be careful. I don’t know, does that make sense?

Jason Daye
Yeah, yeah, that does, that’s good. And that is helpful. And I think it goes back to that, you know, appreciating the technology. But understand, like you said, the guardrails that we need to have, and you know, the thoughtfulness that we need to have. So we don’t just outsource it all to the technology, right? I mean, but we can use the technology as a tool.

Rusty Rueff
Someone debated with me the other day as to whether or not, so let’s say, I’ve created a message and then I give it to Chat GPT to say, “Hey, clean this up, make it more readable, or make it more accessible, or tell me where my logic and my thoughts could be more concise.” And should I do that? And I said, “Wow, that’s a really good one. Yeah, that’s a really good one.” I said, “So would you give it to another human being to do that for you?” And the person said, “No, I do all my messages myself.” And I said, “Then maybe you ought to question.” If the answer would be, “Yeah, I’ve got either my wife, or a couple of my elders that I run my messages by, and they edit it, and they bring it back to me, and they do it. And you’re already doing that. And you want to add one more voice in there. Sure.”

Jason Daye
Right.

Rusty Rueff
But be careful. Be careful that you just don’t go, “Oh, that’s so much better than what my other people have been telling me,” because your other people have context. The machine does not have context.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. That’s a great example. This has been a great conversation. One quick question before we wrap up, Rusty. On the horizon: Are there technologies, are there advancements in technology that you think might be beneficial to the church, or that pastors, ministry leaders should be aware of, or kind of keeping an eye on? Anything kind of in that realm come to mind for you?

Rusty Rueff
Yeah, it’s an outgrowth of AI, content creation. For things like videos and trailers and those kinds of things, that’s going to become so easy. So if you’re trying to add into your audio-visual, whether it’s the little bumper between the worship set when your message comes up, or it’s your online thematic thing that’s coming, the efficiency of content creation, and the quality and excellence that you’re going to get that you today would go, “Well, I really, I don’t do that because when I’m done with it, it looks like I did a PowerPoint slideshow.” And you could tell that nobody had the time to do it, these things are going to be great, these things are going to be fantastic. And you’re going to be able to pull music and it’s all going to be paid for correctly, you’ll be paying your copyright fees, and people will be getting their recognition for the images that they’ve created. But, the compilation of things like that is going to move very, very fast. And we’re going to have an opportunity to tap into that. The other thing that I would say, is definitely coming, and I don’t know how it’s going to show up yet. But how we’re able to create small communities within bigger communities is going to become a lot more safe and efficient and effective. And what I mean by that is right now, we sort of are one size fits all. I’m going to create either a Facebook community, or an Instagram community for my church, and sort of everybody’s in it. And maybe I’ll cut it down into some smaller groups. And maybe if I’m ahead of the game, I’m using Discord, or some of the things for these little smaller groups. But I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to be able to have safe spaces that will be very easily segmented, that people will be able to use in ways that they haven’t used before.

Jason Daye
Wow, very cool. Very, very cool. Rusty, man, it’s been great to have you with us, brother. And if people want to connect with you, or learn more about the book, “The Faith Code,” what’s the best way to do that?

Rusty Rueff
So we have a website, it’s called thefaithcode.com. That’s where you can learn all about the book. And then, for myself, I’m pretty easy to find. It’s rustyrueff.com, it’s my first name, last name .com. And I’m on LinkedIn and Amara, all those other things. But you know, if I can be of any assistance, if you’re a pastor listening, or somebody in the church who is trying to figure out how do I connect with entrepreneurs or business people? And, you know, or what are resources that I could learn more, feel free to reach out to me. Just reference this podcast and, and I’ll do my best to be of help.

Jason Daye
Awesome. I love that, love that, Rusty. And we will have all those links, everything that Rusty share with us in the toolkit for this episode. You can find that in PastorServe.org/network, you’ll have links to the book, links to Rusty’s website and we just want to make that available to you.

Rusty Rueff
Let me just say one more thing, Jason, if anybody really, you get the book and you go, wow, this would be great for a small group, or you guys could come in and do something to talk about, because we actually did write it that way that you could actually go through it as a group. We’re more than happy. That’s the beauty of technology. It didn’t cost me a penny to zoom in. Right. It’s awesome to do. And, it would be our honor to be able to do that for anybody who would like to so just reach out, let us know.

Jason Daye
That’s awesome. I love that. Thank you for offering that up, Rusty. Rusty, it’s been great. It’s been insightful. Thank you for taking the time once again to hang out with us on FrontStage BackStage. God bless you, my friend.

Rusty Rueff
Thank you, you too.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.