
Loading summary
A
Welcome to Unseminary's 2025 unpredictions. As we look ahead, it's easy to get swept up in what's new. But the real challenge for church leaders like you and me lies in staying focused on what endures. Hey, friends. Rich Burch here, and I'm honored that you're joining us for this special series. We're diving into seven timeless topics that will shape and keep shaping church leadership in 2025 and beyond. Each episode brings expert insights to help you stay grounded in the principles that trul even as everything around us changes. Get ready to forge the future by focusing on what last. Let's jump in. Hey, friends. Welcome to the Unseminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you are fired up here to be here today. You've caught us in the middle of these unprediction episodes where we're looking at things that were true last year, are going to be true this year, and are going to be true next year. I've got my friend Kenny Jang on, and today we're talking about the fact that this year the world will be smaller than it was last year. As global connections grow, leveraging technology for communication and learning, it's just going to continue to be critical in our mission churches. You and I should aim to develop global relationships and share their ministry more widely. If you do not know Kenny Jang, what rock have you been living under? He's a certified story brand copywriter guide, the founder of Big Click Syndicate, a strategic marketing advisory firm that really helps create Christian leaders, build marketing engines that work. In addition, Kennedy, Kenny Kennedy. Well, you've made you a Kennedy. Kenny is the editor of chief of also of Church Tech Today and is the founder of AI for church leaders. Plus, he's a friend of mine. Kenny, welcome to the show. So glad you're here.
B
You make me sound like a really busy person, Rich.
A
You are. What are you talking about? You're so busy. I love it. Kenny is like, you know, I don't know how many segments of trips you did last year, but you definitely did more than mine. Always on the plane, going places, fill out the picture, kind of tell us a little bit more about Kenny and then we're going to jump into this conversation.
B
Absolutely.
A
I'm.
B
I guess someone called me a ministry entrepreneur recently. I think that kind of fits the bill. I basically have been able to identify problems that I see that are solvable and a little bit arrogant enough to think that I can make a dent in that problem. And so I've, you Know, basically have a bunch of different ventures helping church leaders resource, whether through conferences or through resources like courses or templates and workshops and books and stuff like that. So there's all these things that I'm trying to do to basically empower the church leader to have much more impact wherever they are.
A
Love it. Well, in my mind, one of the hats you wear is the bishop of AI, as a mutual friend has called you. You're the guy that. Now the good thing is like, you and I, we've known each for whatever 15 plus years and you're always the guy who I think of like, I wonder if there's an app that does this. Or I wonder if there's a website that does this. Kenny is the guy who knows that. And that over the last couple years, really since Chachi PT came out, has really blossomed into this incredible. You're just an expert on this whole area of artificial intelligence. And so I want to leverage that today for this whole idea of communication and how can we leverage these tools to kind of communicate better. I'm a firm believer. I'm pro tech. Listen, I think when I look at the New Testament are, you know, the writers of the day. Paul used the technology of his day, which was the Roman roads and the, and the, and the Greek language, to spread the message of Jesus. We want to be doing the same thing today. Challenge us. What should we be thinking about? When you think of this idea of leveraging, you know, AI for communication, particularly with a global bent, tell us what we should be thinking about these days.
B
Yeah, AI is a tool. It's not going to necessarily come take your job away immediately. I like to say it's taken my job, but to a whole nother level. And this is just one of those things where we need a theology of AI for the church. And I'm working on a book and some other resources around that because I'm trying to explore the questions that actually determine how do you get to a point of understanding how we should best use AI for the gospel? And one of the core concepts or core ideas, I think, Rich, is this. If you look at the Toyota 5 Whys, you know, that process where you're asking, why do you believe this? And then why do you believe that? And you get down to it five levels deep. I think the question that church leaders need to answer for themselves is do you believe that there actually could be any divinity in the digital tools that we have in front of us today? Do you think God can use digital tools for his good and for his glory. And if the answer is no, then we must compartmentalize it, we must block it, we need to shut it down, etc. And for those that are against AI immediately, I would say then let's, you know, let's call you out and say, then are you consistent? So are you using the Internet? Are you using smartphones, are using gps? Because if AI is evil and it's not of God, then so is all this other technology that we have that's pervasive all over. And so that fundamental question is the first place, square one, we have to go rich. And then after that, if you were able to say yes, God could use it to redeem our world, we could use it to become much more impactful heralds of the gospel. Then it just opens up this play, you know, sandbox that we can play in, and it just, it's just an amazing world together.
A
Yeah. I love what the Economist said, the newspaper they talked about. I love their definition of AI. They said AI is the label we give advanced technologies when we don't understand them. And eventually what will happen is once you start to understand their use, their functionality, we stop using that term. So, like, in a very real way, I still remember, this is years ago, 15 years ago. I remember autocomplete on Google Search, like where you would go and you would start typing and then it went. And I remember my mind being blown away. I was like, oh my goodness, what is happening? Like, what is this thing? This is ridiculous. That was a form of AI. That literally is a form of. It's very, actually very close to what ChatGPT is doing today. It's taking information and extending it. But there's a specific kind of AI. Generative AI. Can you define that for us? Maybe for church leaders that have heard that before. What does that mean? Generative AI?
B
Yeah, generative AI. So again, you're right. AI has been around for decades in different forms. This latest flavor genre called generative AI hit the media by storm when ChatGPT was launched in November 22nd. And the difference between all the other stuff and this stuff is it is now able to actually create, generate, create new things. So the old AI, the stuff that we've known AI historically, IBM, Watson being able to play chess against the chess grandmasters, or think of it as like this brainiac computer, that the old AI just does computations, large amounts of massive data computations in the brain. Generative AI is to do that and then actually create new outputs. And so we are in a world, if you want to Be a little bit nerdy. Rich. You're hearing the term multimodal AI right now, which only means it can talk about text, audio, video, images, both inputs and outputs. It's able to converse across all that now. And so this is the wild, wild west, because AI is now creating brand new things. It's actually generating new content.
A
Yeah, I love that. I saw a study recently that said 11% of American workers use AI on a daily or use UI, use AI on a daily basis, which I thought was amazing. 11%, 40% do on a weekly basis. This is a clearly a trend that we're, you know, is happening all around us. Let's get kind of practical here. What would be a use case, particularly on the communication side? Maybe a tool that we could be thinking about and a way that our church is either a way that maybe you've seen a church or you kind of want to poke us towards, hey, we should be thinking about maybe using a tool like this this way.
B
Yeah, there's very novel things that we could use AI for. There's some practical productivity stuff. I think that if you're talking future forward, things that really do have massive impact is translation. AI is perfect for translation. So one of the reasons why AI has taken the world by storm is because it is relevant to every single language, because it understands every single language, it's relevant to every single industry because it's pretty much read every single book under the sun, every single webpage out there. And so language is just one of those things that it's completely conversant in and allows you to translate, not just text, not just audio, but now video. You're able to actually take a video, say, let's say your sermon, speaking in one language, it could translate it and clone your voice and clone your video of yourself and lip sync you to that new translated audio. And even though you don't speak that other language. And so once you start to see that technology in action, your creative mind just starts to expand how you can use that in so many different practical applications.
A
Yeah, I love this. When this, when we first started to see this being used, there was like real negative backlash against these kind of. What was that term that kept getting kicked around? There was like the, you know, what was it? Fake. Deep fakes, you know, like, oh, this is a deep fake or whatever. And, oh, that's, this is going to take over the, you know, world and be super negative. But there are some positive use cases for translated video like this. What would be an example or two that you've seen. And then I've got a couple I can think of as well.
B
Yeah. So. Well, I'll give you two. One is I've worked with some organizations that are missionary organizations that are basically translating the Bible into the heart language of hundreds of other languages around the world. Right. The gospel needs to actually reach all the ends of the earth. They're doing that on video where there's a person who's actually speaking and they'll, you know, is translating the video. But the problem with that methodology is in 5, 10 years, my hairstyle, my clothes goes out of style. And so if you're trying to reach unbelievers in a secular culture, that matters. And so they have to invest in re recording reading the entire Bible in multiple languages over and over. You can just imagine the expense for that. Now with AI, you can completely do that in an instance and update their clothes, update their look, et cetera. And, and then here's the super thing that I think who can argue against this using AI for translation? When you put that into countries where there's security and sensitive issues when Christians are being persecuted, you don't want to put a human being on camera. And now you can actually use the voice and cloning and translation. Wow. But you know, you basically keep someone safe. So that's the first case.
A
Yeah. That's amazing. That's powerful. I love that. I know we had our friends from the Chosen, the foundation that's behind the Chosen, and they're using AI in that exact case where they're translating. I think the most translated television show of all time is Baywatch, which believe it or not, it's like 50. Isn't that funny? 50 some odd, you know, translations. But they're aiming for like 120 translations. So like way more than those. And they're closing the gap using AI that they're, you know, they're, they're taking, literally taking their raw video content, dumping it into generative AI and then having it produce entire episodes of the Chosen in multiple languages for exactly the reason that you're saying there. That's.
B
Yeah, I think that's powerful. And like for all the opponents of AI, I dare you to call me up and let's have a discussion about that. How can you argue against using AI for that type of use? The other one is every or most churches have some sort of ministry for missions, overseas missions. And so for example, my church, you know, has a long standing, over a decade, I think, relationship with a ministry locally in Guatemala. My previous church had one in Dominican Republic. Imagine as you build the relationships over the years and they know the pastor and they have this relationship. Imagine now, instead of having translation issues or having to have a translator present whenever you're there, that you can actually translate your sermons into their native tongue and then send those videos. And now you're able to actually start to disciples of them in a much more meaningful way than just a periodic trip, once, twice a year, that you can actually send them materials and resources that are translated that completely is able to be received very well by the people overseas. So I think that's just another interesting way that translation could work in our favor and takes very, very little time. Very low cost, and it's accessible to every single church that's listening here today.
A
Yeah, it's crazy like that. You know, that's an. That's a great example. Great use case and relatively simple to do. I. We were talking beforehand, you know, I used a tool called hey, Gen, which I think you put me onto. Probably. I'll credit you if you didn't anyways, which is, you know, the low cost does exactly what we're talking about here. And I. I've done it where I've made. I made a video, I don't know, six months ago and posted it on Instagram where I translated myself into multiple languages. And it's fun to hear yourself speak Russian and, you know, whatever, you know, Cantonese of different languages. But I did the reverse. I took a speaker, a French speaker, and translated into English because I wanted to hear what does that sound like? And I was blown away with how good the translation was. Like, it was like, oh, wow. Like it, it. The accent was great. It was easy to understand. Man, that opens up all kinds of opportunities. And I think there's something about when we know that it's happening. I'm willing to adopt that technology, like, as a viewer, like, if I know, if I'm not. If someone's not trying to trick me. And, you know, in this case, the case you've just given, like, hey, you know, this pastor, you know, they don't speak Spanish or, you know, whatever language you're speaking in the, you know, the location. But we've gone out of our way to try to make it accessible to you. I think there'll be high levels of adoption there.
B
Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at the demographic trends in all the metro areas and even the smaller ones in this country, you are seeing that many, many communities, most communities are turning much more multi, ethnic, multilingual, oh, 100%. And so I think it's going to be even more pressing need. If your church is serious about reaching your own zip code, you're going to need to start to think about the populations that don't, that are not native English speakers, at least here in America. And how do you serve them, how do you bring them in, how do you actually present the gospel to them in a way that is much more receptive so that you can get more decisions for Christ and baptisms and all the other things that we are trying to do in our call and ministry?
A
Yeah, absolutely. We've done that for years with human translators. This scales that up faster and I would argue in a more compelling manner. Like it's compelling to watch this content. You know, it doesn't. There's the lip sync is better. You know, all that stuff. They've solved some of the technical problems with, you know, with this kind of translation. I literally was talking to a church leader last week that was asking this exact question. They're saying, I wonder if we should be thinking about Portuguese, France, French. And I can't remember what the third language was, you know, launching some sort of experience that translates, that isn't trying to hide the fact that it's an English speaker, but is translating this. That's, that's great.
B
So here's, here's the translation tool I want Rich. It's the English to English tool. And I wanted to take my message. So it's going to take my message, whatever I give as a presentation or talk, and then it's going to transcribe to ChatGPT. And then ChatGPT is going to make it much more logical, much more clear, much more compelling, and then make me say it in the video. So that's a better version of me. How about that?
A
Yes, a snappier version. Take, put, put the, the Tim Lucas filter on. How do I say this? I'd have to say it louder, you know, and there'd have to be spaghetti or some sort of prop every time. But yeah, that's great. I love that. That's, that's so good. Well, what about. So I love this idea even. You know what you got me thinking there when you said that too was, you know, international partners. You know, I'll struggle in another language. You know, I, I might only know five words in Spanish, but like, I have a relationship with these people. We've been, you know, there a bunch of times and like when we're, when we're on site, I'll struggle through and we'll like, I'll use Google Translate and like try to have a conversation. It's wooden, but it does feel like there's some sort of relationship there. Another thing we could do is like when we're on, you know, oftentimes those in those environments, they'll like want to shoot a video to say something back to the church. Instead of like putting, you know, subtitles on that. We could take that video and very low cost, like, you know, less than the. Definitely less than the cost of the, you know, coffee at the airport. We could translate that and show that to the people at our church back home. Man, that would be powerful, powerful way to use that kind of technology. I love that.
B
Yeah, I'm looking, waiting for the future, right? We, we talk about the innovation right now in dog years, right? And given 365 days a year, we're seeing seven leapfrogs in the innovation right now. And just like, I don't know if, you know, there's a Google Translate app where you can hold it up as your camera and it will translate in real time signs that you see in other languages. I'm for sure that that's going to be with video translation, that I'm going to be able to hold up a camera to you speaking and it will actually change your voice, not just subtitle you. But sure. That's the future, right? And so I think it's bright for us especially for talking about translation as a use case.
A
Dude, I literally used that app last week. I was in Quebec French speaking and you know, predominantly French speaking. And we literally were walking around like using it on signs, using it on our, you know, menus at restaurants. It's wild. Like I'm like this. I am living in the future. It's incredibly, it's incredible. I'd seen it advertised but never used it before. Forth.
B
And it's a great time to be alive.
A
Crazy. It's crazy. I'm like, how does this happen? And it doesn't cost me anything or I'm not. I don't have any perception of how it's costing me. Is probably a better way to say that. What about, you know, are there any other uses maybe close to home, you know that I love that global. But are there ways that we should be thinking about this year using generative AI to help us reach people, you know, in our neighborhoods, around the corner, you know, that sort of thing.
B
Yeah, I mean, how many days do you have? Can we start the list alphabetically? I mean there's so many ways that we should be Using AI to reach more people. I will say this. Every single church has a website, I hope, and every single church has a sermon archive on there. And I think the problem right now is that we live in a YouTube world, right, where the average view of a video is four minutes or so. If I actually pulled up your website, anybody who's listening today, we go to any given sermon page and hit play and Then start the YouTube countdown clock before someone abandons a video view. Four minutes, would they get to anything meaningful, material, significant, memorable in that first four minutes before they abandon your website page?
A
Dude, that is, you know, that's a great way to think about this. You know, stop complaining about the fact that we have low, you know, memory and like we all that stuff. Let's think about the practical use case. Like that's a great example. So many people, they're just warming up in the first four minutes. They're not getting to it. So, so what, what can we do? How, how do we, how do we live in a, in like you say, in a YouTube world where that's people's primary orientation or even more so like you know, TikTok, snap, all that.
B
We live in a short form video world. And so this is where your AI, it used to be, you have to. The reason why no one does it in the past five, 10 years is because you need to hire a video editor. Someone needs to literally sit through your entire sermon, transcribe it, read it, highlight, pull out the clips, you know, edit it. It's tedious, it's laborious and it's expensive. And now you've got tools like sermon shots that basically you upload your video or just put in your YouTube link and it will automatically identify the hotspots, the key points of your sermon, automatically clip them, resize them to whether you want vertical video, square video, horizontal, and then it will repurpose them into short form pieces. You should post that now. You should post it on social, you should send an email, but you should also put it on your sermon page. There's all these other types of forms of content that you should actually be reformulating your long form sermon into and putting it on your sermon page. I think for me there's over 10 different types of short form content that should be on a given sermon page and AI is here to help. And it costs pennies and it also takes like less time than you would ever think. And so, and here's the other kicker, Rich, you and I are always nerding out on this. How can we activate More volunteers in our ministry. And that's a perfect volunteer role. That's something that can be done asynchronously off site. They don't need to drive to the church. And it's something that there's someone in your church that has got an hour a week to actually start to do some of these things for your. And the ROI is limitless. Right. Because once you put the stuff on the Internet, it actually has traction. So anyway, repurposing your content.
A
Let's slow down on this. Repurpose your sermon. I love it. So you said 10. That caught my attention. I'm like, oh my goodness, 10. I love the idea of taking the general. Obviously we've got the general sermon. Lots of people write discussion notes. So that's two. I get a couple clips that. What would be some of those other 10 that I should be thinking about?
B
Yeah. So one is FAQs. So there are people who are watching your video and there's questions. So this is this from me. For me, it's from my history as a church online pastor. Right. So what's the difference between in person church and church online? There's a couple of things. Church online is not always a degraded version of in person services. And here's the one place where I think church online shines that's better than in person, and that is in in person church, the pastor is upset when people chat during their sermon. When people are talking and murmuring and asking questions and chatting with each other, people get upset. If you talk to any church online pastor, we get upset when no one's talking during the sermon.
A
That's good. That's good.
B
And what actually comes up in the chat, the live chat is there is people are asking questions. They're asking basic questions like why are we taking snack in the middle of the sermon? Bread and juice? And what's going on here? People have never been to church, are asking these questions. What is this Christianese jargon? So all these things come up. So asking FAQs about the topic is a great thing. That AI is perfect for doing that. And then related to that, just give one more. What about a glossary?
A
Oh, I love that.
B
Why don't you take out all the jargon and Christianese terms and then just put those definitions there on the sermon page so that someone who's not a believer that doesn't have that didn't grow up in Sunday school actually wants to know about these terms. Don't make them look it up. Put them right there. So those are just Two additional easy things that you can do with AI that can be done in an instant with a transcript that takes you no time, but it will serve the viewer. Someone who comes to your site. Oh, tremendously. Right. You can imagine that, how helpful that is.
A
Well, and I love the glossary idea that's like close to home because, man, I'm, I'm passionate about how do we help unchurched people. And we often trip. And this is one of those things I found that ChatGPT particularly is so good at is helping us think differently than ourselves. And so I could see, take your transcript literally, get the text file, drop it into ChatGPT and just say, thinking like a person who, who doesn't normally attend church, pull out at least a dozen phrases or words that, that they would not understand. Define those in a way that, you know, whatever aligns with evangelical thought and you know, generate that term. Or you could also say like, you know, reference a code, time code in the message if you've got tone codes in your thing and literally that, you know, you copy and paste that do that every week. It would takes, well, it takes a lot. It takes way shorter to do than we just talked about it. Like, it's like 15 seconds every week to do that and goes out of our way to, you know, hey, make it easier for people that don't attend church on a regular basis.
B
Absolutely, absolutely. So like, shouldn't we merchandise the page, as we say in business? Shouldn't we dress up the sermon page with not just that long form content, but ways to engage it in short form, ways in different angles? Because some people might be more attuned to enter from the angle of text. So maybe it's a summary, maybe it's doing discussion questions, maybe it's pulling out the Bible verses and having some commentaries about those. There's so many different ways to engage the same topic. The point of your sermon archive page should not be for them to actually play the whole video. The whole point is to engage them so they ask more questions and they take whatever their next step is in their relationship with Jesus Christ. To take that one little step further. And I think this is the, this is the opportunity that the church has today, especially with AI here to support us.
A
Well, and I love that because what it's, it's looking at people and the like. In this case, people that come to our website or people that come to our church and saying, hey, people are going to engage at different levels. Like there are going to be people that are just going to watch your 4 quote things that are fun to watch. There are. And then there's going to be people that are going to want to look at the glossary. People might read your notes, people might write, read the thousand word, you know, article on what you're talking about. And then some people might be so intrigued by all of that that they'll sit and watch the 45 minute message. But we start with just the 45 minute message. Why is that? Why do we, it's like our bias is towards, you got to watch this whole thing as opposed to, you know, serving them. Why, why do we do that?
B
Well, I don't think, I don't think people at this point in the church, the staff look at the website as the place of ministry. So it's not. You get them to the website, but the website is just a pointer, a directional sign. It's a map in the whole building of where you're supposed to go. And the only place you're supposed to go from the website is to the church building. Right. And so I like it. And it's almost, I say it's almost like a bait and switch. You're just trying to get them to the website so they get them into, I say, a timeshare presentation inside your sanctuary. Let's close the door, lock the door for 90 minutes and then promise them what, a mug or a T shirt at the end of it instead of a ticket to your show. But backing up, to be serious, that's true. You're not looking at the website as the place to actually engage and influence people in their quest to learn about Jesus and the biblical worldview that you have to offer.
A
Love it. Well, friends, the thing I love about this is, and what you're pushing us here on repurposing our sermons is like, for years I've had this and you and I've had this back and forth about church online for, I don't know, more than a decade. Where I'm like, I love church online. I'm a pro church online guy. Some people are going to say, I'm not by what I'm about to say, but I'm like, the form of what we do, most of what we do doesn't fit or the, the product that we do doesn't fit the form. The, the, the 45 minute hour long thing it does. That doesn't feel like the Internet to me. That, that feels like something else. But this idea of breaking it up into all these different bits and pieces, this feels a lot more. I've written about this, I'm like, I think the best church online out there is the if gathering people, because they figured out how to do it in a whole bunch of different ways, small groups. And sure, they're doing in person, but they're doing, you know, the kind of, you know, synchronous event online, all of that. But this makes it much more approachable for an average church. I'm a church of 500 people. I could do this. I could find a small team, an AI team, a digirati who would say all, we'll do this every week and, you know, take a couple hours a week and generate or not even take an hour a week and generate all kinds of great stuff. So I want to make sure people check out repurposeyoursermon.com this is a resource you've put together. Friends, I am unabashed. Like, I want you to check this out. What you should do right now is stop this episode and go to repurpose your sermon.com and engage there. But tell us about that. For the people that didn't do that, tell us, what is repurposeyourserman.com?
B
Yeah, so we've built a community of thousands of church leaders on Facebook. There's a group called AI for church leaders that you can join. And what we're hearing from our community is they want practical ways of using AI. And so the sermon is one of the most popular things. Like, we know that we have opportunities to actually do something with a sermon, but we just don't know what. And so that's why we built this resource. So it takes your sermon and we walk through, I think, a dozen different ways to take your long form content and create discussion guides, sermon clips, the quote images, devotionals, summaries, blog articles. There's all these ways that I think you should do it. And then we've actually mocked up a sample sermon page, right? So I've gone on this rant with you today, and I say, look, this is what you should be doing. So my worldview, I think my point of view is like, there's a sample sermon page outline that we've actually built, and you can download it and look at it and use as inspiration and then learn how to create every single one of those things. It's a practical thing. I think every church could benefit from it. If you don't follow it, the whole point is at least it will start a discussion internally with your teams and say, hey, maybe there's one, two or three good ideas that we can start to Figure out how to repurpose our sermon for greater impact and really the original reason why you are preaching the sermon. And I think this is again, the caveat, Rich, I think here is many pastors forget that the number of people that might listen to the sermon that they've invested 5, 10, 15, 20 hours in is not limited to the people in the room. The people that actually end up benefiting from that gospel Message could be 10x100x,000x the number of people in your actual room. So why don't we bless as many people as possible with the sermon that you've been called to preach. And so this is one of those a drop in the bucket to help you, you know, get to that goal.
A
Love it. So yeah, that's repurpose your sermon dot com. I would love for you folks that are listening in to drop by there to check it out. I love that you've made this so practical. This templated page that says, hey, here's what that should look like. And friends, the reason why we're talking about this during this unprediction series of of interviews is because, you know, a year ago you were thinking I should be thinking about something with AI and communication and you're still thinking that now. And we've been talking about it for 31 minutes and you haven't done anything about it. And unless you take action now, a year from now, you'll be thinking the same thing and you're going to be behind on reaching your community. So I want you to double down and invest in this area like all the areas we're talking about this month. But this is a really important one that I want you to spend some time, focus, find some volunteers to pick up this ball and run with it. Well, Kenny, you are a gift to me. You're a gift to the broader community. So thankful that you are here today as we wrap up today's episode. Anything kind of final thing you'd love to say as we wrap up today's conversation?
B
I just want to say it's a word of encouragement. We have so much available to us today in the technologies, not just AI, in so many things that we have available to us. And I think we just need to lean into that growth mindset and let God order our steps in front of us. If we just have the willingness, open heart to do that, great things can happen for ministries all over the place.
A
Love it. So repurposeyourserman.com is where we send people to if people want to follow you on socials or anywhere else. Where do we want to send them for that?
B
You know, I'm pretty easy to find. Someone said they couldn't find me recently. I was like, I dispute that. If you google my name, Kenny Jang, I would agree.
A
Oh my goodness.
B
I'm available on most of the I'm available on the the New kid on the block. Tick tock. So if you want to look at some of my viral videos there, I'm available on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you want. So I love engaging with church leaders everywhere. Invite you to have a conversation and I want to. More importantly, I want to learn from everybody. Right? We gotta, we have to learn together. And so just hearing what's working for you in your neck of the woods is a blessing to me and so I just invite that conversation.
A
Thanks, Kenny. Really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for joining us on this journey through Unseminary's 2025 unpredictions. Stay grounded in what matters and let's keep forging the future of the church together. For show notes, more insights, resources to help support you all year, head over to unseminary.com and sign up for our email list. See you next time. Thank you. Sa.
Title: Repurpose, Reach, Renew: Unleashing AI for Your Church’s Mission with Kenny Jahng
Host: Rich Birch
Guest: Kenny Jahng
Podcast: UnSeminary Podcast
Release Date: January 22, 2025
This episode explores how church leaders can strategically embrace artificial intelligence to amplify their communication, expand their reach, and serve their communities more effectively. Rich Birch and AI advocate Kenny Jahng dig into the theological, practical, and global dimensions of AI, focusing on tools and tactics for sermon repurposing, digital translation, and online ministry engagement that endure beyond technological trends.
“Do you believe that there actually could be any divinity in the digital tools that we have in front of us today? Do you think God can use digital tools for his good and for his glory?” (05:08, Kenny Jahng)
“The difference … is it is now able to actually create, generate, create new things.” (06:58, Kenny Jahng)
Past AI handled computation; generative AI creates new outputs (text, audio, video, images).
“Missionary organizations … are translating the Bible into the heart language of hundreds of other languages.”
AI updates visual style and provides safe alternatives for persecuted regions. (10:09, Kenny Jahng)
“Imagine … you can actually translate your sermons into their native tongue and send those videos. … You actually start to disciple them in a much more meaningful way.” (12:07, Kenny Jahng)
“I think there’ll be high levels of adoption there.” (14:22, Rich Birch)
“Many communities are turning much more multi-ethnic, multilingual … if your church is serious about reaching your own zip code, you’re going to need to think about the populations that are not native English speakers…” (14:44, Kenny Jahng)
“There’s over 10 different types of short form content that should be on a given sermon page … it costs pennies and it also takes like less time than you would ever think.” (20:32, Kenny Jahng)
“Shouldn’t we merchandise the page, as we say in business? … Ways to engage it in short form, ways in different angles … the whole point is to engage them so they ask more questions and … take whatever their next step is in their relationship with Jesus Christ.” (25:31, Kenny Jahng)
“I want to learn from everybody. Right? We have to learn together. And so just hearing what’s working for you in your neck of the woods is a blessing to me.” (33:56, Kenny Jahng)
Theology of AI:
“If you were able to say yes, God could use it to redeem our world, we could use it to become much more impactful heralds of the gospel. Then it just opens up this play, you know, sandbox that we can play in.”
— Kenny Jahng (05:34)
On Deep Fakes vs. Positive Use Cases:
“Who can argue against using AI for that type of use?”
— Kenny Jahng (12:07)
The “English to English” Tool:
“I want it to take my message, transcribe it to ChatGPT, make it much more logical, clearer, much more compelling, then make me say it in the video. So, that’s a better version of me. How about that?”
— Kenny Jahng (16:12)
Serving All Learners:
“People are going to engage at different levels … there are going to be people that … just watch your four-quotes. … Some people might be so intrigued by all of that that they’ll sit and watch the 45-minute message. But we start with just the 45-minute message. Why is that?”
— Rich Birch (26:26)
The Real Opportunity:
“The point of your sermon archive page should not be for them to actually play the whole video. The whole point is to engage them so they ask more questions and they take whatever their next step is in their relationship with Jesus Christ.”
— Kenny Jahng (25:31)
Empowering Churches of Every Size:
“This makes it much more approachable for the average church. … I could find a small team, an AI team, a digirati who would say, ‘We’ll do this every week…’”
— Rich Birch (28:08)
| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:51 | Theological framing: Should Christians use AI? | | 06:44 | What is generative AI? | | 08:34 | Practical use cases: AI for translation in global mission & partnerships | | 14:44 | Multilingual ministry at home – demographic trends and AI | | 19:14 | Engagement crisis: sermons online & why short-form matters | | 20:32 | AI tools for repurposing sermons (ex: Sermon Shots) | | 22:37 | 10+ ways to repurpose sermons: FAQs, glossaries, more | | 29:45 | repurposeyoursermon.com resource & AI for Church Leaders community | | 32:47 | Kenny’s closing encouragement and mindset | | 33:20 | Kenny’s social media presence and invitation to connect |
The episode is conversational, encouraging, and pragmatic, blending optimism for technological possibilities with a pastoral desire to serve better and reach further. Both Rich and Kenny use accessible language, relatable analogies, and practical examples rooted in real church life.
AI is not a threat but a powerful ally for the church’s enduring mission. Churches of any size can—and should—harness AI for translation, content repurposing, and deeper digital engagement, starting with resources like repurposeyoursermon.com. The key is to shift mindset: see the website and digital tools as extensions of ministry, not just promotional signposts, and to engage every learner—across all platforms, languages, and attention spans.