from Kim Tame

Dear friends

No artificial additives?

As if technology hasn't gone far enough, we now face the prospect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking a bigger part in our lives.

I should start with a warning; this article has been assisted by Copilot and Perplexity.

We can't ignore the challenges now posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) - it's already here and making an impact.  I already use AI for research; though I check everything, since it can produce odd and inaccurate results.

But surely in that most traditional of environments, the church, AI could not have more than a marginal role?

So I asked Copilot - the AI that comes with the Edge browser - what it can do for the church. It told me about the help it can give with social media, automated messaging and personalised content recommendations.  How it can help with Biblical research, history and theological discussions.  How we could improve our scheduling and manage our donations and communication.

Then it told me about the challenges; that we could lose the personal touch and spiritual discernment in human relationships, and not least, that AI, in the way it collects and organises information, could be passing on false information.

It even came up with a case study; a small church in Switzerland, which temporarily swapped the usual confession with a priest for a multi-lingual bot and a hologram of Jesus.

The program was trained with scripts so that it could give appropriate responses - in 100 different languages. Two-thirds of the people who came to the AI confessional reported a positive experience, while others found the experience to be two-dimensional and repetitive.  At the end of the trial period, the project was not continued.

Could AI write a sermon?  I had to try.  For this experiment, I tried two widely available AI browsers; Perplexity and ChatGPT.  I told them which week of the lectionary I wanted, and asked it for some sermon themes and illustrations.

So far I'm not impressed - Perplexity produced a string of platitudes, with the odd sentence that I quite liked.  ChatGPT did slightly better, with a good sermon outline but fairly bland content.

I think I'll stick with thinking and writing for the moment.

Kim Tame

from Rev Wes Hampton

Dear Friends,

Easter is at the heart of the Christian story.  The resurrection of Jesus enabled people to understand his teaching and death, and to recognize his continuing presence with them.  It brought the Holy Spirit into their lives, empowering them to proclaim good news in the face of apparent defeat.  Without Easter there would have been no recollection of the ministry of Jesus, and no sharing of his Good News.  With Easter, we have all this and so much more.

Easter is at the heart of our stories.  Christ’s resurrection gives us confidence in his claim to have come “that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10 NRSV)  Such life begins with a group of disciples encountering the risen Christ, who are then transformed from a cowardly huddle into an evangelistic team.  Like the two who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus’ followers turned their focus from the sorrow of Jesus’ death to the joy of his new life.  Life experienced “abundantly” is rooted and bears fruit in the present. It also goes further to a relationship with the risen and exalted Christ in his kingdom.

Is such abundant life visible in our lives?  And, since life involves growth, do we see this life that Jesus has inaugurated spreading in this world?  Almost certainly, we shall feel that the answer is “Yes and No”:  there are signs of life if we look hard enough for them, but we sense that there could and should be more.  What needs to be invigorated in our own lives?  Not every change needs to be dramatic – with Easter the regular day of worship moved from Saturday to Sunday, which is hardly earth-shattering – but if our relationship with God seems stale, if our inclination to pray or to worship has declined, if we expect little of life, then we might need to allow the Good News of Easter to stir us up once again.  Easter roused a small group of people: now their message has reached every continent.

Wes

from Rev Wes Hampton

Dear Friends,

Over these last four weeks, we have heard some of the great encounters with Jesus that people have in John’s Gospel.  In their own ways they have each approached the subject of the life that Jesus would offer his followers.  This week, however, we begin Holy Week, where Jesus’ impending suffering and death overshadow the events of these last days.

In John’s Gospel, the six days from Palm Sunday to Good Friday take up just over a third of the entire book, and more than half of this section tells the story of the day we call Maundy Thursday.  As important as all the meetings and teaching are, the writer puts enormous focus on this one week and this one evening.  Clearly, it is not to be passed over quickly.

We cannot do justice to this crucial period if we pass straight from Palm Sunday to Easter Day.  The Passion of Jesus deserves our time and attention, as we read or listen again to these events which help to form our understanding of why Jesus died in the way that he did.  Some of this great story will form our focus when we come together to worship this coming week, especially on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  Some of it we can read and reflect upon for ourselves, as we look at the Gospel accounts of the Passion.

Although the story may be old and very familiar to us, its significance is ever new and worthy of our contemplation.  Let us all find the opportunities to recall and to journey with Jesus.  Only by entering into this week shall we be ready for the new week, and the new life, to come.

Wes

from Rosi MorganBarry

If you have time to read through the book of Revelation you will have to face the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, cope with plagues and earthquakes, fire and brimstone, beasts and dragons, battles and burnings, bowls of wrath, thunders, lightnings and hailstones and the pit of hell.  But in the end, you will come to the beautiful vision of the City of God coming down from heaven with the announcement “Now God's home is with mankind! He will live with them”.

There are three gates on each of the four sides of the city of God. (Revelation 21, 13)  William Barclay has a lovely comment on these gates.

“There are three gates on the east. The east is the place of the rising sun and the beginning of the day. These gates could represent the way into the holy City of those who find Christ in the glad morning of their days.

There are three gates on the north. The north is the cold land with a certain chill in it. These gates could stand for the way into the holy city of those who come to Christianity by the intellectual exercise of thought and have found the faith through their minds rather than through their hearts.

There are three gates on the south. The south is the warm land where the wind is gentle and the climate soft. These gates could stand for the way into the holy city of those who have come to Christ through their emotions, whose love ran over at the sight of the cross.

There are three gates on the west. The west is the land of the dying day and the setting sun. These gates could stand for the way into the holy city of those who come to Christ in the evening of their days.”

No matter how or when we come to him, God will let us in.