[00:00:04] David Maples: Welcome to the Ministry Maximizer podcast. I’m one of your hosts, David Maples, and I’m joined here by…

[00:00:10] Carla Green: Carla Green.

[00:00:11] David Maples: And we are your co-hosts for the next hour or so as we delve into everything dealing with technology and the ministry. This episode is focused on artificial intelligence, technology, and pastoral care. And the real theme of this episode is about extending your reach without losing the human touch.

[00:00:31] David Maples: Carla, for a minute, would you introduce yourself to listeners of the show to tell them a little about your background and tell us a little bit about what pastoral care is?

[00:00:39] Carla Green: Right. So, I am a… currently I am COO and Chaplain at an estate planning law firm, but my past has been, I’ve been a pastor at a large church in East Central Illinois and also pastored my own in Central Illinois. And so have a lot of work around the church and ministry.

[00:01:00] Carla Green: And currently, I’m getting my doctorate in Chaplain Ministry and Leadership. And so, and then pastoral care. This is a… I think we throw it around a lot, just about care when it comes to how pastors care for us. But I looked it up just because let’s get a a good definition going, a working definition. It says it’s a form of support that addresses emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical needs of an individual.

[00:01:24] Carla Green: And so, I think it depends on what size of a church you’re in. I think the larger the churches, you may have actual departments for pastoral care or a person dedicated to that. Or they may depend on small group leaders to be the person that reaches out. So, it might be something as simple as who visits you when you’re in the hospital, who visits you if you’re stuck at home, or who do you call if you’re having a marital problem or a kid problem or a legal problem as far as like, I’m going to court and I need some help, or grief, if somebody passes away.

[00:01:56] Carla Green: There are programs like DivorceCare and Grief Care… I think it’s DivorceCare and GriefShare, too, that that they have that some churches do, but it’s it’s kind of a a very broad topic, pastoral care, and it’s not an easy one. And so I think there’s… I think it’s important for us to know going into this is that we don’t necessarily have cut-and-dry solutions because pastoral care is difficult. And we have to hold it in tension that we’re not just going to solve everybody’s problem with a tool. And so how do we do that? And so that’s kind of where we’re at, probably more than you wanted to hear.

[00:02:31] David Maples: No, no, I’m with you here 100%. And so, I’m the other arm of the the podcast. My name is David Maples, I’m an AI technologist, and I also run a software company and a digital marketing firm, and I have some other investments. But basically, my goal on this show is to kind of introduce technology to kind of bring this business-centric aspect to some of it so we can apply these better things to models, etc.

[00:02:56] David Maples: And this is, for me, is kind of an exciting episode because it’s something I’m not as familiar with. It’s not something I think about. When I think about the big things on, okay, what is the pastor responsible for at a church? And I think about the things that usually come to mind for me very easily are the sermon on Sunday. They’re at the front of the room, they have to direct everything and, for lack of a better term, herd sheep. That’s kind of part of it, right? Is that shepherding of the flock. And that’s what I kind of think of as pastoral care.

[00:03:25] David Maples: As I have, and as all of us kind of in our lives do, as I’ve seen family members in my family pass away, that kind of thing, I think the other portion of pastoral care that I probably don’t, or I’ve not spent as much time thinking about, is that other very, very important part of it, that really that human connection, that human touch, which is who visits someone when they’re sick? Who… and I mean, how do they handle meeting with people before they get married? Who does the marriage counseling? And I think a lot of that depends on, as you said, the size of the church.

[00:03:58] David Maples: Because a lot of these things, these details that I think… I don’t know, for those in the audience, if you are, if you’re the pastor of a church, this is easy for you. You know exactly what it is. It’s whatever you do. Pastoral care is every interaction, probably, with the individuals in your church. But for those of you out there who are more ancillary to that, if you’re in administration at a church, or if you’re, or if you’re just interested in this because you want to see how technology affects something like the church, I think you may not have the same perception on it. And I never thought… I never thought about how much time that actually takes. But I think this is a big portion of what a pastor, priest, preacher, etc. does on a weekly basis. Visiting people in the church, etc.

[00:04:40] Carla Green: And a lot of times, it’s unexpected. So one of the things that we just, in the church that I was in, the larger church, when somebody would pass away and if you were the one that was going to officiate the funeral, we just said, you know, plan on three days of being out and that that your schedule is going to be totally shut down because you’re going to need to be with that family and they’re gonna… you know, you have to have a point person. Well, you can’t do that by yourself if you’re if you’re in a small church.

[00:05:06] Carla Green: And so, a lot of this too is, like like, you know, David was talking about, you know, what interests him with this, but with me, when it comes to Ministry Maximizer and and this type of thing, it’s it’s how do we broaden… I want to give more tools back to the church so they can do more of things like this, so that they have time. So if I can take… if I can give you back time and treasure for, like, you know, how you put your sermons together or how you do your small groups or all the administrative work, so I can clear your schedule a little bit so you have more time for relationships that are aren’t so prescriptive, then I think we have a win there. And that’s really what the the goal of this is, is to give you back the time so you have more face time with people and that you can actually love and care on them the way they need it, they what they’re crying for.

[00:05:56] Carla Green: And this works out in business too is that how you approach a life event is how stuck they’re going to be to your church. So if they get ignored when they go to the hospital, or they get ignored when they have something tragic happen in their family, they’re probably going to be church shopping as soon as all that’s over. Same with a business. If I take… if I don’t take care of the need I’m supposed to be taking care of, they’re probably going to go find somebody else to take care of that need. And so how we do life events is the whole game, because that’s what they’re judging us on.

[00:06:28] David Maples: Okay, so to take that… I’ve got two points I want to make on this. First, subbing one for the other. So I really hadn’t… I hadn’t thought about that and I’ve got, I think, an analogy or… I’m trying to use Ministry Maximizer to generate some parables right now because we’ve been putting these pieces in there.

[00:06:43] David Maples: But the second piece about it, I hadn’t thought about the church shopping dynamic. And I think there’s a piece of that that’s even… I just want to add to what you’ve said. You could actually turn them off from the church altogether. If they fail you in that critical time, it’s like, you had one job. And if you fail me in that one job… and these could be any of those big life events. You know, kind of, I think, you know, they talk about in in life, there are these goalposts that people reach. And for human beings, there’s there’s like these six or seven goalposts, they call them, and I think they actually apply to the church as well.

[00:07:15] David Maples: So the first thing is like, when does someone get married, buy their first house, get divorced—and that’s not everybody, but it’s half of everybody—there’s a death in the family, death of a spouse, death of a of a parent, the birth of the first child. You know, what do those things look like? And these are all… and and and I don’t know if I already said this, like buying their first house. There are all these things that are kind of like these these goalposts in life. And all of those, all of those things are incredibly stressful.

[00:07:43] David Maples: And there’s probably no time in your life that you need God and faith or the church as a support structure more than when you suffer, especially a tragic loss. And I’ll just, I’ll take, I’ll take divorce for one. The stats are that divorce is in many cases worse than the death of a spouse. Because it’s… and I had a client once who told me, he said, he said, “Divorce is worse than the death of a spouse because they’re saying not only are they not here, but they don’t need you anymore.” And it’s a different kind of, uh, it’s a different kind of like tragedy to befall someone.

[00:08:21] David Maples: Now, I’m not espousing someone to stay in a relationship that doesn’t work, those kind of things. That’s beyond the scope of this podcast anyway, right? The thing I’m thinking about is what do those things look like? And it’s incredibly important that we make sure that we’re attending to the flock, to go with the biblical perspective on it, that we are looking at what those things are to really maintain that human connection. Because that connection is, and we said in a previous podcast, that even though we’re sitting… a lot of these people are doing it digitally and there’s a lot of, there’s value in that. There’s more value in the coming together. Most people, I think it was like 75% or 76% of people prefer the actual human interaction piece of it, to actually gather and to break bread together and do that kind of thing.

[00:09:09] David Maples: So, I I think it’s really interesting when you talked about subbing out one thing for another, because you can’t replace that human connection. And and the business analogy I was thinking of was something like that that you really can’t do. And I think about… so for example, in a company, if you have employees and and I, as someone who runs a small business, you’ve got a couple dozen employees, etc. It’s really, if you can’t be there for your employees when things are tough, when they suffer a tragedy or a loss, and you treat them like a number, they aren’t there for you when they come. So I think that that’s kind of the same kind of thing a church could see, is that someone, if you’re not there when people think you should be.

[00:09:50] Carla Green: Right. And I was even equating it to, so say you’re an insurance company and I’ve been paying premiums for my auto insurance forever. And I get in a wreck and you decide you’re not going to pay my claim. And so now the expectation was that you would take care of me when something went wrong. For the church, I think it’s kind of the same. Like, okay, we’ve gone to your church, we’ve tithed, we’ve been in small groups, we’ve volunteered where you asked us to volunteer. I’ve led where I needed to lead, I served on boards, I did whatever you needed, or a lot of what I needed. And I had an event in my life and you didn’t even call. You didn’t even do this. And so, you know, I invested in my church. I invested in, like when other people were needing, I was there. So I think you, when you miss out on those types of opportunities, you’ve… and and there is… I also want to just say, I know that there, like I think you made the comment, which I know you, um, you said that, you know, “the one thing that you had to do.” That’s what people say, but I we all know as pastors, we have a ton to do.

[00:10:53] David Maples: Sure.

[00:10:54] Carla Green: And you never… they never want an oversight of anything. It’s just it happens because life is busy.

[00:11:01] David Maples: Sure. And so… And I and you weren’t saying that at all, but I was just making sure that it’s like, you know, we know you’re busy, how can we help you?

[00:11:08] David Maples: Well, it’s the… it’s that, it’s the perception piece. It’s that people… people like things to be binary. They like things to be black and white. It’s easy. And it’s very easy to look at, especially when you’re grieving and you’re suffering and you feel, you feel the weight of all that. And I’m just putting myself in the shoes of a parishioner right now. And you know you don’t handle this alone. When you’re mad or you’re angry. Remember, that’s one of the stages of grief, anger. And it’s not just anger at the event that happened. It’s it’s all these other people and you’re a raw wire and you’re going to complain about things. And I think that’s that’s a big portion of it. And they feel like you had one thing to do to help me through this time and you couldn’t even do that. And I I just thought about it from a perception standpoint. This is almost… it’s almost a public relations problem because if you have other family members who go to the church, they’re going to say, “Oh my gosh, they didn’t take care of Tessa when this happened. You know, they didn’t, they didn’t help when she needed it.” And, you know, that’s just beyond the pale. I I would never… you’re not going to say good things about the church.

[00:12:11] David Maples: And I think that overall has a net… it’s that ripple effect. You just throw a stone in the pond and now those ripples… and we don’t think about… maybe we do. Maybe you in your church think about all these things. But when you haven’t done something… and by the way, I’m going to go ahead and say this. We’re only human. We will make mistakes. We have all fallen short, and that will happen. Try not to make it a habit, but if it does happen, it’s okay. We need to own that and move on.

[00:12:37] David Maples: So really what we’re talking about here is the heart of kind of pastoral care. What does that look like? And it’s… we want to look at the technology pieces, and I think there I think there’s an ethical component we need to talk to you about in this episode in particular. It’s that I personally believe that these technologies, as wonderful as they are, and I build them and I work in them, they’re only as good as the person using them. And I think to get rid of… I don’t think any of this should ever completely supplant at all that human empathy and that human touch. I think, I think a robotic voice is probably not going to have the empathy that you want, especially if you find out that it’s a robot that you’re going to expect to care for you and your systems.

[00:13:20] David Maples: So what are what are the big… okay, so we talked about… I I want to address that a little bit. So for people in the audience, what are things that typically fill up a pastor’s day? Like what are all the things you would say on this list of things you’ve seen?

[00:13:33] Carla Green: To fill up a pastor’s day? Well, like you said, sermon prep, um, and it’s it’s… like it… and I we say this all the time. It’s different if you’re one, if you’re a one pastor church or if you’re a have a whole team, because you could just be doing… So let’s just talk about all of it if you’re one and then if you’re, if it’s bigger than that, then you’re probably just taking that one thing and doing more of it, right? So you’re building Sunday morning serve, you know, sermons. And so that can take, depending on, you know, the level of study, I would say, you know, at least a day and a half or a day out of your week. It might be more than that depending on how much you want to study or how, you know, how long your sermons are.

[00:14:12] Carla Green: There’s the… there’s the, yeah, there’s the visiting… Well, there’s the leadership piece of it. Like, how’s your team coming together and what things, what programming are you going to have? How are you going to handle the children’s area? You know, how are you going to handle the teens? Is is there a theme that you’re just letting, you know, people do what they want to do, or is there like a strategic view of this is what we need to do and how is it going to play out in each area?

[00:14:37] Carla Green: There’s also the answering emails or phone calls of people that need stuff. Um, there’s managing volunteers because it it takes a team no matter how big you are. You should have volunteers because people need to serve in a church. There might be community involvement that happens of how can how can you be more in your community and have outreach? Uh, there’s people calling out in the community in of, “Do you have giveaways?” I mean, people think that, you know, they can come for, you know, whether it’s a a monetary handout or a food handout. You’ll get those requests all the time depending on how your benevolence works.

[00:15:14] Carla Green: You might have missionaries that you’re working on and taking care of. There’s, I mean, the the busyness and the… I mean, there’s lunches that people have to stay connected, there’s dinners, there’s… I mean, there’s just all kinds of people type of things and worship, like handling what does worship look like on Sunday morning? How are the musicians? Are they volunteers or is there a whole team and there’s the technology that goes into even a Sunday morning service of, you know, how microphones and sound and CRMs, like as far as the, you know, or customer relationship management. How are you managing the people that come through the door? There’s the the giving and all the bill paying and making sure all that’s in order. So there’s it’s a business. It’s just a very hands-on people business.

[00:15:59] David Maples: So being a pastor is any three full-time jobs that you want to take on.

[00:16:03] Carla Green: Exactly, and more.

[00:16:04] David Maples: So as long as you’re fine having three full-time jobs, you should definitely go into the ministry.

[00:16:11] Carla Green: You definitely should. It is a calling and it’s the toughest thing that you’ll ever do, but and love it all the same.

[00:16:16] David Maples: It’s it’s interesting. I think about like the other pieces of it I thought about is running a church and you are basically the… I hate to boil it down to and people probably hate me if I said the CEO of that individual church or whatever it is, but you are kind of the… you could have a committee and who handle certain things for you. But you may even… you may be the person who’s getting the quotes to repair the sanctuary because the roof is leaking.

[00:16:41] Carla Green: Exactly.

[00:16:42] David Maples: And you’re in charge of all that at the smaller church. So it’s it’s, as I said, any three full-time jobs you want. And on top of that, you’re expected to take care of all these other things and and somehow be not infallible per se, but to make sure that you’re taking care of the needs of your congregation.

[00:16:59] Carla Green: I would say available. I think people expect you to be available.

[00:17:02] David Maples: Available.

[00:17:03] Carla Green: And it’s interesting that you say three because, um, our senior pastor had three black hats that he put on his head all the time. And one was community, one was corporate, and one was… Oh, I lost the other one. Community, corporate, and it’ll come around. Anyway, they were the three hats that he wore and it’s like that’s basically it. It’s how you’re working out in the community, how are you corporately handling it, and then the church as well, the church was the third one.

[00:17:28] David Maples: It’s just it’s a lot. It’s it’s not it’s not for me. You know, it’s it’s a different, it’s a different skillset and a different gift I’ve been given.

[00:17:36] Carla Green: Well, and then also there’s the, you know, there’s the fivefold ministry that I think that’s in Ephesians, you know, that some people are apostolic, some people which are leader, strategic type CEO type people. Some people are prophetic and so they’re, you know, praying and and seeing what is happening and are kind of the seers of the church. There’s the evangelist that are going out into the community and bringing people in. And then there’s the pastor, the shepherds or the pastors who are the caring for people, and then there’s the teacher. And they’re the ones that are, you know, and so if you’re a single… if you’re a one person show, I don’t want to say show, if you’re a one person church, um pastor of a church, you have all five of those to wear as well, and you’re probably only have two that you’re good at.

[00:18:26] David Maples: So you pick the two and then struggle through one more.

[00:18:28] Carla Green: And then you volunteer the heck out of the rest of them.

[00:18:31] David Maples: I also thought about uh the mentorship idea because a lot of this, in the previous episode we talked about discipleship and you need to be building disciples out of your flock and that helps you expand your reach and expand what the church is doing. So, but fundamentally, let’s just let’s dive a little bit deeper into kind of pastoral care and we could… the short answer is, what would you say are the top three things you could use AI or technology for right now to save time in a given pastor’s week?

[00:19:01] Carla Green: Sure. Um, I think sermon generation as far as, um, if it’s… well, there’s probably a couple things under there even, just whether it’s coming up with ideas for what to do, whether it’s, uh, outlining it for you. Um, I mean, you could probably do the whole thing. I wouldn’t recommend it because then I feel like it’s not you, it’s not making it your own.

[00:19:24] Carla Green: Uh, there along that lines, I think there’s some letter writing that it could do if there’s something that needs to go out from the church, or, you know, like we haven’t even talked about the communication piece of social media, bulletins that need to be done. Like, so using it to rewrite whether it’s blogging or articles or how you stay connected through the week or how you get people excited about what’s coming up, you could easily put your sermon topics into um AI and say, generate social media or a blog post or a letter for me to go out as well.

[00:19:55] Carla Green: I think you could even use it, even if you had a tough situation coming in and you just needed a, you know, like I threw in today, so I have somebody who’s struggling with, like say I have somebody who’s struggling with depression, like give me all the verses that I need for how I would pastor or pastorally care for them for depression just so like just to get some ideas or have the Holy Spirit start using them to kind of go, okay, and center yourself before you go. I think those those types of things can help you switch gears faster.

[00:20:30] David Maples: There is, um, one piece I think as I I run into organizations and I’m doing consulting in artificial intelligence, which is generative AI, large language models, anything like a GPT and Anthropic Claude, Ministry Maximizer, which is a little more focused on ministry, but uh using any of these things, I think one of the things that people think about and and don’t think about, they think about how it saves them time, but they don’t think about expanding the application to the other people they work with.

[00:21:02] David Maples: And the reason I’m saying this is say, okay, let’s say you do social media for your church. And at a very low level, and I’m the pastor of my small congregation, so I take my sermons each week, I use Ministry Maximizer to help me develop my sermons, I write them in there, I go make sure I put my human touch on it, and I’m able to do… I’m literally six to 10 times faster than I was before. I do have to go double check scripture on it, make sure that I’m showing proper discernment because you need to be, you do not supplant a a robot or a machine for your own discernment. They don’t… the last time I checked, they don’t have any ability to pray. And I’m not I’m not being funny about that. I am trying to be 100% real about that. And I think you need to you need to keep yourself in the loop on that and make sure that this is the proper… I think they from a brainstorming standpoint can be amazing.

[00:21:52] David Maples: So you do all this on your own and you’re like, “Wow, I’m able to do this social media all my own, etc.” Get stuff out there, use graphic generation program and put my bulletin board bulletins together. So let’s expand out a little bit. A lot of churches will at least have the pastor plus one. There’s at least an admin person somewhere. And usually what you quickly deputize to them is the social media, the newsletters, and all these other things because you still have to work on the sermon. You wouldn’t ask your administrative assistant to probably generate the sermon for you. You might, but the reality of it is, unless you’re a super big church, I don’t think that happens.

[00:22:26] David Maples: So, you go generate the sermon and do those pieces, but I think this is where you miss it. I think a lot of people, and I I see this in business a lot. So I don’t know, maybe in your church, you don’t have this problem. Think about how they can use the tools. And now, if you’ve cleared up an extra 10 or 20 hours on their plate, maybe you can spend that time in discipleship or mentorship. How do you grow them in the church and let them do that human element piece that you maybe don’t have enough time to do all those human element pieces? They could make that initial call out to people to find out. You don’t have, and I understand, we’ve totally have worked on some AI phone call type things, etc. I would never ask a robot or an AI to call a bereaved. They have no… they they they can fake compassion, but it’s not real. They can fake empathy, but remember, it is not real. It is just a machine. They could just as well fake hatred. None of that’s related. And I think and I don’t think that that’s the time or any of these times when it’s critical. If I’m inviting someone to come to the church, I’m thanking you for coming on a Sunday, that could be something that my administration or my second church or my junior pastor, if they are now freed up some time using technology, this is a multiplicative effect, they can reach out and do that human element piece because I believe that is the part that’s really, really vitally important.

[00:23:50] David Maples: And where I saw this, this is a very long explanation for a very short answer, if you can multiply your time, let them multiply theirs, and then use that other time you’re freeing up to enhance and deepen those elements of pastoral care that require that human touch, because most of it does.

[00:24:06] Carla Green: Yes. And ultimately, in pastoral care, the people need you to be present. And so if you’re thinking about all these things that you have to do, clear off what you don’t need to be doing, and pay attention… and don’t pay attention, like that’s rude. Um, and be present. Be present to what the Holy Spirit’s doing, be present in the moment and um, and I think I think there’s wins here for that.

[00:24:28] David Maples: So, we talked a little bit about in a previous episode, something like an AI chatbot on a website. I totally think that is important or maybe useful for even a small church to have on their website that answers questions about what time the services are, that can answer those very top-level questions. But I think immediately, the minute it says, “Hey, I’m looking for a church. I just moved to town and I’m looking for a church, I didn’t like XYZ church or whatever it is based on where they came from, or I’m trying to find people.” I think that’s immediately where you need to interrupt that artificial intelligence thing because I believe those human elements are things that that really are critical with that. That’s just one example of of something you could use, but you very quickly need to figure out at what point that doesn’t serve you. It doesn’t move the ministry forward. And I do think if you are… I want to go and say from an ethical standpoint, I’ve um, I’ve argued with business owners about this. I I don’t think there’s any excuse for not telling someone in the church that you’re involving an AI with some things you’re doing. I think that is an an ethical… I think as a business owner, you should tell people too. But I’ve had business owners say, “Well, you know, we’ll see if they catch on.” Well, okay. But now that we’re in the ministry, I feel like I can be a little more heavy-handed with it and say, “No, you absolutely need to do that ethically.” It’s your responsibility.

[00:25:44] Carla Green: Because if you don’t do it, they’re going to wonder how many areas are you using it in. And instead of saying, “You know, we’re going to use it for the first level of phone calls or we’re going to use it for strategic planning, or we’re going to use it to generate social media.” Like, nobody’s going to care that you’re not writing your own social media.

[00:26:02] David Maples: For… no, they probably won’t care. But I I guarantee you they would have problems with it if they weren’t approved by a human.

[00:26:07] Carla Green: Right, exactly.

[00:26:08] David Maples: And that human-in-the-loop factor, I think… this is one reason it really excites me to talk about the technology piece with churches in particular, especially dealing with AI, because I believe that this is one place that I can kind of lean on my Bible a little bit and just say, hey, you you can do what you want, but you don’t get to sacrifice your ethics for this. And you you don’t. There’s just no, it’s like that is…

[00:26:33] Carla Green: Well, you don’t want like, I was thinking through this today too, is that they’re going to give… AI is going to give you a logical answer, most likely, right? You can totally disagree on any of these or… but kingdom, when you’re talking kingdom of God, it’s upside down. So we don’t want to just give people logical answers or moral answers that the world would know. We need that being in tune with the kingdom, being in tune with the Holy Spirit to go, “No, because, you know, the world doesn’t tell you you have to serve in order to lead. You have to give in order to receive.” You know, these are upside-down things and, you know, even Jesus with the parables, like, you know, he has surprise endings. AI is not going to surprise you with an ending that makes you go, “Oh, man, that really spoke to my spirit.” Don’t lose that revelation that God wants to give you, but anything that is administrative or repetitive that you don’t need, yeah, like maximize your time and to pull in and pull in some technology to help you out.

[00:27:35] David Maples: So here here’s one. I think that could be very useful and this is, I’m going to give this one for free. And I think this needs to go on our list of things that we need to add in Ministry Maximizer. I was thinking about engagement patterns with people in the church. And if you have enough touch points for people, and you should be collecting this data, it’s… and I don’t want to make this rote. But you want to see when people are attending, what they’re doing. I don’t know if you put your giving in there or not. You definitely want to know if they are giving or not. That’s probably useful to just know if something has happened. Because there’s probably, if the pattern becomes interrupted with what people are doing on a regular basis, that would actually be useful to at least know that maybe that’s the time you reach out to them. Because are they pulling away from the church? How do you pull them closer? Can we look at what’s going on? Maybe this person has not come to certain things in a long time and they used to. What’s changed? What’s different in their lives? And if that’s not weighing on your heart, it probably should be. But the thing I think that could be very useful is you take a church of, let’s just say a church that’s 150 parishioners, not a huge church, kind of a small church, that’s a lot of data points. That’s a lot of data points.

[00:28:42] David Maples: If they’re in a spreadsheet, you can actually drop that into something like Ministry Maximizer. You save it as a CSV and you say, “Analyze this and look for trends and behaviors.” And you say, “Analyze this based on the following.” It’ll come up with a suggested guideline. You could say, “Who here looks like we need to be reaching out to these people on a more regular basis?” And I think that that is a thing that it’s very hard, and we also as humans are biased. When we look at data, we might look at the 10 people who shook my hand this week instead of the people who did not. And there might be behaviors in the other pieces of data we have there. You know, what’s going on? Did they used to have six people come to church? And I don’t know how churches do attendance, but I know there are certain things you can find out what they’ve done, who was there. I think those things are useful.

[00:29:26] David Maples: I think it’s important when somebody doesn’t show up at church, that somebody reaches up to… out to them. If they normally attend on a regular basis, it’s important to have someone else call them. Not to shame them, but just just don’t ask them… and I don’t think you should even call and say, “I haven’t seen your church lately.” Just say, “Hey, I’m calling to check in and see how you’re doing.” And AI can’t do that for you. But what it can do is it can look at your data.

[00:29:46] David Maples: And and so you out there listening to the show, if you want to get involved in this, go to the website ministrymaximerpodcast, send us the question, because there’s a way to do this. I think the other piece on that that’s really important is, um, ethical considerations. You want to make sure that whatever data you’re putting out there in these machines, when you’re having it analyze your stuff, because I think a lot of big churches probably are doing this already, you want to make sure that you are maintaining the privacy of the people you’re putting into there. You know, and there’s there’s definitely ways to do that. A a system like Ministry Maximizer in some ways has benefits because the information is kept privately. It’s sent out via APIs, etc. but it’s not… it’s not necessarily stored at those foreign servers, and they’re also not allowed to train on that data. So that’s a that’s a privacy piece on there that’s important.

[00:30:32] David Maples: If you have people, um, if you have parishioners who are from overseas, from the European Union, you have to comply with data retain… uh data retention… If you have parishioners from overseas, from the European Union, you have to comply with the GDPR, the privacy laws in the European Union. And I guarantee you there’s a lot of churches out there who have one, two, or three members, you know, who are from overseas. It’s important and you need to apply that to all those systems. I think those are important.

[00:31:03] David Maples: I think something, before the episode, Carla, you mentioned, and you mentioned, you touched on it a little bit here, when you’re reaching out to people and you’ve run into a novel situation or something you’ve never run into before. Someone has, you you mentioned it a minute ago, someone’s depressed or someone’s having trouble. And if you have not… now, I think the first thing you should do is probably reach out to another pastor or minister, etc. Just ask them. Who’s your mentor? You ask them how they deal with it. But those people aren’t always available. They’re busy too. I think the AI could be a useful question to say, “Hey, how’s their way to do this?” Or if you’re dealing with a very critical situation, maybe describe it to the AI and say, “What’s a strategy for dealing with this?” Now, use your own judgment and discernment on, you know, is this the way we want to do it? But I think that’s a very useful thing that could help you have a non-biased feedback based on your question and at least give you an aspect to maybe approach it. What are your thoughts on that, Carla?

[00:31:54] Carla Green: Yeah, I think, um, I mean, I think it’s I’m always the one that wants to go in prepared. Not that I want to go in and go, okay, I have my tool here and I’ve I see that, okay, this is what I need to tell you first. But but to have how they’re, you know, ask it questions of, like if I’m going into this situation, what are some of the things I could encounter and read through some of that so maybe you’re kind of having a look.

[00:32:17] Carla Green: But but always… and part of that is to settle my own mind so I’m not trying to figure out an answer. I mean, I think the most… I think the most important thing that we need to do, I maybe it’s not the most important, but is that we don’t feel like we have to have an answer for everybody. I’m not trying to solve your problem every time you come to me with one. I’m… I think we have to go say, “I’m here to listen. I’m here to listen for what God’s telling me when you’re talking to me. Is there something that I need to share with you?” But the most important thing I can do is sit with you and listen to you, not give you something that I got out of, you know, off the internet or even a previous experience because there’s, you know, nothing diminishes what their pain than saying, “Oh, yeah, I I can relate to that because I’ve done this.” How many times do people do that to you and they’re so off, like, and even if they aren’t off, it doesn’t matter. My pain is my pain and I don’t want to hear about anybody else’s in the midst of telling you this.

[00:33:14] Carla Green: And so, um, and and I we actually had a pastor who lost his son and he would tell me, “I hate when people come up and ask me how are you doing.” And it’s just so natural to say, “How are you doing? How are you doing?” And I said, “Well, Don, what do you want us to say?” Because it’s so natural to say that and it’s uncomfortable. And so I just had a real honest talk with him. He goes, “I just want… I just want you to tell me I’m I’m sorry and just sit. Just sit with me and just be and, you know, just agree with me in my pain.” And, you know, there’ll be times when God is prompting you to to say something and we have to be, we have to be open to that as well.

[00:33:51] Carla Green: But I think I think, you know, if I’m going to use AI before I go, it’s just to settle my anxiety about it that, okay, here’s some things that could possibly come up, and so I’m not totally going in blind of what they might be telling me.

[00:34:05] David Maples: So there’s a there’s a business book, which I want to… and I I come from, like I said, a business background, and a lot of it’s in sales and things like that. And there’s a a book written by an FBI hostage negotiator called “Never Split the Difference.” And they spend a lot of time in that book in particular, and I’m only talking about this because I think there’s a technology component there too. But I think that book, because I read that book years ago before GPTs and all these things were even a thing, and I think I’m going to go back based on this episode and go back and reread it because it talks a little about prepping, being prepared before you go into an experience, having an idea of it and just having gone through some of the scenarios. Game-ify… not game-ifying out. Having gone through some of the scenarios before you go in there is very useful. So if this happens, then X. If this happens, then Y.

[00:34:52] David Maples: And it’s the same reason why that they do mock interviews or mock sales training or anything like that in business because you never know what’s going to happen until you go meet these people or see these things. You don’t… you don’t know. What happens if I go talk to this person and they just start wailing and they’re upset and they’re beside themselves in grief? Maybe sitting with them in silence and holding their hand while they go through that 10 or 15 minutes is what I need to do. And the AI systems are not anywhere near doing this kind of thing yet, but you could actually work out scenarios and ask it how to deal with certain things. And I think that would be a good way to… again, use discernment, hold them up, and say, “Do these work?” But at the same time, it’s going to be able to come up with scenarios where is… sometimes running a company, one of the worst things I can do sometimes is go and ask questions of my staff over what they think we should do, things, course of action. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m literally asking them because I want their input.

[00:35:54] David Maples: What happens? I go ask a room of 15 people and it’s crickets. Nobody wants to say anything. Nobody wants to be wrong. Nobody wants to be… feel critical. You don’t want to say this in front of the CEO or the boss. And I bet you the same thing happens at a lot of churches too. No matter what you think, there’s a power dynamic there. And and preachers out there, I’ve got you. I understand that there’s a power dynamic and that may change these things. So I think the AI is a very easy way to ask some of those questions and get a response that that may can help you out. And I just use it as a shortcut. I’m not saying it’s going to be the answer, but I think it could be useful. And then you can go back and you can pray about that.

[00:36:33] David Maples: And by the way, I’m going to say prayer for a couple things. Obviously, it’s very powerful for a lot of reasons. From a simply humanistic, secular standpoint, being deep in thought and reflecting deeply upon a question in prayer will let you think deeply about the issue. And you can call that a a response of the Almighty or whatever, but I can tell you there’s a thousand and one literal scientific reasons it helps. And I think it’s it’s important to understand that. I think looking at these systems and asking them questions, I think could be very valuable.

[00:37:07] David Maples: So, I I think the other thing I wanted to probably look at is based on something you said earlier, it’s the preventing people from falling through the cracks. Mhm. So how do we use that to help support what we’re doing to help them feel… and so here’s one thing. If I could, if nothing else, if I could save myself five hours a week and then devote that time to my flock, how different would my outcomes be?

[00:37:33] Carla Green: I think you’d feel more like you’re getting to what you thought church would be like or what your… you’re getting to what you thought the job would be, but you never really had time for.

[00:37:43] David Maples: I mean, because how many…

[00:37:43] Carla Green: It’s the relationships are always the thing that’s on the back burner. It’s the to-do list and tasks that will run your or rule your day.

[00:37:51] David Maples: How many preachers want to be looking at the financials? How many how many times do you say, “Well, how do we pay for the new roof on the sanctuary?” That is probably not the thing that gets you burning, getting out of bed in the morning.

[00:38:03] Carla Green: No, absolutely not. It’s and and a lot of these touch points will may end up being the answers to those prayers that you have for how to fix a roof and how to bring other things in because when you when you take care… one of the prayers that I had because I had a little bit of an issue with one of my children when I went into ministry, just a small little rebellion, and I was really mad at God for the first time in my life. I was like, “Are you kidding me? Like, I’m choosing to give up my corporate life, take a lesser salary, go into ministry, and now this is happening with my kid? Like, you’ve got to be kidding me.” It’s the first time I yelled at God. True confessions here. I didn’t think I was ever supposed to. It was the most amazing thing that I ever did, though.

[00:38:42] David Maples: It’s okay, Job. It’s all right.

[00:38:45] Carla Green: Yeah, yeah, I was fine. And so, and the one thing he said to me, well, he he finally said… “Finally, you’re being honest with me,” is what I felt like I heard God say. And then he also said to that, you know, “If you take care of my church, I’ll take care of the things that are are bothering you.” And so like, it’s, you know, we are Jesus’s hands and feet here on earth. And the things of the world will get done. But the relationships are the key. It’s it’s what God wants us to do. And and we all know that. I’m preaching to the choir on this. It’s it’s not anything you don’t know. And I think we suffer from being perfectionists and being performance-driven because we feel like that’s what is now the demand when authenticity and being available is really the currency that we need to be working in instead of performance and perfection. And that other stuff will take care of itself. And you’ll you’ll be better known for having been the person that took the time to call because you, uh, because that was the most important thing.

[00:39:45] Carla Green: And using, like I think it’s brilliant of using some of these AI tools to, um, to flag when there might be an issue. And so I was going to ask you even in that, David, like, so if you have… a lot of pastors aren’t allowed by their boards to look at the financials of who’s giving what. But if you fed it into… is there a way that if we created something to where if they fed it into a tool and there was just an anomaly that said, “This has changed. You know, this person used to give weekly, they used to give what looked like a tithe, and now they’re not,” and I don’t need to know the amounts, but it spits out that, hey, this might be one that you want to call.

[00:40:23] David Maples: I think the answer to that is yes. We’d have to program something in for that, but I’m sure we could. So it’s almost interesting. You could perhaps, we could build in an anonymization factor that would let you achieve the outcome but without knowing the actual underlying data.

[00:40:40] Carla Green: Right, because that was the one way that we knew something was going on because people will stop giving three months… well, it was when I was there, they’ll stop giving three months before they stop coming. But they’re on their way out when they stop giving because they may not agree with you and so they’re going to at least stop financing you first.

[00:40:59] David Maples: So… and…

[00:41:00] Carla Green: It’s a good… I mean, it was always our key of who we needed to call and say, “Hey, how are things going?” And usually, most… 90% of the time, there was something that happened that they didn’t understand, but they didn’t want to call, or something happened in their family and we missed it.

[00:41:15] David Maples: So, there’s probably a narrow window of opportunity there. So you can’t wait to the 11th week out of a 12-week cycle like that. And then say, “Oh, hey, by the way…” but you could probably reach out three or four weeks in and still probably figure out the thing. And and and it’s probably good feedback.

[00:41:37] Carla Green: Right. And it might be a little bit different now. Yeah, because you’re not worried about the ones who are willing to call you and tell you what’s wrong with you. You’re worried about the ones who aren’t going to call you and they’re just going to leave. It’s the quiet…

[00:41:45] David Maples: The quiet kind of quitters.

[00:41:46] Carla Green: Right. And so, but I’m wondering today because, you know, it’s been a decade since I’ve been in the church, and the way people give is different now too because they have automatic payments or they’re paying on credit card or whatever. And so it’s very electronic instead of a check in the offering plate or money in the offering plate. So a lot of times, you know, physically stopping your automatic payment should be a bigger, you know, that could you’d know that sooner. So…

[00:42:16] David Maples: So the question is, is it even there? And I think it is because you want to know what any any of the challenges you’re facing are, because you want to, from a pastoral care standpoint, you want to make the church better and you want to be doing those things. If there’s a big family event and you missed it, that’s a big thing.

[00:42:35] David Maples: I I think there’s a few things we need to talk about as we kind of come to the end of this episode. We want to talk a little bit about… I think we need to, I feel like we need to have an episode coming up soon where we actually just show some practical examples. Maybe in a couple weeks, we could just have an episode where we just say, “Hey, here’s some ways we do stuff we talked about in the first six episodes.”

[00:42:52] David Maples: And um, so one of the things I think is useful is you can go online and you can do some research on what other churches are doing. You just you can do a Google research thing on that or you can use Gemini Deep Research if you have a Google account. Um, go to gemini.google.com and do deep research and ask it to say, “Give me examples of churches effectively using technology and their pastoral care, care ministries.” And it’ll come up with a whole bunch of information on there.

[00:43:19] David Maples: I want to warn everyone out there, and we will be talking about some of this stuff in the podcast, you need to try on that stuff like a new pair of shoes. You got to wear it around and find out if it fits you fine or if it hurts your feet. Because just because it works for a different church, remember, all churches are in a different stage of their life cycle. There’s a different size of church and there are different goals of the ministries, just like you talked about the the five kind of evangelical, apostolic, you know, the different kind of… there’s different reasons the church…

[00:43:47] David Maples: You talked about, and I think we can have an episode, just a practical episode coming up that’s maybe less technology and more mission statement. Maybe we’ll show how to use the AI in the mission statements. I think we’ve already decided, I don’t know, we’ll talk about this after this episode, but I think we’re going to hijack kind of our schedule a little bit, uh, because we haven’t talked about what episode eight, nine, and 10 are going to be. So maybe we’ll go ahead and break that at episode seven and just say, hey, let’s put some um, use cases in there and then maybe we can set that up as something people can watch afterwards.

[00:44:12] David Maples: But I think if you’re going to find something from another church, we can even show you how to research some of that and then find out how it works. It’d be nice to have some before and after metrics. Maybe we can start surveying some churches and ask some of those things. But you want to know, the big things you want to know, and this is something that’s probably not as available out there are lessons learned and pitfalls. You want to know what to avoid.

[00:44:32] David Maples: I think for any church adopting technology, the first step is going to be figuring out kind of the small, bite-sized pieces. You either figure out, and I think you need as the pastor, you need to lead from the front. I really believe in that. You need to specify based on your theology and belief system, how are our church is going to adopt these things. I think you need to be open and honest with your congregation about what you’re going to do with it. And then you need to figure out how to get buy-in from the other people in your organization, anybody who’s going to be using it. You’re going to have to, for lack of a better term, eat your own dog food. You’re going to have to try it and you’re going to have to realize that not all these things will provide the same payback for you. Maybe for you, the most effective way to do your sermons, for me it would be, is to dictate what I’m thinking about ahead of time and then to cross-reference it and then maybe throw it into Ministry Maximizer at that point in time and get an output that I’m going to work with. And then I’m probably going to go in because I’m a big bullet point talker, because I’m going to be adding back in my own flair when I talk about whatever the subject is from my standpoint.

[00:45:35] David Maples: In your church, you might be different. Now, by the way, I’m not running a church, but when I do public speaking, that’s that’s how I would do it. And I think it would be useful with that. I think it can be absolutely fabulous for brainstorming. Or if you said… and and so here’s the thing. Create a survey for your church. Everybody’s got technology. You can build a survey out that sends out stuff to everybody in your church via text message and ask like, “What they would really… what are you struggling with in your life?” Anonymize the answers and just say, “What would you like to hear us preach on?” If I’m going to preach up there, what is something… and look, we already have our own things. Every preacher, every minister, every priest, every reverend has their own particular thing they love to preach on. What about getting outside your comfort zone, expanding your gifts? I think there’s a lot that can be said and you can use a lot of AI to give you ideas on that. And those are my thoughts. What would you say, Carla? What would you say are ways we should implement this to start with?

[00:46:26] Carla Green: Right. So I think that’s all good. And I was even thinking if there’s some like… so one of the areas that or one of the local things that have happened recently around me is that somebody ran through a school and killed three people by their car. And so horrible, horrible event. And so I would say like, you know, how can you… like if you see trends or something that’s happening locally, you know, might even pull in, “Here’s my sermon, how am I how can I tie this this event in with this?” or “What are some things, like if depression… like if you’re hearing a lot about depression, like how can I how can I make my topic right now more about, you know, this?” Like, how do you marry what you want to do and what’s going on in the community or what’s going on in your church specifically? So using that survey of how can I do it. And so because that was the beauty of what when I was watching Ministry Maximizer working of taking two topics I wouldn’t necessarily think of that and putting them together. And I wish I had the prompts of what we used because it was kind of funny how we were doing it. But, um, but I would think, and then also what are the objections too? Like, if somebody is going through depression, how will this sermon impact them? Or, you know, like these types of questions of if somebody that I know, you know, has had a lot of grief, you know, is this how’s this going to work? Or how can I tie it together? And so some of those things that you might just haven’t thought about or that you want to throw it some curve balls, I think that’s a good opportunity as well.

[00:47:56] David Maples: Um, I think we talked about it in a previous episode, but I really hadn’t thought about it since we talked about it, about how those, the objections, kind of figuring that out ahead of time. And and what you’re talking about, and I’m sorry about that tragedy in your local community.

[00:48:08] Carla Green: Yeah.

[00:48:09] David Maples: That is probably weighing on everybody a bit. And there’s nothing harder than a disaster that you don’t see coming. And there are no… I think the biggest disasters that we don’t see coming are the human-created ones.

[00:48:26] Carla Green: Right.

[00:48:27] David Maples: We know that floods happen and and that’s… and we we call them, they’re acts of nature.

[00:48:31] Carla Green: Acts of God, which is crazy.

[00:48:33] David Maples: Yes, I always thought that was kind of funny. It’s like, oh, yeah, God’s God’s doing that, right?

[00:48:37] Carla Green: Right. But and that’s another thing too, that’s the… and we haven’t talked about that and I I want to touch on it before we before we end is that there is… so what that person is needing, like they may not need the advice, they may not, you know, need all that, but what they do need… what they’re experiencing, so if my husband passes away, I can see God in a new nature that I have not seen Him before with only that opportunity, right? Not that I want him to die, I’m not saying that. But but it’s I get to… and I can still… and so like, so what are you seeing, like you’re there as the seer of, “Man, I see God doing this and you may not see it because you’re so blinded by grief. And so let me just hold it and I get to see it and experience…” I mean, in some ways, it’s an opportunity for you to to grow as in your Christian faith because you’re like, “Man, I didn’t I didn’t really understand how well God comforts us during this time. I didn’t expect to see this.”

[00:49:32] Carla Green: So seeing that unexpected and being able to share it later or share it in the moment, you know, it might just be something that you want to write down and hold for them for later when they can handle it. But we’re not going to see sorrow and depression and tragedy on the other side of heaven. And so we only get to see that nature of God on this side. And so being able to see that aspect of Him and how it’s grieving Him as well and how and how He wants to comfort us and shepherd us, like it’s an opportunity and in more than just making an impact in your church, but in your own relationship with Him and how you see Him as well.

[00:50:09] David Maples: So I think that’s a pretty good note to end this episode on. So we’ve talked a little bit about pastoral care or about what it is and ways… I think we’ve kind of landed on the the human elements got to stay there in that, but use it to maximize your time in other areas and then use it for kind of to augment your abilities to handle a situation or to kind of create situational type things so you can at least practice or get practice at these things, especially when you haven’t seen them before. I I think it could be incredibly effective for someone in a a new area they’ve never been into before or anything like that. I think, um, I think definitely surveying your your your flock, your church, and asking them about things you’ve done. And and by the way, even if you’ve only got 150, you got 500 people in your church and you’re like, “Only 50 people filled it out.” That’s 50 data points you did not have before. And you can make decisions with that data. And then you can tell them on Sunday it’s really important they do it because it lets you know things about what you’re doing. And that’s kind of important.

[00:51:07] Carla Green: And I think that other thing too that you brought up is if we could give you five hours a week back for relationships, that’s 260 hours a a year. I think I did that math right.

[00:51:17] David Maples: It’s an incredible amount of time. And I don’t think people always think about… or it could be it it could be time for you as a minister to recharge.

[00:51:27] Carla Green: Right, exactly.

[00:51:27] David Maples: Maybe it’s time for you to you to go sit outside and spend a little bit of time outside for a minute because I will tell you, this is the other opposite side of pastoral care because I think it’s a, I think it’s kind of like a a a word that can be multiple things. It’s pastoral care is, as we’ve talked about it, is that you caring for the flock. What about caring for the pastors themselves?

[00:51:50] Carla Green: Caring for yourself.

[00:51:51] David Maples: Because I I think… and and I don’t know because I’ve never been a minister. I think that can be incredibly challenging at times, especially when you’re dealing with grief or these other things.

[00:52:01] Carla Green: Well, you’ll and I know we’re about ready to end it, but you will serve people better if you are overflowing with what God has for you. So if you fill up and what flows out of what He has for you, um, will will do more than your cup getting less and less and less and less. And so, so yes, keep your keep your cup full and overflowing.

[00:52:21] David Maples: So as we wrap up this episode, there’s a few things I’d like to say. The next episode coming up is one of those episodes that we’re excited about going out there because it’s going to be one of those contrarian episodes where I’m going to get to play bad cop to Carla being good cop. And we’re going to talk about addressing the critics. So I’m going to come armed with every criticism I can think of. It’s about addressing the critics dealing with technology, faith, and biblical integrity.

[00:52:45] David Maples: So that’s going to be about how do you look at these things? And you’re going to have people in your congregation who fight you on this, even if they’re in the inner circle. They’re going to not want you to adopt these technologies, etc. And then we’re going to shuffle up things a little bit after that. I think based on this episode, we’re going to have a kind of a hands-on workshop thing we’re going to do. We’re going to move episode, what was going to be episode seven to six, and that’s going to be AI-powered content creation for churches on a budget. And I think that’s going to be probably like the small church-centric episode. Now, I think it’ll have benefits for any group. And maybe you’ll have already seen everything we’re going to bring forward. And then right after that, I think we do a quick a quick break and we’re going to go into kind of, um, a couple of like mini-type, you know, one-hour workshops, etc. where we’re going to actually show you guys the power of something like Ministry Maximizer at work and going to give you some ideas and some feedback. And we’re just going to show you how you can use some of these things in your own church. Carla, anything else you want to add before we wrap this episode up?

[00:53:40] Carla Green: No, great episode. Thank you.

[00:53:42] David Maples: So…

[00:53:43] Carla Green: It’s my pleasure.

[00:53:44] David Maples: So, for those of you out there listening, the biggest thing you could do is tell other people about this podcast. Pass it along to your friends, other people in other congregations and churches, because if you’re really trying to grow the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God, they all could use this information. So pass it along to them. It doesn’t cost them anything but an hour of their time. And if you want to give us some feedback, you can definitely hit us up on the website and feedback with anything, we’ll be glad to talk to you about things in the future episode or maybe invite you on as some guests. We are planning on having guests kind of in the back half of this season, in about five more episodes and start bringing in some people and talk to them and have them challenge us on some pieces instead of just us talking about these things. So, again, if you like this episode, please go out there, give us a thumbs up or a comment on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere that you get good podcast content. Again, I’m David Maples.

[00:54:37] Carla Green: And I’m Carla Green. Thanks for listening.

[00:54:39] David Maples: Thank you for listening this week and we’ll see you out there soon.

[00:54:42] Producer: Hey everyone, it’s the producer here. Thanks for listening. If you’ve made it this far, be sure to check out ministrymaximizer.com. Transform your ministry with AI tools that help you craft your sermons, increase outreach, and spread the good news of the kingdom. Sign up today at ministrymaximizer.com. That’s ministrymaximizer.com.