Think Theology website

Good things come to those who wait. The recordings of last summer's conference on Isaiah are finally available; apologies for the delay. (You can also listen to them through the King's Church London podcast if that's easier.) Enjoy!King's Church London · THINK 2025  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 2  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 3  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 4  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 5  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 6  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 7  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 8  King's Church London · THINK 2025 | ISAIAH | Session 8

Is your church stable in numbers, shrinking, or growing? What is the average age in your congregation? What is the ethnic make-up? How many under 18s are there? And how many over 70s? On current trends what will your congregation look like in ten years’ time? And what does that suggest about how your church should be thinking about mission and discipleship? These questions really matter, but I’m not sure enough church leaders are really engaging with them.The evidence – statistical and anecdotal – suggests that what looked like the terminal decline of the church in the UK is finally flattening out. Yes, there are still plenty of emptying and dying churches, but there are plenty of growing ones too. At the local level, and in meeting with church leaders nationally, the story I hear is that healthy churches are growing – often rapidly. An honest assessment of the numbers indicates that a lot of that growth is being driven by immigration rather than conversion. If your church is in a town where there is a hospital or a university it is not difficult to add significant numbers of students and workers from overseas to our congregations. In addition, many churches have benefitted from the influx of Hong Kong Chinese relocating to the UK, and then there are the considerable number of Iranians here as refugees and converting to Christianity. This is beautiful! It means increasing numbers of local churches now look more as things will be at the culmination of the ages (Rev. 7:9). The danger though is that growing churches can kid themselves about how well they are doing: if you’re near a hospital or university you haven’t really had to do anything! This immigration driven growth can disguise some deeper demographic issues. A total fertility rate (the number of babies each woman has) of 2.1 is required to maintain a stable population. In my birth year, 1970, the UK TFR was 2.5; in 2025 it was 1.5. In 1970 the median age in the UK was 33; in 2025 it was 40. In 1970 life expectancy was 72; in 2025 it was 82. There are now a million more over 60s in England than there are under 20s. For the first time in our national history, there are now more unmarried than married adults in the UK. These changing demographics are globally typical. I first posted about these issues on Think 13 years ago. Back then the TFR in the USA was a stable 2.1; last year it had fallen to 1.6. The most famous example is South Korea, with a TFR of 0.8. South Korea may have already reached a demographic tipping point from which it is impossible to recover. All this has significant societal implications, which is why shrinking birth rates are, belatedly, occupying the thoughts of governments around the world. Inverted population pyramids are economically, even existentially, troubling. The UK state pension might just still be in existence when I reach retirement age, it almost certainly won’t be for my children. Property prices in the UK are currently artificially high as demand exceeds supply. In 30 years’ time it is more likely that supply will exceed demand, and all those flats now being thrown up in our towns and cities will be standing empty, and increasingly worthless. In that timeframe lots of schools will have been mothballed as there will not be enough children to fill them. Within the next century South Korea may effectively cease to exist as a nation. I’m used to churches which are relatively youthful and in which celebrating weddings and births is more normal than taking funerals. That is likely to change over the next couple of decades. This means there are questions we should be asking, and scenarios for which we should be planning. How can we go from simply welcoming immigrants to genuinely including them, with the consequent changes required in our leadership structures, worship styles, and so on? How do we do that while also reaching the ‘90%’ – the non-immigrant population of the UK? How are we going to ensure sufficient young leaders continue to emerge in our churches? How should our ministries be reorganised to recognise the realities of an aging population? How can we celebrate and encourage marriage, and having children, while also honouring and including those who are unmarried? In my church, like many others, we are blessed with a high proportion of children and young people. This is a sign of hope for the future. Yet as I look around at the congregation I am aware that it is likely I will be conducting more funerals in the last third of my ministry than I have in the first two-thirds. This means pastors are going to have to learn, or rediscover, gifts of visiting the elderly, preparing people for death, and conducting funerals which we may not have much previously exercised. Are we ready for that? In my 30 years of ministry I’ve observed that each decade passes shockingly fast. Thinking carefully and honestly about what shifting demographics will mean for the UK church in the next decade is something we cannot afford to avoid.    

One of the things that makes Paul such a compelling thinker, and such a wise pastor, is that he always sees the big picture. When challenging sin, it is surprisingly easy to zoom in on the specifics of the behaviour and surprisingly difficult to zoom out and see the whole spiritual, historical and cosmological canvas on which it is painted. This ability to zoom out is critical in our generation, when so many people are, like the Corinthians, challenging biblical teaching on sex and sexuality. I don’t know how you would challenge a church that had accepted incest among its members, or which passages of Scripture you would appeal to. My guess is that I would have zoomed in on a specific instruction, like “Do not have sexual relations with your father’s wife; that would dishonour your father” (Leviticus 18:8), and left it at that. But in 1 Corinthians 5, as he so often does, Paul zooms out. He starts not with Leviticus but with Exodus. He begins with gospel rather than with law. He heads for the defining event of the Old Testament Scriptures—the escape from Egypt by means of the Passover—and uses it to show why the church must not be compromised and defiled by unrepented immorality in its midst. (I say “unrepented” because it is important to remember that the problem here is not just the sin but the fact that everyone has responded to it with pride rather than grief. If this man, after having sex with his stepmother, was to repent of it and change his ways, Paul would be commending him rather than expelling him, and urging the church to welcome him back. This is exactly what happens in a different situation in 2 Corinthians 2:5-11.) On the night that they escaped from Egypt, Paul explains, Israel ate unleavened bread. It was free from the fungus (yeast) which otherwise spreads throughout the dough and affects the whole loaf (1 Corinthians 5:6). At the very beginning of their journey to freedom, God gave Israel a meal to teach them that they were to be distinct from the world around them, and free from things that might otherwise infect God’s holy people and spread throughout the whole nation. Well: the same is true of you, Paul says. Since most of us don’t think of yeast as a pollutant and quite enjoy bread with yeast in it, we might get a better sense of Paul’s picture if we paraphrased it as “a little mould spreads throughout the whole cheese”. Tolerating the mould, or the yeast, jeopardises the whole batch. The only way to save the cheese is to get rid of the mould. And that, Paul is saying to the Corinthians, is what you must do with this incestuous man. You are a Passover people. You are called to be pure, undefiled, unleavened, and holy, and this is in fact what you already are. Christ himself has been sacrificed for you as a Passover lamb, pure and without blemish (v 7). So when you celebrate the “festival”—which I take to be the Lord’s Supper here—you must not be “leavened” with malice or evil, but be pure and “unleavened” with sincerity and truth (v 8). Otherwise the sin of this man, and your acceptance of it, will spread throughout the whole church like yeast through a loaf or like mould through a cheese, and you will be destroyed from the inside out.

Friendship is underrated in the modern West. Here's my message on it last Sunday from Proverbs 27, drawing from Lewis, Tolkien, Keller, and the good people of Lewisham:

I've just started writing for Christianity Today's books newsletter, which comes out weekly with short reviews of three titles. Here's my first one; the next one will be out in a couple of weeks and cover a new theology of authority from Christa McKirland, Charles Murray's apologetic for Christianity, and Chesterton's Orthodoxy.Alan J. Thompson, A Basic Guide to Biblical Theology: Nine Themes That Unite the Old and New Testaments (Baker Academic, 2025) Fitting the whole Bible together can be challenging. Many readers are familiar with some of the most dramatic stories and most famous wisdom verses but would struggle to put them all in sequence—let alone assemble them into an overarching story that makes theological and narrative sense. That is why basic introductions to biblical theology can be so helpful. Summarizing the story of Scripture, showing people what to look for as they read it, and helping them visualize how it all hangs together can help readers find their feet in God’s Word and can give them tools to make sense of it. Sydney Missionary and Bible College New Testament scholar Alan Thompson does this thematically. Nine biblical themes receive a chapter each—Creation and Fall, covenant, Exodus and tabernacle, Law and wisdom, sacrifice, kingship, prophetic hope, kingdom of God, and Holy City—topped and tailed by discussions of how to put the Bible together as a whole. The clarity and simplicity of these themes is a strength of the book, as is the frequent use of diagrams to illustrate them. Thompson’s tone is also helpful. His hermeneutic is unapologetically Baptist, but he gives his reasons and highlights areas where people disagree, explaining differing positions fairly. In places, the book is not as basic as its title suggests, with less storytelling and more jargon (and mentions of the millennium) than we might expect. But this is a short, clear, fair, lucid, and well-researched introduction to biblical theology will serve plenty of students and serious laypeople well. Timothy Keller, What Is Wrong with the World? The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid (Zondervan, 2025) It is not easy to write a compelling, heartwarming, devotional book on sin. The subject lends itself to treatments that either breathe fire or water things down, depending on the audience. It’s hard to get to the heart of human sinfulness in a way that both exposes and explains, confronting the sin while comforting the sinner. The fact that Tim Keller has done both in What Is Wrong with the World? is testimony to his remarkable preaching ministry and to the skill with which his wife, Kathy, has posthumously presented it. Keller’s approach is to show us seven ways in which the Scriptures picture sin, each rooted in a different biblical narrative. In the story of Cain, sin is a predator crouching at the door. In the story of Saul, it shows a frightening capacity for self-deception. In Jesus’ parables, sin is leaven, quietly but inevitably spreading until it is rooted out. To Jeremiah, sin is mistrust; with Jonah, self-righteousness; with Naaman, leprosy; with the Israelites in the wilderness, slavery. Each picture receives a chapter full of biblical wisdom, psychological insight, practical illustration, and gospel hope, and each impressively reads like a book chapter rather than a transcribed sermon, which makes it a refreshing joy to read (also impressive, given the topic). The book concludes with two chapters on true repentance drawing from Psalm 51. Highly recommended. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670) Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a genius. He gave his name to a philosophical dilemma, a unit of pressure, and a mathematical triangle—and he only lived to the age of 39. But he was also a deeply thoughtful Jansenist theologian whose blend of biblical observation, cultural analysis, apologetic wit, and charismatic experience makes him fascinating to read on nearly any topic. Many of his theological arguments have extraordinary sticking power. The Pensées (literally, “thoughts”) are an eclectic assembly of them, in the form of aphorisms, one-liners, paragraphs, short essays, and personal testimonies. Yet they still sparkle nearly four centuries later. Some have become familiar. Many readers will have come across his wager about betting on God’s existence or his quip that the sole cause of humanity’s unhappiness is that people does not know how to stay quietly in their room. (For Pascal, the reason for leaving his room is that if he stays there quietly, then he thinks about death, so he fills his life with diversions instead.) His evangelistic method has also been highly influential: Since people despise religion and are afraid it might be true, we have to first show that religion is worthy of respect, then make good people want it to be true. Only then do we show that it is. But the book also fizzes with humor, penetrating apologetics, and biblical insight. (I will never read the Joseph story the same way again.) Most of all, Pensées displays a deep love for Jesus.

I really don't want to forget the lesson of 2020-21, which is best summarised in James 4:13-15: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” Still: there are lots of things that if the Lord wills them, I am greatly excited about in 2026. For instance:1. Finishing Matthew Bates’s wonderful book The Birth of the Trinity. I’m a third of the way through at the moment, and it’s theologically creative, brightly written, devotionally rich and a delight to read. 2. The new season of The Traitors. Is Harriet the secret traitor? Will the others work with her or against her? So intriguing. 3. Freya India’s book Girls: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything, due out in February. 4. 21 days of prayer at King’s Church London, which starts today. I will also be heading to Jubilee Church London for one of their evenings, so that’s a mighty double bill. 5. Speaking at the Advance Global conference in South Africa in March. This will be my third Advance conference, and the others have been outstanding, so I’m hugely looking forward to this. 6. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, due out in July. Yes, I have all sorts of concerns about it (and the trailer did not exactly alleviate them). But every Nolan film I’ve seen has been excellent, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. 7. Reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929: The Inside Story of The Greatest Crash in Wall Street History. My copy has just arrived and I started it this morning. 8. Francis Spufford’s new novel, Nonesuch, which is due out in March. 9. The annual fellows retreat for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, in New York City in April. I learn so much, and laugh so much, in these gatherings; I’m particularly excited about this one because I missed the last one. 10. The second season of The Night Manager. The first was one of the best three single season TV shows I’ve ever seen (along with Chernobyl and The Honourable Woman), and while I don’t expect the second to be at that level, I’m still expecting to love it. 11. Preaching through 1 Corinthians for the first time since 2007. 12. Editing and contributing towards a new book for Newday, called How To Be Human. It is basically a biblical anthropology for teenagers based on Genesis 1-3, and we have twelve great writers and chapters lined up. 13. The third volume of Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin. I just finished the first, and it was as much a history of the world as it was a biography. If the same is true of the third then it will be brilliant. 14. July’s THINK conference with Peter Williams on Luke. I honestly can’t think of anyone I’d rather have teach on this book than Peter. 15. Tehran season 3. Rachel and I watched season 1 in December, and it was the first show we’ve seen in ages that had us trying to find excuses to keep watching it. 16. Carl Trueman’s The Desecration of Man, due out in April. 17. The World Cup this summer. Obviously. 18. Newday. Obviously. 19. The release of my new book, Happiness: What It Is, Where To Find It, And How To Make It Last Forever, in July/August. Clearly I would say this, but I’m really hoping it will help a lot of people. 20. A family holiday with the cousins in August. 21. Newfrontiers Global in Cyprus in October, which regular readers will know is always a highlight. 22. Visiting brothers and sisters in India in November. 23. Getting into the fourth and final volume of Christopher Ash’s Psalms: A Christ-Centred Commentary. Will Psalms 101-150 have Christ on every page? What a cliffhanger. 24. Our King’s Church leadership team week away, when we plan, pray and talk about the year ahead (and play the occasional game of water volleyball). 25. My oldest son turning eighteen. Yikes. 26. Christmas. Obviously. Happy New Year!

We all want peace. It’s a human desire. Ask yourself this: what price would you pay, And how much would it be worth, Just for one single day, to bring peace to the earth? I’m not just talking about a farewell to arms: I mean peace on earth and the healing of harms, Whether those harms come from physical pain, Or those anxious gremlins that live in your brain. So what’s your answer? What is peace worth? For your nation? Your family? Yourself? The earth?The Hebrew prophets had a craving for peace. They called it shalom: the world made whole, With healing for the body and joy for the soul. “Light is coming!” said the prophet Isaiah. “The warrior’s weapons will be fuel for the fire! Swords into ploughshares. A permanent ceasefire. Songs of deliverance rising from the peace choir. For unto us has been born a child, And in his name all the nations will be reconciled. They’ll call him Counsellor. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace, making all things well. O come, O come, Immanuel! Hasten the day when the conflicts cease! Heal sores, settle scores, put a stop to the wars, And cover this planet with life and peace! Centuries later, the peace child is born. Most people don’t notice: just an elderly priest, And some random shepherds on a piste in the Middle East. “Here comes the sun!” says the elderly priest. “He will guide our feet in the paths of peace!” A few months later, another old man Gives thanks for the peace child he holds in his hand. “I’ve prayed for this moment,” he starts to cry, “And now that he’s here, I’m done. I can die.” The random shepherds get more of a fright, As an angel chorus lights up the night, But the point is the same. “Glory to God, And peace on earth, and mercy mild: God and sinners reconciled through the peace child. Light the lamps. Strike up the band. Watch, as his influence spreads through the land, Confronting anxiety, conflict and sin With a calm and a peace only heaven can bring.” Shalom doesn’t come all at once, of course. You can’t create peace in the world by force, Or have it crash-land on the earth with a bump. Instead, it spreads, like flavour in a sauce, Or a piece of yeast bringing rise to a lump. So the peace child starts with the trickiest part: The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. He dies to reconcile God and humanity, Taking our sin and killing our hostility. He brings about peace between nations and tribes, Bridging their divisions and healing their divides. He puts back together the human soul, As fractured bodies and minds are made whole. And he readies the world for a day of release When death turns to life, and war becomes peace. O come, O come, Immanuel, And bring shalom to Israel, And make this whole world … well.

This is a superb debate about Tim Keller's ministry and legacy between Collin Hansen and James Wood, hosted by Peter Leithart. Collin has literally written the book on Keller; James's critique of Keller and winsomeness sparked a huge debate when it came out in 2022. (Full disclosure: I am a fellow at the Keller Center, which Collin runs, and James co-hosts Mere Fidelity, on which I have often appeared.) This is both a model of how to disagree well, and an illuminating exploration of a number of vital themes for the contemporary church, including cultural change, apologetic approach and political theology. If you would prefer an audio version, go here.  

Birds have wings; humans have books. One of the great delights of my job is having the time to read books, the privilege of being sent plenty to review, and the budget to buy others.I generally read in four different parts of the day. In the early morning, when my daughter is awake and I wish I didn’t have to be, I read history. In my devotional times, I read biblical commentaries or (occasionally) theology. In the evenings, as I am about to fall asleep, I read fiction. Everything else - books on culture, pastoral ministry, leadership, money, church history, or anything I am researching for a writing project or conference - is read during the working day, often in afternoons when my metabolism dips. Horses for courses, I guess. Here are five recommendations from each category. History and Biography Frederic Morton, A Nervous Splendour: Vienna 1888/1889. Dominic Sandbrook said this was one of the books that most influenced his writing, and I can see why: a haunting and beautifully narrated tale of a traumatic year in Viennese history, which also contains the seeds of much twentieth century history. And what an ending. David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. An utterly gripping true story about an eighteenth century shipwreck, that richly deserves all the plaudits it has received. The best sort of adventure yarn. Ian Leslie, John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs. It is hard to say anything new about The Beatles, but this is such a clever way of doing it, exploring the relationship between the two protagonists through the lyrics of the songs they wrote together. Neil Price, The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings. The Vikings are so much stranger to us than we think, and that makes them unsettling, even frightening. The best account of them I have read yet, which goes beyond the battles and the boats to the way they imagined the world. Helen Castor, The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. A story in which you know the ending, and which has previously been told by plenty of writers including Shakespeare, has no business being this narratively tense, psychologically interesting and historically absorbing. Brilliant. Bible and Theology Christopher Ash, Psalms: A Christ-Centred Commentary. Admittedly I haven’t read the fourth volume yet, but the first three are so good that I’m happy to call it as one of the outstanding books of the year. My wife and I have both disappeared into it in our devotions for weeks at a time - a wonderful gift to the church. Michael Morales, Numbers. A two volume deep dive on one of Scripture’s most difficult and misunderstood books. The format does not always help, but there are abundant insights here on passages that have always been a mystery to me, from the structure of the Israelite camp to the prophecies of Balaam and the puzzling last few chapters. Magisterial. Danielle Treweek, Single Ever After. A really impressive piece of work, as I explained here. Tim Keller, What Is Wrong With the World? It is not easy to write a compelling, heartwarming, devotional book on sin. It is even harder after you have died. The fact that Tim Keller has done both is testimony to his remarkable preaching ministry, and to the skill with which his wife Kathy has presented it. Patrick Schreiner, The Transfiguration of Christ. The best sort of doctrinal study: biblically illuminating, devotionally satisfying, theologically compelling and stylistically readable. The best book I’ve read on the transfiguration, and better than most books on other things as well. Culture and Ideas Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. You wouldn’t think that a book about how animals perceive the world would be captivating, but this really is. I’ve thought about it and quoted it numerous times since I finished. An eye-opener. Tom McTague, Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution, 1945-2016. This is basically a long history of Brexit, from the end of the Second World War to today, but it sheds a remarkable amount of light on many aspects of contemporary Britain, and makes a very convincing case that Brexit was near-inevitable for decades before it happened. A great read. Matt Smethurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life. The secret sauce here is the choice of topics. Each of the book’s eight chapters takes a theme on which Keller regularly wrote and preached during his ministry, and synthesises his teaching into a theologically coherent and pastorally instructive whole. Musa al-Gharbi, We Have Never Been Woke. Book of the Year. A fresh, incisive, iconoclastic and well-written take on the rise of symbolic capitalists and the illusion of wokeness. You can read my longer review here. Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed. A short, rich, honest, moving and yet hope-filled book about living with depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, by a man who seems incapable of writing a boring book about anything. Fiction Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost. This murder mystery (or is it?), told by four unreliable narrators and set in mid seventeenth century Oxford, is up there with the very best novels I have ever read. Gripping, twisty, and utterly ingenious. Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere. I finally got around to this and can completely see what all the fuss is about. Such believable characters, and a plot that manages to be both surprising and inevitable at the same time. Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies. Another book that everyone was reading a few years ago and I only just have. For an exciting book, the characters and themes are great; for a book with interesting themes, it’s wonderfully exciting. Seicho Matsumoto, Tokyo Express. This train-based detective story in post-war Japan was first published in 1958, and the world it evokes is both fascinating and intriguing, but it was recently retranslated and published as a Penguin Classic. Short, tense and really satisfying. Stephen King, 11.22.63. A man goes back in time to stop the JFK assassination, but life intervenes in all kinds of ways. Massive, taut and absorbing. My first experience of Stephen King, and hopefully not the last.

“Pastor fired for preaching sermons written by ChatGPT.”That headline might not actually have appeared yet but it almost certainly will. Clearly AI can perform tasks which assist sermon preparation, but the temptation to simply let AI write a sermon is high. And why not, if AI is your friend? The way in which many people are forming companionship with AI raises numerous ethical and practical questions. An assumption increasingly heard is that these relationships are largely because contemporary society makes ‘real’ friendships difficult. If you struggle to make human friends, AI offers an immediate virtual shoulder to cry on. But is it only sad and solitary people who are reaching out for artificial companionship? My flesh-and-blood friend, Richard Stamp, has been thinking long and hard about Christian discipleship in a technological age. He suggests more is going on – that even those who have lots of fulfilling human relationships can be drawn to AI companionship. The issue, as he sees it, is that (like it or not) AI provides: A different kind of friendship. Difference intrigues us and novelty excites us. AI feels and sounds different to other relationships. A wise kind of friendship. AI affirms your questions and its ‘wisdom’ is limitless. It has an answer to everything. A sexual kind of friendship. AI is like porn and prostitution: you can switch it on off at will, and it is always responsive to your feelings and desires. To use an overused term, it always responds to our most narcissistic tendencies but is unlikely to ever accuse us of narcissism. A patient kind of friendship. AI listens to whatever you want to drone on about in a non-judgemental way, without ever giving you an eyeroll or looking for an excuse to find someone more interesting to talk to. A discreet kind of friendship. You can tell AI the depths of your heart without shame and it won’t gossip your secrets to anyone else. (Although someone somewhere is surely collecting all that lovely data!) For these reasons the companionship of AI can feel more attractive, certainly easier, than dealing with people – with all their own needs and desires and quirks and foibles. This isn’t only the case for the lonely. We might have a rich social life but then enjoy unwinding with our therapeutic AI friend – and then ask ‘him’ to write a sermon for us while we’re at it. AI isn’t going away, so the issues raised by all this will only become more pronounced. The trick we’re going to need to pull off is learning to use AI in a way that maximises its advantages while remaining crystal clear that it is only a tool. There are other tools we might value and enjoy very highly – a particular kitchen knife, a favourite hammer, a car – but we would not blur this value and enjoyment with friendship. Because AI gives the illusion of really knowing and responding to us it is much harder to avoid the blur. Richard says, “I still think that we need to help people to be better at human friendship (fun, sagacity, intimacy, patience, safety, discretion), so that we keep synthetic ‘companions’ in their right place, but ultimately what we’re looking for and love with AI is to be found in God.” AI can be useful, fun even, but it really isn’t your friend. It certainly isn’t your saviour. And – please – don’t ask it to write your sermons.