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Dear Siblings in Christ,
 
This week I want to briefly share my reflections about two events from last week.
 
The first was an ecumenical conference called, “AI and the Church” that Doug Manis, our Lay Leader, and I both attended virtually. I was motivated to attend because there have been several times when I and other church leaders have found AI to be helpful in doing our work, but I knew little about the tools. There were bishops from at least five denominations who attended and spoke, as well as pastors and lay persons from churches around the country. There was a mix of excitement and hesitancy. The excitement stemmed from the ways that artificial intelligence can do good in the world, helping to design paths forward for implementing feeding and housing programs, serving as a brainstorming partner when writing, creating, editing, or producing clear messages, and streamlining the management of resources. The hesitancy came from the environmental challenges with AI’s use of water and fuel, the need for more land to be developed into data centers, often in areas where the people who are already most vulnerable due to poverty and other factors live, and the possibility for AI to do harm, rather than good because of the ways it has learned from human ability to do harm, as it learns from the body of human writing on the internet. Some of the themes that were most powerful to me included:

  • There are categories of use for AI, named by Blake Davis, from Discipleship Ministries in the UMC, including human generated content with AI assistance, collaboratively generated content, and AI generated content with human assistance. These can be helpful in drafting policies about how AI will or won’t be used by church leaders.
  • The use of AI to address perceived scarcity of time may heighten already unhealthy expectations that churches do more, faster, and with fewer resources, rather than scaling what churches do to their need and mission.
  • Investment in AI is primarily by business and therefore it is designed to place highest value on making money. This tendency may not serve the church well and there is still opportunity to influence what other values can also become part of the design, although that opportunity may not last much longer, due to the very fast pace of development.

Doug and I are talking about what an AI policy for Haller Lake UMC might look like and what our next steps might be. You can see an example AI policy that Discipleship Ministries uses here.
 
The second event that I’ve been reflecting on is the Faithland Presentation after worship on Sunday. In it, four possible ways forward for our partnership with Habitat for Humanity were outlined. First, we could sell the south half of the property to Habitat, as we voted last winter. In this case, no new vote is necessary and we can proceed without delay. However, P Patch gardeners have partnered with an organization called GROW NW, who is prepared to purchase the P Patch, which is where the other three options come from. If we were to sell the P Patch to GROW-NW, the MOU with Habitat needs to be changed. We could sell Habitat the rest of the south half of the property, or what’s left of the south half of the property plus a little more space, just over the half-way mark, or we could sell Habitat the west half of the property. Choosing between these four possibilities will be the work of the Leadership Board at their September 22 meeting, with input from the congregation before that. If the Leadership Board selects something other than remaining with the MOU as it is, a new congregational vote will be scheduled at our All Church Conference, which is tentatively set for Sunday October 25. A few of the key slides from Sunday’s presentation are available, attached here. I hope you will be praying about these options and plan to participate in the coming discussions.
 
With gratitude for your careful discernment about new possibilities,
Pastor Laura