The Human Touch (Part 4): Creative Problem-Solving That AI Can't Touch

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the potential pitfalls of relying too heavily on AI, templates, and external solutions for ministry challenges. Emphasizing the unique nature of each church community, Rhoades encourages church leaders to leverage their creativity and knowledge of their congregation to develop customized solutions. He advocates for a balance between using external resources and fostering original ideas that cater specifically to the needs of their community. • Outsourcing creative thinking to AI and templates may not address unique ministry challenges. • Churches should avoid 'cookie-cutter' solutions and instead focus on their unique community needs. • Authentic ministry success requires creativity and understanding of the church's unique DNA. • Leaders are encouraged to use their creativity and courage to develop personalized solutions. • While templates and consulting can be beneficial, they should not replace personalized ministry strategies. • Brainstorming and collaborative problem-solving with familiar team members can spark innovative ideas.

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Transcript

The Human Touch And AI Series

Copying Trends Versus Leading Locally

God Wired You For Creativity

Courage, Fear, And Real Experimentation

A 30 Minute Brainstorm Challenge

When Outside Help Matters Plus Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Okay, you've got a ministry problem. Jet got it, and you don't know what to do. You ask JetGPT for ideas, you Google how other churches handle this problem. You down three templates from ministry website, and somehow, somehow, none of it feels right for your situation. Because your church isn't a templated church, and your people are templated people. That's what we're talking about today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at ChemistryStaffing.com, along with my colleague Mastine. And I am so glad that you're here today. We're in the middle of a series on AI, I'm calling the human touch. We're talking about how AI and automation can help and maybe not help our churches. And this is one of the things that I'm seeing happen in churches quite a bit here lately. We're outsourcing our creative thinking, not just to artificial intelligence, but to cookie-cutter solutions that worked somewhere else. And we've been doing this for years. AI has not introduced this to most churches. We look to larger churches, larger ministry trends. And that's not entirely bad. But sometimes if we're looking for a cookie-cutter solution that works just because something worked somewhere else, does not mean that it's going to work at our church. Matter of fact, it probably won't. We look to ministry cultons consultants a lot of times who've never met your people, and we go to the latest conference strategy that sounds really impressive. And all those things are great. I love conferences. I love a good conference. I am a consultant and a coach. Don't take the advice never to give me a call. I still want still want to talk to you. But here's the thing: your ministry challenges are your ministry challenges, and they are beautifully unique. And that's sometimes where the magic happens. But we lose something in the process. We we're forgetting that God wired us, God wired you for creative problem solving. We're defaulting to what's the template instead of what's the calling. Now I think there's some I've developed a whole bunch of templates for churches and love for you to get your hands on them, right? But you can grab ideas, but if you just take a template from anywhere and you just say, this is it, this is what we're doing in my church, you probably will fail. If you take everything that a consultant tells you who's outside and doesn't know your church, if you take everything they tell you and just say, Yep, absolutely, you're probably gonna fail. Because when we do that, we're copying instead of creating. Now you can use a template to get you there, to get your thinking started. But don't just follow the formula of somebody else. You need to follow, we've been talking about this all week, you need to be open and following the spirit. We're asking what works instead of what's needed here. And I think there's nothing wrong with learning from others. I just mentioned that. But wholesale copying, that's not leadership. Taking somebody else's sermon, having AI write your sermon for Sunday word for word. That's not good. That's not good. That's wholesale copying. And not going to be good for the health of your church or the health of your staff for the long run. I'm just telling you. Uh your church needs you to be creative. You say, Todd, I'm not really all that God hasn't wired me to be creative. You know what? He's put you where you are with the skill and the wiring that you have because that's where he wants you. You think, Todd, I don't have a creative lick in me, but you do know things. You know your people's actual stories because you sat in their living rooms during their crises. You understand the unique DNA of your community. You understand what makes your community different from the town over. You connect the dots that an algorithm, an AI, a chat GPT, a template never ever could. And you sense what your church needs in ways that nobody else can even begin to imagine. This is, you might not think of it this way, but this is your creative edge. But you're creative. This might be your problem. Your creativity requires courage. Okay? You're creative, but maybe you don't have the courage behind it. Maybe you're afraid of failure. Maybe you're afraid that trying to solve a problem on your own or come up with a creative solution based on what your church needs just won't work. Maybe you've been stung in the past and have failures. But I would encourage you, you need to be asking what if instead of what's been done before. What's been done somewhere else. It's combining two unrelated ideas into something new. It's letting your team brainstorm without immediately shooting down ideas. It's starting pilot programs instead of perfect launches. It's saying, let's try this more and let's research this. Because the bottom line for today is your ministry problems need your creative fingerprint, not somebody else's copy and paste solution. So this week I want you to pick one ministry challenge that you've been stuck on. And instead of going to Chat GPT, instead of going to Google, instead of running it through your Claude co-work, don't ask for those solutions. Grab two people who know your church. Maybe they're people on your team, maybe they're somebody from your elder team, maybe they're a key volunteer, and just pull them in and brainstorm with them for 30 minutes before you ever try to see what's happening elsewhere. Let your human creativity and your human imagination and your human curiosity lead the way. Because here's the deal: God gave you a brain for a reason. He gave you a brain for a reason and he wants you to use it creatively. Are there times where you need to get templates, where you need to get some coaching, where you need some serious consulting, when you're in trouble or you're in over your head? Absolutely. Absolutely. But just because somebody from the outside gives you a template or a word does not mean that is exactly what God wants or what God will use in your specific situation. Hope this is giving you some clarity rather than confusion. Giving you some courage to unleash your own creativity, the creativity that God has given you, out of the knowledge that He's given you about where He has you and where you're serving. If there's any way that I can help you, feel free to reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. I'd love to hear from you and check us out over at chemistrystaffing.com if there's any way that we can help you in any of your healthy church staff initiatives hiring. If you need to let somebody go, if you need some compensation analysis, that's what we do, and that's what we're passionate about. So you can reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com if you're interested. All right, tomorrow we're going to continue our series, actually, end our series on the human touch, and we're talking about emotional intelligence and how to lead with emotional intelligence.