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EP 348 Live Recording: Jeff & Eric Kidwell Talk AI, Digital Mission, and Killing the Contact Form

The Church Digital Podcast

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  43. right times in the conversation we've actually fine-tuned this to where ai will actually point

  44. people to have the next conversation with the pastor of like hey actually yeah we'd love to

  45. pray for you would you like a pastor to pray for you with that you know click this button and we'll

  46. let them know and so either it can take messages for you and connect them offline through like email

  47. or um we actually built this in um afterwards but now you can not just have an ai conversation but

  48. you can actually say can i chat with a pastor right now and if a pastor is available they can

  49. actually live chat with the pastor from there but the ai handles all the beginnings of it and you know

  50. at the end of the day i know pastors and they're just trying to get to the next sunday oftentimes

  51. in ministries they're so busy with with with that so having time to actually have live chats all the

  52. time is is oftentimes um you know really really difficult and so having the ai that's a great

  53. representative ambassador even of your ministry uh and then let them choose when the right times

  54. is to have that that deeper conversation has been a game changer for ministries yeah yeah i could see

  55. where where churches would be in in you know there's a lot of digital missionaries and others in here

  56. and i want to get to one of the questions some of the questions in here but i could see where

  57. um it would churches would be challenged okay well you're replacing people um machines are having

  58. conversations but the way that you're describing it it's it's almost like it's the ai is more of a

  59. of a traffic cop it navigates the the the safe conversations and when it gets to hey well i want to

  60. have i'm having a serious issue i need to pray with someone i need to talk with someone like there's ways to

  61. structure it in such a way that it hands it off to to the person so it's it's you know a a

  62. a relational kind of stop gap to pull people deeper into the conversation um 100 are like

  63. talk to me about the church because like i said i that's ai is a controversial thing inside the church

  64. so unless some people are going to buy into it some are not what's the mindset of the people that

  65. are buying into it like let's let's keep it positive what are they seeing uh and what are

  66. they experiencing what's the benefit uh by going down this road and and um and being positive with

  67. ai in this context so i think the main people that are the most excited i can also talk about the people

  68. who have apprehensions and i think and i think it's i think it's good to have apprehensions because

  69. especially with new technology you want to make sure they're asking the right questions but let's talk

  70. about the people who jump on it and then the others who eventually realize okay yeah this is this is

  71. really great is that they love the idea of being able to be represented 24 7 um in their voice it's

  72. almost like they like i don't know if you ever asked this thought this question but it's like you ever

  73. just sit there and you're like you're at your desk or you're somewhere and you're like you're just wishing

  74. like i wish i had another me another me that could like either just handle these emails or have these

  75. conversations you know with with my team or my elders i need to have like a meeting with them

  76. or um it's it's kind of like that but it's with guardrails right because like you said it's like a

  77. traffic cop in a sense of like knowing uh and it's all baked in and they don't have to have it they

  78. don't have to try to create this from scratch already like this works with just by putting

  79. in your church or ministry website ai goes there it learns all this stuff and so like it can know

  80. like this is a slower conversation i can kind of answer some of this stuff but then there's also

  81. times when it's like if someone's saying i'm having mental issues the ai like what do they say

  82. monopoly like you know don't pass go i go directly like the ai automatically points them to resources

  83. like hey actually um call call someone right now that first of all you're not alone but here's this

  84. number called 988 or go to you know the suicide helpline and they would love to help walk you through

  85. this like being able to kind of know those different kind of designated reporters even situations that

  86. this is not a situation that we want any time to kind of pass through where this person who's in

  87. urgent need right now gets the help that they need um the ai has been tuned to kind of um look out for

  88. those things so i'd say that the people that love it love the fact that it's uh that it's that and also

  89. um there's ways that that they can try it out internally to like see how it's been trained ask

  90. questions red team it i'm always a big fan of like having your team just kind of go in there and try

  91. asking questions that people would ask when they're on your website and then try it just try it out for

  92. for half a month or we have a free trial where you can try it for 30 days no credit card required

  93. you just put it on there and just see see what it does um and uh and yeah we have we've had very

  94. little people stop using it usually the reason why pops people stop using it i had one ministry stop

  95. just because of the fact that they stopped being a ministry they they felt like i was calling to do

  96. other things and so um so i'd say that's the main thing just being able to be represented and just

  97. knowing the fact that um ai can really help build these um and nurture these relationships

  98. to a place where people want to take those next steps and so for the people with apprehension

  99. i'd say you know those are the ones who are like is it gonna is it gonna answer like a question weird

  100. and that's one of the very first things that challenges that we that we tackled and and one

  101. of the reasons why people love live ai the people jump on it right away it's because if you ask a

  102. question to your to your live ai and it doesn't know the answer it's not going to make up something

  103. it's not going to be like oh yeah like we've got totally got a shuttle you know um uh but it says

  104. i'm sorry i don't have information about that you can actually customize that response so that i could

  105. say i'm sure i have information on that i'm still learning but if you want to learn more just call

  106. this number or email us at at this email and we'd be glad to to answer that for you and so the ai gets

  107. smarter as it goes yeah i would imagine the making of facts is is kind of scary um it could be um we've

  108. got flat cap asking the question is this just for websites like in his context is uh he's doing a lot

  109. of work and a lot of our people are doing digital missionary work in like discord and so um an api

  110. hookup to get into this i don't want to get too technical with you i know you're the visionary guy

  111. but um have you thought about integrating this into an api to integrate this into other platforms away

  112. from just the web browser 100 so i have such a heart for not only just like digital um

  113. expressions of of the church but also for um the the ministries all over the globe and what i've been

  114. hearing a lot is also just like how a lot of missions and a lot of ministries are done over

  115. whatsapp even and so um so i'll say this so right now um the the bottom line is currently we are focused

  116. just just on websites however if anybody out there wants to help us be part of um uh like beta testing

  117. apis those kind of things with discord where or even like a texting number we in the long run want

  118. to be able to kind of unleash your ai to not just have conversations on your website but everywhere

  119. imagine being able to email the church email the general church email and the ai would field

  120. a lot of that right off the bat if it doesn't know the answer then it points it to the right person

  121. to ask that or having a texting number or discord or whatsapp so we want to be multi-channel

  122. and even like facebook um plugging into your that first response would come from not like a generic

  123. you know facebook response but it's trained on your information on your heart on your values on your

  124. beliefs and um so yeah so if you are interested in helping us um maybe beta testing some of that

  125. i would love to to work with ministries and and people that would be excited about helping us test

  126. that out well shoot i'll do it myself um yeah like i would love um and we can offline this but to

  127. figure out the ai uh the api level of this so it can be integrated into like you said two of my favorite

  128. words uh whatsapp and discord uh oh you know whatsapp's whatsapp's filled with spam and so we're working

  129. through that but whatsapp and discord a lot of that uh you know we've we've got uh we got uh mr pete's

  130. uh working in in virtual reality and there's some opportunities there maybe to look through but uh

  131. you know i guarantee discord's got the api side to open up to integrate in uh and so yeah i'd love to

  132. to do that or maybe even fund some of the experiments we can we can get there there are plenty of people that

  133. that would benefit from this that that we if we could navigate through and and open it up outside

  134. of the website websites website is crucial um for for some ministries um you know and some of our

  135. ministries have moved beyond that um as a primary focus and so that's some of what we're we're fishing

  136. on here so that's beautiful we can have that conversation right i'm sorry like one of the hardest

  137. live streams too just to put this out there like one of the biggest challenges i find ministries have is

  138. how do we make sure that we have someone that can fill the questions and so how do we make sure we

  139. have enough volunteers some a lot of ministries are just turning off their live stream chat because

  140. they don't have someone to be able to manage it imagine if you had someone that could you know

  141. listen to the to the live stream live feel like a youtube and then being able to kind of like post

  142. different kind of things comments but then answer people's questions and just comment and engage with

  143. people um would be just like i think another just application that we're really um would love to

  144. to partner with different ministries to help us you know test that and and uh try it out yeah i mean

  145. we're we're a beta house here uh so we we love to experiment and try on different things so i'm sure

  146. we can have those conversations and and figure it out we just got to work with the the tech stack to to

  147. get there um how what's the it's it's it's funny like he's even talking about so if you're you're

  148. challenging me with what you just said like i'm gonna i want to i want to call this out i want to

  149. dialogue through it so i you would tell me hey um like there's an opportunity to integrate live stream

  150. into artificial uh artificial intelligence in the live stream to do chat and actually i have heard

  151. some people have experimented with that historically now now what i would have said before this

  152. conversation and i'm open to being trained differently is hey don't live stream any service

  153. don't you know unless you have the ability to interact with the chat in real time because

  154. otherwise you're just broadcasting noise you're creating consumers the interaction the dialogue is

  155. is through that and so like historically i've said it's got to be about people it's got to be about

  156. people we need the shadows we need the and when i was doing the physical church stuff like i had

  157. 20 30 40 people that were my chat hosts and i'd schedule them and they'd show up and they do all the

  158. all the all the stuff now you're talking about ai not replacing a person maybe multiplying opportunities

  159. what's i just would love your take on this question what's the role of ai and what's the role of people

  160. in in this this interaction balance because you're you're inserting ai into places where

  161. yes it's helpful yes it's challenging what's the balance between the the two there yeah so i think

  162. at the end of the day um just because we can do something doesn't necessarily mean that we should

  163. and so it definitely should be um and as it was once person once told me and i even actually his name

  164. was jeff by the way everyone watching at home don't build anything until you need it um but also

  165. make sure that if you're building something make sure it actually has a reasoning and some why behind

  166. it so but to answer your question i think the key thing i just want to interrupt one second

  167. actually if you zoom in on the sticky that was on my desk don't build anything until you need it

  168. honest to god it was just sitting there uh not a guy named jeff told me somebody else but go ahead

  169. continue i'm just saying go ahead please passing wisdom from we're paying it forward someone will now

  170. you know maybe reference this this podcast in the future this live stream so um i think if anybody

  171. else listening to this is wrestling with the same question like how in the world i even think about

  172. trying to use ai to be a part of maybe my live stream because i'm a 100 believer of the same

  173. thing jeff that if you're going to do a live stream let's make sure that we have people that are there

  174. that can connect with them right then and there um and so so i think of this in two ways one

  175. we can have we can think about it from the the from two major pain points and i think both of this

  176. would have to base would still need to be um you know ask people who are attending church both

  177. people who are who watch online primarily or people who've never watched online before and they're

  178. totally new um is uh and get their feedback it's two scenarios that i can think of that are the

  179. main ways that ai can help so number one would be making sure that the chat isn't a ghost town

  180. and making sure that it feels alive and it's not just one person posting but it feels like it's it's

  181. more of a conversation because i know there's a lot of live streams that feel like okay man i just feel

  182. like i'm just the same one just posting the same thing but you can make it more of a conversation

  183. where it feels like it's like the organization's ai is replying into the thing and also just kind of

  184. asking like just questions that people can reply to so that's that's one but in engaging with people too

  185. and helping um them and so this dovetails into the the next biggest problem that i think that can be solved

  186. with ai is it's uh the the opposite problem maybe you have so many people that are chatting

  187. that the people that are in there can't possibly get to every single person make them feel like they're

  188. they're um seen known and heard um and loved and so i think ai can really help with that too of like

  189. helping to kind of surface up the most um pressing needs that a person a live person could kind of um

  190. by pattern recognizing and saying okay hey these are the top five conversations you should really

  191. focus on i'll handle the rest and um and and and you can then just tee it off just picture it like

  192. the ai it is like you know if you ever played t-ball the ai is just like okay let me just tee this off

  193. for you put a little t right here boom it's ready to go and then you just hit a home run maybe even have

  194. an ai to help um craft and point just like scriptures like hey this should be a scripture

  195. a good scripture like almost like co-pilot like like imagine if we all had like you ever seen that

  196. one movie with will smith where i think it's um he's like in someone's ear and he's like helping them

  197. like through like dating um you know we could even consider like how could ai maybe not so much

  198. necessarily be in the chat as much but just kind of help the people who are there have come up with a

  199. conversation or ask a question or say oh this is you know this ties to this scripture oh but or even

  200. like hey by the way since this live ai has access to all your your other your other parts of your

  201. website but also your sermons the i could be like hey um this is like a little bit of that sermon that

  202. was preached um four months ago by this other pastor if you want to learn more about what's the

  203. next step of learning how to trust god from steward your finances check out this so so i know that's um a lot of

  204. that is kind of like oh man there seems like a lot of what ifs between now and there but i'd say it

  205. always starts with like what would be the main problems we would want ai to solve and we've kind

  206. of really i maybe even covered uncovered like a third one but it's like let's make sure it's not a

  207. ghost town um second one would be if it feels like it's a lot going on let's have ai help kind of uh

  208. make sure everyone feels feels seen and heard and then the third one thing it would be like hey maybe an ai could

  209. help um the volunteers to ask really great questions and not necessarily um have the conversation for

  210. them yeah but maybe they it just kind of coaching so yeah no i i love that uh it's it's it's critical

  211. mass uh it's uh it's traffic cop bringing to the to the attention and then it's it's it's some coaching

  212. and you know steve steve's jumping in steve's a friend brother from another mother ai can assist with

  213. live stream but not replace live people uh beginning to think that that that's true everywhere and and

  214. that's you know to be like steve that's that's my vantage point is is i love i love the idea of and i

  215. use the term traffic cop but i mean essentially that's that's what i i think it it excels at i think it

  216. excels at at a traffic cop hey um you're you're going through the situation uh would you like to talk to

  217. someone or here's resources and it's and it's smart enough in in a relational dialogue tone to have that

  218. that conversation and and to point people in in the right direction and if that means having a

  219. conversation with with a pastor or a volunteer full of all that's good in the world yes let's do that

  220. if that means getting connected to more resources to allow the person to um uh to dig in deeper i'm

  221. guessing there's some sort of log or some sort of report in your system that you can see how where

  222. people are going and and and what they're doing yeah and the questions that they're asking and how

  223. they're being helped yeah you can you can see all that i call that you can see the quantitative like

  224. the numbers but you can also see the qualitative which is what are those questions that that people are

  225. asking it's and um yeah it's it's it's deeper than just kind of looking at a google analytics of like

  226. looking at what pages people visit this this is like actual conversations and questions that they're

  227. wrestling with yeah so there there's plenty of opportunity the thing that i love about ai is

  228. is it i i'd love to see ai multiply people's efforts and so if if i can use ai to to drive to a video

  229. sermon or to drive people to a web page or to draw attention when people are looking and can't find

  230. i think that's it's a huge opportunity and and if it can be the operator to help people navigate uh to to

  231. to help users navigate to get to the right person i think it's a huge win well you've got a a demo set

  232. up right can we like click through and and and see some of that let me uh let me put you up here on

  233. the screen all right go for it yeah so i had a pastor actually give me a suggestion he said hey you

  234. should create like a dummy church website and so you're not calling churches dummies no this is a

  235. non-existent church it's not a real church okay and my wife kind of gave me a little bit of flack

  236. that you know you know we're i even have like a back story of like the leadership of how carrie and

  237. i started this church so this is not a real church anybody that's watching this this is just uh a way

  238. to kind of see like on um on like a church website how this could work so i'll refresh it so you all can

  239. see this um and uh and as we get ready to kind of see this load too i'll say too that even just this

  240. idea of how how some alive ai ai could work instead of a live stream we could also train it to not do

  241. certain things at certain times like only when the when the volume of the chat it reaches like this

  242. many chats per minute that's when you want the ai to come in so there's this there's a whole lot of um

  243. there's a whole lot of stuff that we can do yeah so as you can see as we talked about earlier like

  244. live ai is like if your website's the front door of your your digital ministry um and your ministry in

  245. general live ai is the door greeter so after a few moments of coming onto your website you're gonna

  246. see this but this little um um you know button down there this message chat and then after a few

  247. seconds it welcomes them says it makes you feel like okay there's there's a presence here hey welcome

  248. to live church we're glad that you're you know we're here to help you find hope and healing and

  249. after a few more moments it gives some like conversation starters or what we call engagement buttons

  250. and so i can click into this and just you know ask things like um you know hey when is service time

  251. um what are some other questions jeff that that people might ask when they come to a church website

  252. uh what do i wear what's for the kids yeah um where do i park

  253. a four and seven year old any tips for a newcomer

  254. and all this by the way is is initially coming from your website so check this out

  255. this is this is live i like i don't have someone like wizard of oz you know giving these answers

  256. because no one could drop that fast anyways this is ai train on your voice come as you are i love that

  257. you'll see people and everything from jeans to dresses we care about you know about what you wear

  258. i love that so for your kids we have fantastic children's ministry with age-appropriate classes

  259. activities that they'll love to make your visit smoother you might want to plan a visit so not

  260. only did it like answer the question but it also surfaced up one of those um call to actions one of

  261. those engagement buttons so i can be like yeah you know what i am ready to plan a visit you know because

  262. this this uh conversation feels warm uh and i'm ready to do that so i can go in here just type in my name

  263. you know my email yeah and all that so yeah that's um beautiful how does it yeah don't type your

  264. phone number i don't want random people calling you because of youtube um how would it handle like

  265. a more difficult situation like uh i lost my job i need help um yeah let's let's put that

  266. put my put my phone number let's let's do that one two three four five six seven eight nine yeah it's

  267. funny um yes let's try that so let's um let's see how the ai responds so i'm going to tell you right

  268. now the ai is going to respond in one of two ways it's either gonna say i'm sorry i don't have information

  269. about that or it's going to point them the resources so let's see so hey like i um i have

  270. lost my job how did you word that i lost my job and i'm struggling right now yeah

  271. so great first of all it's just empathize and start if you're feeling that way please know you're not

  272. alone there are people who care about you and want to help you can call national suicide prevention

  273. lifeline at nine and eight and they're available to help you 24 7. so we've trained the ai that if

  274. someone kind of says some of these trigger words like i'm struggling yeah yeah that we we we really

  275. we've wrestled with how much more do we have that can i ask and have conversation with them before we

  276. try to send them to this but if they yeah say some of those buzzwords we want to send them there like

  277. right away i think i'd love to also show this to you too i'll show like another ministry here um called

  278. called north side and uh like if you ask a question that the ai doesn't know it'll actually surface

  279. that up in in its brain um and so actually i'll ask it here so i guess i'll ask a question like

  280. what is jeff's favorite um but i'm just going to leave the typo in there because i love how

  281. the ai is not going to judge me by the way what is jeff's favorite food um black coffee and sushi

  282. not at the same time so it's black coffee and sushi so the ai obviously because the ai doesn't know

  283. about jeff's eating habits yeah and so we can come over here church um let's see live church and

  284. we're gonna log in um here's where the demos typically break down because you're logged into

  285. like 19 accounts at the same time so we'll have to see how good you are let's see this is no pressure

  286. this is where the rubber meets the road um i and for some odd reason my um

  287. uh my password uh filler upper thing is not coming in um so but that's cool i can actually

  288. i came a little bit prepared and i've got a these copied and pasted over because who has time to

  289. remember all these passwords anymore right i mean unless you're doing the non-safe way which is uh

  290. i'm just gonna try to use the same password for everything by the way holly do not do not recommend

  291. that um live church boom let's copy over this here and then i'm gonna show you all what happened on the

  292. back end when someone asked a question that the ai yeah so we can come back over here and by the way

  293. this is what it looks like when you log in to see like the the quantitative yeah and so we're gonna

  294. come to q a and you can see the ai surface this this question that they didn't know how to answer

  295. and so we can either delete it because maybe we don't want the ai to ever answer that question

  296. but if we want to we can say all right yeah um you said sushi and black coffee black coffee

  297. and so i'm gonna leave the typo in there by the way too and we can see

  298. how okay that's been added and so live in real time i can ask that same question i can actually ask

  299. in a different way like favorite foods does jeff have any

  300. and so the ai gets smarter as it goes by answering these questions that maybe we we weren't thinking

  301. about and so look um it even and it fixed the typo yeah yeah made sure i didn't have the typo

  302. favorite food is sushi black coffee though not not necessarily at the same time even reworded it a

  303. little bit yeah so if you have any questions feel free to ask i i pitted your church website for

  304. knowing that i like sushi there's got to be more important things than sushi um there are a whole

  305. lot more no very but you know breaking bread there's something about breaking bread with each other

  306. but uh so yeah so that's um that's that's basically just a bit and it's like i said super easy i tell

  307. pastors if they can copy and paste they can have the uh an ai on their website in five minutes because

  308. basically you just go to our website live ai.co sign up give it your website the ai goes to your website

  309. learns to know all there is you know to know all about you and then you just come over here you copy

  310. this code put on your website and you now have 24 7 um you know presence on your website yeah so this

  311. is so basically the source documents uh is is the is the church website is there an opportunity to upload

  312. pdfs videos other material like if you had a sermon uh embedded on a web page is is it scanned like what

  313. what other types of material does your your ai process yeah um great question so currently the

  314. the two primary ways are through your website off off the top the second way is you can come in here

  315. to where it says qa and you can add questions what questions someone might have and the answer um and

  316. so we don't have yet but very very very soon i believe is we're going to have ways where you can

  317. upload pdfs you can sign them with your youtube you can do that kind of thing but until then it's a

  318. little bit more manual and i'm a big believer how do we remove obstacles so pastors can get back to

  319. what they do best which is minister to people and do less busy work and back-end work um but if someone

  320. wanted to basically do that all they'd have to do is go to their youtube copy the copy the transcript

  321. or even like their sermon just copy their sermon notes come in here and just put questions like

  322. what was the sermon about and then just go ahead just paste the sermon transcript and then outline

  323. and then boom the ai can have you know answer questions same thing with pdfs just go to pdf just

  324. copy it and then come over here and just paste it and then the and then the ai can answer any of the

  325. questions that might be inside of those documents like you know um discipleship resources or maybe you have

  326. like a like a resource it's like hey this is discipleship 101 and you can take that pdf and

  327. upload it in here and your ai can help point people to that and so if someone's like hey do you have

  328. what your beliefs on like if i should get baptized and be like yeah you should do baptized and actually

  329. you should join our next discipleship class where we're going to go over this resource that you just

  330. read um and so uh so yeah so um very soon we're going to be be able to do train on other things

  331. but but right now we're just focused on how to make it as easy as possible love it so yeah can you have

  332. multiple ai implementations on unlike you know maybe on on the small groups page specific to that like an ai

  333. specific to that small group or a web page specific to a curriculum that you have it kind of processing

  334. through or is is it just one implementation across the entire website yeah so it is um it's typically

  335. done in one implement implementation across the website the only reason why you would maybe want to

  336. have um let's say uh uh maybe one implementation on another and we can actually do that by the way

  337. all we um someone would just ask us and we would help them to where we'd have the ai with um with

  338. those different implementations but the main reason maybe why you would have on separate ones is

  339. because maybe you want to have um maybe you don't want to really want to have plan to visit on the

  340. small groups page because it's more geared towards helping someone kind of get plugged into a small

  341. group or small questions um and so we can definitely help help people set that up but i'll show you

  342. something too and um uh we're actually uh we're beta testing this to where people can not just have

  343. like a live chat on their website in the bottom corner but we're coming after contact forms all

  344. right so contact forms your days are numbered gone will be the days of like having to see i don't know

  345. about y'all but when i see like a contact form in seven fields it's like i don't want to fill that

  346. out and so uh um so we're we've created another way where people can basically embed the live ai on

  347. a website maybe put it next to a sermon or maybe put it next to some kind of resource on their page

  348. and it could say something like hey i have more questions and you know got more questions about about

  349. us ask them here and maybe we don't all these want all these buttons here we just want to just be a clean

  350. conversation just focus on that one thing with one prompting yeah um uh we can definitely do that and

  351. uh this is one of the ways that we're helping churches to do that so as you're killing the form

  352. the data ends up going to uh an email to a database to uh to to your back end where it's processed

  353. yep okay yeah all the above back end where it's processed but then also um email notifications okay cool

  354. cool cool and with you know even down the road integrating into like a c uh chms crm like a

  355. you know a database something like that'd be really cool um so it's it's a seamless thing

  356. um but i know i love it i i love the road that you're on how how long has um how long has this

  357. existed uh one uh i'm sorry uh live ai so we were we we did an alpha um on thanksgiving

  358. and so one of the i told my team i was like you guys gave me a really great reason to be thankful

  359. today because we were we went um we had an alpha on on thanksgiving and then we went um uh beta on

  360. on easter and so we are uh basically publicly now lunch yeah so yeah wow so really new and so really

  361. we're we're also a team that really loves feedback so anybody that's using it wants to give us we

  362. especially love people who in our uh our back end come in here and go to the support tab and give us

  363. like ideas for feature requests any kind of issues they they're seeing um because uh at the end of

  364. the day um i remind my team on this a regular basis but like this is not a dictatorship this

  365. is a democracy and the way votes are cast is by how users and people who use live ai and

  366. votes are cast by dollars let's see what the users want and give it to them that's that's awesome uh

  367. man this is this is this is exciting what um and so like you're you're in beta you're four or six

  368. months in you've you've been doing this yeah less than a than a year having a viable product that

  369. that's out there yeah um 50 organizations using it 50 000 messages already sent yeah wow 50 000 in in

  370. in i mean five months or so um what is the what do you what are you going to look like you know it

  371. was funny offline we were talking about uh eos and and uh vto vto's and goals and things like that

  372. so what what do you look like in five years great question i think in five years my hope is that

  373. that the church at large views live ai as the trusted ai layer in their ministry because um it's

  374. it's going to happen just like we integrated different kind of technologies into ministry

  375. um we're going to figure out how to uh to to really be at the forefront where um churches and ministries

  376. can really trust that the way that they're thinking about ai with the guard rails and what we can do

  377. with it what we won't do with it is has been really thought out well and and that they just trust that

  378. um that the ais is is is gonna be a great representative of them and and also help them figure out other things

  379. so like in the five years my also hopes is i want to not just help churches on the front door of the

  380. ministry but also want to help them slow down the revolving back door of helping them figure out when

  381. different people might be disengaging from the ministry because you know just like in a live chat

  382. if if there's like a bunch of conversation happening and a person that's able to get to all those

  383. um a big church one of the biggest problems is how do we still remain small i want to help i'm

  384. going to help small churches be able to to identify lay leaders to help them do the work of the ministry

  385. and then for big churches i want to help them remain small and help them realize here's a group of

  386. people where if you just had like your your kids pastor call them up and say um hey i noticed that

  387. you haven't haven't been here for a couple weeks just want to give you a call and see how things are

  388. going um they might find out that they they weren't they didn't come because they had like some kind

  389. of problem or offended because of the kids ministry but it might just be because they had to start

  390. taking care of their aging parents and just because they gave a call they stopped them from from

  391. disengaging from the church so i have a really big heart um for two things i tell you two things that

  392. drive me is i i want to make sure that people um don't fall through the cracks number one and then

  393. number two um because i was you know a teenager who joined a church and a pastor saw me and believed in

  394. me and took me under his wing i really want to help pastors to to do that because a lot of times

  395. pastors feel like especially if you're 100 and under you feel like you have to do everything all

  396. yourself so i want to help them to to multiply what they're doing um but by being able to to tap on

  397. those um underutilized resources in their church to help them do the work that's a great that's a great

  398. point of of your of the 50 some clients you know i was funny i was making an assumption that big

  399. churches are more likely to use your tool what what are you seeing like what's your average customer

  400. church persona right now yeah it's it's the whole it's the whole thing we have um

  401. maybe 10 to 10 to 25 percent that are zero to 100 we have another maybe 20 20 that are um 100 to 250

  402. we okay we've got um we've got uh yeah so there's a significant number that's less than 250.

  403. you know you yeah low numbers what you just said would be 25 so but just a significant like and and

  404. i love the fact you know a small church a small church is going to appreciate the multiplication

  405. aspect of this that they're using a traffic cop to communicate and get the appropriate information to

  406. the appropriate people at the appropriate time and so i love the fact that some small churches are even

  407. exploring this there's benefit to big churches but you know i could see something like this um

  408. making a drastic difference in in churches in in a small church you know i can tell you historically

  409. in my life small churches have been very hard the ones that i've worked for worked with the ones i've

  410. attended it's been very hard to communicate because if the vision is all stuck in one person's head

  411. they're overwhelmed and they don't have the capacity to to communicate or send out the emails or

  412. in things and so having you know that ai multiplied that to to communicate generally

  413. and to to route specifically as needed um man that's that's that's a whole other vision for me

  414. i hadn't even gotten to that place yet that's really cool yeah it's it's pretty much all

  415. you know small churches to medium to to large church that are using it and different ones i got a

  416. small church that they're bilingual so they love how their church members can come and speak in spanish

  417. and then the ai can speak up to 50 plus languages respond in their native tongue um which is great

  418. also for like our i know we got people who are doing missions like all over the world who are watching

  419. right now um they they love that aspect and uh yeah it's it helps it helps both they have different kind of

  420. things that the ai can really help in both both of those situations so i mean let's let's say this um i

  421. i am i'm very excited uh about what you're doing um the website is useful for a percentage of of people

  422. getting it into an asynchronous community via api is going to be uh is going to be a uh a big change uh

  423. a big emphasis a big opportunities uh for for uh our people and so you know we're going to we're

  424. going to help we're going to work with with live ai uh in in this season to to try to figure out how to

  425. get it um into uh in asynchronous communities into the api level uh and we'll make it you know available

  426. for churches and others to to benefit outside as well because it's not about hiding tools but but

  427. giving it and so man i love i love the work that you're you're doing here it's just exciting um i know

  428. that there was uh there was a some tools uh that we were going to talk about on it you know just looking

  429. at the time we may not have too much time but if you just want to highlight it maybe share some of

  430. the urls uh for the audience yeah dig into on the flip side that that might be a good thing just to wrap

  431. up here yeah would love to so first thing i would love to share out is if you go to live ai

  432. dot co forward slash 42 um these are the 42 questions that every church website should answer

  433. and so this is whether or not you want to kind of help um add these to your website faq or even just

  434. to help equip your team like i know a lot of leaders who are like man there's some questions

  435. that if my team answered this i would be afraid of how they would answer it you can use this to

  436. help train them or and again you can train the ai on all these things things like by the way this

  437. comes from you know like we said those 50 000 messages the questions that people are asking but

  438. also even some of the questions that some churches are answering on their website and most of them are

  439. not but like you know where are you located you know that kind of needs to get answered or like

  440. oh do i need to give money during service and so putting out here and like even answering like some

  441. deep deep questions like you know what happens if i doubt you know does that mean that i don't have

  442. enough faith so being able to help like train your staff but also you can just copy this um you can

  443. use this for yourself but you also can just um have your live ai be trained on that right away and i

  444. think it's just kind of cool too that the uh uh it ended up being 42 because as you know in the

  445. one movie that that's the answer of life right the meaning of life is 42 is it 42 i thought it was 37

  446. and i never i never i don't i don't i'm british humor i don't get my daughter loves that stuff i don't so

  447. that's funny yeah well one one other real quick one too if you go to live ai.co forward slash sermon

  448. dash resources um this is going to be open where you can paste in your youtube url i mean your youtube

  449. transcript and it'll actually generate resources for you um such as uh the um the summary of your sermon

  450. five discussion questions and and this is all free by the way so you can you can go on there and you

  451. can do that and you can also use this to help train your ai on basically the summary of your sermons

  452. message and then lastly just to make this available to everyone um if you go to live ai.co forward slash

  453. digital dash missionary um you can actually get an extended 30-day free trial and also get 10% off

  454. um of uh of your thing so there's no risk at all no credit credit card required you can put it on your

  455. website try it out and you can also even schedule a demo i'd love to meet with anybody watching this

  456. um either right after this um or even just schedule a demo if you're watching this in the future

  457. um would love to just uh help answer all the questions you have about ai and ministry and

  458. that kind of stuff so again that's uh yeah digital dash missionary live ai.co

  459. slash digital hyphen missionary and so uh 30-day extended free trial uh 10% off that's that's

  460. that's a great deal and so eric man thanks for jumping on the the stream with us eric and uh live ai

  461. where it was a sponsor of uh the digital missionary conference back in april and excited to see him

  462. even with this offer here continue to support digital missionaries out there and the work they're doing

  463. globally and you said i didn't ask this question earlier 50 languages or so that your ai can can speak

  464. naturally and so uh it's a great opportunity even as we're you know obviously working with with people

  465. at the the global level uh and so excited to see i mean honestly straight up i'm excited to see uh

  466. already what this beta looks like six eight months into existence and um really looking forward to what

  467. the future holds uh for for live ai and and beyond so man eric thanks for jumping on on the stream here

  468. as we're we're wrapping up in any any closing thoughts yeah just thanks for having me jeff i'm

  469. a super big believer in what you guys are doing um at the church digital so uh keep going i'm with you

  470. guys in a way that i can collaborate and help be a part of this movement of helping the global church

  471. uh to do this i am here all for and so yeah consider me a resource not only to you jeff but your team

  472. and anybody watching this uh um um would love to help anybody figure out how to how to how to reach

  473. the world digitally and not just digitally but you know we've got to have those physical

  474. you know things as far as i can tell we can't use ai to lay hands on people and so but that's the only

  475. other thing i could think that can't happen necessarily digitally but so i just want to um

  476. just say i'm honored to have this conversation with you and and uh to be here today love what you guys

  477. love it yeah we're gonna we're gonna keep pushing the limits as far as we can digitally and excited to

  478. have tools like live ai out there helping us as digital missionaries do what we're doing and so

  479. for that eric once again thanks for for jumping on the stream but we're gonna wrap um i have no idea

  480. what my next stream is gonna be gotta squeeze it in because i'm going on vacation next week but

  481. until then uh we're gonna close for eric this with live ai this is uh jeff at the church digital

  482. thanks for hanging out with us today and we'll see you next time on the stream y'all have a good one

  483. bye