Can AI truly transform the way ministry operates within the church? Join us on this thought-provoking episode of Lead Time Hot Topic Friday! We uncover the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence in ministry alongside my good friend Matt Engel. We dive into the many facets of AI integration, from streamlining administrative tasks like email management and chatbots to enriching sermon content and crafting impactful social media snippets. But it's not all about efficiency; we stress the crucial importance of maintaining human connections and community engagement. We argue that AI should serve as a tool to enhance, not replace, the personal touch that is essential in ministry.
We also tackle the broader implications of AI for church leadership and governance. How can we ensure that these advanced technologies align with our theological traditions and ethical standards? Matt and I discuss the necessity of a solid theological framework and the role of church leaders in the thoughtful implementation of AI tools. Moreover, we reflect on historical shifts in technology, such as the advent of spreadsheets in finance, drawing parallels to today’s AI revolution. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and faith, offering rich insights for church leaders and communities navigating the evolving landscape of AI.
Visit uniteleadership.org
Can AI truly transform the way ministry operates within the church? Join us on this thought-provoking episode of Lead Time Hot Topic Friday! We uncover the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence in ministry alongside my good friend Matt Engel. We dive into the many facets of AI integration, from streamlining administrative tasks like email management and chatbots to enriching sermon content and crafting impactful social media snippets. But it's not all about efficiency; we stress the crucial importance of maintaining human connections and community engagement. We argue that AI should serve as a tool to enhance, not replace, the personal touch that is essential in ministry.
We also tackle the broader implications of AI for church leadership and governance. How can we ensure that these advanced technologies align with our theological traditions and ethical standards? Matt and I discuss the necessity of a solid theological framework and the role of church leaders in the thoughtful implementation of AI tools. Moreover, we reflect on historical shifts in technology, such as the advent of spreadsheets in finance, drawing parallels to today’s AI revolution. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and faith, offering rich insights for church leaders and communities navigating the evolving landscape of AI.
Visit uniteleadership.org
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Well, hello friends. This is Lead Time Hot Topics. I'm your host today, Jack Kalleberg, and I'm here with a dear friend, Matt Engel, who's a good friend I've known for several years now, and we're going to be having a wonderful conversation about technology and AI and the impact on ministry. So, Matt, it's great to have you here today. It's great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2:This is going to be fun so our first topic is about artificial intelligence, and you know, ai very soon is going to become ubiquitous and it's already being used, probably in ways that we don't even know about it. Right, I just signed up for a service to help me with my email, to get my email cleaned up, and it's like wow, this is actually working way better than I thought. So it's going to be so common that it's going to be. I imagine it won't be long before we can't even imagine what it's like to not have it anymore, just like we can't imagine what it'd be like to not search Google, right?
Speaker 3:So let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:There's going to be pros and cons. I think that's the key thing that we can say. So let's try and unpack that from a ministry perspective. What do we think could be the pros? Where do we think the pitfalls might be? Let's unpack that right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I look at this as AI has been around for a while, right, and I say a while, probably within the last three to four years. We've been playing with it in churches, right, probably in the last two and a half. And I would say there's this euphoria on every. A mentor of mine likes to say everybody falls in love with the front end of the puppy, but like a you know, like a puppy, they have back ends too and they, they, they can make messes. You know, unintended consequences.
Speaker 3:Right, I think there was this right Right, especially in our case, when we locked two puppies into a laundry room and it didn't go well, they so.
Speaker 3:So this idea that we all fell in love with the front end when AI just kind of has come out right and churches did the same thing, I would argue they was like man, it's going to help me with all of these things. And what we're seeing now is sort of this yes, there are positives, and I would agree with you, it is going to be very similar as a Google. I think it's actually going to replace Google, because it's not going to be a list of links that I have to go to. It's going to be a curated list that comes to me. I don't even have to leave a tab anymore, right, and so I do see there's net benefits the, the, the, the, the.
Speaker 3:The back end of the puppy, though, is that I saw a lot of us run out, start working with the front end, and then it was like oh well, what? What's our theological approach to this? Like, what's the ethical side of this? What's, what's? What's a healthy leadership model for this? And that's where I see a big, a healthy, good pause to say, okay, like it should cause church leaders to have the conversation. What do we think about the imago dei, right, the image of god like we are created in the image of god and we are to have dominion over certain things, according to Genesis 1, 26, 127. It's like you know. So in this instance, it's not replacing people. People still need to have dominion over it, so it shouldn't be just you know, release and let everybody run and we'll be fine. I actually think that this has been a good marker for us to stop and say, hey, let's just get all on the same page. Let's not necessarily talk good or bad, that's always. Technology is a dumb. It has no emotion. Technology is dumb.
Speaker 2:It's the smartest of how you use it. It's the end user.
Speaker 3:Right. And so for us, for me, what I've seen churches start to do is, hey, let's stop here. We know it's there, we know what we've done and we know what we can do with it, but let's make sure that we're all on the same page by putting this on a piece of paper that says, hey, this is the page view of this. How do we ethically use this and how do we remind ourselves that we church people are in the quote-unquote business of helping people grow and bump into Jesus and then be more Christ-like, et cetera, et cetera. And you can't do that when you pull people out and sort of reintegrate or reintermediate sort of a technology to replace people. That's not what scripture says.
Speaker 2:One downside I can think of right off the bat is if you're relying on AI to have conversations with people, it is very possible for that AI to have conversations in a direction that you didn't intend it to do.
Speaker 3:Exactly. The large language models have not yet been built to support. There's a few out there I shouldn't say it that way but most of them that are being used right now don't have a faith back end. It is very much, hey, here's what's in. Data is available and I'm just going to kind of do it, and so I agree it should not replace people, it should further drive people together. That's the gap that I have. It's like, hey, if you want to use an AI bot on your web page that says when is church and where is it located, et cetera, et cetera, no problem. That is actually sitting in the gap between bringing somebody who would like to come to your church to the church.
Speaker 2:Who do I talk to about a certain thing, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, that I understand. But if we went so far as to pull people out of the equation and replace it with AI, I think that that's where we get a little sideways.
Speaker 2:Have you seen that happen already in churches where you have Without naming names? Could you kind of describe generally what you saw?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean they were using a texting platform that was using.
Speaker 3:AI and it didn't have sort of a faith LLM, a large language model. It didn't have that as the back end. It didn't have that as the back end. So some of the things that it was spitting out were probably not the most gospel-honoring, centric type of verbiage that we would use. And so, again, that church basically pushed pause and was like, hey, okay, we learned something here. It wasn't. They didn't view it as a negative, they viewed it as a learning opportunity. That's good. And that's kind of our posture, as you know. I mean, we're very much into like, let's experiment and let's remember no lives will be lost by experimenting. But also let's reconcile that with what we just learned and said, okay, yeah, we just learned something, let's back this up and let's reconcile that with what we just learned and said, okay, yeah, we just learned something, let's back this up and let's tweak it, let's go.
Speaker 2:That's the caution. But what about on the positive side, like where do you see the potential of amplifying ministry?
Speaker 3:Yeah so I've been saying it this way is there's the ability to sort of decouple tasks. So let me start over. Let me say this Every church that I know has a goal of what they're trying to do within the year. Right Within that goal, there are strategies to accomplish the goal within that year, and of that strategy make up a boatload of tasks that need to be done that accomplish, that execute the strategy that then can accomplish the goal. What I'm helping churches kind of focus on is like, hey, we're not replacing the goal and we're not really replacing the strategy. That's still a human component. But we are offsetting some tasks and saying, hey, I don, I don't need to do this Excel file manipulation and spend three days looking at it. I can pop it into an AI tool. It can analyze it in 30 seconds and spit back to me what it would have taken me three days.
Speaker 3:Again that task, exactly that task absolutely can be outsourced to AI, right, and we should be okay with that task Now again notice.
Speaker 1:I didn't say the person.
Speaker 3:There is still a human component that needs to fulfill the task, to solve the strategy or to implement the strategy to hopefully solve the goal. So that's kind of how I'm seeing the best usage of is okay, let's break things down into the tasks and sort of create momentum with yep AI can do that. Yep AI. I mean, I still see and I'm shocked and again, I love the local church, but it's like, yeah, there's tools out there that now exponentially do a better job at spellcheck, right.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Exponentially make it sound a little bit more empathetic, right and better than a human. And you want that Like. There are emails that we craft that we're sitting there writing out going. Man, I am with you, I am praying for you. I know it stinks that you just lost your husband or your wife or a child or grandparent, whatever. And we want it to sound very empathetic because that's what we're feeling. But let's face it, not all of us got our PhD in literature. In English I taught at the third grade level.
Speaker 2:I'll be the first to admit it. I think I spell at the third grade level.
Speaker 3:according to my team grade level, I'll be the first thing I spell at the third grade level according to my, according to my team, right, exactly, I'm like well, I, I think I remember somewhere saying if you get the, the first letter, and the last letter the same that's right you're okay, don't figure it out, it's my shorthand. So so it's things like that. That like man. What a powerful way that we can use technology to support and reinforce what we're trying to do in ministry.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful. Yeah, Like I said, I think like small churches on limited budgets, all of a sudden you know like, hey, I'm a pastor, but I need an assistant. That's expensive. There may be less expensive ways to get the sort of assistance that you need to do for scheduling. And, like I said earlier in the recording that I'm using an email assistant and I'm like I'm just experimenting with it right now, but it's looked at thousands and thousands of my emails and it knows my voice and it doesn't send anything unless I say yes, but I'm shocked with how well it writes something that would be similar to like what I would write and it saves me a ton of time and I'm still in the driving seat because I have to say, yes, I agree to that message, right.
Speaker 3:And I think you hit it on the head right there is if the plus side that you gain is time, and then it's what we do with that time. I am solely convinced that our job is to continue to help the saints do ministry as church leaders Right. And so if I can gain a little bit more margin and time to get at that core function, like I don't see in scripture where it says you know, my core job as the executive director of the church is to, you know, answer emails and do fill in the blank, I see that our job in scripture is to equip the same to do ministry, and so if I can gain margin to do that even more, count me in all day long.
Speaker 2:So that brings us into our next topic. Let's say you're a small church, You're new to using technology and AI, Maybe you're a startup and you've got a mix of competencies and so, hey, we need to make some early wins. What would be some early wins? Early easier use cases using AI technology tools to become productive, let's say, in a small church.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So I think I've seen sort of the quick run toward right. It's hey, you can take your sermon and I'll give you a real example. It's like when I would prepare a sermon I'd have like eight pages of notes and I truncate that down into probably two or three pages for my you know, 35, 45, 50-minute sermon that I would preach on a weekend and most of that content would then go on the shelf. It was never used again. Right now.
Speaker 3:Now you can take AI and actually stretch out the experience for people saying, hey, here's some things that didn't make it into the sermon but helped inform what it is. I just caught on and if you want to know more, you know here are some things that you can go dive into. That's tremendous value that we can provide for the congregation and the community people and the community members. So like, that's an easy one. The other one is that that is out and about and there's a ton of different companies that are doing it right now is is taking your sermon, chopping it up and then making it usable for social media. It's like, hey, we're going to.
Speaker 3:You know, out of my 45-minute sermon there were three things that I said that were really profound, and so it can look at that and chop that up and make that massively useful for your social media for that week. Great, I don't see any any problem with it. So those are kind of the easy ones that I would say. Any size church now doesn't have to have a creative team, they don't have to have even a social media person with they. If I know a church up in New York um, uh, that it was taking it was taking him about three hours to go through the same thing, chop it up, put it into a package and then put it out to his social media channels. For the church up in New York they run about 65, 70 people on a weekend and he's like Matt. I can do the exact same thing now in less than five seconds, and then it takes me now about five minutes to do the same upload, but the bulk of the time was having to chop everything up.
Speaker 2:So you've recovered three hours from ministry All of that work.
Speaker 3:And that's how that's exactly. He's like Matt, I have three extra. I've gained three more hours to go visit people in the hospital, to, to, to pour into a new couple that's getting married, that's going through premarital, and I've gained that margin back where it used to be. Man, you know, and he even said he's like and, if I'm honest, I didn't really want to do the premarital counseling, but I knew it was the right thing. But then it's cutting into my Saturday and that's my Sabbath, because I'm preaching on Sunday, you know. So he's like I gained three hours. I can now do three different couples premarital counseling Boom, boom, boom, where I wasn't able to in the past.
Speaker 2:And I'm like you won. And it probably, if it knows what it's doing, it could probably find, like you said, those snippets, maybe even do a better job on the output of it If it's trained well, right.
Speaker 3:And that's the key is like a lot of these things are being trained, and I know and I know the pastor well enough to know it probably is. It's not a knock, but he was not one of our most technologically advanced pastors, so so, all that to say, though, so those are probably the easier ones. One that I think is super cool for any size church, because, I would argue, the majority of churches have some sort of missions type approach and they're looking to reach others across the world. It's sort of the, you know, go to the ends of the world in Matthew that we're commanded to do, and the thing that I really like is that we've been able to now accelerate the translation layer of our communicators and our pastors. I mean, we're doing it now at Eclipse that we haven't been able to even reconcile new members class, translating it into the scripture, where their missionary is that they're supporting as a church overseas, and saying, hey, here's this already packaged up and translated for you.
Speaker 3:I mean it is so fascinating how, how expansive the gospel can be done now through some, some of these tools that I'm like man, that's powerful, that's really really cool.
Speaker 3:So those are a couple of things Easy on the what I would say the external side, the internal operational side, that I see that are easy wins that don't take a lot. We kind of already touched on but the scheduling of things and the documentation of notes in Zoom, right, and oh, what were those calls to action? Well, now AI can actually build that out for you. Everybody gets the notes and everybody then knows what to do versus and we're all working on the same document, versus having somebody where it's like, oh well, I took the note this way and my call to action it does that for you. So that, and then, besides the editing and the email and some of those operational structures that are required, those are just game changers, but those aren't as fun and as sexy to our pastors because they're like, well, that I have to do, you know, the external missions thing or sermons and that type of stuff. That's sort of the fun stuff.
Speaker 3:But I like the efficiencies that are gained on the inside of the operation.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm just going to kind of mention it this way. This is a little bit of a like a bigger issue for society. There's going to be a lot of jobs that are going to look very different in the future because of AI. And I remember, I remember, I remember.
Speaker 3:I'm a finance guy.
Speaker 2:I'm like my degrees in finance Right and I became very valuable because I was amazing at spreadsheets. So I was like you know, I'm like like way up there in terms of like I can nail spreadsheets in ways like just cause I would nerd it out on him and geeked out on him, so like kind, a very techie kind of guy, but also understood the finance theory and it was fascinating for me to hear the history of spreadsheets Back in the day. The reason it's called a spreadsheet is because people had these gigantic pieces of paper called a spreadsheet. It was grid paper.
Speaker 2:And if you were an accountant, you worked on these gigantic pieces of paper with a pencil and an eraser to keep track of things and that it would like. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed in these jobs, and then they came up with the electronic spreadsheet and all these people lost their jobs because you didn't need. It was like a, it was like a data entry thing on a gigantic piece of paper and all of a sudden, the spreadsheet did it. And so then, like what the title of accountant became? It became a different job, like the, the fundamental role of what that even was became a different thing.
Speaker 2:There was a huge change in the market for the jobs. It was smaller but like way more sophisticated, ultimately created a whole new industry for people to get into the finance industry right, and I think that's what we're going to be, looking at with AI, even in the church. Right, Even the job of your communications director is going to change dramatically, right?
Speaker 3:I agree, and I mean even layering onto that. I totally agree and one of the.
Speaker 3:I think this gets back to something that a lot of the churches that we've been working with and you guys and others that have been embracing the idea that, as staff, our job is to develop people. Yes, we have a communications director title, no problem there. But at the abstract level, that communications director's job is actually to develop people, equip the same to do ministry. So, if I can, if I can, as if we can, as church leaders, reconcile the fact that, yeah, that title was never their actual job, it was just something that we didn't know how to compartmentalize. So we're like well, we need people to do communications, so you do communications. No, biblically, their job is to equip the same to do ministry.
Speaker 3:Therefore, yes, I'm going to argue that your communications pastor is probably going to at least in my, in my brain of what we're seeing emerge in church. Your communications director is going to be shifting their, their actual functional things that they do day to day into moving more toward developing people. They're going to be shifting their actual functional things that they do day to day into moving more toward developing people. They're going to be pastoring people. They're going to be doing hospital visits. They're going to be doing premarital. They're going to be doing pastoral work because, yeah, I can outsource a lot of your job to AI and I don't need a 40-hour person to do that when.
Speaker 2:I can actually freeze people up to think more strategically about it If it's not in the day to day grind of the task. That's needed to be done Right.
Speaker 3:Agreed. So there's a great potential. Yes, and I think the safest place actually for this is actually getting us back to what Scripture really does say about it. It's like no, I just think that our job is to equip them. And if I can get that communications, all those tasks to accomplish that strategy, to meet that goal, done in 10 hours versus 45. And I've gained 35 hours of margin to do what I think is actually biblical all day long, sign me up. But it will cause people that we've hired to have a reconciliation. We're already seeing that where people are like well, that's not what I really said, that's not really what I signed up for, I'm not that person, I'm not that Well, either we train you and level you up in it or we find you a new, a new, a new spot and it might not be on the bus.
Speaker 2:So let's get into our kind of our third topic here. We we've already talked about some of the risks, how it can go right, how it can go wrong. What can a church do? I'm going to I'm going to broaden it a little bit A church, but also, like church workers, professionals, because I think we have to look at the institution and we also have to look at yourself as the ministry worker. What do we do to put in safeguards? And then what do we do to prepare, because this is coming no matter what. So let's dig into that, let's talk about the safeguards first, and then we can kind of finish it off with preparation. But basically, like this is coming, yeah, and it's kind of like one of those things you know, uh, you're either on the bus or you're getting run over by the bus. I mean it's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be. This is the reality.
Speaker 3:It just went by the bright light?
Speaker 3:no it was a train and it was coming and it was going away. Yeah, so I think, from the safeguard perspective, I think the first thing that I would be doing if you don't already have it is I would be working with your team. I don't think this is a lead pastor function. I actually think it's an experience the lead pastor brings through their whole team. However their governance structure works. It could be the elder board, it could be your teams. If you're a smaller church, you don't have anybody who's probably your elder board. But I think, like I said, a mentor of mine always tells me he's like Matt, if you want me to be on the same page with you, put it on a page. So I think, first things first, we need to get on paper our theological view of scripture and reconcile that with with all the, all the theology and all the you know the term is the theological anthropology of this and reconcile that to these tools.
Speaker 3:So I think that's probably number one is hey, before you go out and buy the subscription to whatever to help you do that thing that you're being sold, I'm not telling you not to buy it, but I am telling you we should probably have some sort of theological approach and ethical approach and then a leadership approach that governs our use of, maybe AI, but it could even be one layer up that says technology.
Speaker 2:So let's pause on that real quick because.
Speaker 2:I think people really need to grasp that kind of what you said putting things on paper because there's so much diversity of Christianity in America. I'm a Lutheran. I come from a Lutheran background. We very, very want to make sure that we are honoring our theological tradition when we're using AI tools and that we're not. We don't have a tool out there that's saying things that would be inconsistent with how we would say things, and I would say if you're a different tradition, then you should be doing the same thing for your tradition as well, like you should have the integrity you know. This is what we believe.
Speaker 2:We want to make sure we're using the tool that has integrity to what we believe and don't just put that on autopilot and just assume that it knows enough to deal with these kinds of issues Right and well, I want to pause on that real quick because I've used AI a lot to write content right now and I've had to be very, very, very conscious about priming the pump, saying, hey, I'm writing this from a confessional Lutheran perspective and it needs to be consistent with that. And I've gotten into arguments with AI right about topics and stuff like that, and you have to know your own theology well enough to know that that, that it could be, slipping things in there that you didn't intend it to slip in there, right?
Speaker 3:that that's right. I I think that that that to me is is the, that's the back end of the puppy. This is the work to do that nobody really talks about. When you're being sold and being bombarded with, this can do this and it can do that, and it can do when you're being sold and being bombarded with, this can do this and it can do that, and it can do a PowerPoint for you and it can convert. You know, like all of those things, yes, but before we get there, let's at least make sure our teams, our church body, our governing board, are on board with our perspectives of how we leverage AI, technology, et cetera, in this construct, because I would argue, a lot of us haven't had this conversation, but we're all probably using technology in some fashion. We've just kind of done it blindly. Here's a moment where this is a game changer. I mean, this has that level of implications for good and bad. No-transcript, less time. So they have capacity. Let's make sure they're equipped with a document that says hey, this is how we view AI and technology and according to scripture and our traditions, how we view AI and technology and according to scripture and our traditions. This is what we need and that will clear up a truckload of pain on the backside. And then the other.
Speaker 3:The other piece that is tied to this is then transparency, transparency, transparency. Just be transparent as soon as you. It reminds me of the old academic days I'm. You know, it's like just cite your source. That's it Like quit, pretending that you're the smartest person in the room and that you came up with this profound idea. No, you didn't Like just cite, just cite, just be transparent, so that you don't get into a bind of you know well, was this AI generated or was this you? Right? Like I would just rather be transparent. So those would probably be the two, those two things, I think, will help safeguard what we're talking about. But it does take. This is like the elbow grease it takes work.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:It's easy to spend 20 bucks a month to fall in love with the front end of the puppy. It's easy to spend 20 bucks a month to fall in love with the front end of the puppy, but I'm telling you the back end. Without having that document and some sort of transparency motion, you're liable to end up in a conversation with your team or others. Well, I didn't know that we couldn't do this image.
Speaker 2:And what is that image even of? And yeah, I think in some ways you're almost laying out a case why it's going to be so important for churches to really um, let's put it this way, don't delegate your theology to ai like really know your theology, know it really really well, and so there may be, uh, and a greater need for people that have, like academically, really understood the root and core of why you believe what you believe and can argue and can argue with an. Ai.
Speaker 3:It's like I think I think you know there might be a pathway where seminaries and others should be licking their chops, going like we've got to get a flood of people, because there are probably people out there that are not as theologically sound as they should be, and it's like, oh wait, that comment's in the wrong spot. Oh, I didn't know that. You know, biblically it reminds me of the story of Babel, right? And it's hey, our leader's off, we don't know where. We're going to kind of make up some stuff and we're going to do some stuff and all of a sudden we've got this thing and our leader comes back on.
Speaker 3:What are you doing Right? I think that's sort of that same thing. We can fall in love with the front end of the puppy, but the puppy has a back end, and I think we just need to be really diligent. Again, not good or bad, technology has no opinion, it's the user, and so we just need that foundational layer to help inform the rest of the structure of the church to how we want to think about things and where does technology fit? And we're not really replacing people with a machine. We're actually looking for the machine to re-intermediate people together. That's biblical right and things like that. That that will get there, but you don't get there.
Speaker 2:I mean again, you don't get there if it's not on the page, so that's the institution. Any kind of like final parting words for individuals. We're getting right at the tail end here. We got maybe a minute.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I go back to Micah 6.8, honestly, with any type of thing that hits the church, like AI, it's how can we do justice, love, mercy, walk humbly with God? How can we do justice, love, mercy, walk humbly with God, like, if I can, if I can bring that lens into these new things that are happening, great, then then again I feel like we're postured in the right right position. But but yeah, those, those would be my, my kind of observations of what I've seen, who's doing what, what we've learned and what to potentially avoid and how to. We've paid a lot of dumb tax, so maybe this is helpful for some people out there.
Speaker 2:Well, folks, this wraps up our conversation. This has been our Hot Topics. Matt, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. I'm looking forward to chatting again with you soon and enjoy the lovely weather up in. Happy Jack, I'm so jealous of you right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, we will.
Speaker 1:Friends take care and, god bless, have a wonderful day. You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.