EP373: GTA 6, Dating AI, and the Loneliest Job in Ministry

Episode 373 opens with bad timing and good humor. Jeff booked a 2pm Wednesday stream and Apple scheduled its foldable iPhone announcement on top of it, on the same week a sprinkler repair cut the fiber to his house and left him offline for three days. It is a solo, unscripted hour from a ten-by-ten guest bedroom in Miami. The first real turn is GTA 6. Miami is renaming itself Vice City for the launch, and the new game lets players date a character powered by AI: texting, holding hands, planning dates. Jeff's line is that digital relationships can be just as damaging as physical ones, and that the church is quick to believe that and slow to believe digital can be restorative. Then the provocation: there needs to be mission work done in the GTAs of the world, the same way people are called to inner-city Miami. If someone wants to plant a church in GTA, he will sign on the dotted line. The title comes from a conversation with Dr. Sam Hayes about a fall conference Jeff has decided not to hold. What he senses instead is a moment for pastoral care: digital missionaries in a season of strife, frustration and persecution from inside and outside the church. He calls it probably the loneliest job in church ministry, and names how easy isolation has become, especially with AI doing more of the work. His answer is to give God the failures as well as the glory. The last third is a case study. A Miami church plant launching its mobile app the night of the stream, whose pastor trusted Jeff only after months of solving the problems he actually had, first production and then the unglamorous digital work. Now people arrive at the guest center because ChatGPT, Instagram or a blog sent them. His conviction for 2026: the number one thing you can do for a physical church is help it get people into the building using digital, with AI making work possible that no church that size could otherwise afford. Full episode page — transcript, chapters, and the live chat alongside it: https://thechurch.digital/shows/becoming-thechurch-digital/ep373-the-loneliest-job-in-ministry/ Going deeper: What is a digital missionary? https://thechurch.digital/guides/what-is-a-digital-missionary/ Caring for online pastors: https://thechurch.digital/guides/online-pastor-care/ Hybrid church: https://thechurch.digital/guides/hybrid-church/ AI for churches: https://thechurch.digital/guides/ai-for-churches/ CHAPTERS 00:00 A foldable iPhone and three days offline 09:55 Released, and what comes next 15:58 Miami becomes Vice City 17:06 Dating an AI in GTA 6 22:53 Mission work in the GTAs of the world 25:06 The loneliest job in ministry 29:51 Giving God the failures too 37:51 A year of earning one church's trust 48:55 Digital gets people in the building 51:46 Why AI makes it possible ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JOIN THE FAM 💬 Discord — https://discord.thechurch.digital/ 📱 WhatsApp — https://whatsapp.thechurch.digital/ MORE FROM THECHURCH.DIGITAL 🌐 Website — https://thechurch.digital 📺 Subscribe — https://www.youtube.com/@bethechurchdigital FOLLOW Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/bethechurchdigital/ Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/bethechurchdigital ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ theChurch.digital exists to empower the rest of us to make disciples. Beyond the building. The great commission, but digital. #DigitalMinistry #DigitalMissionary #ChurchOnline #BecomingTheChurchDigital #DisciplesMaking #ChurchTech Full notes, chat and shorts: https://thechurch.digital/373