As part of my summer reading plan, I dove into Charles Spurgeon’s All of Grace. I have not read a ton of Spurgeon’s books, but this one rocketed to the top of what I have read. All of Grace – if I can make this comparison – was Gentle and Lowly before Gentle and Lowly was cool. It is a refreshing drink of water, an encouraging kick in the britches, an attempt by the Prince of Preachers to cup your face in his hands and turn your head towards Jesus.

And…it’s remarkably brief. My Kindle version clocked in at just over 100 pages.

Buy it. Download it. Read it. You’ll be glad you did.

Here are my top ten favorite quotes:

• He makes those just who are unjust, forgives those who deserve to be punished, and favors those who deserve no favor.

• To make him just who is just is no work for God – that were a labor for a fool; but to make him just who is unjust – that is work for infinite love and mercy.

• …come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. Come to Jesus just as you are, leprous, filthy, naked, neither fit to live nor fit to die. Come, you that are the very sweepings of creation; come, though you hardly dare to hope for anything but death. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your bosom like a horrible nightmare. Come and ask the Lord to justify another ungodly one. Why should He not? Come for this great mercy of God is meant for such as you are.

• Think more of Him to whom you look than of the look itself. You must look away even from your own looking, and see nothing but Jesus, and the grace of God revealed in Him.

• Unbelief and despair are sins, and therefore I do not see how they can be constituent elements of acceptable repentance; yet there are many who regard them as necessary parts of true Christian experience. They are in great error.

• However pure our tears, there will always be some dirt in them: there will be something to be repented of even in our best repentance.

• A man might as well hope to fight a swarm of flies with a sword as to master his own thoughts when they are set on by the devil.

• If you look to Christ for your beginnings, beware of looking to yourself for your endings.

• Christ and the believing sinner are in the same boat: unless Jesus sinks, the believer will never drown.

• Let Jesus be your all in all, and let free grace be the one line in which you live and move.

Order All of Grace:

See all posts in the Top Ten Quotes series.

Disclaimer: FTC watchdogs will probably want you to know that the authors represented did not ask for this endorsement, nor did they provide me with free swag in order to do so (unless specifically mentioned otherwise). I’m just a really satisfied customer who wants to let you know where you can get some great products. So there. Further, if you order a resource from a link on any “Top Ten Quotes” page, I may receive a small affiliate commission from Amazon. If that bugs you, feel free to bypass my link and buy from a vendor of your choice. But still: buy it. I only promote books that have benefitted me and that I believe will benefit you.

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If you live in (or are connected to) the world of church hospitality, you don’t need me to tell you that can be a challenging space. What we do is broad: intersecting with lots of areas of the church. It’s sometimes poorly defined: we can’t necessarily describe what we do, so why should our lead pastors or congregants be able to? But mostly, it can be isolating: the hats we wear are somewhat unique, and it can feel like we’re solving problems in a silo.

That’s why the Connections Confab exists. Since 2015, I’ve gathered a deliberately small group of leaders around a common table. We dive in head first to topics that matter…conversations that challenge what we think about when we think about our roles…and along the way, we build an irreplaceable band of brothers and sisters to keep the motivation going.

The 2027 Confab kicks off in February, and applications are now open.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Confab is a three-session, on-site networking group that will take place in spring 2027. We go deep (really deep) on topics that are important (really important) to your ministry. You get an all-access backstage pass to the ins and outs of what we’ve learned (and what we avoid) at the Summit.
  
  
• Confab gatherings are two days each: February 17-18, April 11-12, and June 2-3. All other details for next spring can be found in this handy Confab overview.
  
  
• Confab is built around relationships. That’s why we gather three separate times over the course of five months, and why we ask you to commit to all gatherings.
  
  
• You can now apply to be a part of the Confab. Because we intentionally keep it small – think 15 or fewer – our application monkeys will go over your info with a fine-toothed comb and let you know the results by mid-December (so exciting!).
  
  
• If your application is approved, I’ll send you a link to officially register and pay. The Confab’s cost is $1,500 for three on-site meetings. (Similar coaching networks can cost upwards of three times as much, so you get a ton of proverbial bang for your buck.)
  
  
• All applications are due by December 3, 2026.
  
  

Confab is designed for church leaders who oversee guest services, connections, hospitality, or other ministries that shape the guest experience. If you have specific questions on whether this is a good investment of your time or budget. I’m happy to talk…let’s set up a time!

View the 2027 Confab overview.

Apply for the 2027 Confab today!

The Q:

How do you create and maintain team buy-in / morale when you have only a few new guests each month?

[Question submitted in a recent One-Day Workshop]

The A:

This is a great question, because it separates two similar – yet distinctively different – situations:

Momentum is a bit like capturing lightning in a bottle. Momentum can come naturally when there’s a new initiative, a new leader, or an unusually-heavy stream of guests. But momentum can mask all sorts of underlying issues, including that of morale.

Morale is a different animal. It represents your team’s unified purpose and enthusiasm to pursue that purpose. You can have high momentum and low morale…an incredibly busy Sunday where people are still just going through the motions.

But leading a guest services team when there’s little momentum is like navigating a boat in shallow waters: the rocks and stumps of boredom and lack of vision make themselves known, and it’s all too easy to bottom out.

Here are four ways to upgrade morale…even when momentum is low:

1. Always elevate the why.

We’ve talked before about our second plumb line: The Why is more important than the What. That represents my firm belief that (a) our people want to do a good job, but (b) a detailed job description can be more restrictive than inspirational.

Rather than lock a team into what they’re supposed to do, let’s lead them to remember why they are doing it: a good guest services team is clearing the path for the gospel to be clearly heard. We’re batting down every distraction that might complete with that vital message.

2. Remember that first impressions isn’t just for first timers.

I get that a Guest Services Team with few guests feels like a let down (if not a complete waste of time). But that assumes that our sole purpose is to serve first-time guests.

Yes, FTGs should be the category for whom the system is most intentionally designed, but they’re certainly not our only category. We should seek to treat every person that walks onto our property as an honored guest. We should open the door for the newcomer as well as the chairman of deacons. We should greet the charter member with as much joy as we would a stranger.

3. Realize that inactivity doesn’t equal inadequacy.

If we’re talking about morale, it can be demoralizing to make it through a Sunday at the first-time guest tent with nary a first-time guest. It can make us wonder if it’s all a waste of time, and if resources could be deployed in other directions.

But reverse that thought process for a moment: put yourselves in the shoes of a first-time guest. That tent can be a beacon of hope, clarity, and welcome for you. If you’re a tent volunteer, it can mean that you’ve waited a week or two without being put into action. If you’re the newcomer, that tent volunteer is exactly who you wanted (needed!) to see.

4. View your team as a culture creator.

Let’s Field of Dreams this process just a bit. “If you build it, they will come” may sound more like prosperity gospel than good theology, but I think there’s a nugget of truth there.

If your regular attendees can view your church as a place where people can easily connect without being embarrassed or put on the spot, they will know it’s a place where they can invite their friends or family with no risk that they’ll be embarrassed or put on the spot. If you build that culture, don’t be surprised when people respond.

Low guest numbers might limit your momentum, but they don’t have to determine your morale. As a leader, you get to navigate the boat around the stumps and to a better horizon.

Want to submit a question for a future Q&A post? Ask it here.

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This is the next installment in our ongoing “Large Church” series, which looks at guest services through the lens of the larger congregation: those with an average attendance of 800 or more. While any church can deal with these issues, they seem to especially be true of larger churches.

See the entire series here.

Let’s start off with my no one asked for this hot take: no matter the size of your church, it’s huge.

Here’s what I mean: 50 people or 5,000, living room worship or megachurch platform, bivocational pastor who wears all the hats or a staff that would rival the size of most rural congregations, any church is big to someone who has never been there.

The culture is confusing, so it’s big. The connection points are not spelled out, so it’s big. The opportunities to connect and join a group and break into cliques and figure out who does what are all new to the person who is new, so yes … your church is huge, no matter how small.

But there’s a relatively simple solution, and it’s a universal one:

Clarity.

Making your pathway clear will make next steps easier. Defining the building blocks of spiritual growth will help people know where they are and what their next move is.

Clarity is the great equalizer. It will make a large church feel smaller than it is, and a small church feel larger than it is. It makes a large church get smaller, because when people are able narrow their focus, the next step becomes easier. It makes a small church feel larger, because a spelled-out process helps the newcomer know “We thought about this before you showed up, and we want to make it easy for you to keep showing up.”

Complexity is all too easy to gravitate towards in our congregations, our staffs, our individual ministries. Policies and organizational knowledge can be a blessing or a curse, depending on whether they become the unwritten rules that clear the path or barricade the way for newcomers to connect.

Where do you need to get clear today?

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Over the last several months, the team I lead has been on a bit of a hiring spree. We’ve helped bring on three Guest Services Directors at a campus level, and on our central team we’ve added an Events Associate, an Area Director, and even tossed in a summer intern just for the “Yes sirs” and the “No ma’ams.” #iykyk

I bring this up because recent weeks have been a lesson in the old and the new, the foundational and the experimental, the guardrails and the trailblazing. Our team has been reacquainted with the idea of fresh eyes vs. wise eyes (a concept that is not original with me, but for the life of me I can’t find the source where I first read it). But I’ve also come to realize that there is one thing that links the two together: the standards in between.

1. Fresh eyes

There is something wondrous, fascinating, and dare I say precious about a new team member. Their foot seems to always pivot between adventure and terror. Everything is a new challenge. Most days are filled with new learning. Because they don’t know what they don’t know, they’re not saddled with the “We’ve never done it this way before” mindset.

As a leader, I’ve had to learn to not only celebrate the fresh-eyed people, but to encourage them to tell us what they see and how it could change. Staff member or volunteer, old guy or young woman, decades of ministry experience or none, every single person who comes into a new role comes in with a different perspective on how to get things done. We fail and frustrate them when we ask them to toe a needless line, and we forsake the opportunity for our own ministry to grow when we shut down their insight.

2. Wise eyes

That said, there is something sacred about institutional knowledge. Organizational memory can be an oracle that guides us all. Every team needs someone who has been there, done that, who knows what has been tried and failed, who knows what has been tried and worked, who knows where the bodies are buried.

As a leader, we’ll do well to celebrate the wise-eyed people, to ask good questions and listen to their good answers. We make a grave error when we celebrate the new and inadvertently kick the old to the curb. When we surround ourselves with yes men and reject counsel from seasoned leaders, we go the way of King Rehoboam.

3. The standards in between

…but here’s what has become real to me over these last few months: the thing that unites wise eyes and fresh eyes are organizational and ministry standards. These are not values on a wall, they are what exist in our walk. They are the living and active guidelines, correctives, and north star we follow.

That doesn’t mean standards never change, objectives never shift, or values never get modified. It does mean that they do so very deliberately because they’re just that important. And it means that our standards – whether we call them plumb lines, mission statements, staff values, or whatever – serve as the pathway that shapes behavior. They ground fresh eyes in organizational context, and they keep wise eyes looking to the future rather than getting stuck in the past.

This week, take a moment to look around your staff and volunteer team. Who represents your fresh eyes? How are you calling their new observations out of them? Who are your wise eyes? When is the last time you asked them to assess how things are going? And what are the agreed-upon standards that keep everyone in sync?

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One of the biggest obstacles to creating a healthy guest culture is that of alignment: what are we talking about when we talk about hospitality? How much is too much? How do we know when we’ve reached the goal, or when we’re just blowing smoke?

For years, our team has addressed that challenge by aligning around a core set of five plumb lines: short, sticky phrases that give our volunteers a common language for what hospitality looks like and why it matters.

5 Plumb Lines is a short resource designed to put that common language in the hands of your entire team. It’s designed to shape your volunteers, the culture you’re building, and the way you serve the guests you’re trying to reach.

In 5 Plumb Lines, your team will learn:

• Why flashy programs and sparkly Sundays will only last so long.
• How volunteers who know their why will almost always figure out their what.
• How the smallest details can make or break a guest’s experience.
• The art of making it personal for the masses and the individual.
• Why the first visit always serves as a setup to the second visit.

And it’s priced to put into the hands of your entire team, with discounted 10-packs available.

Order 5 Plumb Lines here!

This is an updated and expanded version of a previous article.

Let’s start with the basics: we should keep our guests in mind all the time. When they show up on the weekend, they are our honored guests (that’s why we call ’em guests, and not the V-word).

But there are strategic times during the worship service when we should especially address our guests. When we do so, we serve not only our guests, but our members and regular attendees as well. Addressing guests reminds a growing church that there are newcomers in the midst, and reminds a plateaued or declining church of our evangelistic responsibility.

Dr. Tim Keller said it like this in Center Church:

Almost every Christian, if they pay attention, will be able to sense whether a worship experience will be attractive to their non-Christian friends. They may find a particular service wonderfully edifying for them and yet know their nonbelieving neighbors would react negatively, and so they wouldn’t even consider bringing them along. They do not think they will be impressed or interested. Because this is their expectation, they do nothing about it, and a vicious cycle begins. Pastors see only Christians present, so they lack incentive to make their worship comprehensible to outsiders. But since they fail to make the necessary changes to adapt and contextualize, outsiders never come. The pastors continue to respond to the exclusively Christian audience that gathers, and the cycle continues. Therefore, the best way to get Christians to bring non-Christians to a worship service is to worship as if there are dozens of skeptical onlookers. If we worship as if they are there, eventually they will be.

As you plan your weekly worship service, you should plan with your guests in mind. Specifically, you should plan specific times to address your guests from the stage. I don’t mean that you should say every single thing every single weekend. To do so would be repetitive, formulaic, and boring. But I do think you need to have these in a regular rotation.

Here are 9 scenarios and mini scripts to help you do that:

1. At the start of the service

Within the first five minutes – either before or after an opening song – someone should deliver a welcome. Most all churches do that, but not all churches do it with an eye towards the first-time guest. So welcome them. Let them know you’ve planned the service with them in mind, and you’re glad they showed up. 

“Some of you may be with us for the very first time. We want you to know that we’re especially glad you’re here. We’re grateful that you’ve trusted us with your time, and our prayer for you is that this service will help you see and experience the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.”

2. As you worship

Can I say the quiet part out loud and get in trouble with worship pastors everywhere? Singing in public is odd. Unless you’re a teenage girl at a Taylor Swift concert, a character in a Broadway musical, or that one off-key co-worker that everyone secretly wishes would get laryngitis, few of us break into song in front of others. And yet every weekend, we ask large groups of people to sing many songs in a row. For our first-timers, that can feel odd. The songs are likely unfamiliar. And the whole experience can be unsettling. So telling the why matters.

“You might wonder why we sing when we gather. It’s because we’re commanded to throughout scripture. Psalm 100 tells us to come into his presence with singing. Ephesians 5 reminds believers to speak to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. When we sing, we are telling the story of Jesus, reminding ourselves and others of his great love for us.”

3. During corporate prayer time

At our church, we have a regular rhythm of breaking into smaller groups of two and three people to pray for specific needs. Again, quiet part out loud: this can be terrifying for someone new to the church. On the other hand, we are called to pray with and for one another, so the local church doesn’t get a pass, even when guests are present. On the other other hand, we always give our guests the chance to opt out.

“In a moment we’re going to gather in smaller groups all around this room and pray together for the needs I just mentioned, and you can see the bullet points on the screen. If you’re new, you’re welcome to join in. But if praying with others makes you uncomfortable, you can simply drop your head and that’s our universal symbol to leave you alone.”

4. During the sermon

Your preaching shouldn’t be exclusively focused on the guests in your midst, neither should it be exclusive to the seasoned saints among you. So every weekend in every sermon, give context. Provide background. Catch them up on the previous three messages in the series-in-progress that they missed. And take time to address the common doubts, questions, and “so what?” moments that your guests are certainly having. There are any number of ways that you can do this, but this statement covers a lot of ground:

“If you’re new to the idea of Christianity, this [passage / point / statement] can be confusing. Here’s the context in which the author was writing. Here’s who he was writing it to. And here’s how that informs and directs the life of the Christian today.”

5. Prior to communion

Whether your church offers communion weekly or quarterly or anywhere in between, you have a responsibility to “fence the table” appropriately and explain the significance of the event. 

“This church offers many things that are wide open to you. But if you’re here today and you’re not yet a believer, the Bible is clear that this one act of worship is not yet intended for you. As the elements come by, we respectfully ask that you let them pass you, and rather use this time to reflect on the sacrifice that Jesus made for you.”

6. Prior to baptisms

If anything is more confusing to an outsider than the Christian verbiage of “eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus,” it’s putting a fully-clothed person under the water while people cheer. (I mean, think about that.) So we explain what’s happening and why. [Related post: Explain Yourself]

“Baptism is an outward sign of the inward work that Christ has completed for us, and the way an individual publicly identifies themselves as a believer in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The act of baptism is a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, as well as our own death to sin and resurrection to new life.”

7. Prior to the offering

Nothing ruffles a newcomer’s fur quite like the money bucket coming around. So give ’em a pass before it’s passed. Let your guests know that the service isn’t about what they should give, but what they can receive. 

“The offering is a time for the people of God to give joyously to the mission of God. If you’re a guest, we don’t want you to feel compelled to give in any way, we’re just glad that you’re here. In fact, we have a gift for you at the first-time guest tent, and we’d encourage you to stop by as you leave.”

8. At the end

As you’re dismissing the service, remind guests of an appropriate next step. For your church, that might mean a stop by the welcome center, Next Steps table, first-time guest tent, whatever you call the place where people can connect. We mention the tent specifically a couple of times during the service. And whenever we remind guests of that opportunity as a final step, we always see an uptick in those that drop by. 

“Maybe you saw the First Time Guest Tent when you entered. That’s set up especially for you. We have a gift there for you and would love the opportunity to get to know you.”

9. Any time something is unclear

We covered baptism and communion, but there are so many other areas where our insider language and curse of knowledge needs a little explaining: missionary commissioning. Congregational votes. Church business meetings. Small groups. Acronyms like VBS or SBC. Responsive readings. Who’s who on stage. “Spurgeon,” “Keller,” “Paul,” or any other one-named individual that someone may not know.

When you begin to watch and listen to your service through the eyes and ears of someone new to your church, new to the Church, and new to Christianity, you’re going to uncover all sorts of “Aha” moments where clarity is kind. Which of these nine areas can you start to examine – and explain – this weekend?

Related posts:

• [Series] Guest Services from the Stage
• 10 Ways Your “Curse of Knowledge” is Impacting Your Guests (part 1)
• 10 Ways Your “Curse of Knowledge” is Impacting Your Guests (part 2)
• Five Questions Your First-Time Guests Are Asking

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Every so often we dip our toes into a series called Danny Recommends:, posts that tip you off to the stuff that I…you know. The recommendations might be products for use in your ministry, resources that will help you develop leaders around you, or just fun stuff that you need. Want. Whatever.

My wife and I have hit that age and stage of life where we do less “Let me surprise you with the gift I think you want” and more “Hey I just ordered something and that’s what you’re giving me for Christmas / my birthday / whatever.” (Marriage pro-tip: romantic? Nope. Practical? You betcha.)

Anyway, during last year’s lead-up to Christmas, I set my eyes on a new Bible. And “set my eyes” is a highly-appropriate term, because the eyes – well, they ain’t what they used to be. I needed (clears throat, wipes a single tear) a large print Bible, which – if we are true biblicists – is the way Paul meant all Bibles to be written.

And so began the search, which included deep dives into online reviews, bookstore visits, stealing borrowing from friends’ bookshelves, and seeking out personal recommendations. And now, I can finally – heartily! – recommend to you the ESV Preaching Bible.

I’ve now gotten nearly ten months of use out of it. It’s a daily-grab resource for me. Here’s why I love it, and think you will too:

Translation

I was introduced to the English Standard Version in my second year of seminary. It quickly became my favorite translation, and – while I will occasionally sub in other translations just for variety in my devotional time – I always come back home to the ESV.

Aesthetic quality

I’ve also hit the age where I just really appreciate a well-crafted book. I knew the kind of Bible I was looking for wouldn’t necessarily be cheap, because I wanted it to be high-quality enough to last (more on that in a moment.)

The goatskin leather cover just seems to get prettier and more supple the more I use it. The design is simply gorgeous. And while I was first thrown off by the “Preaching Bible” moniker (because I planned to use it for personal devotions, not preaching), these are the specific features that won me over:

• 10-point font. Still not quite as large as I’d like it some days, but good enough (and keeps this particular Bible weighing slightly less than a sack of potatoes).
  
  
• Single-column format. I’m not sure where the double column came from or why we lived with it for so long, but man I love a single-column.
  
  
• Minimal footnotes. I am a big fan of my ESV Study Bible that I’ve had for years, but this was not designed to be that. There are just enough to be helpful without taking over the page. I will typically use my Preaching Bible to kick off my study time, and then open my ESV app (also highly recommend) to supplement with Study Bible notes and nearly 20 other resources in that app’s library.
  
  
• Wide(ish) margins. When it comes to personal Bible study, I’m a consummate underliner, but I’m not a great note-taker. However, I wanted to be. That’s why a wide margin was important in my search. This one fits that bill, and the margins are wide enough that I can jot down thoughts and insights to my heart’s content. (And while I’ve never found a Bible that completely prevents bleed through of hand-written notes, these pages do an okay job, and I use my favorite pen to take those notes.)

Durability

Let’s circle back to both the aesthetic quality and the “I’ve hit that age” theming of this post: I’ve hit the age where things I can pass along really mean something to me. Some of my most prized possessions are Bibles that were used and loved by my Mom and Dad: reading their notes and scribbles are an incomparable treasure. I wanted a physical Bible which would outlast me and might play the same role in the lives of my kids and grandkids.

If you’ve hit that age where you like to pick out your own Christmas gift, this might be something you want at the top of your list.

Order the ESV Preaching Bible

See all posts in the Danny Recommends series.

Disclaimer: unless specifically noted otherwise, the books and resources I recommend are ones I’ve purchased, benefited from, and believe will benefit you as well. If you buy through one of the Amazon links on this site, I may receive a small affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. If that bugs you, feel free to bypass my link and buy from the vendor of your choice.

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In a recent article I talked about how I use (or don’t use) AI in my writing process. As stupidly-long as that article was (in the bots’ defense, they would’ve probably cut words, had I let ’em), there’s an entire other side of the AI sandbox that I’ve been playing in (or avoiding) over the last year, and that’s speaking and teaching.

I would classify “speaking and teaching” as anything that involves me (or a writing project with application points) being in front of a group of people: leading a training, preaching a funeral, running a breakout at a conference…all of those things and more would fall under that category.

How I don’t / won’t use AI in speaking and teaching is nearly identical to how I don’t / won’t use it in writing. I’m not going to generate a talk from scratch. I’m not going to re-work someone else’s work. I believe that speaking – like writing – comes from a very personal part of a creator’s soul, and outsourcing that seems like a step too far to me.

AI and the speaking / teaching process: how I use it

As I’ve toyed with the new tools, there have been a few use-cases that have been outrageously helpful. Before I list them, here’s an overarching principle: I will only use AI to assist in re-shaping material that I’ve already created, not to build something out of nothing. (This principle will make more sense as I go.)

Further, I have tried to make it a regular habit to notate any document that got an assist from AI-shaping. Even if I’m the only one who ever sees that note, it at least gives me a record and a paper trail on how I used other tools to create that work.

Here’s are my use-case scenarios:

• Voice transcriber. I have the blessing – or potentially curse – that my writing voice and my speaking voice are nearly one and the same. I speak how I write and write how I speak. For that reason, utilizing a transcription tool to “talk out a talk” and let the app do all of the writing has been a massive time-saver. (I’ll admit that ChatGPT is pretty horrific at this…if any of you tech nerds have solutions, I’m all ears.)

• Transforming articles into talks. I’ve been occasionally successful at taking pre-existing articles from this site and asking ChatGPT to rework them into a talk, suggesting the proper order and transition statements. I say occasionally, because this hasn’t worked 95% of the time, and it’s proven easier to do the work myself. My prompt is always “Don’t change any of my words, just rearrange paragraphs and articles in a way that would make sense in a speech.” …and then Chat goes on to change all of my words, in which case I go Yosemite Sam on its robotic rear end. Because this violates my overarching principle, it’s a process that simply hasn’t worked for me.

• Transforming articles into podcast interviews. This was my first – and most mind-blowing – use of AI in this realm. A co-worker and I were asked to put together a limited-run podcast-style interview for our staff on the topic of guest services. The staffer who asked us to do it had already selected articles from this site that he thought would be a good fit. After over-thinking it for a few days, I plugged the articles into ChatGPT, asked it to change it to a podcast style, and boom – the end result was a near-perfect preservation of the article content, but in a conversational Q&A style.

• Creating application guides out of talks. This has been another big time-saver for me. An organization asked me to create some training videos for church staff members and volunteers, and provide an application guide for each. The first part was easy enough. The second was doable, but one of those time-sucking annoyances that I allowed the machines to play around with. A few prompts produced one and two page documents that walked participants through the implementation of what they just heard.

In full disclosure, there’s one more use-case that violates the principle I outlined above. This year my team has been going through a book that has any number of study guides available online. I used those guides and the material in the book to create assessment guides and a series of brief discussion and teaching points for us to cover in meetings. Creating something out of nothing, not based on my work? Yes. Time saver? Also yes.

ChatGPT as a formula-filler

I’m putting this use-case in its own little category, because this one will require a bit of explanation.

I am occasionally asked to officiate a funeral for someone I don’t know at all or don’t know well. In those situations, I have a fairly standard formula that I use: a eulogy with stories about the person that gradually transitions into a gospel message.

Several months ago, I decided to experiment with the first half of that formula to see how AI would handle it. I plugged in several examples of previous funerals, plus facts and stories I’d gathered from meeting with the family, and the end result was a first-half that got me 80% of the way to my standard in a fraction of the time. (I then spent some time cleaning it up and making it right.)

To be clear: my research. My gathering of stories and anecdotes. My typical “formula” for the first half. But ChatGPT took my work and stitched it all together.

And yet…if I’m honest, something about that, even with the guardrails and guidelines, felt like it was cheating an otherwise-serious and sacred process. So will this particular experience become a regular occurrence? My gut is still unsettled, but I’m leaning “no,” even as a time saver. That said, it was interesting experiment to see how a process that is already a formula could be shortened with a little help.

The bottom line

To repeat the last post: early-2025 Danny is surprised at how late-2026 Danny has incorporated AI into the speaking and teaching process. Are there time-saving tools? Certainly. But I stand by the fact that speaking to an audience or teaching a group comes from a personal part of the creative soul. There are some great uses of AI that saves time and energy and sanity. There are also uses that – for me – cross a line that erodes my own creativity and hands the process over.

Those lines are my lines, not necessarily yours. I recognize that different people will draw different lines. (And ironically, just a few hours after I drafted this post, The Gospel Coalition released their own guidelines for AI and writing.)

But I’m curious: how do you use AI in speaking and teaching?

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Somewhat-long-time readers know my love for Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect. It released in 2022, and it was one of my favorite books I read that year. (See the Top Ten Quotes post here.)

When Guidara announced Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide, well, of course I pre-ordered it. If Unreasonable Hospitality was the why, The Field Guide is the what and how. The design of this book is inventive, playful, and fun: it’s set up like an extra-thick Moleskine notebook, with full-color interior and lots of room to take notes, reflect, and develop an action plan. If you’ve read the first, don’t hesitate to purchase the second. It’s an excellent companion piece to a fantastic book.

Here are my top ten favorite quotes:

• Hospitality…is how I make you feel.

• There’s a fine line between courage and recklessness.

• The best way to respect and reward the A players on your team is to surround them with other A players.

• Excellence first, then hospitality.

• Your passion is contagious. High energy begets high energy – it’s cool to care. Don’t dim your flame to match those around you.

• Most people react to tension in one of two ways: They back away and avoid the awkward interaction entirely, or they try to bulldoze the other person into agreeing with them. 

• Hospitality really is the most selfish pleasure.

• If praise is affirmation, criticism is investment.

• A well-managed mistake can strengthen the bond between you and your customer.

• You determine when your customer’s experience starts and ends.

Order Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide

See all posts in the Top Ten Quotes series.

Disclaimer: unless specifically noted otherwise, the books and resources I recommend are ones I’ve purchased, benefited from, and believe will benefit you as well. If you buy through one of the Amazon links on this site, I may receive a small affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. If that bugs you, feel free to bypass my link and buy from the vendor of your choice.

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