If I'm able to work far enough ahead, I have my spouse read my sermon and make suggestions, if he's got the time. Yesterday he did substantial revisions.
I'll take another look today. He read it to me last night, and it seems much stronger. I think he added 1-2 pages of new material. He knows more about chickens than I do, and added more about hen behavior to explicate the idea of God being like a mother hen gathering her brood. He added more about how to have respectful discussions instead of the social media kind of sniping, which I may cut down a bit--it felt more like the beginning of Philosophy class than a sermon.
I feel strange about his revisions, but not because I feel like my writing has been violated. I like the idea of collaborative writing, but I'm almost always working on my own, because I like it better, and I get exasperated at having to coordinate schedules.
I feel strange because I am paid for sermon preparation. I also feel strange because I've spent my whole life in academia, and I'm always careful about whose ideas are mine and whose are someone else's. Because it's hard to document co-writing, I often don't let people put words into my documents.
I know that a lot of people are using ChatGPT and other AI ways of writing to revise sermons. I feel better about using my spouse, for all sorts of reasons. I know that a surprising number of people are using ChatGPT and other AI ways of writing to write sermons. I won't be doing that, but I also know that I'm fortunate not to need to do that. I have lots of previous writing of my own that I'll use before I use AI.
I'm also fortunate because I've spent my whole life writing, so it comes naturally to me. With luck, I won't face the kind of writer's block that leads me to use AI carelessly.
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