The other day, my husband showed our kids a video he had seen on social media. And almost immediately, they said, “Dad, that is AI … that isn’t real!” And then proceeded to laugh at both him and the video too.
That moment stuck with me.
I’d say my husband and I are pretty tech savvy. We can usually spot the fake stuff. We have never wired money to a “family member in an emergency” or bought gift cards for our boss (IYKYK). So for him to feel even a little duped was strange. It was also a reminder of how blurry things are getting.
And honestly, it is both amazingly cool and also something we need to pay attention to.
It's About Awareness
A couple months ago, I read Matt Shumer’s article Something Big Is Happening. (The article is really long but fascinating. Worth the read if you have time.) It raised important questions about where technology is headed and how quickly things are changing. But I'm not sharing as some sort of doomsday warning. This is not about panic or acting like everything is terrible now.
It’s about awareness. It's about understanding the moment we're living in and hopefully responding well to.
At Fishhook, we care deeply about helping churches communicate in ways that are clear, creative and trustworthy because we want the Good News to be heard as the good news. That means we cannot afford to communicate in ways that feels void of care, generic or disconnected from real people.
If the Church is carrying the best news in the world, we should carry it well. That is part of what sparked this “What is Real” series.
Deeply Human
During a recent team conversation when we were just discussing this topic, Shawn asked, “What do we mean when we say deeply human?” We all stopped because it was such a good question. In a world full of automation, speed and polish from leaders and institutions, that may be one of the most important questions we can ask.
What does it mean to be deeply human in the way we lead, write, design, build and create? That is what this series is about.
In the next few articles, our team will explore what is real in design, content, web programming, leadership and creativity. Each one will come from a different voice on our team and a different area of expertise, but all of them will wrestle with the same core idea: in a world that can be filtered, automated and faked, real still matters.
Defining What Real and Human Means
For us, being real does not mean being sloppy or unstrategic. It does not mean oversharing to pretend authenticity or throwing excellence out the window. It means communicating with honesty, wisdom and heart. It means sounding like a person, not a machine. It means being thoughtful about what we say and how we say it.
It also means valuing the kinds of things technology cannot replace. Strategy matters. Skill matters. But soft skills matter too. Discernment, empathy, nuance, purposeful restraint, tone, timing and instinct. Those are not small things. They are part of what it means to be deeply human.
And we think that matters more than ever!
Because as more content gets created faster, people are going to keep looking for what feels true. They will be drawn to and notice what feels real. And my hope is that the Church will meet that moment well. And not with fear, not by trying to keep up with noise, but by being so real, so trustworthy and so rooted in Jesus that people are more ready to lean in and learn more.
That is why we are talking about this. Because in a world where so much can be filtered, generated and faked, the Church has an opportunity to communicate in a way that feels deeply human, deeply trustworthy and deeply rooted in Jesus. And when we do, we are not just keeping up with the moment … we are helping people see and hear the good news for what it truly is: good.
