“We Weren’t Sure About Your Christianity” – Pat Gelsinger

Man, God was fighting battles for me I didn't even know were happening. The more inquisitive I am about other faiths, the more I get to talk about my faith. How do people respond to that? They're too slow. I know, I can go faster if you want to see that. Pastors generally don't think as big as business leaders do. God isn't surprised by AI. He created it. We discovered it. Man, I don't want to be like Ed Stetson or anything like that. People say that all the time. But it worked out okay. All right, Pat Gelsinger here. People maybe heard of you at Intel or before. But you have a spiritual story and a spiritual background. Tell us about it. Yeah, and you know, grew up in the church, right? I was baptized when I was six days old in the United Church of Christ with full knowledge of what I was doing. Yeah. And you know, always went to church every Sunday. Otherwise, I got in trouble with dad. And I was there to impress the... meet girls and impress the mothers and grandmothers. So that was a great spiritual journey. So, you know, I always thought I was a Christian. Moved to California when I was 18 years old to go to school and started Intel at a ripe old 18. And started attending church. Why? To meet girls and impress their mothers and grandmothers. So it was a good formula. And soon after starting, attend there. I met Linda. And the sermon topic about three months after starting to attend there. Revelation 3, 15 and 16. Oh, wow. I know your deeds. They are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other. But since you're neither cold nor hot, I'm going to spit you out of my mouth. And I became convicted and began my hot for God journey there in February of 1980. But the next piece of the story, Ed, is pretty exciting. Because just a couple of months later, baby Christian. And I'm walking down the aisle at one of the hallways at Intel. And I feel convicted to go into the ministry. Really? From God. I didn't hear this part. And it's like, man, I don't want to be like Ed Stetzer. Anything but that. People say that all the time. It's true. And, you know, I was loving technology. I was good at it. Excited about it. And so I argued with God for several months. And finally, I laid a fleece before God. I said, okay, God, if this happens, just like Gideon, I'll go into full-time ministry. I'll become like Ed Stetzer. And as soon as I did, the answer was, the workplace is your full-time ministry. That's really what began my journey as, I'll say, faith and tech. And living that out every day. Fascinating. Okay. So, I mean, this is a space that, I don't know how to put this. You're sort of known in this. You've done kind of workplace, you know, ministry, seen it as mission and more. I guess I wonder, how do people in the workplace respond? I mean, you're, you know, this is not exactly a bastion of the Bible Belt, even where you've been working. How do people respond to that? Well, I'll say, you know, clearly, I'm a bit of an oddity that way. And, you know, being so visible about my faith. But it's also, I've gotten to more leadership roles. I've helped start things like the Intel Christian Bible Network. The precursor to ERGs, employee resource groups, you know, have been, you know, visible as this faith work kind of a guy. And that's gotten a lot of things. But then as you get to more significant roles of leadership, it's like, how do you demonstrate that in a way that still has a very diverse, liberal community? In fact, a fun little story. I was meeting with one of my board members when I was at VMware. And, you know, over lunch one day, he says, you know, we weren't sure about you. Right. And this is a couple of years into my VMware CEO journey. And I said, really? And he says, yeah, you know, that Christian stuff. Really? And I'm like, what? And he says, yeah, we debated that more than anything else before calling you a CEO. And I'm like, really? And he says, yeah, you know, being a CEO of a liberal, you know, Silicon Valley software company, we just weren't sure a conservative Christian could do that. And I'm like, really? And then he just says, but it worked out okay. I am like, man, God was fighting battles for me. I didn't even know were happening at the time. But I'd also say that it's important for us as Christians to show up in a good way. And, you know, for that, how do you demonstrate your faith? May I pray for you? Right. You know, being able to truly support a diverse community. And one little, I'll say, magic has been the more inquisitive I am about other faiths, the more I get to talk about my faith. Right. You know, oh, you're behind. What do you believe? You know, what's this Diwali thing anyway? And, you know, how do you guys handle this Ramadan? You know, the more aggressively inquisitive, the more you get to say, well, this is my faith tradition. This is what I believe. That's so, I'll say, enabling of a broader conversation. I think when I think of you and your role, and I've kind of just watched you from a distance, and we were in a room together once at a conference together, but I've just kind of watched and read things, is I think in James Davidson Hunter talks about faithful presence. And you've kind of been that faithful presence in the midst of that. And so I guess what advice would you give to pastors? Because my main audience is pastors and church leaders. I mean, we're literally in a van that has pastors and church leaders written on the side. But how do they empower and equip people like you to live on mission in the workplace? I would be encouraging every pastor, get to know your big business leaders. I mean, really get to know them. Show up in their place of work. Go into their office. See how they interact with other people. You know, be engaged in their life. Because many times it's sort of like expecting a big business leader to show up at church and to be helping in the nursery. Okay, that's not what they're good at. I mean, these are people who run organizations, who have people taking care of them or being able to influence and so on. And you've got to live in their world a little bit. But it's also then how do you minister to them at that level? And how do you pray for them? How do you engage in their most challenging moments to really be a mentor of sorts? How can I help you in your spiritual journey, even while you're being this workplace leader? But that as much as anything, it's like finding ways that ministers can really say, okay, business people want to get stuff done. And if you want me to be part of your ministry, put me in a role that I'm helping you get stuff done. And if you're going to ask me to do some trivial things at the church, okay, I'm not interested in that, you know, right? I may feel I need to do it because guilt, serve church and so on like that. But you're not leveraging my skills, my capacity. But the problem is we don't think of pastors. Pastors generally don't think. I think as big as business leaders do. So like how do we, because we might, we need to be a small group leader. We need to maybe do, like I said, work with children. How do we cast that kind of kingdom of God world changing vision to somebody who's maybe has a bigger view than even we do? Yeah. And I like to say to the TBC leaders, transforming the bay with Christ, a city gospel movement that I helped to start. And I say to the pastors of TBC, I want you to be the most influential person in your city. More influential than the mayor, than the chief of police, than the school superintendent. And you need to be in relationship with them, right? And if you're not, you're not being as influential as you could be at that level. And sometimes you want to have the business leader take you to those people as well. Hey, let's go, you know, the mayor, what are his social programs that he's leading? And how are we going to, let me go with you right to those or, you know, Hey, you know, what would it mean for us to sit with the police commissioner in our town and what are his biggest challenges? You know, and many times the only way that the pastors are going to have that meeting is if they have the business leaders with them. Right, right. The mayor's not going to always take the meeting without you being there. Yeah. And that's something that's both empowering of the pastor. You know, there's bare stuff to do here, but it's also leveraging the things that the business leaders can truly do. Makes sense. So you're no longer at Intel. What are you doing with Glue? I mean, you're already there, but what does that mean? Well, you know, I've been working as the board chair for them for a while. And as part of that, you know, it's been oversee the tech platform. And now that I have a bit more time on my hand, the opportunity is to step into that in a bigger way. I'm the executive chair now, so much more active in it and overseeing technology. Yeah. And I just love Pat Gelsinger overseeing technology. That sounds, I don't know, but it's ominous and exciting and all those things together. Well, for some of the technology guys, it's a little bit ominous. Yeah, it's a little intimidating. It's a little intimidating. So like, what does that mean? What kind of, I mean, AI has been a big in this space. You know, I've been a part of the hackathon the last, you know, I'm the guy who's supposed to yell at the beginning, let's get ready to hack. Anyway, so what does that mean? What kind of technology are we overseeing? Well, you know, one is, you know, is the Glue platform a good platform? Right, right, right. And as I say, hey, you know, most churches are lousy at tech. And when they come on to the Glue platform, my goal would be is we have taken them up in a major way for their technology capabilities. And with that, that we can truly say, okay, you've just gotten more secure. You have more data services. You have more, you know, modern developer programs that you can go, you know, build an incredible platform that takes care of your church and your business. So, you know, for that is make it good. Make it secure. You know, make sure we're following the best practices of the industry. But the other is as well in the AI. You know, are we going to, you know, make the Glue AI services truly phenomenal AI services for it? And are we going to be influential in the AI community? And we've talked about being open, you know, driving values-based AI. You know, one of the other things that we're, you know, driving to do is we would have Glue be the best at language. Because the faith community has always been the best at language. So our AI tools should be the best at language, you know, voice to text, text to voice, voice to voice. And, you know, being able to, you know, be a real driver of AI leadership in that area of language. And then the final one is, hey, our faith community is in love with content and making sure that it's licensed, properly managed, used appropriately in training and inferencing. So all of those would be some of the pieces of what it means to be a great AI platform for the faith community. Yeah, I think churches, pastors, they tend to embrace things, but they tend to be slow to it. You know, we think about, you know, great radio ministries, but they weren't the first. And we think about, I mean, some suspicion towards the internet, you know, internet 1.0 and 2.0. And so what would you, what encouragement, this will be the last question, what encouragement would you have for pastors to think about how to step into more effective use of technology? Well, I'd say, you know, one is, hey, your people are, you may not be, but they are, right? And with that, and if you want to be relevant and impactful to them, right, this is the time, right? You know, AI, you know, I often think of this as a Gutenberg moment. Yeah, I like that. You know, so, you know, here's this short pudgy little monk, right, who embraced the greatest technology of the day, the printing press. And he literally changed the world, right? Hey, AI is that tool today. It is changing language. It's, you know, breaking down user interfaces. It is like the internet was 25 years ago. It is that transformational. And, you know, God isn't surprised by AI. He created it. We discovered it, right, you know, for it. So, you know, in that, it's just, you know, phenomenal, you know, tool capacity for us to take advantage of. You know, and finally, you know, I'd say to them as well is it really does make your job better, right? You know, the ability for you to, you know, hey, when your sermon's done, let's translate it into five languages and post it so you have a bigger audience. You know, let's turn them into snippets, you know, that we can immediately post for this week's Bible studies and activities. You know, let's summarize it and use these tools to create, you know, a capacity that, you know, truly allows us to, you know, take your messages and make them better. You know, finding other content resources, being able to, you know, mine literally the last 2,000 years of church texts and bringing them to life. If you're not taking advantage of that, you know, why not? It makes you better. I mean, and I, you know, as an individual, I have three chatbots open on my computer all the time, asking questions multiple times a day, you know, picking the best ones associated with them. I am always learning from it. It's like, you know, man, I am like the dumbest student, right, and they're just giving me more information, more knowledge, more insights. Take advantage of it every single day. Pat Gelsinger, thanks for your passion for Christ. Thanks for, well, now this expanded role at GLUE, but also thanks for taking time to talk to pastors and church leaders, helping them to walk through and think through these issues. Thank you. Amen. Great to talk with you.