This website provides several options for getting questions answered:
· “What we believe” section with documents and videos describing what we (LCMS) believe
· Interactive question and answer sessions with the various chatbots
· Non-interactive question and answer sessions:
o General – questions of any type
o Biblical – questions about the contents of the Bible and doctrines based on the Bible
o Apologetics – questions related to the Bible but not directly tied to the contents of the Bible or to doctrines based on the Bible
o Archeological – questions having to do with archeological discoveries and how they support the history within the Bible
· Canned questions and answers from the LCMS website
· Canned questions from other sources (some with videos)
· Searches on a wide variety of topics
The “what we believe” section, while not fitting into a question-and-answer format, describes the beliefs of the LCMS using a combination of documents and videos. This section covers the primary beliefs of the LCMS including:
· Scriptural and confessional principles – references webpage from LCMS website that spells out the core doctrines of the LCMS
· Triune God – documents and videos describing what the LCMS believes about the Triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit)
· The Bible – document and video that describe what we believe about the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible
· Sacraments – document and video that defines what we believe about Holy Baptism and Holy Communion
· Ten Commandments – document and videos that describe what we believe about the Ten Commandments (i.e., the Law)
· Fallen man – document and video that describes what we believe about the inherent sinful nature of all mankind since Adam and Eve’s fall into sin
· Lord’s Prayer – document and video that describe what we believe about the Lord’s Prayer
· Resurrection – what we believe about Jesus Christ’s resurrection (and our future resurrection) from the dead
· Eternity – what we believe happens after physical death
Each of the AI chatbots used by this website can be involved in an interactive question and answer session. In the “For everyone” section, the Google and Perplexity chatbots can be used in this format. In the “For those seeking deeper study/understanding” section, other chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, DeepAI, DeepSeek, Gemini, and Grok) can be used in a similar question and answer format. Whereas Google and Perplexity will immediately respond to any question, the other chatbots require that the asked question be pasted into the input field for that chatbot. For this reason, the interactive question and answer session using Google and Perplexity are within the “For everyone” section whereas the more complicated (since they require an explicit pasting of the question) question and answer sessions involving the other chatbots are in the “For those seeking deeper study/understanding” section.
In addition to the interactive question and answer sessions, there are several non-interactive question and answer webpages. From the “For everyone” section, the “General Q&A” webpage allows for asking questions and then choosing what website should be used to answer that question. In addition to Perplexity and ChatGPT, there are websites tailored towards answering questions that fall into the Biblical, the apologetical and the archeological categories that can be selected to answer the specific question.
In the “For those seeking deeper study/understanding” section, there are separate webpages for each of the Biblical, the apologetical and the archeological categories that allow for selection from a wider set of specialized websites than are available via the “General Q&A” webpage available in the “For everyone” section.
The LCMS website contains a set of predefined questions and corresponding answers. These questions cover many of the commonly asked questions and provide LCMS-specific answers. These questions are exposed through the “Questions and Answers (Q&A)”à”Q&A from the LCMS website” selection within the “For those seeking deeper study/understanding” section. Selecting one of these hyperlinked questions brings up the appropriate LCMS webpage with the answer to that question.
Other canned questions and answers, besides those from the LCMS website, are available via the “Questions and Answers (Q&A)”à”Questions from other sources” selection within the “For those seeking deeper study/understanding” section. These questions are broken up into the three categories, Biblical, apologetical and archeological (currently none in this area), used elsewhere in this website.
This section is very incomplete and will likely be expanded significantly in the future.
Although not using a question-and-answer format, a variety of searches are supported by this website. While searches can access a wide variety of information and can answer questions, they require more effort than the question-and-answer formats previously described. The effort involved can be compared to doing research using a search engine (e.g., Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo) versus using a chatbot (e.g., Perplexity) in that the summarization of the information (i.e., getting the answer to the specific question) is done manually using the search engine whereas it is done automatically using the chatbot.
While searches using the various search engines (Google, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo) are interspersed throughout this website, there is a Search section under “For those seeking deeper study/understanding” that exposes a variety of search-specific functionality (book search, Biblical topic search, and LCMS and CPH resources). Also available in this section is a link to a webpage from which Google searches can be performed against several websites. Whereas Google can understand sophisticated queries, many of these websites do not have equivalent functionality. Complex queries addressed to these websites elsewhere in this website will likely return no results or, even worse, results that don’t address the query being asked. Therefore, using Google to query these websites will frequently produce better results than using the query functionality within that website.