ChatGPT helps pastor Ben Palka break through writer’s block, think about how Scripture may land with a young Washington, D.C., congregation, and find new insight within a Biblical passage as he prepares a Sunday sermon.
Palka became a Christian at 21 while studying at the University at Buffalo. He later trained at Southeastern Seminary in Raleigh, where mentors recognized him as a church planter—a pastor with the entrepreneurial drive to start a new congregation. In 2018, he planted a church in DC. It now draws 850 to 1,000 people on Sundays, many of them 25- to 30-year-olds working on Capitol Hill or in technology and law. Their lives and questions help shape how he preaches.
Palka uses ChatGPT nearly every day, especially during sermon preparation, though he never asks it to write his sermons. While working through the New Testament book of Colossians, he might ask what a 25-year-old tech entrepreneur could think upon hearing it for the first time. He asks for psychological and sociological angles, ideas from theologians and pastors, modern quotations, illustrations, and possible ways the passage has been misunderstood.
If a passage has not yet come alive for him, Palka talks it through with ChatGPT. One unexpected interpretation or connection can open a direction he had not considered. “It destroys writer’s block for me,” he says. “My own sermons have gotten way better having it as a research assistant.”
Palka brings his own faith, voice, knowledge of Scripture, and understanding of the congregation to the pulpit, treating ChatGPT as a research assistant, coach, and conversation partner. As an MLB chaplain with the Washington Nationals, he also uses it to translate ideas into baseball language—a vocabulary he says he did not previously know well.
People across Palka’s congregation use ChatGPT to prepare for conversations of their own. One leader turns a book of the Bible into a clearer weekly outline for his small group; others compare Catholicism and Protestantism or explore a difficult passage before speaking with a pastor. A church member who runs a lawn-care business often brings Palka an AI-generated answer and asks, “What do you think?” The answer gives them a starting point for a deeper conversation.
That movement back toward other people matters in a city Palka says can be lonely for newcomers. Many arrive in DC for a dream job but lack local relationships. His church responds by gathering in person on Sundays and in roughly 30 homes during the week, alongside sports, service projects, and men’s and women’s ministries. Palka sees a risk when AI draws someone into isolation. But it’s his experience that it more often helps people clarify a question before they carry it into community.
“It’s augmenting conversation,” he says. “It’s clarifying his thoughts before he talks to me.” ChatGPT is most useful to Palka when its answer sends someone back to a pastor, a small group, or a friend with a better question.
