On August 21, 2025, developer Dara Sobaloju posted what appears to be another idea on X.
The tweets chorded. It immediately attracted questions, suggestions and encouragement from pastors, developers and curious church people. Since then, Sobaloju has recorded his progress Pewbeam aian agent designed to listen to sermons in real time and project relevant poems on screen.
Sobaloju's projects are not isolated cases. In recent years, Nigerian churches have begun experimenting with AI in their own way. The Ministry of Christian Life was launched in 2025 Ask Kumuyian AI chatbot that questions the sermon from the general's supervisor, Pastor WF Kumuyi.
The Church of God (RCCG) of the Redemption Church of Christ has an AI chatbot. Apostle Stephengreets the user: “Hello, I'm Stephen, an apostle of RCCG Digital Missionary. How can I help you today?”
In 2023, Longbeard, a Canadian-based technology agency, launched Magisterium AIwhich is described as “the number one answer engine in the world of the Catholic Church.”
These church-led bots focus primarily on answering questions about doctrine, faith and church activities. But outside of official institutions, independent developers like Sobaloju imagine a variety of applications of church AI. A tool that not only answers questions, but also solves problems in real time during service.
Sobaloju's Pewbeam AI wants to address issues he's seen many times. Preachers misquot or paraphrase the Bible, and confusion derails the flow of the message.
“I saw firsthand how it denied the speaker,” says Sobaroj. “For this to work, you need to have voice input. The idea is to use AI to use the pastor to paraphrase something, the system picks up it and raises the right Bible in real time.”
Buildings from Nigeria, Nigeria
Sobaloju had been nursing the idea for two years, but until recently he had maintained his hopeful thoughts when his friend Tony Deoye joined him as a brand designer. After writing down the Mini Product Requirements Document (PRD), he tweeted about the idea. The reaction surprised him. The pastor and the church alike said they wanted it.
His goals for Pewbeam are shaped by Nigerian reality, poor internet coverage, unreliable power, and various hardware capacity. “Anything you can work in Nigeria can work outside of Nigeria,” he says. “That's a tough environment.”
To address that challenge, he focuses on three layers. Real-time speech-to-text, minimal delay, offline-first design with optional connections, and contextual accuracy so that the poem matches the preacher's intentions.
He uses the poems using Faster Whisper, an optimized version of Openai's speech recognition model. The system also supports “direct calls.” The pastor calls out a poem and it pops up immediately.
The hurdles in building Sobaloju's AI agents are clearly important. The model should be lightweight enough to run on a daily laptop, but accurate enough to avoid the Bible of Inconsistency. “When a pastor is talking about something, there may be some references in the Bible,” he explains. “The challenge is to ensure that the right things come in real time.”
Still, Sobaloju is optimistic. His current goal is to adopt a business model similar to the business model of the Youversion Bible app, developed by the US-based Life Church. Their models are simple. People support the app by making donations, making it free for millions of users. In the long run, Sobaloju believes Pewbeam can adopt a model in which wealthier churches pay subscription fees, allowing small churches to access the tools for free. “I learned that if something is good, it's worth the money,” he says.
The wave of AI builders in the church
Another Nigerian developer, Tolupe Adeniyi, is building a bot (a blend of “Bible” and “Ultra”) that works similarly to Sobaloju's Pewbeam. It also features Openai Whisper, “automatically queues Bible verses on the interface and runs completely offline for accuracy, low latency and independence from your internet connection.”
Adeniyi says, “The idea came to him because the preacher sees a troublesome pause when he refers to the Bible.
In Lagos, Olanrewaju Taiwan is building an AI app called Preaching AI. Inspired by Sobaloju's tweet, he began experimenting with sermons transcriptions and later began working on the beta biblical app, Meno. The Greek word “Abide” is Meno, which uses Google's Gemini model to describe the poem.
For Taiwan, innovation is part of a long tradition. “The scroll came before the book, before the book, before the book. Now we're here with AI. It's technology, and we're not afraid.”
In the Diaspora, London-based David Olowomeye has developed the Gospel Note AI, a mobile app specially designed to take notes while sermoning. Unlike general-purpose apps like otter.ai, normal conversations are not transcribed. “It's for the church. If you try to use it elsewhere, you know that it's not a sermon,” he explains, adding that the app is programmed around the Bible and related materials.
Olowomeye doesn't plan on monetizing his product yet, but sees it as a niche tool for Christians who want an organized sermon note.
Can AI belong to a church?
The idea of AI in the church may sound strange. Religious institutions have a long history of skeptical techniques. “When the TV came out, they called it the Devil's Box,” says Sobaroj.
Beyond transcription and poem recalls, imagine other uses for Sobaloju, Taiwan, and Olowomeye. We will hold an AI-supported census, including RCCG's annual gathering, AI-powered donation tracking, and even providing collections.
In Adeniyi's words, “We are entering an era where the backbone of the church's technology is invisible but essential.”
Adeniyi adds that using AI can help church musicians easily acquire songs, compose harmonies, and explore new sounds that enhance worship. It is about amplifying human creativity and spiritual leadership, not replacing it.
What are the risks involved?
The risk of inviting AI into spiritual life is difficult to ignore, especially when it comes to generative AI chatbots built for religious purposes.
“No matter how smart, intelligent, persuasive, deep or emotional, no matter how smart, intelligent, persuasive, deep or emotional [AI] Rotimi Aways, an evangelist who also runs the AI consulting firm Kinai, may not know what it is saying.
The technology tendency to “hastisfies” by creating confident but false answers is dangerous when it relates to sensitive topics related to the Bible and salvation. “Whatever the church builds its model, the underlying system is already trained in all forms of doctrine in the world.
Even if the church tweaks the model with its own doctrine, the underlying foundations still have traces of conflicting worldviews and can provide misleading answers.
Away says the most troublesome thing is overly dependent. “It can prevent people from reading the Bible anymore. They just ask the AI.”
The danger is increased when these chatbots assume the identities of Godgpt, the Apostle Stephen, and Askkumuyi. “I once said hello to Godgup, and it answered: 'I am God',” he recalls. “Imagine someone who really wants God now and doesn't know much better.”
“I will move away from spiritual names,” he urges engineers who build specially for religious institutions. Instead, he recommends that churches and developers use names that reveal that the system is a chatbot rather than a pastor or spiritual entity.
Please mark the calendar! TechCabal's Moonshot is back in Lagos from October 15th to 16th! Join Africa's top founders, creatives and technology leaders in two days of keynotes, mixers and ideas for the future. Early Bird Tickets are now 20% off – Don't Snooze! moonshot.techcabal.com
