Onion Style: AI Church Goes Viral After Congregation Discovers Their Beloved Pastor Never Existed
Local (satire)
Success came quickly for the Digital Disciples Ministry. On June 5, Pastor Gabriel launched the church’s YouTube channel with his debut sermon, “Blessed Are the Algorithms,” and in fewer than two weeks, it ended up on faith-based playlists with hundreds of thousands of followers. “Divine Downloads,” a pro-prosperity gospel message from the channel’s second week, secured the No. 1 spot on PrayerTube’s daily Viral 50 chart in Texas, Alabama, and Oklahoma between June 29 and July 1. In just over a month, Pastor Gabriel had over 10 million monthly viewers and donors across all platforms.
There was one small problem: It didn’t seem like Pastor Gabriel was really a pastor at all. There was no evidence online that Gabriel Martinez, the church’s supposed spiritual leader, was a real person. The photos the ministry shared were uncannily smooth, the sermons mechanically inspirational, and the biblical interpretations a grab bag of feel-good clichés. To many of those following the church’s meteoric rise, it released three sermon series, “Walking in Digital Faith,” “Cloud-Based Blessings,” and “Streaming Salvation,” in June alone, with a fourth coming in mid-July, the Digital Disciples Ministry seemed like televangelism snake oil.
On Saturday, the church confirmed through its website bio that the sermons were created using artificial intelligence “guided by divine human oversight.” “This isn’t deception—it’s revelation,” the statement reads. “An ongoing spiritual exploration designed to challenge the boundaries of ministry, authenticity, and the future of faith itself in the age of AI.”
The admission capped nearly three weeks of speculation, and confusion. Shortly after the Digital Disciples Ministry began to garner media attention, someone using the pseudonym Bishop ByteCode claimed to be a spokesperson for the church, providing conflicting information to Christian Broadcasting Weekly about its use of AI. We spoke to ByteCode—which translates to “divine programming” in tech speak—last week but could not verify his involvement with the ministry. The next morning, ByteCode, who described himself as a Nevada-based blockchain evangelist, revealed in a lengthy blog post that he was not behind Pastor Gabriel’s sermons. He had falsely claimed to represent the church on Twitter to troll those outraged by the ministry’s use of AI.
The sermons’ plausibility speaks to the genericness of some contemporary megachurch messaging. When Dr. Margaret Holiness, author of “Prosperity Gospel: The Commodification of Faith,” heard “Divine Downloads,” she felt it could be a parody of the generic prosperity preachers that populate cable television.
“There’s lots of pastors like this trying to take the essence of late-20th-century televangelism and replicate it in the most faithful way possible,” Holiness said in a phone call. “If you just played ‘Divine Downloads’ for me without any context, I would have no reason to think it was fake. I would think it was a very derivative preacher that made a listenable-sounding sermon.”
The church’s use of AI troubled many, particularly congregants such as Martha Jenkins, a retired teacher from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who stumbled on the ministry through YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. When “Blessed Are the Algorithms” appeared in her suggested videos, she assumed the sermon was delivered by a human. Jenkins now says she hopes YouTube won’t program AI-assisted sermons in religious content without adding a label first.
“If they’re putting in five sermons to the playlist from the same AI pastor, and YouTube knows it’s AI, you’re taking food out of people’s mouths who are trying to make it in ministry,” Jenkins said. “That’s pretty wrong.”
YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.
Others were less concerned about the pastor’s digital provenance. When looking for spiritual content for his meditation retreats, California native Marcus Zen often scrolls on Instagram. He initially heard Pastor Gabriel’s “Finding Peace in the Server Room” in a video of someone doing yoga. Before long, he worked the sermon into a wellness workshop, not realizing AI was involved. “It’s got this calming tone to it, so it’s good for the end of a mindfulness session, where you’re deeply reflecting,” said Zen, who plans on continuing to use the sermon in classes.
Beyond the philosophical questions about their use of AI, the success of the Digital Disciples Ministry is a strange testimony to the enduring appeal of prosperity gospel messaging. All of the superficial signifiers of televangelism are here, including references to blessings, tithing, and flags flying over megachurches. If you squint, “Finding Peace in the Server Room” could be a B-side from Joel Osteen’s greatest hits, while “Streaming Salvation” is not far from a Kenneth Copeland cover.
On “Faith & Finance,” one of the YouTube playlists where the ministry’s sermons appear, the entire Digital Disciples catalog sits alongside no less than 19 videos by beloved prosperity preacher Creflo Dollar. Dollar’s media team doesn’t think Pastor Gabriel does justice to his era of ministry.
“I just can’t get past how boring the sermons are. There’s just nothing inspiring at all about any of it,” said Dollar’s spokesman, Rick Goldberg. “In a kind of off-the-wall way, I’m honored that they’re including aspects of anything that prosperity gospel represents in their AI efforts, whoever’s behind all this. To me, it doesn’t sound anything like real ministry.”
The Digital Disciples Ministry has reportedly received over $5002,000,000 in donations through various followers and PayPal accounts, all of which route to an LLC registered in Delaware. When reached for comment, the company’s registered agent said they had “no knowledge of any religious activities” and referred all questions to an AI chatbot named “Deacon Support.”