ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity AI, and Gemini | Which is best for Ministry?
By far the most well known AI Large Language Model (LLM) is ChatGPT. In a relatively short period of time, Open AI, the creator and owner of ChatGPT has established themselves as the leaders of all LLMs worldwide. At the time of writing this article, it had over 500 million weekly active users and held a market share of around 60%. If you are interested in the AI space, I’m sure you have used and are well aware of ChatGPT.
The other three LLMs mentioned may be less familiar to you. I’m going to do my best to help you understand if and when you should be using each of these LLMs, especially in the context of Christian church ministry. Each of them has strengths and weaknesses. I’ve used them all and I can tell you from experience that you will get a different experience using each of these LLMs.
ChatGPT
This LLM needs the least introduction. You are no doubt using it already for various ministry tasks. I’ll do a deep dive on creative uses of ChatGPT for ministry in a future article. For now, I’ll highlight some of its key features and give you a few quick ideas on how to go deeper with it.
The first thing I want to encourage you to do is to not fall into the trap of using ChatGPT as a search engine only, something that is true for all LLMs. Yes, you can enter in search terms in the prompt window of ChatGPT and it will spit out answers for you. I have reduced the number of times I go to Google or any search engine. It is certainly faster to just type it into ChatGPT and have it give you the answer in seconds. This usage of an LLM is the bare minimum usage. If that’s all you are using ChatGPT or any other GPT for, you are missing out.
Crafting a Good Prompt
A prompt is what you type into the search box of ChatGPT or any other LLM. How you query the LLM largely determines the quality of the result you will receive. Prompts can accept a whole lot more information than you may realize. ChatGPT 5, for instance, can handle up to 128,000 tokens. That’s equivalent to 300 pages of text. That’s a lot of information!
You can add way more instructions than you currently do when seeking information from ChatGPT. It is worthwhile to learn how to craft better prompts.
Let the LLM know what you expect it to produce in as much detail as you can. Let it know what you don’t want if it is possible to misunderstand your request. Give it an example of the output you expect to help guide its response. The better the instructions, the more pleased you will be with the result.
What is ChatGPT Best at Doing?
ChatGPT is known for excellent natural language skills and understanding. It does an excellent job at following your chat conversation and considering information it has learned in that chat. To that point, make sure that you are creating new chats when asking it information on new topics. At the very least, keep your chats topical if you want it to perform at its best.
ChatGPT is also very good at theological debate. I’ve personally used it to act as my conversational partner in a theological debate and found that it gives excellent answers. It does this so well that it has influenced my beliefs on certain topics as a direct result of this back and forth dialogue.
If you pay for ChatGPT Plus, you get access to more tools like Projects and Agent as well as more use of resource intensive tools like generating images and deep research.
Projects allows you to segregate your chats into specific projects like book writing, sermon series, academic research, or other personal projects. You can give it custom instructions for all chats in that project that helps to guide the LLM more specifically according to your wishes.
Agent is a new feature as of the writing of this article that allows ChatGPT to do some tasks for you like scheduling appointments in your calendar, create reports complete with slides, charts, and more. It can collect information online and place it into a spreadsheet, creating a sermon with slides. This new feature is a game changer but it is limited because of computing power. For now, the Agent tool only allows 40 agent requests per month at the Plus level. I would also caution you about allowing ChatGPT having access to private information like your membership list and contact information.
The last thing I’ll warn you about with ChatGPT, and this isn’t unique with it but it is known for this, LLMs are prone to hallucinations. Make sure to verify information it generates to make sure it is true and real. It can sometimes confidently state a fact as true that is in fact a hallucination. ChatGPT and LLMs in general are getting better at not hallucinating but it hasn’t been eliminated yet.
Grok AI
All of the LLMs I’m mentioning in this article have similar capabilities in the broad strokes, Grok is no exception. Grok is an LLM that is owned by xAI, recently folded into X, formerly known as Twitter. It is younger than ChatGPT and less developed but has nevertheless scored really well on evaluation tests.
Grok is specialized on content found on X. As such, it is specialized in a more informal content base and as a consequence, its results are more informal. That isn’t to say that Grok is exclusively trained on X content, it just has more direct access to the stream of content on X than other LLMs. It is generally recognized as best suited for reaching younger, skeptical, or postmodern audiences.
Having used Grok for a few months, I often found that the results it provided were excellent, well informed, and less prone to hallucinations than ChatGPT. At a recent live stream, Elon Musk and his team stated that with their latest model, Grok 4, is able to respond at a PhD level across all knowledge domains.
I consider Grok to be a good general purpose LLM. Grok 3 is quick and good for fast, general responses. Grok 4, at the time of this writing, is available to those who pay monthly, it is very good at deep research.
I’ve noticed lately that xAI, Grok’s parent company, has been aggressively pursuing updates seeking to catch and surpass ChatGPT. As I wrote this article, they launched a new service called Imagine. They claim that it is the fasters image and video generation service out there.
Perplexity AI
Perplexity is best for doing professional / academic level research. It isn’t an LLM per se. It uses ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude as its LLMs and then organizes that content in its own unique way.
As a result of its prioritizing credible sources and that it provides source backed answers, it is less prone to hallucinations compared to ChatGPT. The citations it provides are clickable, and it excels at fact-based research. It is therefore a preferred platform for journalists, academics, and professionals.
Since it prioritizes facts, Perplexity AI isn’t as good for creative writing tasks. It’s accuracy is only as good as its sources but nevertheless, it is a solid choice for anyone doing serious research.
Gemini
Google’s entry into the LLM space. Gemini is tightly integrated into the Google Workspace. It excels at summarizing PDFs or generating multimedia content. It competes well with Perplexity on research tasks. It also supports very large context windows, supporting between 1-2 million tokens, much longer than what is typical for ChatGPT. This large context window makes it ideal for us in coding. You can paste in a large amount of code and have it interpret it, fix it, or generate more based on what you provide.
Its biggest drawback is that it currently offers limited interactions for free users. Last I checked, it was capped at around 500 interactions per month unless you are subscribed to a Google Workspace account.
In Conclusion…
I would encourage you to experiment with each of these services. Each of them offers something different. They each have something to offer ministry leaders. Always remember though that while AI can be an amazing help, it shouldn’t represent to the totality of your creativity. Don’t delegate your creativity to AI. Use AI to augment your creativity.
Joseph Duchesne is the creator of The Church AI Guy, a space where faith meets innovation while discussing the long-term impact of AI. A pastor, autodidact, and author of two books—The Last Crisis and Discover the One—he’s passionate about showing how Jesus-centered discipleship can thrive in a digital world. When he’s not experimenting with the latest tech, he’s reading theology, building church community, or spending time with his wife.