What if anyone, anywhere, could build their own Bible experience in minutes? That's the vision behind the YouVersion Platform, the next chapter in the YouVersion story. It opens up the Bible app's content, licensing and infrastructure so developers around the world can create Bible readers, Scripture-infused apps and even Bible experiences inside video games.
Recorded live at the Missional AI 2026 Global Summit in Silicon Valley, this episode features James Poulter (JP) in conversation with Gaylen Washington of YouVersion. Gaylen, who previously worked in mergers and acquisitions at large tech firms including Dell, leads a team of more than 100 engineers. They talk about the platform, how AI is reshaping his leadership, what it looks like to have gospel-centered conversations about disruption and fear, and the kind of people who are thriving in this AI-first season.
The YouVersion Platform exposes YouVersion's Bible content so developers anywhere can build faith experiences in their own languages and regions.
YouVersion's family of apps, including the Bible app, kids' experiences and lighter apps for places where the full app is hard to deploy, has been installed on more than a billion devices. The platform takes the content, partnerships and media behind those apps and opens them to developers. Gaylen calls it a "last mile" effort: closing the gap so organizations and individuals can build faster, in their own heart language and region.
The platform starts with a base layer of Bible text, exposing every translation YouVersion is licensed to share. Once that's hardened, the long-term plan is to add other content, such as reading plans, on top.
The theme is simple: anyone can build. "We want to build something that our grandmothers and grandparents can build on," Gaylen says. Anyone who registers as an organization or individual and gets an API key can start building within minutes. People are already creating bespoke Bible readers, their own Scripture-infused plans and even video game experiences, including an avatar who walks through the story of Jesus with the Bible text opening right there in the game.
Bible licensing has long been a barrier for builders, and YouVersion is drawing on years of trust with publishers to make it simpler.
Licensing Bible texts has long been one of the hardest parts of building Scripture experiences. "Trust is at the heart of this conversation," Gaylen says. YouVersion has earned a great deal of trust with publishers through its family of apps. For the platform, it is asking publishers to take the relationship a step further with an additional agreement to sublicense their content.
That process will take time, and not every publisher available in the Bible app is on the platform yet. YouVersion is showing publishers the value, including richer insight into how their texts are used across both the apps and the platform. Over time, Gaylen expects the platform to offer the same translations as the family of apps.
AI agents help Gaylen see across his whole organization without stepping into his engineers' roles.
As a leader, Gaylen wants to know what's happening: what code was pushed, how many merge requests went through and how healthy the pipeline is. He often found himself digging into repositories and forking code to understand it, which wasn't the best use of his time. His job is to set his team up for success.
So he connected agentic workflows using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to create a digest that pulls from code repositories, Teams channels, Notion documentation and databases. Now he gets a 360-degree view of the platform without stepping outside his lane. His engineers and product leaders appreciate it, because he can support them while giving them freedom to do their jobs.
AI is reshaping roles at YouVersion, and leaders are making space for honest, gospel-centered conversations about it.
With more than 100 engineers, YouVersion is one of the largest development teams in the faith world. AI has changed everything, Gaylen says, and leaders are working out how to shepherd that change in a life-giving way. People joined for the mission and for specific roles, so now YouVersion is stepping back to ask what's changed, how people work, how roles are defined and how it recruits. It's not a one-time exercise; with models changing so quickly, it will become a regular rhythm.
He shares a recent example. Platform engineers had become so effective with AI that they built their own data analytics and engineering pipelines, even though YouVersion already has a full data organization. When this came to light, data leaders who had invested years in building their teams found it shocking and off-putting. Rather than telling people to "get over it," as might happen in corporate settings, YouVersion paused to name that this felt existential, hard and scary, and made space for the conversation.
Gaylen actually relishes these moments. YouVersion is a ministry with business and operational dimensions, and sometimes the resistance isn't just about process; it's spiritual. The team prays, names issues and values clear, direct feedback, so offense and the enemy have no room to divide them. In corporate life, he could only address things covertly. Now he can address them openly with the gospel.
The people thriving now, Gaylen says, are "hyper-curious," self-aware, humble, hungry and smart, and above all open to being product thinkers first. Engineers increasingly describe themselves as product engineers. It isn't about having a computer science degree or not. The signal he looks for is someone who recognizes the game has changed and is willing to change with it.
Even where you can't name Jesus in a meeting, you can still act in ways that look like Christ.
Gaylen came to YouVersion to combine what he loves: God's Word, people and technology. To Christian colleagues still in corporate roles, his advice centers on how they're doing personally. When you feel the dissonance, you need to act on it and stay true to yourself, even if it's costly. If you can't quote Scripture or pray in a meeting, ask everyone to pause for a moment of silence. Do something that "smells and feels and looks like Christ, even if you can't say His name in a meeting."
How does Gaylen handle the relentless pace of AI change? Candidly, he admits he's struggling. That's exactly why he built his AI digest. He's confident it will get better, but right now, it isn't easy.
Gaylen genuinely loves his team, and he's excited to see each person grow as roles shift. YouVersion is working on integrations with major partners, getting to know independent developers and planning hackathons designed not as one-off events but to bless developers, care for them and keep them connected to a growing community throughout the year.
Visit platform.youversion.com and select the getting started option. It's designed to be self-explanatory.
For more from YouVersion at Missional AI 2026, find these sessions in the Missional AI Video Library under Silicon Valley 2026:
The Missional AI SFO27 Global Summit takes place March 30–April 2, 2027, at the Hyatt Regency SFO. Super early-bird registration runs September 24 through October 8. Book your hotel room with your registration and your ticket drops to just $399, the lowest price we've ever offered. Lock in your room and your seat at missional.ai.