At the end of March, LifeChurch.tv Pastor and Innovation Leader Bobby Gruenewald announced a new LifeChurch.tv initiative called One Prayer. The idea involved inviting as many churches as were willing and able to participate in a collaborative June sermon series. Participating churches were asked to preach one sermon in the month of June on their own and then choose from among the hundreds of One Prayer video sermons at oneprayer.com for the remaining weeks of the series. Well-known pastors such as Ed Young Jr. and Perry Noble contributed One Prayer video messages for download, as did hundreds of other pastors across the world—giving participating churches plenty to choose from. Now that the One Prayer series is officially underway, I asked Gruenewald a few questions about the project.
COLLIDE: More than 1,300 churches (representing more than 750,000 people and as far away as South Africa, Egypt, and Pakistan) are taking part in One Prayer. Are you surprised by that level of response or is it about what you projected?
Bobby Gruenewald: We are blown away by the response. One Prayer has gone from four churches to 1,400 in just three months. We knew that there was interest from talking to other pastors, but we had no idea the response would be this big.
COLLIDE: On the technology side, what kinds of web applications and hardware did LifeChurch.tv have to put together to facilitate One Prayer?
Gruenewald: Our Digerati Team custom built the web application that is behind oneprayer.com. It’s built on open source technologies including PHP, mySQL, and mootools. Additionally, we are leveraging some popular web 2.0 API tools to power the blog including disqus and tumblr. Oneprayer.com and all of the free resources being downloaded for the series are hosted on several dedicated servers (most of them are in Dallas, TX).
COLLIDE: To a lot of people, it might seem counterintuitive for LifeChurch.tv to put time, effort, and money toward something like One Prayer, which likely won’t grow LifeChurch.tv in the traditional sense (more attendance, more giving). What is your perspective or philosophy on how you invest LifeChurch.tv’s resources?
Gruenewald: That’s a great question that goes right to heart of One Prayer. If we see ourselves only as LifeChurch.tv it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. But we see our church as a part of the Church, and that brings the perspective that we have a responsibility and role to play in the Church at large. The great thing about One Prayer is that it is only possible through the contributions (time, sermons, leadership, etc.) of many churches who see themselves as a part of the Church—it’s not a LifeChurch.tv thing.
COLLIDE: When One Prayer ends in three weeks, how will your team measure the success of the initiative?
Gruenewald: The initiative was focused on churches uniting so that the world might know Christ (John 17:20-23). We already see One Prayer as successful because of the response and involvement of all of the churches, and are even more encouraged as we hear from people who have been impacted.
To find out more about One Prayer visit www.oneprayer.com