Isn’t it about time prayer went online? After all, we can go online to tithe, read the Bible, and attend a church service at an Internet campus. Evidently online prayer was the next logical step in that progression because One Prayer, Kindle, and WeTheChurch all take on that idea in their own way.
One Prayer – oneprayer.com
One Prayer is actually more of a sermon series than an online prayer community, but trust us, it fits. Every sermon preached by a pastor involved with One Prayer addressed that pastor’s one prayer for the Church at large, and the title of each sermon went something like, “Lord, Make Us _____” (as in, “Lord, Make Us Bold). 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 (founded and hosted by LifeChurch.tv) 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. In total more than 1,300 churches representing more than 750,000 people took part in One Prayer, which means almost a million people spent the month of June being exposed to prayers for the worldwide Church—not bad!
Kindle – kindlejoy.com
Kindle (still in beta) is a social network of sorts designed to help users share prayer. Users can connect to one another by making friends and joining groups. Then once a user posts a prayer, that prayer can be shared with the user’s friends, groups, the entire Kindle community, or it can be kept private. Kindle is a great way to build community and see the different prayer activities of users or groups at a glance. Plus, Web 2.0 features like comments and tags are available for individual prayers.
WeTheChurch – wethechurch.org
WeTheChurch is a remarkably simple but effective concept. The site offers two options to those looking to share prayer: submit a quick (140 characters or less) prayer request or submit a quick praise. Users can follow the most recent submissions via wethechurch.org or Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter (twitter.com/wethechurch) or RSS. As the official site says: “It’s that simple. Just us, the church, praying for each other.” Amen.
Also, here’s our review of Echo Prayer from the September/October issue of COLLIDE:
Echo Prayer
Web App
What’s Cool: The problem with traditional prayer journals (you know, paper ones) is that they don’t organize your prayers and send you reminders via email and text message like Echo. Plus, Echo is free!
What’s Not: There’s not much to complain about with Echo; it’s a simple, intuitive tool that can help you manage your prayer life.
Bottom Line: The technologies used in Echo aren’t revolutionary, but they’ve been synthesized to form a useful product for the tech-savvy prayer warrior.
Our Rating:
Official Site: www.echoprayer.com