Lately I have been burdened by they ways that we track the prayer requests submitted by the congregation. As of now it is a completely manual process.
- Most prayer requests are submitted during a service on the back of a contact card
- The cards are gathered and PRs are compiled on a list.
- The lists are distributed amongst the staff members and the prayer team.
Each Monday I notice that about half of the list is made up of reoccurring PRs. Secondly there is no way for the church to get any type of feedback on what is going on with said PR.
I have been dreaming of some type of technology that would track prayer requests for our church...
- allow for someone to login and submit and track their prayer requests for the church.
- The ability for granular access to confidential PRs for specified users (ministry staff members).
- Logged in members to see a list of prayer requests and to pray for them.
- When someone prays for a request a log of who prayed and when it was will be saved and shown on the prayer. (kind of like a prayer poke)
- for people that enter their PR they can update information and show how their prayers are being answered.
- The ability to set PRs active/inactive, public/confidential, and anonymous/named.
7 comments:
There is a system out there that does about 95% of what you outline. But it also does a LOT that you do not outline including managemnet of hospital and homebound visitations. It has been under development for a little over two years now and is being successfully used in about eight churches. the url is http://www.iprayerworks.com
Thanks for the comment. I'd love to see how your software works! I'll send you an email so we can take a demo of the application.
Michael. We are developing a module as we speak that does all of this. It works with our ChMS. It works off email and is developed in MS .NET 2.0. We are planning for a summer launch. Here is a related post: http://www.equipthem.net/2007/09/what-to-do-with.html.
ps. interestingly enough...iprayerworks originated at a church down the street from us.
Michael,
Whatever came of your search for a prayer app? Did you find a solution?
Unfortunately this project was pushed back and it hasn't gone anywhere as of yet. The biggest problem isn't finding some application to track our prayer requests. The problem is that most of them are separate from our main church management system. We are striving to not create data silos. We have a difficult enough time keeping on database up to date. I'd like one that would plug into a ChMS of my choosing. I was recently contacted by Rus Blondin about a product that he was familiar with called Ask A Prayer (askaprayer.com). It looks really good but I haven't had a chance to really get involved with it yet.
Michael - Actually a good friend and I started working on Ask A Prayer about 2 years ago but it's kind of stalled right now. I think it has so much potential and we've developed it to a very usable state but we are both very busy. I would love to get someone involved who is passionate about using technology to help churches prayer. I am open to any type of structure of this product - free, paid, anything to get it out there to bless churches. Any ideas?
G'day. My name is Brian Lockwood. My business partner is Rus Blondin. Just wanted to give you an update that Ask A Prayer can integrate with management systems like Arena. In addition, we have now extended Ask A Prayer to be available to missionaries, small groups and ministries. We feel it will impact the prayer community in a great way, allowing prayer teams to be mobile. ie Missionaries.
Ask A Prayer is currently available in Beta for free. We would value your input and feedback to continue to grow Ask A Prayer.
Kind regards,
Brian Lockwood
www.askaprayer.com
Post a Comment