Don’t Pray Enough? Have This Web Service Pray For You!
First covered over at TechCrunch, InformationAgePrayer.com is unlike anything I’ve seen so far in terms of “digital prayers.” You can essentially pay them to pray for you.
From their mouths directly:
Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget.
We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying. Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen.
At Information Age Prayer we think our service should be used like a prayer supplement, to extend and strengthen a subscriber’s connection with God. Traditional prayer is an integral part of this connection and should never be forgone, even after signing up.
You can subscribe for yourself, or you can purchase a subscription as a gift to friends or family.
Insanity. I really like their plug for the children:
If your children don’t pray anymore sign them up for one of the many daily prayers available for each religion (click categories at the left). You may also want to have a prayer said for them directly. The prayer for children is the cheapest Information Age Prayer service at only $1.99 a Month. Pray for a child here.
Someone wake me up and tell me that this isn’t what I’m really something. Early April Fool’s joke, right?
FAIL.
Buzz it!
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39 Responses to “Don’t Pray Enough? Have This Web Service Pray For You!”
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[...] Web service will create computer-voiced prayers — for a fee March 18, 2009 ChurchCrunch [...]
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I'd love to see their earnings.
i feel bad, but, i hope it's nothing.
Haha, I hope so too.
"We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying" does that mean that whn I pray silently it does not count?
Actualy this is more sad than funny (although it is realy funny). It reminds me of buddhist prayer wheel .
ah, i guess that wouldn't work.. would it..?
This is clearly not oriented to Christians that believe prayer is a relationship but to others (Christians and other religions) that believe that prayer is a duty. But I don't think it is much different from submitting anyomous prayer requests to on line prayer groups. If there is no relationship what are you looking for in the prayer. Support and encouragement that someone is praying for you I guess but it still seems strange to me.
On the other side, it could be that these people really are praying for the people and getting paid for it. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem.
I think this is most definitely different from submitting a prayer request to an online group – depending on the group itself.
As far as I can see, this is more a replacement for your own prayer, while a submitting prayer requests is more of a "please pray with me" or "please pray for me"
This is also the same prayer over and over each day if I understand correctly – then why not just tape your own prayer and play it over and over, or does paying for it make it more important.
dial-a-prayer – you pay, we pray
What's next?
This really is based on the buhdist prayer wheel concept of prayer.
I think that many (if not most) people that submit prayer requests do it because they think that other people's prayers are worth more than their own. So as far that that is true, then this isn't much different. Many people will submit a prayer request and then not pray for it themselves. I really don't have a problem with praying for random people. (I actually think one of the most effective stranger evangelism techniques is public prayer stations, where you just offer to pray for people.) But I think that too often the church actually encourages this type of prayer thinking because we haven't taught people to pray, haven't really encouraged prayer, haven't demonstrated it publicly, etc.
This may be too much because several people on this board know me in real life. But one of our pastor's yesterday twittered about intercessory prayer being one of the most important and least talked about aspects of leadership. I then emailed him to ask how I could be more involved in organized intercessory prayer for our church and leaders. His secretary wrote back and said that the church really doesn't have an organized intercessory prayer group. (There is a men's prayer group that takes prayer requests but I stopped attending after a year because there was only about 10 mins of prayer per hour, it is a men's small group not a prayer group.)
I do think there are two different issues going on (at least). One, inside the church we don't really understand prayer and usually give it lip service but no actual time or importance. Two, outside the church people "believe in prayer" but don't believe that they have any strength in prayer so they want "professionals" to do it.
Great stuff Adam. Totally agree.
peace|dewde
It is the South African's Comment day today
This concept is completely ridiculous, shall we have a $10 Salvation Prayer as well.
Then again when you watch a DVD of – for example – Andy at chruch, why would you play it straight through to the end of the Prayer – do you? does it matter? How is that different to a recorded prayer even if you pay for it?
that's an interesting point there buddy…
huh.
I just noticed that the prayer for financial help is free
Ok that is funny. Does that imply they actually think that these prayers work? Otherwise, I wouldn't you charge for financial need prayers. Or maybe they are just doing their part to get people through the bad economy.
Adam,
Always appreciate your take on things… I think the “profitting” idea has got me frazzled.
And yes, if they are praying for the people, that's nice… but… again, why the money? interesting biz concept.
I guess I am feeling contrarian today. I don't know. But what is different about paying people to pray and paying pastors. I heard a house church guy talk about the fact that in the NT on of the paid roles was "widow". He made a fairly strong case that the role that was really being talked about was intercessor. He said that in their church they were looking to hire an intercessor but they had no plans to hire a full time pastor.
I in no way believe that this is a real Christian service. This is a Buddhist prayer wheel. But I do think it is possible and probably even a good idea for a church to have an intercessor on staff. (Not to say that you shouldn't be encouraging people to pray on their own or raising up lay intercessors. But if you pay to have a nursery staff, why wouldn't you pay to have intercession.)
But this is not paying someone to pray for you in the sense of intersession, they simply have computer read a prayer you submit:
"utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day"
Accepting money to pray for people…isn't that slightly…'off'
If someone can't pray for you because they want to, what is the use, isn't it a bit like paying for friendship?
Appointing a person as intercessor – hmm not sure about that
ha ha ha,
maybe I was too quick off the blocks.
Either way, I see this as a competitor to proper prayer. At least people will think they can pay others to pray for them. Not good.
Ok, enough web playing. Time to go pray
I agree this service isn't one that I would consider intercession. But in general, what is different from paying people to evangelize (as an evangelist does) or paying people to pastor, or paying people to serve in a million other ways (church IT guy, youth leader, worship pastor, etc) and paying people to pray for the church. It is a role and a gifting and the payment does not necessarily invalidate the work any more than paying the worship leader invalidates their worship.
If this is a serious attempt at prayer, how sad. If it is nothing but a profit making scheme, shame on the inventors.
The Lord looks at prayer coming from the heart, not the wallet. This will not work in the kingdom, no matter how much money it might make down here.
The Lord wants a cheerful giver, but a poor supplicant coming before Him. Poor in the sense of needing Him to get the riches otherwise unattainable.
Actually, that's pretty clever (speaking from a business perspective only, of course). Person submits a free e-prayer for financial help. If that person's situation doesn't change, the folks running this website aren't any worse off. But if by pure coincidence that person's financial situation improves, they might credit the change to the e-prayer. That might make them more inclined to pay for e-prayers on other topics.
What is different? It isn't a person to start.
I am not specifically talking about this service when I talk about what is different. I am talking about actually having intercession seen as a role in the church.
There isn't necessarily one but it would be kind of weird to have somebody on staff that only did that or to pay someone not involved with the church in any other way to do that. Why pay for something people can and will do for free? It definitely makes sense to have people with that call on staff and praying for the church among their roles.
I agree it can be weird to pay someone to do something that someone else will do for free. But there are musicians at most churches, and many of those churches still pay for musicians. There are many others people that could preach and might even do it for free, but we pay pastors. The difference is time. People who do something full time can spend full time doing it. That is really the only difference between volunteer and paid staff in my mind. All roles can be taken over by a volunteer if you wanted them to.
Maybe I'm undervaluing the importance of prayer or of having someone filling that role "full-time". I'll have to think about it. Maybe I can't get over the feeling of "thats all they are going to do?" If so, thats a problem but I tend to think it makes sense to have someone for who that is focus. It makes sense to have a team of people, staff and otherwise, who are commited to intercessary prayer for the church. Maybe we are just debating the semantics of the title at this point.
I was meaning to post directly to you Chris, but didn't. My post is below. Sorry.
I am in no way suggesting all churches need a full time prayer person. My guess is that way less than 1 percent of churches have a prayer person. I am only saying that a prayer person is a valid role. And that prayer should be an important part of who you are as a church. If it is not (and there are a lot of ways to measure this) how can it become an important part.
I have a friend that is into measurement and has developed a tool to measure the personal prayer life of churches. He uses this to try to get people to think about prayer and how to have a more vital and systematic approach to prayer in their church. In my experience most pastors are not “prayer people”. They are doers, that is why they are pastors. So there can be a lot of conflict between intercessors and pastors because they don’t “get” one another. That is never healthy. But I don’t know of any pastor that has a healthy intercession team that would not fight to keep it going. A church that is being actively prayed for, and takes prayer seriously as part of their decision making process, is a church that God can use.
I have been involved for about 10 years in Pastor’s Prayer Summits. These are extended times away from the office (usually 2 to 4 days) with no schedule other than prayer, no speakers, no seminars, just prayer). In communities where this takes off and there are pastors that do this and see the value it often leads to a greater sense of “the church” in a community. But many quite often it is only seen as an experience that you do once and not do again. Pastors don’t come back and the community is unchanged. When I moved from Chicago about 2 years ago, the Prayer Summit there was dying. It just happened that almost all of the prayer summit leadership team either relocated or job changed and was forced to stop working on the leadership team. I would love to see something like this happen in the ATL area where I am now, but I am not in a pastoral role and as far as I know there are no active prayer summits in the state.
All that to say, I think prayer should be more important in the church. (Sorry for the brain drain.)
hmph
This cant be real! Seriously
Jesus Crist this shit is evil!!!!!!!!!
haha. ok…?
Thanks to this website I got a much needed good laugh today and it was for free!
No really…..LOL!
You can pay this guy to pray for you. For a dollar a day he'll pray for whatever you want.
http://confusionnow.com/blog1.php/2009/10/09/will...