Community, Social Media & Networking
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The Next Level of Prayer: Social Media

Posted by JosephCole on Jul 17, 2009

digitalprayer

This is a Guest Post by Joseph Cole.

Have you ever organized a prayer meeting or other type of intercessory prayer event at your church, showed up and then wondered where all of your people were?

It’s amazing how many believers suddenly get very busy whenever a prayer meeting is called because–let’s face it–prayer is not the hottest event going down in the community.

However, this does not have to be the case if you take your prayer event to the next level: Social Media. I want to tell you how the Web 2.0 experience turned our prayer vigil into a hub of epic excitement and adventure that left our participants begging for more.

More thoughts after the jump:

Last Friday, Tabernacle of Praise, a rural church of about 100 members, co-sponsored a 24 hour City Wide Prayer Vigil in Crestline, OH. The event was hosted in the Crestline House of Prayer by the Peacemakers International starting 9 am Friday and ended 9 am on Saturday morning. Friday morning saw a variety of denominational representatives come through the door: Church of God people, Foursquare people, United Methodist people and independents like me. All of them came to support the city in prayer, and they came expecting to be greeted by a list of prayer needs. Instead, they saw laptops.

Arriving early, I had set up my Airport Base Station Extreme (an awesome piece of powerful connectivity) in the building, set up my MacBook, opened up Seesmic Desktop (my desktop Twitter client) and began to Twitter the event using the hashtag #24hrprayer. My Facebook account is set to import my Twitter updates and so all of my Facebook friends received the updates as well. Most of the participants from our rustic community had never heard of Twitter, yet within minutes they began to see the power of this new social technology as we began to receive prayer requests from a variety of Twitter users all over the U.S. and the world.

As the event went on, we received Twitter prayer requests from people like @gailhyatt, @ronedmondson, @travisthrasher, @human3rror, @flowerdust, @imarkbailey and @carece. Despite all the Twitter activity, we receieved the majority of our requests from Facebook. Through Facebook, we were connected to believers in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, Spain (It helps to speak Spanish.), India, and Kenya. We were able to pray for them all in real time as they sent in their requests.

The power of social media in prayer is that it brings your prayer event to the online community, which knows no geographical boundaries. My people here from a relatively small church in the country of Ohio were exhilarated by praying for people in far away places who are doing great things for God.

Twitter and Facebook took our prayer vigil to the next level by connecting us to the global Body of Christ.

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12 Responses to “The Next Level of Prayer: Social Media”

  1. Adam_S
    Friday, July 17, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    This is a great idea. I think the main reason people don't like prayer meeting is that they are poorly run. Most of the time they are 80 percent gossip and then the rest of the time listening to people drone on. Prayer should be exciting and it can be if people are taught how to pray in groups. There are many good prayer training things out there but because prayer is often not valued people don't go to them. They don't go to them and the prayer times are boring. Prayer times are boring so people don't value prayer. We have to break the cycle.

    I also think that twitter is a great prayer resource. I follow staff at our church and regularly pray for them when they bring up meeting and events that are going on at the church.

    Thanks for the post!

    Reply
    • josephmcole
      Monday, July 20, 2009 at 2:38 am

      I have to agree. Almost all the prayer meetings that I have been involved in have been poorly organized and so the energy simply bogs down in the middle. When the people in a prayer meeting get a glimpse of the awesome power and majesty of what they are doing, there is no lack of passion on their part.

      I also understand the gossip issue, and would like to comment that we didn't experience that in this prayer vigil largely because the people in the room didn't know the believers who twittering their requests to us. All they knew was the great things that these people were doing for God. It was amazing.

      Reply
  2. WKevinG
    Friday, July 17, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    This is a great testimonial to the power of prayer and the power of technology to enable broader participation. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  3. Mikes
    Friday, July 17, 2009 at 9:51 pm

    Wow amazing! Truly a great testimony! I really pray that we can also bring our prayer meetings to a next level for God. Good Job!:)

    Reply
  4. Rodlie
    Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 2:05 am

    i dig it. i'd love to hear more about this sometime.

    Reply
  5. Josh Wagner
    Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    The power of the Internet. This stuff is exciting!

    Reply
  6. pbadstibner
    Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    Was wondering if you had heard of an account called @worldprayr and what you know about it you may want to check them out.

    Reply
  7. Jim
    Monday, July 20, 2009 at 1:44 am

    Pray without ceasing

    Reply
  8. Ana Cole
    Monday, July 20, 2009 at 2:45 am

    Estoy orgullosa de ti mi amor. Te amo. Dios es bueno y estamos caminando hacia los sueños de su corazon.

    Reply
  9. @imarkbailey
    Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 10:49 pm

    I was so impacted by this 24 hour prayer vigil. I participated in it by praying with them at the house of prayer and let me tell you, it was powerful. I walked out of their so impacted by the people and the power of God. To feel that passion, compassion, love, commitment to God and a deep caring for all from saints praying, was let me say “breath taking and overwhelming”…I loved it!
    I can't wait to have another one and if you ever thought about doing it….I highly recommend it!

    God bless you all,
    we love you!
    Minister Mark Bailey

    Reply

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