Hear my prayer

It's the kind of request usually uttered in the strictest confidence to the most intimate of friends:

"Please pray that spirit of anger and violence in my home is broken, that (my) husband has the eyes of his understanding opened," pleaded Faye.

But her supplication wasn't whispered in the privacy of a confession booth. Faye cloaked herself in the anonymity of the World Wide Web and posted her prayer for all the world to see on worldprayerteam.org, an online prayer message board hosted by New Life Church's World Prayer Center.

Launched in 2003, the international site functions as a faithoriented chat-cum-message board. Users register for free to post their prayers. Then, with a click of a button, visitors can access the requests - which are divided into categories for personal and national prayers - and pray accordingly.

On any given day, hundreds visit the site to post their prayers and pray for others. The site receives about 30,000 visitors every month, and more than 600,000 prayers have been posted since its inception in 2003, according to New Life Pastor Brady Boyd.

Now the site is inspiration for expansion. Renewal Ministries, a Texas-based Methodist group, teamed up with a New Life Web designer to create a personalized version of the product: virtualprayerroom.net.

For $10 monthly per 100 worshipers, smaller churches can obtain their own sites and personalize them with prayers oriented to their congregations. They started testing the sites in early 2007, and began offering them to churches in trial form last winter.

More than 100 such sites are currently running, said Terry Teykl, president of Renewal Ministries, and about 500 groups - including several radio stations and media conglomerates - are waiting to purchase the new product. Though the product has been available for free in a prototype form, the final fee-based version will launch in the next few weeks.

Connected communities

Cyberspace isn't new territory for the faith community. Most churches have Web sites, and many offer extensive e-mail updates and multimedia sermons. A Google search for "prayer" leads to tens of thousands of sites offering testimonials and tutorials on how to pray.

But few sites offer actual prayer.

Godtube.com, a popular Christian videouploading site, recently added a prayer wall, where users can anonymously post messages and prayers. And a site based in the United Kingdom, www.pray-as-you-go.org, offers a daily prayer meditation, suitable for downloading to an MP3 player.

But the mission behind the new Virtual Prayer Room sites is to mimic the physical experience of a prayer room, said Lynn Ponder, editorial director of Prayer Point Press, a division of Renewal Ministries. In a real-life prayer room, church members direct their prayers through stations, each of which indicates a prayer topic. In the virtual room, people direct their prayers through a news feed.

"In the last five years or so there has been sort of an explosion of online prayer resources and Web-based prayer tools, because the Internet is a part of our lives now," Ponder said. "(The site) seemed like a natural way to connect people."

Certainly, though, people can pray anywhere, anytime. So why the need for a Web site built on the premise that more prayers are better than one?

It ties into a line from Matthew 18:20: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Some Christians believe it means that Jesus becomes more present when people pray in unison.

"A house divided against each other cannot stand," says Katherine Button, prayer coordinator at Farmington United Methodist Church in Farmington, N.Y., which has been using a prototype of the Virtual Prayer Room site for more than a year. "When there's unity, there's strength."

But it's not just the idea of having many people pray that draws people to the New Life and Virtual Prayer Room sites; it's also the comfort of knowing that one's prayers can be issued anonymously.

"I need to lose 200 extra pounds ... please pray," writes one woman on the New Life site.

And, there's the chillingly straightforward. "My husband beat me black & blue. He has little remorse," writes a woman from a small town in the U.K.

The site offers no promises of intervention or assistance - only prayers. All it takes is a few clicks of a mouse and a valid e-mail account (and no exchange of money) to register and submit prayers.

But no registration is required to view the prayers.

Prayer instruction

The Old Bethel United Methodist Church in Indianapolis purchased a virtual prayer board through Renewal Ministries to provide a place for communal prayer at a cheaper price than building a prayer room.

In the nine months the church has used the board, it has received about three prayers a day, and the site has helped unite the church community, said Ethan Maple, associate pastor.

"It not only equips (congregants) to pray, but it also teaches them how to pray," Maple said. "Some people don't know exactly what words to use or how to use them, and the virtual prayer room will tell you: ‘pray for your governors, pray for your pastor.'"

The sites have automatic nets, which vet the posts for foul language and inappropriate postings. But not everything controversial is censored: One request on the New Life site asks viewers to pray for "no Muslims in our government positions."

Numerous posts, in fact, condemn people of non-Christian faiths.

But advocates argue that the benefits of virtual prayer outweigh costs. "To get people praying on the same page with the same vision in mind and the same goal in mind, it helps to unify a church around what it is that they're seeking God for," Ponder said.

And, she said, the site puts prayer in the forefront of spirituality.

"A lot of churches just see (prayer) as something they do when there's a problem or when someone has cancer or there's a crisis," Ponder said. "I think that what we try to emphasize is that prayer really needs to be the foundation of what they do."

The influence of the New Life site is documented in "Praise Report," a page on which members update the Web viewers on the endings to their stories. People talk of their cancer being cured, of debt collectors going away. And that's the power of prayer, Ponder believes.

"You may see more people coming to Christ, you just may see more lives being touched within the services, you actually may see an increase of giving. You may see marriages restored or more visitors that are being drawn to the church. But the presence of God will always bring results," Ponder said.

ANSWERED PRAYERS

A sampling of prayers and outcomes as posted at worldprayerteam.org:

The prayer: May I have the faith to believe that I will get the money that I have asked God for. So I do not have debt collectors, auctioneers - threatening letters. I am living in fear of embarrassment. We pray and believe. AMEN The outcome: Debt collectors have not come, my overtime was paid, Landlord agreed to be paid in installments. My brother accepted my proposal. - Lillian, Nairobi Province, Kenya

The prayer: Please pray for Bill. He's having surgery in his abdomen area for melanoma. Please pray that the doctor will be able to get it all and there won't be complications. Also, most importantly please pray that he will trust Jesus as his Savior. The outcome: Thanks for praying for Bill! the doctor was able to get all the cancer. It did not spread! - David, California

The prayer: Please pray for places suffering from drought. Father we thank You for blessing us. Please have mercy on us. Send rain/moisture to us. We give You praise. Thank You for taking care of our needs. We ask in Jesus name. Bless you for praying. The outcome: We praise You Lord & thank You for the little shower we had today (rainbow too). Thank you prayer warriors. - Diane, Colorado