Monday, June 28, 2010

Requesting Prayers: Every Church Needs to Develop Privacy Protocol

I sent a prayer request to a pastor’s personal email. The next thing I knew, a deacon from the church was posting a message on my facebook wall about praying for me. What this communicated to me was that the pastor who received the prayer automatically put it on the prayer chain, somebody in the prayer chain picked it up and remembered that I am on facebook, so figured they could follow up about it on my facebook wall….well intentioned, wanting to let me know they are praying for me.

People who post on my facebook wall may not realize that my kids and their friends all follow me, and as ‘friends’ see everything that gets posted on my wall. For example, what if I needed prayer for something I didn’t want to share with, say, my parents, or my kids – something that they might not be ready to hear about? This particular prayer was about my sister, my kids' Godmother, facing cancer. Luckily, my kids were already aware of it. But what if they hadn't been? What if they had to find out about their Godmother's illness on my facebook page?

But wait, it’s not like I posted a plea on facebook. I went out of my way to make the request directly to a pastor – as opposed to an anonymous prayer chain submission. So how safe is it to ask a pastor for prayers? Certainly this particular pastor is not safe.

However, there was another pastor from the same church who I emailed asking for a prayer, and he contacted me back, and prayed for me. Simple and direct. In addition, he followed up two weeks later to check on me and the object of my prayer request.

I was amazed and felt so cared for. It was very safe. I felt like God was there with us in the process. Like this was and is indeed the way in which the body of Christ cares for itself.

What do you think? Should churches come up with protocols in this electronic age of reaching out? Should I be concerned about who prays? As long as a member of Christ's body is praying for me - why do I care? Shouldn't I just be grateful?

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