This is like… the best kept secret in the world?! At PrayVine.org, you can create a special conduit for communicating with prayer partners and donors regarding your real-time prayer needs. They can write a prayer back to you and even send a photo of the prayer event. You can even send them PDFs. Cost? Free! Try it today. (Thanks Brian!)
1) Why Are We Just Now Hearing About PrayVine?
For those that use this, how is it different from an email list, WhatsApp prayer group, or other means of communicating prayer requests and prayers online? I.e. if people don’t open an email from you, how are they motivated to use this service? Thanks.
Hi, this is Ian Hsu from Prayvine. Email newsletters do not invite engagement, because they are usually long-form and past-tense. There’s a big difference between receiving a prayer request about something happening right now, and something that happened a month ago. Prayvine is designed to help workers communicate with their partners with concise prayer requests in real time.
For example, a worker simply types in their prayer request (and attaches a photo if they want) into a single text box, clicks a “send” button, and their partners automatically receive an email notification with response buttons built in. It literally takes seconds rather than the 20+ minutes needed to get a newsletter out (e.g. fiddling with templates, sending test mails, etc).
In addition, the design of Prayvine helps keep workers accountable in (a) regularly sending out updates (e.g. reminder features) and (b) the discipline of writing short requests (e.g. the prayer request box is kept purposefully small. Workers experience consistently see much higher rates of engagement when switching from newsletters to Prayvine. BTW, supporters do not need to create a Prayvine account to receive prayer requests.
The key problem for WhatsApp and other group messaging services is that they do not scale well, because the default is “reply to all”. We are currently working on a mobile app that addresses this issue.
The Lord called me and my wife into this ministry about 6 years ago, and we operate Prayvine as 501c3 non-profit ministry. We raise support so we can make Prayvine available for free to ministry workers. We’d definitely appreciate your prayers and welcome you to contact me directly at ian [at] prayvine [dot] org.
Great response, Ian! I’m enjoying trying it myself. Thanks for your work to make it a reality!
Thanks for sharing this! I’d seen it before, but hadn’t actually tried it. I just chated with Ian at Prayvine today and really enjoyed the thought and prayer he’s put into this tool. I’ll be trying it out to see if it’s something more folks in our org should begin to implement!
JC, thanks for checking it out. I’m enjoying checking it out and learning the ropes on PrayVine as well!
Thank you, Ian, for serving those on the field in this way (and those praying for them). A few quick questions that might be of interest to others…
1. Will video be supported soon? Or are hyperlinks at least supported so that we can link to a video we post on Vimeo, YouTube, or other video host?
2. Can you speak a bit more about how secure the service is? My org works primarily in countries where security really matters.
3. Any plans to make this available as a mobile app — or perhaps a progressive web app (PWA)? If pray-ers were able to get both a mobile notification and an email whenever there were new posts, that would really help make sure that messages are getting seen.
Thanks!