AJ the Irish Lass' Ramblings

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When I first started running an email prayer list  when I was about 18, such things were somewhat of a novelty, AOL was sort of like Facebook is now, and I’ve learned a lot of things along the way. There’s a lot of trial and error involved with doing anything online, and prayer lists/groups are no exception.

Here are a few of my takeaways I’ve learned and some info on how I currently handle prayer requests:

• Email has pretty much died off as a medium for sending out requests for a lot of people with social media and texts/SMS being far more commonplace. However, that doesn’t mean everyone involved with your prayer ministry will use your social network of choice – that’s where having a website or blog where you post new requests comes in handy.
• If you still have prayer partners willing and able to receive requests by email, make sure you use list software or have an easy subscribe/unsubscribe process. Just because someone emails you a request does not mean they want to be put on a list or have their email address shared with other lists (contrary to popular belief, Congress never passed a law that prohibited emails from being treated as spam if they have unsubscribe links).
• It’s also helpful to keep in mind that, because of the theological diversity within Christianity, prayer partners might not share the same beliefs on everything, so your personal prayer distribution list might not be the best place to share Bible studies. Instead, continue running a separate list or group for such things.
• Politics are best left out of any email distribution, because you don’t know what side of the aisle  your prayer partners are on (I’ve shocked a few people by informing them I’m a Democrat) and, quite frankly, prayer partners facing persecution in other countries have a lot to cope with without getting drawn into the American political debacle. If you’re at the receiving end of a lot of political emails, don’t hesitate to politely ask people to refrain from sending them or use your email filtering tools to keep these types of emails out of your inbox.

Even though I no longer distribute requests via email, I still welcome prayer requests which you can send by visiting the page titled Prayer Requests at the top of this blog. You may respond to posted prayer requests by posting a comment or by contacting the requester through an email link (if an email address was provided and they agreed to have it shared).