What's the Best System to Track Prayer Requests?

By Jacob Gerber — a pastor and the founder of Shepherding Tools.

An up-front summary of this article:

• A paper notebook is a simple, tried-and-true system for keeping prayer lists in analog format, but lacks the power of a digital system.
• A to-do app can handle a list of prayer requests well, but its lack of integration with shepherding software can make the system clunky overall.
• An app to keep track of prayer requests manages personal prayer requests well, but often lacks coordination with other officers as well as integration with shepherding software.

And here is the longer version:

What are the benefits and drawbacks of keeping a prayer list in a paper notebook?

The simplest tool to use to keep track of prayer requests is a notebook. This can be a cheap, spiral-bound notebook that you can find in a school supplies section. Or, it can be a nice, leather-bound notebook so that the quality of the notebook matches the importance of the activity.

Beyond keeping a mere list, a paper notebook allows your prayer list to function as a prayer journal. If you allocate a sufficient amount of space in the paper, you can not only write down the details of the request when you first learn about it. More, you can write about any updates to the situation, tracing God's providential provision for that specific request over a long period of time.

Using a paper notebook for a prayer journal is a tried and true method, so let's consider the strengths and weaknesses of paper.

The benefits of paper notebooks for a prayer journal

There are many benefits to using a physical notebook for your prayer list. First, there is something valuable about slowing down and writing notes down in analog format. While digital formats can speed up requests, slowing down for something as important as prayer can help to focus our hearts on the significance of the task in a way that tapping on our phone screens does not. Writing also helps us to remember information better by forcing us to distill what's important on the front end when we are jotting down notes. So, writing down prayer requests in a physical notebook can be a valuable spiritual practice in itself.

Second, there is real value in building your prayer system in a format that doesn't require the internet or power. Ironically, I'm actually writing this in the middle of a multi-day power outage in my area after tremendous storms that rolled through our area (working on a laptop with a battery that I had to recharge on electricity that I used at a coffee shop in another state). My whole family has taken up even more physical books than normal, and there is something elegant about a technology (the written word on a physical page) that doesn't turn off when the electricity dries up. Of course, paper is hard to read at night with no electricity for lights!

Assuming you have electricity, though, computer systems can be a tricky place to manage our devotional lives, including both Bible reading and prayer. The reason is simple: we use our phones and computers for entertainment, social media, work, and a variety of other purposes. When we are praying with the same devices that we use for all those other purposes, it's easy to be distracted by other things that we might do instead. We gain real clarity and focus when we use analog methods for these pursuits.

The drawbacks of paper notebooks for a prayer journal

Even so, when I have tried using paper notebooks (of varying kinds of quality), they have not worked well for me. First, paper notebooks have natural limitations of space. I never wanted to devote a full sheet of paper to every request, but I couldn't always know in advance which prayer requests would become significant to need multiple updates. It became difficult to cram all of the updates and details about the request into an area with limited real estate. A full-fledged prayer journal is an elegant concept, but its execution never really clicked for me.

Second, the more prayer requests I added, the harder it became to find the active, ongoing requests. To be sure, there is something encouraging about going back and seeing all the prayer requests that have been answered as I flipped through the pages; however, it became increasingly difficult over time to find the active prayer requests amidst many pages with prayer requests crossed off.

What are the benefits and drawbacks to keeping a prayer list in a to-do app?

For a long time, I managed my prayer list out of a to-do app called Todoist. This system worked really well. In fact, a lot of the principles that I learned in building my own prayer tracking system in Todoist became the basic structure to how I have built the Shepherding Prayer app.

What are the benefits of a to-do app for managing a prayer list?

To begin, I built a special category for "Prayer" and put all my requests into that category. Then, Todoist has a simple system for setting recurring to-dos. I could type "Mondays" (or abbreviations like "mon"), and that prayer request would recur every Monday. Or, I could type "every three days," or "every 2nd of the month" and those todos would recur just like that. Then, I could easily reschedule certain prayer requests at greater or lesser frequency when needs arose or resolved in the lives of the people I was praying for. Finally, I loved the ability to add comments.

Since I also used Todoist to manage other work and personal to-dos, it was a very simple, one-stop system to manage everything. It was easy to add prayer requests on the fly, and they would recur at precisely the frequency I set. It's fairly cheap to get a paid plan, so if you are looking for a straightforward to-do app that you can use to manage your prayer list, I would strongly recommend Todoist.

What are the drawbacks of a to-do app for managing a prayer list?

There are a few reasons, though, that led me away from using Todoist to manage my prayer requests. First, there was no smart way to even out the amount of prayer lists that I would receive on a specific day. I set days of the month to pray for people to spread my congregational prayer list across an entire month, but that was very labor intensive. I had to calculate how many households I had by the days in the month. Then, I had to add people to specific days manually. Then, when new people came in, or when some people left, I had to look through the app to see which days were heavier and which days were lighter than others. This required a lot of manual rescheduling.

The same problem reappeared for prayer lists that I had set for days of the week. I prayed for certain needs every Monday, others every Tuesday, etc. This was a nice system; however, the same kind of manual organization and adjustment had to happen every time I added or removed prayer requests from that list. It's a simple system to set up for a small number of prayer requests, but it becomes unwieldy for managing a large number of prayer requests.

The other drawback is that it didn't integrate well with the shepherding records I was keeping in Shepherding Tracker. After entering a shepherding contact, I had to open up a new app to add a prayer request—if I remembered to do so at all. Then, when I prayed for someone, it was difficult to get back into my shepherding notes to see updates to what had transpired in the requests I was praying about for these families.

When it became too difficult to manage multiple systems, I created a prayer app that integrated with Shepherding Tracker. All my notes and prayer requests are now organized in one, integrated system.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of an app to keep track of prayer requests?

The main drawbacks of software to keep track of prayer requests would be that an app is not analog. In a high-pace, digital world, we do well to slow down and reflect with clarity. The analog aspect is a huge benefit to a paper journal that an app cannot match, by definition.

Yet, I use a prayer app because it allows me the versatility and flexibility that a paper prayer journal cannot.

How does prayer software decide who you pray for next?

Prayer software can't decide what you should pray for. Instead, prayer software helps you to remember what to pray for, and when.

Most powerfully, prayer software helps to schedule prayer results through lists. When you set up Shepherding Prayer for the first time, the setup prompt suggests that you decide how frequently you want to pray for two groups: the congregation as a whole and the officers of the congregation. You can either set a timeline for praying through each list (e.g., "I want to pray for every member of the congregation every 30 days") or you can specify the number of households/people you want to pray for every day (e.g., "3 households/day").

Then, you can add custom lists for your households within Shepherding Tracker. I regularly use four custom lists:

• Shut-ins (weekly prayer)
• Pregnant women (weekly prayer)
• Acute shepherding needs (daily prayer)
• Chronic shepherding needs (weekly prayer)

The first two categories are self-explanatory, so let me give a brief note to explain the latter two categories. In the regular flow of pastoral ministry, there are individuals who go through seasons where they need regular, daily prayer. Whether they are battling a specific sin, or whether they are facing a serious crisis, it becomes important to pray for them on a daily basis.

There are also people who may not need daily prayer, but have consistent issues that I want to remember in prayer more frequently than every month or two when they pop up on the whole congregation email list. I have set my "Chronic shepherding needs" list to pray for those people weekly, but you can choose whatever frequency you would like.

Shepherding Prayer also allows the creation of custom prayer requests that are not associated with members of your church, as well as custom prayer lists that you can create within Shepherding Prayer. Just like with your prayer lists from Shepherding Tracker, you can specify how frequently you want to pray for those custom lists.

Then, to add people to prayer plans is as simple as adding specific lists. Not only do those requests start appearing in my customized daily prayer list, but the system spreads out everyone in the list so that I don't get seven on my list one day and zero on the next. If I'm praying for seven people on a weekly basis, I will get one person to pray about every week.

What is the best app for prayer requests?

I'm biased, but I built Shepherding Prayer to build on the benefits of other prayer systems, while trying to eliminate the drawbacks of them. To begin, this is an app that I can access from my computer or, more frequently, on my phone wherever I am. As an app, I don't have the space limitations of trying to cram all my prayer requests (or those requests' updates) into a shrinking space on paper. There is unlimited space for requests and updates alike.

The best functionality of Shepherding Prayer is that it emails me a customized list of prayer requests every day. I manage the frequency of prayer requests, and then the app not only reminds me to pray for my requests at their assigned frequencies. More, the app actually does the hard mathematical calculations to spread out the different prayer requests across multiple days so that I get roughly the same amount of prayer requests every day. That's the functionality that improves upon a simple to-do app.

Regarding prayer apps, one of the largest drawbacks of many apps is that they were not created for pastors and elders who are overseeing congregations. Rather, they were created for individuals to manage their own, personal prayer requests. Right out of the gate, many prayer apps do not coordinate well with other officers in the church, manage different privacy levels, or integrate well with shepherding software.

So, it is critical that Shepherding Prayer was built to integrate fully with Shepherding Tracker. When I am logging information about a pastoral conversation, I can add a prayer request for that person when they are still fresh in my mind. I can set the privacy of that prayer request so that it is something only I see, or I can share that with other groups of people who will be praying for that person at some point: elders, deacons, or even the whole congregation. That moves the software beyond personal productivity to shared shepherding of the whole church through coordinated prayer.

FAQ

What should a pastor do to get started building a system for prayer?

Any system is better than no system. Buy a cheap paper notebook or set up a to-do app to get praying immediately for the needs that you know about. In prayer, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and we easily forget what to pray for. Building a system—any system—is one of the most effective things a pastor can do to expand the effectiveness of his ministry.

How frequently should pastors and elders pray for their whole congregation?

In my opinion, it is non-negotiable for pastors and elders to pray for their congregations by name. Elders "should pray with and for the people, being careful and diligent in seeking the fruit of the preached Word among the flock" (PCA BCO 8-3). The frequency of praying for the people depends on the size of the church. In a smaller congregation, my goal was to pray for every member of the church by name monthly. At a medium congregation, my goal is to pray for every member by name at least every two months. The larger the congregation, the more specific prayer requests there will be in addition to the normal, ordinary prayer for each household.

What makes Shepherding Prayer different from other prayer apps?

Two things set Shepherding Prayer apart from other systems. First, Shepherding Prayer integrates closely with Shepherding Tracker. Many prayer apps are designed with an individual congregant in mind, but Shepherding Prayer is designed for pastors and elders who will be praying for the congregations. The software architecture prioritizes and strengthens the connection between shepherding and prayer. Second, Shepherding Prayer offers simple customization of the frequency of prayer requests, managing large lists into daily, customized prayer plans with ease.

Although other systems have their benefits, if you are a pastor or elder wanting to pray better for your church, I'd encourage you not to try to reinvent the wheel. Start using Shepherding Prayer for free for up to five users today by signing up here. Shepherding Tracker is included, creating a powerful link between your shepherding and your prayer. Then, when you are ready to get all your officers into coordinated prayer, check out the simple pricing for more than five users.