Text & Pray

Hey Creekers… Prayer is powerful and effective! James 5:16 says, “the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.”

I’ve thought about how we as a church can care for each other more effectively with our prayer needs. Prayer chains through the phone tend to be slow and dependent on each person passing the prayer need “down the line”. A lot of times people aren’t home and the voice mail might not get checked quickly enough. Email is another alternative, but can be slow depending upon how often people check their email.

At Elk Creek we are going to deliver our prayer requests through text messaging! Most people carry their mobile phone with them everywhere they go. Text messaging has quickly become an excellent way of communication and will be used more and more in our day and age.

Here’s how this will work. If you are part of Elk Creek Church and would like to receive prayer requests from other Creekers…you can text the word “pray” to 313131 from your mobile phone. You will receive a confirmation message back letting you know that you have successfully signed up. Or you can click here to enter your mobile number from the web. When you receive a text message with a prayer need, please take a moment and pray as soon as possible for the need. 

We also have three ways for you to request prayer…

1. If you already subscribed to receive prayer requests through text messaging, you will be in the system and you can text a prayer request to 313131. Please make sure to include your name in your text message so that people know who they are praying for. This is the fastest way to deliver your prayer request. Again…you have to be signed up to receive pray requests in order to text a request.
2. You can email your prayer request to pray@elkcreekonline.com. Your request will be entered as soon as possible and delivered via text message to all that have signed up to receive prayer needs. 
3. You can always call the church office at (484)667-4111 with your prayer request if text messaging and email isn’t your thing.

A few things to remember…

• We want as many people to sign up for this as possible, but we only want people to sign up that are really going to pray. This isn’t a way to get the latest “scoop” on people. This is about praying for serious needs. 
• We want to text prayer needs that are urgent in nature. Please use good discretion when submitting requests. Maybe prayer requests that are less urgent could be shared with your small group instead of texting them.
• Be as brief and concise as possible with your request. Text messages can be a maximum of 130 characters.
• Oh…and one other thing…check with your carrier on your text messaging plan. I don’t want you to be surprised when you get your bill if your carrier charges you a fee for text messaging.