Why I built PrayerAsks
Most communities already have people willing to pray for each other. They rarely know who needs it.
Where it started
As a young volunteer near a spiritual center I kept prayer lists, and I treated keeping them as work. Writing someone's name down meant thinking about them, and that often turned into a phone call or a practical offer of help. It also got me out of my own head for a while.
Recently I checked in with an old friend and learned he had been through a very hard year: trouble at work, health problems, tests in his family. Plenty of people in my community hold devotionals. Any of them would have prayed for him, and none of them knew.
What I could find for this was a group text, a card in a basket, or a church software module where a moderator can always see who wrote what. So in PrayerAsks an anonymous ask is saved with no author at all, the least-carried ask goes to the top, and the answer comes back to everyone who carried it.
What I want
A friend going through a hard year gets carried by the people already gathering around him, and hears from them afterwards.
What it does
One list a community keeps together, and a worklist for the person who keeps it, showing what nobody has carried yet.
Commitments
No role, ours included, can see who wrote an anonymous ask. The list is not sorted by popularity. The AI does not write prayers.
Nathan Rohm
Founder
In Nathan's words
"Prayer helped me align with what was best for the people around me. And I think it made me feel more connected, valued, and invested in their lives."
"A few times I did have someone say they were praying for me. They did not have a job to offer. They did not have money to give me. But they did have spiritual love and support to share. This meant a lot to me."
"I thought about all the people holding devotionals in my community who could have also helped out with prayers and well wishes."
Nathan Rohm
“We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.”
