If you’ve attended the sorts of churches that I grew up in, you are very familiar with the “prayer chain.” This was a list of people (usually ladies) who formed a call tree to get people in prayer in the event of an urgent need involving a church member.

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of tweets and re-tweets requesting prayer, and people responding with their prayers. Especially today, when a case of mistaken identity reported that a very well-known blogger was in a car accident with his daughter this morning (as it turns out it was another guy with the same name with a daughter who has a similar name to his). The swiftness and the voracity of the twitter deluge that followed was surprising, with people calling for prayer on behalf of someone they really only know online (well, in most cases). It was somewhat counter productive until the correct information got out, but it was very encouraging to see the care and concern that was shown.

I think twitter is a great medium for the prayer chain for a couple of reasons:

• Information moves really quickly on twitter – the request can reach thousands in a matter of minutes.
• 140 characters is enough to send out a request, but not enough to gossip about it (if you know about old school prayer chains, no explanation required).

What do you think? Is twitter the new prayer chain?

Tags: prayer, twitter