Prayer Request Management

Hi Dave, and welcome!

If it were me, I'd make an announcement that the prayer list needs updated, and if you want to keep someone's name on the list, to please contact you. Otherwise, the request will be dropped after 2 weeks. This is to keep the list current.

One way I did our list was to divide the requests into different groups, like Unsaved, Illness/Surgery/Recovery, Wisdom and Direction, and Praise. The biggest issue I had was the chronically sick who were not ever going to get well, whose names were on the list forever and ever with no real update. I finally just listed some general categories, like Chronically Sick or Terminally Ill, Missionaries, Unspoken, etc. That shortened the list a lot. Yes, we need to pray for the sick, but for those who have a chronic bad back or diabetes, we can better pray when there's a flare up or surgery, rather than leaving the name on the list for years and years. After a while, people start ignoring those names. You might get a few disgruntled folks over it, but I wouldn't sweat it.

When someone died, I would remove their name from the list and add a request for the family under the "recently bereaved" for a few weeks, then remove it.

I also put an area on the list for "This week's new requests" and bolded the area for Praises.

Hope this helps.

 

That's a good way to run it, I think.

 

One church I know cleanses it once a month, If you want to keep on adding the same name, you have to keep on calling it/emailing it in.