While I haven’t tried live corporate prayer on-line, I have found that people respond very well to typed out prayer in email. For example, when people contact our church on-line asking for prayer, several things happen based on how the request is shared: posted to our prayer requests and praises page (by the user, not us), automatically and immediately sent to our prayer team for prayer with an autoresponded reply that says we are praying specifically for the need or joy shared and sometimes I personally reply including a prayer. The personal prayer works like this for me: I type the prayer as if I were speaking it to God over the person while laying hands on him or her. It is not an edited or boxed prayer but a specific response to the request from my heart that addresses the issues the person requested prayer for. While we don’t often hear back from people in response to autoresponded acknowledgements of our praying for them, I almost always receive a positive reply for those I have prayed over on-line. Although this is not live prayer, I believe that the person reading and agreeing with the prayer they are receiving joins me in corporate prayer.

I am very new to internet opps for ministry, in fact new to much of the social media available. But I am in an online lifegroup (United Nerd LifeGroup) where we did a group study together for 6 weeks, and are now training to lead our own online groups. Prayer has been a key element to the group. Group leader, Tony Steward, is live via webcam, the rest of us participate in a chat room. Prayer times vary, but I’ve come away blessed by each of those prayer times. We also ‘gather’ in a Facebook group between meetings to pray, or post devotions.