www.creativeladiesministry.com

[Larkin]

Hi everyone! I'm new to the site and I think it is great. I am a stay at home mom of one son, he will be 4 in November, I'm a church secretary, toddler teacher during children's church, and am over the ladies group. My prayer request is this.... my baby starts preschool on Tuesday, 2 1/2 days a week. It is going to be so hard to leave him there without me. He is ALWAYS with me, never stayed with anyone besides me & dad except grandparents and never overnight. He is extremely excited so I'm trying to be brave but I don't feel like I'm ready for this. Please pray for me.

Also does anyone have any ideas on a Prayer Chain calling list for a church of about 100. We tried each one calling the one after them, but people acted like they had no idea what you were talking about when you called them. If anyone has any ideas that worked in their church please let me know. Thanks!

[Bethany]

Larkin, I have the most wonderful solution to your prayer chain problem! There is a product out there called "The Phone Tree". It's a machine like a reverse answering machine: it leaves messages. You program the phone numbers of everyone into it. Then you can put a message on the machine and it will call everyone on the list and give them the prayer request. It will even leave messages on answering machines. It's a wonderful tool that eliminates the "grapevine" effect. Here is a link to their web site so you can learn a little more about it. We absolutely loved it in our church. It's a bit pricey, though. We paid $500-600 for the standard model, which they don't seem to seel anymore. It looks like now the models they have work with your computer and are $999 and up. I still think it's a good investment, when you consider how many problems arise because of the breakdown in prayer chains. We had people thinking other people were dead, people mad, fighting, nasty phone calls, etc. just because they got the wrong message or no message.
This takes care of those problems.
Anway, here's the link so you can check out the features for yourself.
www.phonetree.com

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God bless,
Bethany

[kristen]

This is what we do for our church prayer chain. Since everyone is not interested in being on it we had those sign up who was. Then we broke them up into groups. There is one main person who gets called to start the request going as well as the pastor. Then the first person in each group gets a call from the lead one. So in your group you should only have to call one person. Each group should have 6-8 people. If you don't reach the next person on your list continue on until you do. Have everyone keep a notebook near the phone so you can write the request down. It's nice to keep track of requests and answers to prayer requests.
A few things we try to stress...call the next person on your list and give them the request, don't spend time chatting. get the request going. You can always call back later and chat.
One other thing....we try to keep the requests to urgency only, if it's not an emergency keep it for prayer meeting.
Print out the groups and give them to each person on the lists.
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I enjoy this sight so much. I look at it daily

[creativ4]

Hi Larken,

Glad to have you here and will be praying for you as your preschooler goes to school. I know that's hard on us moms

About the prayer chain. I've never seen them work too well when everyone has to call the next one in line. Either people are caught in the middle of something and they can't make a call to the next person right away and it is forgotten or they aren't very good about relaying the information. When my husband was pastoring, I was in charge of the prayer chain and I called each "link" in the chain or each person (those that wanted to receive the calls). It really in a sense wasn't a prayer chain in the typical sense, but still each "link" was given the correct information because it was the same one giving it each time and it didn't get changed down the line (Remember that game we used to play where you whisper something in someone's ear and then them to their neighbor and by the time it goes on around the room it is changed completely from what it started out). In another church we were in, they did it the same way and just had one person calling all the "links" in the chain. This was a real ministry to the lady that was in charge of it and it really blessed her to be doing it. That was her place of service in the church. She loved taking care of the requests and calling everyone.
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Joy and blessings,
Julia

[vanilla]