Since 2021, Upper Columbia Conference has put significant focus on prayer. In 2022, UCC began holding many prayer-focused events, including 40 Days of Prayer, Zoom rooms with special guest speakers and an annual prayer summit. In addition to these events, prayer ministries has been praying for more ways to expand and reach people through prayer, and God answered with the digital prayer ministry initiative.
David Jamieson, UCC president, attended the North American Division year-end meeting last year when he heard a story from Justin Kim, Central California Conference digital evangelism director, about digital prayer ministry. It grabbed his attention, so Jamieson shared it with Kathy Marson, UCC prayer ministries coordinator.
“I found the video from Kim’s presentation and after watching it I was so inspired,” explained Marson. “Several churches in CCC partnered with NAD Adventist Information Ministry to offer prayer in their communities through social media. The outcome was amazing! They had so many requests that they had to stop advertising their prayer posts in order to handle the requests that already came in.”
Marson shared the video with several others and a committee was formed to make this ministry a reality. In early January, Jamieson; Marson; Art Lenz, UCC IT director; and Dustin Jones, UCC communications director, met with Brent Hardinge, AIM director, to talk about digital prayer ministry in UCC. During the meeting, AIM and UCC finalized plans to form a partnership to provide a pilot program in UCC to begin this year.
“The program works like this: The church records a video ad offering to pray with and for people in their community,” shared Marson. “The ad is delivered on social media to anyone within a 6-mile radius of the church. AIM employs student chaplains to respond to messages from call centers located at Andrews University and Walla Walla University. Students handle all of the interests in a timely fashion and turn the contact over to the church as soon as they have shown an interest in a local prayer contact.”
Following the committee meeting, six churches in UCC were invited to participate with the prerequisite that the churches currently have a presence on Facebook and/or Instagram.
“It is the hope and prayer that this will be successful and can be implemented in many more churches in the future,” shared Marson. “God’s timing and miracles are evident. Thank you for your prayers for digital prayer ministry.”
