One of the most powerful ways church and ministry leaders can care for their people is to pray for them. Churches all over the country are inviting people to send in prayer requests, but often people never hear back, and never know if their prayer requests have truly been heard or prayed for. But with Gloo, no prayer request will ever fall through the cracks again!
Gloo uses natural language processing to automatically recognize and flag when someone texts in a prayer request. You can then easily respond to your people's prayer requests and create a genuine two-way conversation between the person needing prayer and the team member that is praying for them.
How to send in a prayer request:
Gloo uses natural language processing to recognize and flag incoming prayer requests. Anytime a Connection texts in something like "I need prayer," "Will you pray for..." or "Can someone pray for me," the system will automatically mark their message with the "Needs Prayer" status in your Inbox.
If someone texts in a generic ask, such as "Will you pray for me?":
Gloo will automatically reply with "What would you like prayer for?"
The user will respond with their prayer request.
Gloo will flag the message with the "Needs Prayer" status in your Inbox.
Gloo will also automatically send the "Prayer Request Received" Automation to let the user know their request has been received. This Automation can be customized or toggle on/off by going to Automations -> Customizations.
If someone texts in a specific request on their first text, steps 1 and 2 will be skipped, and the request will simply be flagged and the Automation sent.
Important: You do not need to set up a custom Keyword for prayer, and if you do, it will interfere with Gloo’s natural language processing and prevent prayer requests from being properly recorded!
Please note that if an Explorer texts in a prayer request, the system will recognize and flag it like normal. However, it will not interrupt the conversation by sending the "Prayer Request Received" Automation.
Want to be notified every time a new prayer request is received? Check out how.
Assign a prayer request to a team member
Many times churches have prayer teams already built who pray for people in their congregation. You can assign each prayer request out to an individual in order to maximize the opportunity to respond and connect and pray. If you need help adding team members into your Gloo account, you can find instructions here. To assign prayer requests out to specific team members:
Click on the Assign to team members icon in the bottom right corner of the conversation card.
Pick any of your team members (or multiple) from the drop down to assign them the request.
Once you've selected a team member, they will be notified based on how their notification settings are configured, and their initials will appear in the conversation card. That conversation will remain assigned to them until someone goes in and removes their assignment.
Respond to prayer requests
All incoming prayer requests are automatically flagged with the yellow "Needs Prayer" status.
Going to Messaging -> Messages will display all messages in your Gloo account, including prayer requests. However, clicking into the Prayer tab will simplify the view by only showing messages marked with the "Needs Prayer" status. Click on the message card to view the full message thread.
Any outstanding prayer request will have a green Mark as Prayed button next to it.
Clicking that button will give you three options.
First, you can simply click Send Message to send your default "Prayed For" response. You can preview this response before sending, and you can customize this response under Customizations.
Second, you can type out a custom response that will override the default, and click Send Message to respond.
Third, although we do not recommend this, you can click Skip Sending Message to mark the request as resolved without sending a response.
Any of these actions will mark the prayer request as resolved. When a prayer request is resolved, the green Mark as Prayed icon will disappear and the status will change to Served. The message will disappear from your Prayer view, but you can still find that message thread under your Messages Inbox.
Easily export prayer requests
Would you like to view all of your recent prayer requests in one place? Sometimes it can be convenient to print things out so that you can share prayer requests with the whole congregation, not just your Gloo team. No problem! We've got you covered.
Click the Export icon in the top right corner of your Prayers tab.
Select the time frame you want to export prayer requests from, and select if you want to include requests that have been marked as prayed and/or include the response that was sent. Then click Download to download a csv file containing all of your prayer requests.
Note: If someone texts in a prayer request to your phone number as their FIRST text in, Gloo will respond with your prayer request submitted response and automatically amend the response sent back with your onboarding path 1 response.
You'll never have to worry about someone falling through the cracks no matter what they text in the first time!