The easy to use Prayer Inbox is one of Gloo’s most popular features. There is no set up required on your end, and you can easily connect with your congregation and generate significant communication that goes beyond just Sunday mornings. Here are 5 great tips that will help you effectively engage your congregation on prayer.

Any time you make a call to action, like encouraging people to submit prayer requests, it's a great idea to remove as much friction as possible so that people can easily do what you're asking of them. One easy way to do this is by creating an SMS QR Code for people to use. Check out our guide on how to create your code in minutes!

When people text in a prayer request, they want to know they've been heard! As long as you have the "prayer request received" notification turned on in your Customizations, people will get an automated system reply telling them their request has been received.

But you can take things a step further by responding individually to their prayer requests. Dropping people an individual note makes them feel heard and cared for. And it may even create ongoing conversation where you can get to know your church members in a much deeper way!

In an ideal world, everyone in your church will respond to your call to action and text in their prayer requests! But if you are a lead pastor or administrator going at it alone, it may become easy to get overwhelmed and have responses slip through the cracks. Do don't go it alone!

You can easily build a team of people who can sign into your Gloo account, and you can customize their permissions so they'll only be able to interact with the Prayer Inbox. Doing this will help make sure that everyone who submits a prayer request has someone personally pray for and respond to them.

As you start to collect and go through prayer requests look for specific themes that arise within your church. Common themes to look for include:

Use these themes to inform programs, teaching, small group topics, sermons, or community needs. For instance, if a large portion of prayer requests are dealing with addiction and your church does not offer a recovery group, it might be time to start one. Or if your congregation is praying for marriage, perhaps a marriage sermon series or starting a small group would help.

You will have a lot of prayer requests to sort and categorize but treat this as direct insight into the health and needs of your congregation. Additionally, use it to help prioritize and focus efforts of your church community by working on the top prayer request theme.

Looking for simple outreach strategies? Prayer can be a great way to engage your community. Many people, even if they aren't Christians, respond well when a Christian friend asks if they can pray for them. Praying for people in your community communicates that you care for them, and it gives opportunities to get to know them in a deep, authentic way.

If you want to lean into prayer as a method of outreach, jump over to our guide on using Gloo for a prayer outreach for some tips and advice!