Using the internet to guide and support spiritual practice is something that is being explored by a lot of folks. I read a lot of ideas in the Emerging Church book by Eddie Gibbs. Many young congregations who are trying to straddle our cultural shifts are finding that cellphones can be as good as church bells for calling people to pause in their day and remember the source of all life.
I decided to jump into the fray with the Lenten Prayer Project, a 40 day or so experiment with automated prayers. It begins today with a morning and evening psalm and prayer. The only instructions are to stop what you are doing when you receive the email and pray. I figure some folks with have more time to build around it - maybe additional petitions, maybe a moment of quiet, maybe a lit candle, maybe even a favorite song. It doesn’t really matter, as long as you take the time to acknowledge God where you are. The prayers are on a weekly cycle too (minus Sundays), so you’ll get the same prayer each Monday morning. There should be a rhythm that develops out of that. The prayers are from some Celtic resources I’ve collected, and they are beautiful and challenging.
That’s the general idea anyway, but I figure I could expand it in the future. I could see emails sent out each day, calling participants to pray the hours (the ol’ medieval or monastic way). I also imagine that it could be a very simple service that churches could offer to their communities, especially to those folks on the edge who want a taste of spirituality but aren’t ready to trust the church again.
The “how-to” is pretty simple. I used a free email service called LetterMeLater.com to setup each email and schedule it to be sent. I then setup a simple form at nathanjhill.com to receive possible subscribers. Right now, I enter them in manually to a group on the LetterMeLater site and update the scheduled emails. It’s not an automated process - in fact, if I do it again, I will probably look at setting up a mailing list of some kind. Still, it’s a first step to see how this goes.
In fact, I want to hear people’s responses, so as we get past the first week or two, I may add additional spiritual insights that folks have received as they have prayed these prayers. Collectively, we can see what God is doing among us as we try out this spiritual practice together.
If you want to join the experiment, sign up here: http://www.nathanjhill.com/lentenprayers/index.php
