By Alice Horner
John Roland was studying for the ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd hit his home state of Florida. He got so busy calling to check on his parents, grandmother and others that he lost track of time and missed his ride to an event at his church.
John Roland
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His buddy, Shawn, who was supposed to pick Roland up, went to the See You at the Pole multi-church youth rally without him and was one of seven people killed Sept. 15, 1999, when mass murderer Larry Gene Ashbrook began shooting at random inside Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth before turning the gun on himself and ending the horror.
Like other grieving church members drawn to the scene in the next few days, Roland found walls ridden with bullets and blood-stained carpet being pulled from the floor. Responding to an impulse and knowing that new carpet was coming, Roland went to the spot where he was told Shawn was killed and wrote out a prayer on the concrete floor thanking God for the impact of his friend’s short life.
Shawn’s widow added a prayer of her own. The youth minister did the same thing, and then gave the youth group markers and told them to write whatever they would like.
In his new role as executive director of an Internet ministry to share ideas and overcome obstacles to prayer in churches and society, Roland hopes that his spontaneous idea that brought comfort to him and others in a time of grief will become a “spiritual marker” for many more to use in special places in their own lives.
Guidepost Magazine contributing editor Karen Barber and some friends started Prayer Igniters International, a non-denominational ministry to encourage and increase personal, private prayer, in 1999. With the hiring of Roland, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, a new outreach website, prayerideas.org, went online last summer.
Barber said there are lots of websites that list and respond to prayer requests, but prayerideas.org is different because it offers resources on how to pray. Topics range from Alzheimer’s disease to custody battles. Articles are written by 25 different authors, all professionally edited by Barber. All address topics with an aim of relevancy and honesty.
“We want to appeal to real-life experiences,” said Barber. With a multitude of specific topics that tackle complicated and stressful issues, Barber hopes that the site provides a sort of therapy and reprieve for those still searching for answers.
“I believe that people come to God and prayer when they have had an issue or a crisis,” Barber said. “We are encouraging prayer so that people will come closer to God. With these articles, they’re getting a mentor of sorts. And really, it’s about starting where your need is and ending with God in your whole life.”
Karen Barber
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Barber sees a potential goal of thousands of articles, poems, hymns and other prayer-related content generated by users. “I see it like a skyscraper,” she said. “We’ve built our site, and now we’re just occupying the lobby. We keep building until we get this volume.”
While billed as non-denominational, Barber caters the site for all, believers and non-believers. “We are really careful about explaining things, for example when I say ‘the Father and the Son’, I make sure to put ‘Jesus’ in parentheses,” said Barber.
A key concept for the site is addressing personal and painful issues, topics that Barber and Roland see as catalysts toward a real dependence on prayer. “People who visit the site will say, ‘this is exactly what I needed,’” said Roland.
Roland said his own “brokenness” from a divorce helped open the door to his new ministry. “My passion is now dealing with broken people,” he said. “I’ve been a Christian since I was young, but I didn’t know who Christ was until I shattered. It opened my eyes.”
“I love this ministry,” Roland said. “It meets a lot of needs in my life. This ministry has helped me reaffirm my calling, and show that God can use somebody who’s divorced and broken.”
Roland’s home church, First Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Fla., which ordained him to the ministry, is a charter member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. He was senior pastor of Baptist churches in Wellford and Yemassee, South Carolina, both affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
The purpose of prayerideas.org is not to argue about prayer. It is inclusive and respectful of all denominations and their methods of prayer — meditation, praying on the go, praying for long-term problems, historical prayers, new avenues of expressing prayer through art and postures, praying for specific needs, prayers for special occasions and so on. Content comes from all branches of the Christian church, including the liturgical, evangelical and charismatic traditions.
The variety allows users not only to pick and choose resources that fit their own devotional practices, but also provides opportunities for scattered Christian traditions to learn from one another, organizers say.
They also hope catering to emerging technologies like Facebook and smart phones will appeal to younger generations, which surveys show are increasingly less likely to engage in personal, private prayer. Even in churches, they say, it’s difficult to get busy people to participate in prayer groups and studies. Church schedules with too much to do and too few volunteers too often overshadow prayer.
“The Internet is such an opportunity,” Barber said. “We are an information source as well as a mission field.”