About This Project

What is Trying to be Solved

Prayer is a central part of the Christian life. It allows us to grow closer to God, ask God for assistance in our trials, praise God for all that he has done, and ultimately better unite with his will. However, as important as prayer may be, there is seemingly not a good way to pray as a community online. Through exploring different attempts at it, they all have some shortcomings. Essentially, they miss on three key points:

1. They don't take a lot of time to style themselves to increase devotion during prayer. A lot of the design is minimalistic rather than awe inspiring like we see in church architecture.
2. They lack a website for accessing this prayer. This means that they are restricted to people who like using apps, which can cut off a population of people who still prefer using websites. It also means that they are much less accessible for someone who isn't willing to commit to fully downloading something.
3. Some of the more feature fledged ones fall into the trap of social media by trying to keep you on it. This may be a personal thing, but I've found a lot of danger in social media as it tries to keep you using it, which takes away from time with God. Especially as someone studying computer science, I've found an importance for technology to point outwards towards action and relationships rather than a digital screen.

Without a good website to encourage prayer and relationship with God, we are letting technology, especially social media, be used to distract Christians from their goal in life of getting closer with God. Technology should not point inward towards itself, as social media does because it makes you addicted to it, but instead should point outward towards actions that live out the Christian life. The problem to solve, in essence, is to provide a place to collect prayer requests and seamlessly give them to people willing to pray, essentially creating the communion of saints on Earth. Ultimately, there is a hope that bringing this aspect of Heaven (the communion of saints) to Earth will greatly help people across the globe in recognizing God through the character of other Christians. It should be open to all and be a haven for the Catholic faith, encouraging prayer, devotion to God, and Christian positivity and love.

How This is Being Solved

This website, in its core features, allows users to submit prayer requests and pray for others. People can tell the requester that they have prayed for them, as well as leave comments that show love to people. Along with this, there are also features to learn about the saints in bite size ways, read the Bible in a way akin to Tiktok or Instagram reels, and learn how to pray through lessons created by those with great experience and knowledge in it. Ultimately, the website should both serve as a bridge from traditional social media, which can easily become purposeless and distracting, to a more purposeful form of digital interaction, namely as praying for people and learning about God. It will hopefully provide value to people at any stage in their walk with God and hopefully create the aforementioned digital communion of saints.

Who Is Behind This Project

To be Completed

Conclusion

Ultimately, I hope that this website has or will blessed whoever is reading this. The goal is to help people foster a deeper connection with God, receive prayers, and see the positivity that humanity, even when the digital world can seem so harsh.