High School Student Creates SharePrayer App, Encourages Believers to Pray, Intercede

By Vincent Funaro, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A high school student recently created and launched SharePrayer, an application for iOS and Android that allows believers to post prayer requests in a newsfeed similar to Facebook's.

Thomas Strock, this 16-year-old student from Pennsylvania, wanted to use his gifts in the business world to serve God and made SharePrayer as an online community where believers could post up and read the prayer requests of others and intercede for them.

"There are some people who are great at sports, and some people who are great at music," said Strock to The Christian Post. "I'm great at business, and I've hired the developers I worked with and tried to put something [SharePrayer] together that would help people."

Strock came up with the idea for the app after he got tired of searching for prayer requests in other online outlets including Twitter, Facebook and email. Instead of rummaging through the three different systems he aimed to create one that would put all the prayer requests of his friends and colleagues in the same place.

"I figured it would be a lot simpler if all these prayer requests were in one place and I wouldn't forget them because I would not have to look into 10 different places to find them, so it would be a lot more likely that I'd actually pray when I had prayer requests [available]," said Strock to CP.

After coming up with the idea for SharePrayer, Strock drew up sketches of what he wanted it to look like and hired freelance developers to write the code and create graphics for the app.

He markets it to churches who now use it in their prayer groups, and since its release, SharePrayer even gained some recognition from well-known religious leader and blogger Ron Edmonson.

Users' feedback on the app has been mostly positive, according to Strock.

"For the most part, I haven't seen any bad reviews on iTunes yet," said Strock. "As always there are a few bugs [that have been fixed], but other than that everything [reaction] has been generally on the positive side. It's been helping people and bringing them closer to God."

iPhone, iPad or Android OS users can download SharePrayer in the Google Play or iTunes store for $0.99.