The power of prayer and social media
On this National Day of Prayer, the day is not likely to garner the social media hype of a Kardashian selfie. But like social media, there’s a certain power in prayer.
Many would even argue that prayer’s power is far superior than any hashtag that claims to “break the internet.” And they’d be right, according to Brainerd Salvation Army Captain Scott Strissel, who doesn’t shy away from either – prayer or social media. In fact, Strissel has found quite a bit of success over the past couple of years after he combined the two through his daily blog.
“I think I’m hitting 200,000 reads now,” smiled Strissel. “It’s just one of those deals that became something more.”
Strissel’s blog is titled, “Pastor’s Ponderings: Finding our way back home.” He has a number of regular readers and now the blog has its own website – pastorsponderings.org. “It kind of morphed into something else,” he laughed.
Born with a passion for writing, Strissel’s ponderings started on a whim a few Christmases ago. Those first few blog posts were added to websites like Xanga and livejournal. The purpose of his writing was to create something with meaning. He didn’t want to write just anything, but share in Christ’s teachings and share his intimate perspective as an officer with The Salvation Army.
At first, only a few of his friends would read it. But as social media tends to do, the more he tweeted about it, updated his Facebook status and let more people know, the more people followed him. So much so, one of his latest submissions hit 4,000 reads practically overnight. The article was about what is not taught in training college at The Salvation Army – the difference between lessons taught in the classroom and how it all works in the “real” world.
“It just blew me away at how many people read it and shared it,” said Strissel, who’s able to track reads from all over the globe. In Canada, his writings were considered so exceptional, the blog earned an award from the Canadian Church Press – 2nd place for the best Christian blog.
“I had no idea I was going to be honored. It happened this weekend and somebody on Facebook said, ‘Hey, congratulations.’”
If there was any question about the correlation between the power of social media and something going viral on the Internet, and the power of prayer, Strissel is proof there’s certainly power in both.
“When it comes to ministry wherever we are at, there’s more to just the number in the pews,” he said. “There’s people out in the communities, in the country, the world, and they’re hungry for the word of God and the readings.”