We asked members of our community to send in their experiences of using PrayerMate over the years, and how God has used it in their lives. Here's what they had to say!
Ten years in, PrayerMate helps support over 1.5 million prayers each month by over 30,000 people - praise God for each and every one!
"Before I started to use PrayerMate my prayer life was anything BUT spiritual; it felt less like a conversation and more like a stressful exercise. PrayerMate revolutionised my prayer life. I knew everything would be there and it reminded me to pray for things I would have forgotten about like world mission beyond my own limited world, and it also gave me the assurance that things would be prayed about."
Pam Smith
London, UK
"When someone asks me to pray for them, or I think of someone I want to pray for regularly, I add them to a card in PrayerMate, and when the card comes up, I pray for them. And the beauty is that comes up regularly and over the long term I pray a lot more for the people I want to be praying for."
Kevin Halloran
Chicago, USA
17th May 2011
The first version of PrayerMate was so simple you couldn't even delete your prayer requests!
November 2013
In the Autumn of 2013 we managed to raise £2,765 through a Kickstarter campaign from 92 backers. This enabled us to hire developer Dave Butler to build the first Android prototype. Many of those backers remain PrayerMate users to this day!
January 2014
PrayerMate for iOS had originally been a paid app. On 1st January 2014, as we launched the new Android version, both were made available free of charge thanks to some sponsorship from London City Mission. They have remained free ever since.
January 2016
After participating in the 2015 Code for the Kingdom hackathon event organised by Kingdom Code UK, PrayerMate received a substantial update designed to improve its usability. Its launch was a little bumpy, but overall it was a significant step forwards for PrayerMate.
21st September 2016
After praying about it for some years, in June 2016 Andy was made redundant from his full-time job, which although stressful, was a clear answer to prayer. When Andy shared the news with the PrayerMate community that he was going full-time on the app, which he eventually did in September of that year, the response was overwhelming - with so many people generously stepping up to support him financially in this. Thank you everybody!
June 2017
Having met Andy through Kingdom Code events, Ed joined the team as a web developer - first as a summer intern, then for one day a week, before finally going full time in June 2018. As well as building key functionality such as secure feeds and completely redesigning the PrayerMate Platform website, Ed had a profound impact on the culture and was a great blessing to Andy after PrayerMate had been a solo project for so long.
January 2018
As the PrayerMate community grew, so did the number of incoming emails every day. Helen joined at the start of 2018 - if you've ever contacted us there is a good chance you've had a friendly email back from her!
18th June 2018
Until this point, PrayerMate had still officially been operated by Andy Geers as a solo project. The founding of the parent charity Discipleship Tech was a huge milestone that allowed us bring in broader accountability (with a board of trustees), raise funds and grow the team. It also allowed us to pursue other projects such as Redeeming Time and The Serpent & The Seed game.
December 2019
One of those "why hasn't the app always worked like this?" moments, this seemingly small change was the first major change to the core "prayer" functionality in a long time. This allowed users to attach prayer packs and events to different people's entries.
January 2021
2021 has been an exciting new chapter in PrayerMate's life, with the arrival of not just one but two new mobile developers. Together they have been overhauling the internals of PrayerMate for Android and revamping the first-use onboarding experience for new users. Keep a look out for brand new "Add" and "Lists" pages coming soon!
17th May 2021
It has been such a joy to look back on this past decade and see all the ways that God has been at work both in and through PrayerMate. We are so thankful for the incredible community that has made it all worthwhile. Praise God!
We know there is still so much work to be done to make the app easier to use, for new and regular users alike. We want to bring the recent onboarding changes across to the iOS version too.
This has long been one of our most popular feature requests - we would love to add a better way to record specific answers to prayer and to have the encouragement of looking back at how God has been at work.
Many have expressed their desire to see a way to edit their prayer requests on a desktop computer. We'd love to have the capacity to tackle something in this area.
Discipleship Tech's remit goes beyond just PrayerMate. We have other projects we are already pursuing such as The Serpent & The Seed, our Bible Overview mobile game, to help people engage with the big Bible story.
We are registered recipients with Stewardship, who have set up a support fund for our ministry. You can support us by making gifts to Stewardship for our fund. Where applicable, the value of your gifts may be increased by use of Gift Aid (worth 25% if you are a UK taxpayer).
If you can't give via Stewardship, you may donate via PayPal - either monthly or one-off. You can even give using a credit or debit card if you don't have an account with them.
You may also donate to our ministry by credit/debit card.
Celebrating 10 Years of PrayerMate #2
Kevin Halloran, USA
Pam Smith, London
Paul Tripp, USA
Discipleship Tech,
First Floor, Thames Exchange,
10 Queen Street Place, London,
EC4R 1BE