“ORA collects, organizes, tracks, reminds, connects and securely shares prayer requests and answers with anyone you choose. ORA does this at a personal and intimate level with your friends and family through the mobile platform or ‘app’ on your smartphone. ” Stated Dusty Gulleson, ORA Chief Executive Officer.

Do we really need an application for prayer? YES!
A friend pointed me to Ora some time back and I was following it. I started out as a skeptic then quickly turned to a fan. My skepticism came from a couple of things: 1) I didn’t want another “social media” app. 2) I think my ability to adapt to new technology is slowing. Here is reality: 1) Prayer is essential to the Christian and there is no good app that fits that need that also connects you to people. 2) The reality is the smartphone replaced the day planner and with any transitions, things are are different.

“ORA” a disruptive technology to promote the oldest form of recognized religious expression in the Christian and Jewish faiths–prayer. The ORA system creates a personal mobile experience for the individual and an enterprise-quality community management platform for any organization to invite, connect, share, respond and interact with one another in intercessory prayer.

Prayer app
Ora thrilled me when I first downloaded it. I didn’t need to create another user account, I could immediately sign in via Facebook, and that’s when I became a believer. Facebook is useful for many things, but it doesn’t work well for prayer. It’s hard to concentrate on praying for things when… oh, look a cute kitten! Ora allows me to organize my prayer life in a meaningful way that is simple, intuitive and does not require a huge learning curve.

Social networks are typically inappropriate “high noise” areas that are not private enough for many sensitive postings like prayer requests. ORA offers an environment where prayer is the most important thing. ORA not only makes prayer available on your smartphone, but it makes comments, reminders and prayer partners always available too. ORA offers immediate feedback to requests, questions and comments from prayer partners and helps to track and remind the user of how prayers are answered immediately or over time. ORA helps you get a glimpse of the eternal that can be missed when we’re caught up in the stress of everyday life.

Adaptation to the 21st century
Ora is the 21st century prayer journal. What is awesome is the potential to be more real time with requests. It is good to have a visual that people are praying for you. I find that my “adaption to technology frustrations” relate to the transition culture is in. I’m nearly paper free, but Ora made me realize I never thought through how to go paper free with my prayer life. Using the app I quickly got over the ‘another app frustration’ and realized the need to make this transition.

ORA is a free download for iPhone (and is coming soon for Android). The ORA smartphone app integrates into the ORA Community system. The ORA Community system is a software as a service (SaaS) solution designed with many more management features that allows an organization to administer community-wide prayer communication and easily integrate with existing email, church management or relationship management software from leading providers. For a limited time, ORA is offering a no-cost trial of the ORA Community system for an organization. Visit the ORA website for more information: http://ora.net

Download ORA for the iPhone in the App Store! http://appstore.com/ora

Enter ORA’s Apple iPad Mini Giveaway this week! http://bit.ly/orapromo