GREENFIELD — The list grew and became tattered as Tammy Coughenour kept praying.
It held hopes and dreams for her three daughters, life lessons she hoped they would learn, positive character qualities she hoped they would embody. These were the things she prayed for each night.
Over time she thought about her daughters’ friends and then about the community at large, imagining that not everyone has a parent praying for them. So she approached others about gathering to pray. Eventually that call to pray has become an online presence with more than 200 followers.
When Coughenour first thought about encouraging people to pray, she got in touch with friends Kendra Olin and Lisa Muegge. She had attended church with Olin. And Muegge had been at an Eastern Hancock baseball game with Coughenour, whose husband coaches the Royals, and other mothers when Muegge gathered them to pray once she learned of a student in a car accident.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
“We are praying for this. This just happened,” Coughenour remembers her friend Muegge, the late Feast of Plenty founder, saying. (The injured student would later recover.)
That moment had an impact on Coughenour. She turned to Muegge and Olin, and a several-weeks session of evening prayer gatherings followed in late 2015. Those interested would gather Monday evenings at Greenfield Central Junior High School. They would break into smaller groups to pray together.
“My original goal was to get families out praying,” Coughenour said.
Coughenour offered the groups note cards with subject area ideas to focus their praying, such as “relationship with Jesus,” “protection, love and comfort” or “purpose and worth.” She offered them sets of the cards to take home, or ones that would fit on a keychain.
After the prayer meeting series ended, Coughenour started a Facebook page, “The Prayer Project,” offering a daily call to prayer.
“I thought it was a neat concept and was sometimes inspiring in just the right moments,” said Shauna Nivens, one of the people who has liked the page. “It was a reminder to pray for others too.”
Like some of the note cards at the prayer gatherings, the daily posts list a Bible verse followed by a prayer based on that verse. For example, a recent post shares Psalm 118:1: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” The prayer that follows includes a request based on the words of the verse: “… Please help our children, family members, the teachers and leaders within our community and each one of us to be able and experience YOUR love for us…”
Coughenour said she wants to encourage people to “pray Scripture” and has found that important in her own life.
Paul Galbraith, pastor of missions and student ministries at Brandywine Community Church in Greenfield, said that’s a feature of the page he values.
“What I love about The Prayer Project is the guidance it provides in praying God’s Word,” he wrote in an email to the Daily Reporter. “Many Christians want to have a great prayer life, but sometime we feel stuck or unsure of what to pray or how to pray.
“We know God’s will for our lives and the world is found in His Word, and The Prayer Project helps guide us to pray and realize His will.”
During an academic year, posts on the site often share verses and prayers related to prayer requests relevant to students and families. Over this summer, posts and prayers are focusing on character qualities of God and/or promises of God.
“If people can have that sink into their heads and trickle down to their hearts,” Coughenour said, “it will change their lives forever.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Find the page” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Find The Prayer Project online at https://www.facebook.com/The-Prayer-Project-1537450606568673/.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
