After nearly two decades as a pastor, one of my constant struggles was praying consistently for the people in my congregation. Long lists didn't work for me. Elaborate systems fell apart. I kept failing to pray for the people I cared about so much.
Then I noticed something Paul said again and again in his letters.
“We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers.” — 1 Thessalonians 1:2
Making mention. Not an organized, spreadsheet sort of way. Just naturally, personally, bringing them before God.
So I came up with a plan — a simple rotation, praying for different people each day of the month. Each day I'd take a word, a phrase, or a sentence from my Bible reading and let it guide how I prayed as I mentioned people to the Lord.
It kept things fresh. It kept them biblically grounded. And, most importantly, it actually stuck. I'm no longer pastoring, but I never stopped using this method.
So many prayer systems turn into guilt-ridden, burdensome things. Others lean hard into gamifying your prayer life, which I find distasteful. What I really wanted was a guilt-free prayer reminder — just enough structure to help me pray for everyone important to me, without the guilt trip.
So I finally decided to build it myself.
Prayer Mentions will not gamify your prayer life or burden you with guilt. It's a simple tool built around a practice that genuinely worked for a guy who tried everything else first.
Grace to you!
Jerry B Simmons
What That Means In Prayer Mentions
You won't find a way to mark someone as prayed for, and there is no plan to add one. No streaks, no completion counts, no badge on the app icon, no “days since” anywhere.
There is no way to fall behind here, because there is nothing to fall behind on. An unopened reminder isn't an unfinished task — it was a mention that didn't happen today, and today is not a score.
What The App Keeps Track Of Instead
The app does quietly notice who hasn't come up in a while, and it uses that to even things out — someone who's been waiting longest gets picked ahead of someone who came up last week. It never shows you that, and it never asks you to act on it.
The app keeps track of who's overdue so that you don't have to.
A Day In The App
You keep a list of people you'd like to pray for. Each day the app brings a few of them forward, along with any prayer requests that are active that day, and reminds you at the times you choose.
Alongside them sits your meditation — a verse, a sentence, a phrase to carry into your prayers. It shows on the Today tab and in the home-screen widget.
That's the whole loop. Everything else is a setting on one of those three things.
Archiving, The Only Lifecycle There Is
The single verb the app has for finishing with a prayer request or a meditation is Archive, and it's always yours to choose and always reversible. Archiving a prayer request stops its reminders and keeps it in History. It doesn't mean the prayer was answered, or that it wasn't. The app has no opinion about that.