Who should see a prayer request?
Prayer requests carry some of the most personal things people share with a church. How we think about confidentiality, follow-up and making sure every request is prayed for.
The Sanctuary Stack team · · 2 min read
A prayer request is an act of trust. Someone is telling their church about a diagnosis, a marriage under strain, a job lost, a child who has stopped speaking to them. How a church handles that trust says a lot about it.
Most churches handle prayer requests informally: a card in a box, a message to the pastor, a mention in a group. That informality is warm, but it has two risks. Some requests are seen by far more people than the person intended. Others are never followed up at all.
Three principles
1. Private should mean private.
When someone asks for a request to be kept private, it should be seen by senior pastors only. Not the whole prayer team, not the group chat, and not anyone else in the office.
2. Share for prayer, not for gossip.
Many requests can and should be shared with an intercessory team. But sharing should be a pastor's deliberate decision, request by request, not the default.
3. Every request deserves a response.
The worst outcome isn't a request seen by too many people. It's a request seen by no one. People should know they have been prayed for, and anyone who asks for a call should get one.
How we built prayer care in Sanctuary Stack
- Members send a request from their phone at any hour, and can mark it private or ask for a pastor to call them.
- Private requests are visible to senior pastors only. A pastor can choose to share a non-private request with a ministry team, such as your intercessors.
- When a leader prays, they tap I Prayed, and the member sees that they've been lifted in prayer and how many times.
- Requests for a call appear on the pastor's dashboard as prayer callbacks until someone follows up.
- Pastoral notes stay private to leadership and are never shown to the member.
- When God answers, a request becomes a praise report, a reminder worth keeping.
Even when a church connects an AI assistant to its records, private request text and pastoral notes stay hidden unless a pastor explicitly asks for them.
Whatever system your church uses, it's worth agreeing in writing who sees what. Tell your congregation too. People share more freely when they know where their words will go.