I had the chance to meet Keith Bower at Awaken 2008 last week where he was getting energized for his new project after leaving his senior pastor position of 17 years. His courage to take a step away from the comfort of his suburban church is driven by his desire to bring community transformation to urban Houston.

After returning home from Awaken, we took some time to learn more about Keith’s newest plans - plus a little about how he started using Kindle for his urban ministry.

What do you like about Kindle? How do you see it helping?
Prayer is vital. This is God’s work, not ours, and the only way He will unleash His power is in response to the prayers of His people. Kindle facilitates that, and not just locally as in traditional prayer meetings, but globally in a virtual prayer meeting that runs 24/7 worldwide. Kindle allows us to stay connected in both public and private prayer forums in a way that really supports the communal and collaborative culture we envision. We’re very excited about Kindle…and very grateful to you and your team, Robert, for creating it.

Can you tell us a bit more about what you’re doing?
I am working to ignite a new multi-ethnic, multi-denominational movement driven by young adults to create communities of spiritual and social transformation all across urban Houston. Previous generations would have called this “church planting,” and in a sense that’s what it is. But the KIND of “churches” we want to start are very different - simple churches that are more like lifeboats than cruise ships; churches focused on being disciples, on living the way the disciples lived, loving the way that Jesus loved, and doing the things that Jesus did; Bible-believing, Gospel-teaching churches with compassion, inclusion, and social justice built into their DNA; churches that can replicate virally to address the limitless needs of the city. That’s what we’re trying to unleash in Houston.

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One of our favorite free web tools is Widgetbox that helps people create widgets that you can place on your own webpages or blogs. When you “mashup” Widgetbox with Kindle, you can easily let your blog readers or Facebook visitors know about your personal or group’s prayer requests.

Below is a sample of a prayer widget created using Widgetbox for the Quest College Ministry.

How To Create Your Own Prayer Widget

1. Create a free account at Widgetbox.com
2. Choose the “Make a Blidget” feature
3. Copy and paster your personal or group page URL from Kindle when asked for “Your Blog URL”
   1. Examples are like “http://kindlejoy.com/users/show/74″ or “http://kindlejoy.com/group/Questcollegeministry”
   2. Click “Continue” and your widget will be generated.
   3. Follow the Widgetbox instructions on how to place the widget on your webpages, including Facebook and MySpace.

If you are new to all this, let us know and we’ll help you get started.

One of the original motivations of creating Kindle was to help our small group centralize our prayer requests. While emailing prayer requests is the usual way many small groups communicate their prayers, it’s not necessarily the best way to manage prayer requests. Over time, we forget what we may have prayed for in the past, and to find them usually means searching through one’s email inbox.

We developed Kindle as a way for small groups to easily record and track their prayer request history - essentially helping a group keep a prayer journal. With a journal, small groups can review their past prayer requests and see how God may have worked in our lives.

Do you have a story of how keeping a prayer journal has helped build your faith? If so, let us know how. We believe there are powerful stories of God’s faithfulness in all our lives, and sharing those stories brings us all closer to God and each other.