Talk:Presidential Prayer Team

Cut from article, pasted here
UPDATE (02/20/2015): In the interest of full disclosure, I am associated with The Presidential Prayer Team as the Director of Advancement and Office Administrator. The original writer of this post appears to bear a grudge against Christians and organizations that claim a Christian worldview as their foundation for operating - and the original statements seem to carry an anti-Christian perspective. As a result, there may be an unintended bias to the statements. It is disappointing to see a statement that includes the words "disgustingly propagandistic imagery" as part of a sentence. We accept that this opinion is a reality in today's world. However, I would like to share some background details about the origins of this ministry in an effort to help you understand our mission and purpose. This will, hopefully, provide you with an alternative view of our story...

First and foremost, the Prayer Team began as a conversation between two friends in Phoenix back in the early-to-mid 1990s. They felt there was a need to provide a dedicated focus for Christians in America to pray for their leaders. Our primary verse reference is 1 Timothy 2:1-2 which states (paraphrased): "Pray for your leaders and all those in authority." This letter was written by Paul about 30 years after the death of Jesus Christ to Timothy, a young man who had traveled with Paul quite extensively. Timothy was in Ephesus attempting to lead the new believers in Christ in how they should conduct themselves. This particular verse was an encouragement that the believers should be praying for their leaders. In essence, these two Phoenix friends believed that it was important to pray for the leaders of our nation in modern times. By the fall of 2001, they had finally developed the idea to the point where they were ready to make it a reality. Unfortunately, September 11th surprised us as a nation. Immediately, the people involved in this concept knew they needed to launch the ministry and they spent the next week (day and night) putting all of the necessary pieces into place to launch the website. In fact, the current president of our organization was originally involved as the primary web developer for the site. He and his team built it from scratch over a three-day weekend, culminating in its offical launch on September 18th. George W Bush was made aware of this website and agreed to announce its presence on that same day. (Just to clarify...this ministry concept was put into motion long before President Bush was elected or was even considering an official run for office.) Over the next eight years, the Prayer Team had the good fortune to maintain consistent communications with the White House and was able to receive up-to-date information about current events. This fresh information allowed the Prayer Team to provide encouragement and inspiration to its members to pray for the president, Congressional leaders, the judiciary and our armed forces on a daily basis.

Second, it is true that the content of the Prayer Team's website has been toned down in recent years. This fact is attributable to a couple of reasons: 1) As of this update in February, 2015, neither President Obama nor his staff have responded to our inquiries asking for a personal line of communication with the White House so we have been unable to share the personal needs of the president and his family...nor have we been able to communicate imminent prayer concerns. We would be thrilled to receive an invitation from President Obama to join him in the Oval Office to personally pray for him, his family, and our nation. 2) As social media has grown and 24-hour news cycles have become commonplace, our nation has seen a dramatic increase in the disparity of public opinions. Therefore, we have worked diligently to minimize the opportunity for people to become disgruntled with our communications because of a perceived difference of opinion. That being said, there will always be a disparity. More importantly, the Prayer Team bases its beliefs on a Biblical worldview. That means there are certain issues about which we cannot bend our perspective.

Third, in reference to our Prayer Wall and comment sections in our stories, the Prayer Team does not seek to censor the prayers or comments of our members. So long as the prayers and comments maintain a focus on lifting up our leaders and our nation in prayer, we allow them to be posted. We also allow the occasional comment that responds to another comment. Again, our goal is to be an encourager, not a censor.

Lastly, our use of an "Honorary Committee" was entirely for the purpose of lending the ministry some credibility at the time of its founding. Today, the World Wide Web has almost 1 billion websites. It is important to distinguish yourself as a legitimate site with a legitimate purpose or people will be unable to determine whether they can trust the information being disseminated. Since we are a Christian organization, the support of well-known Christian leaders helped provide that legitimacy to our primary target audience: Christians and others who desire to pray for our leaders. They still do provide a level of legitimacy - although the Prayer Team is now the largest online prayer ministry for our nation and ranks among the top 2,500 publicly-available websites in the world. In addition, we send out more than 128 million email communications to our members annually.

In the end, the Prayer Team is, most assuredly, a non-partisan and non-denominational ministry. That fact is obvious in the communications and messages people from all walks of life send to us - some supportive, some frustrated, some angry, some encouraging. We make no excuses for our Biblical stance. The Presidential Prayer Team is free to join and there is never an obligation. It is 100% supported by love gifts from our members. We receive no funding or support from government agencies or any other entities that carry any specific agenda. We must not fail to pray! Become a Member of The Presidential Prayer Team today. When you do, you'll join the largest group of intercessors in America, and we’ll provide you with an extensive variety of tools and resources to assist and support your prayer life.

20 Feb 2015
 * Okay, finally got around to reading this in full. I'm gonna level with you: there's an intended bias to the article, because the goals and activities of your group are a bit silly.  If you feel there's anything actually factually incorrect, we're happy to work with you, because we do like facts here.  Ikanreed (talk) 19:41, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

To User:Ikanreed - Thank you for providing some direction on how this site works and how edits should be handled. I am new to the site and haven't figured it out yet. Also, please forgive my process here. I am unsure how to respond in the talk section and this was the only way I could find to reply to your comments. In short, I appreciate that other people might see our mission as "silly." However, as a Christian, I can assure you this is not our perspective. We really do believe that prayer is important. I would like to believe that others would respect our position on this and not immediately jump to the conclusion that we're crazy so anything we write is inadmissible as a valid argument. The fact is users on this site have made several horrendously inaccurate assumptions about our organization (based on their own personal opinions rather than any factual information they have obtained) so I wanted to provide clarification. We ARE a non-partisan and non-denominational organization. The site did not "mysteriously appear" right after 9/11. The concept for this idea was started way back in the early 90s when President Clinton was in office. Every letter of every word I wrote in my update is factual and true and should not be considered inaccurate or silly simply because I have a different opinion than the original writer of the page. For example, the statement "Gone are the prayers for God to bless the current president, and gone are the drawings of dead ex-presidents laying their hands on the current president to guide his wisdom..." First of all, we encourage our members to pray constantly for this president. I can even provide a specific page dedicated to the president, if you would like. It was a special focus on many of our nation's leaders during the last six months of 2014, ending on December 31st with specific prayers for our president. In addition, the only reason we don't have a drawing of 'ex-presidents' laying their hands on President Obama is because it's too expensive! We are a ministry and don't have the funds to do something like that at this time. More importantly, no one has submitted a painting to us that we have permission to use for just such a purpose. If you know of someone who would be willing, please let us know. We would be thrilled to have something like that. I don't understand why you are willing to accept the words of someone who is not even a member of this ministry and does not appear to have a Christian worldview over the words of someone involved in the ministry who has direct information regarding the origins of this ministry and the current policies that dictate how we operate. If this website is truly dedicated to truth, it is incumbent on the moderators to allow this information to be published. Please feel free to leave the original post on the site. I have no issue with someone sharing their differing opinions. I just believe we should have a right to counter those comments when they are untrue and based in fallacy. That is why I made the full disclosure that I was associated with this organization. I'm not trying to hide anything. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to respond.20:10, ‎ &mdash; Unsigned, by: Roycpat / talk / contribs 20 February 2015
 * I reckon you've got a case for a rewrite of the intro to the second paragraph. Feel free to add the relevant detail. In other news, I'm happy to draw you a picture of Obama fist-bumping Jesus if you think it'd be suitable for your non-partisan website. Robledo (talk) 20:39, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I assure you that we don't want to misrepresent anyone, but you can't deny there's a very clear political bent to the requests for prayers your site has. We make it clear you claim to be non-partisan, and that you don't do anything officially in favor of one party, but at the same time, there's also an apparent political alignment with respect to what your site suggests people do.  I don't think this article misrepresents the differences between the older material and the newer, for example.  Non-partisan and even handed aren't the same, and I don't think we should portray them as the same.
 * As to the origin of the idea, it would really help if you had some citation or reference we could reference to set the date more accurately. The wayback machine seems to validate the idea that the site dates to 2001, which is the claim our article makes.  Ikanreed (talk) 20:48, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Updating
The last change to the article was December 2016 - and refers to 'the current president.' Can the ambiguity be clarified (unless otherwisely appropriate). Anna Livia (talk) 21:32, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Improper use of adjectives and verbs of a biased nature
I look for information in your articles. The article against the Presidential Prayer Team includes adjectives and verbs indicating biased opinion rather than factual information. Examples: 1- "They boast an honorary committee" - if well-known persons are on the committee, then simply saying so is not a boast. 2- "...sappy Christian Rock singer Michael W. Smith" - I'm not interested in the writer's opinion of the singer, just that the singer is on the committee 3- "...disgustingly propagandistic imagery as artists' renditions" - I'm not interested in the writer's opinion of the artwork, just what the artwork is 4- "...main purpose was to glorify George W. Bush" - I'm not interested in the writer's opinion of why the site continued, just the time it has been up 5- "...secure-the-border tripe" - I'm not interested in the writer's opinion of the border controversy, just that the site includes it as an issue

To retain credibility, I believe your site should require re-writes of opinionated and biased articles such as this one before they are posted as sources of information.
 * RationalWiki:What is a RationalWiki article? 04:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)