At what point do those prayer requests become sinful gossip?
Oh, those infamous prayer requests!
“We need to pray for Olivia and Liam. I heard that they might be getting a divorce!”
“I’m calling to ask for prayer for the church board. Something big is happening tonight. The chairman might resign!”
“How do we keep gossip out of our prayer ministries?” is the most frequently asked question I have received since I began teaching on resisting gossip.
It’s complicated. We want to encourage much intercessory prayer, so we create and maintain phone chains and email prayer lists and we take requests for others at small groups and prayer meetings. However, prayer requests come from sinners, are about sinners, and are passed on to other sinners, so there are plenty of opportunities for sinful gossip to make an entrance in the process (Proverbs 10:19).
Here is a mental checklist that I have developed for managing prayer requests in a careful, godly manner. Before you pass on that request, make sure to check your facts, your role, your audience, and your heart.
Check Your Facts
Prayer requests can be famous for being fuzzy. That’s no big deal if the situation isn’t something potentially shameful. If it gets reported that “Cheryl is having her tonsils out,” when Cheryl is really going to have her wisdom teeth removed, it’s embarrassing to the one with the incorrect facts, but not embarrassing to Cheryl. But if we report that “Cheryl got cut from the team” or “Cheryl lost her job” or “Cheryl broke up with Jeremy,” then it could be very damaging.
Check your source. Is this info straight from the horse’s mouth? Verify the facts. Is there another way of interpreting …
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