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Uncategorized

KINGDOM CODE: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN 50 CHRISTIANS IN TECHNOLOGY GET TOGETHER?

June 23, 2022 Andy Geers

Recently we held the first Kingdom Code UK meetup in two and a half years in
central London. We were discussing together the topic “Is technology good?”.
Here’s a quick video giving a flavour of what it was like:

Uncategorized

BIBLE OVERVIEW MOBILE EXPERIENCE: THE SERPENT AND THE SEED

March 10, 2021 Andy Geers

Almost 17 years ago, I developed this passion for making a mobile game to help
people explore the Bible. It sort of went on the back burner when PrayerMate
came along, but my interest has recently been rekindled, and over the past few
months God really seems to have been at work as this new project has come
together remarkably quickly.

It’s in the very early stages but I delighted to announce The Serpent and the
Seed – a Bible Overview mobile game experience, working with some amazing
collaborators. I’m so excited to see where this leads in the coming months!

coding for christ, prayermate

MY JOURNEY AS A CHRISTIAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

November 25, 2020 Andy Geers

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had two great loves: Jesus, and
computers. My journey has been one of learning how to combine those two great
loves, culminating in the creation of the PrayerMate app, which now helps over
30,000 active users every month to pray, and the founding of the UK charity
Discipleship Tech to support that mission.

Since I was about five years old, I’ve always known I wanted to be a software
developer (except we called them “computer programmers” in those days). I
quickly learnt to start copying the code out of BBC Micro Magazines that my Dad
would then spend countless hours patiently correcting for me – it was thrilling
to see various games and things come to life! Danger Dog (shown below) was the
one I most vividly remember – probably a terrible game in retrospect but seeing
how these simple lines of text could turn into this incredibly complex
experience was mind-blowing to a seven year old!

Eventually my Dad bought me a subscription to Let’s Compute! magazine – a
magazine aimed at teaching children how to code. Probably no surprises in
retrospect that it went bust after just twelve issues – but it was enough to get
me hooked.

I also have my Dad to thank for showing me from the offset how my Christian
faith and my love for computers could be combined. He created a series of
computer animated films based on various Bible stories, titled Bible Story
Graphics, starting with Zacchaeus Meets Jesus, and including the Christmas
Story. They were something of a labour of love for my Dad, roping in the entire
family in different ways (lots of us contributed voices, and my teenaged sister
wrote the music for them). They ended up being published by the Bible Society.

FULL TIME CHRISTIAN MINISTRY?

As a student in Cambridge, my faith, which had always been an important part of
my life, really began to grow as I received so much clear Bible teaching, both
through involvement in the CICCU and at St Andrew the Great church. It was then
that I first felt the desire to do something where I could be directly serving
God, and ended up doing a church apprenticeship down in Fowey, Cornwall. It was
an incredible year where I learnt so much about myself and about Jesus (not to
mention falling in love with Cornwall!) but at the end it was unanimously agreed
that I should go and find a job as a software developer for a while, rather than
immediately exploring full-time church ministry.

Thus began a long period of wrestling – I absolutely loved being a software
developer, working first at a large newspaper company, then a VFX movie company,
a small Christian charity and finally at a food delivery company. But at the
same time I could never quite shake off this feeling that I wanted to do
something more directly gospel-focussed. That was part of the reason I worked a
four day week for a lot of my early career as I tried (unsuccessfully, at the
time) to create an Old Testament adventure game.

It was at the Christian charity that I had the opportunity to explore how my two
“callings” might connect more deeply, studying part time on the Cornhill
Training Course in London. As well as being where I met my wonderful wife, that
was when I first created the PrayerMate app (which was incredibly simple by
comparison in those days – see the video below!) I was playing around with my
first ever iPad and it seemed to me that it would be the perfect format for
reading people’s missionary prayer letters – rather than them sitting unread in
my email inbox, I imagined some kind of automatic prayer list which could
suggest who to pray for each day, but then also show me their latest prayer
updates so that I could know how to pray for them as well. It took me about 7
years to get to the point where PrayerMate could do that but the idea was born!

I ended up continuing as a software developer for another four and a half years
at the startup Hubbub, for which I am so thankful. The people I met and the
skills I learnt were such a blessing to me, and PrayerMate would certainly never
have become what it is today were it not for that experience.

MAKING THE LEAP TO FULL-TIME CHRISTIAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

By the time PrayerMate had reached its first 100,000 downloads, it was becoming
increasingly clear that it deserved a lot more of my time and attention than I
was able to give to it as a side-project alongside a full time job at Hubbub.
And yet with a wife and a growing family there was no obvious way that I could
afford to just give up the day job and focus on PrayerMate (if you become a
millionaire by running a prayer app then I’m fairly sure you’re doing it wrong).
Elise and I prayed about it and talked about it on and off for a good year or
so, before eventually on a date night we did a bit of a back-of-the-napkin
calculation and came up with a plan whereby perhaps we could afford to take the
plunge. I went to my boss and said “something has to change” – fully intending
to hand in my notice.

Unfortunately for me, my sense of loyalty got the better of me. Hubbub was at a
crucial stage of trying to fund-raise, and with such a small development team
with no formal senior developer, they asked me if I was willing to stay on for
an extra few months until the fund-raising was complete. They had two offers on
the table that they were deciding between, and it seemed like it should all be
finalised fairly soon. It felt like the right thing to do, and I agreed.

But the next week, the only developer who had been on the team longer than I had
went ahead and handed in his notice. At the time that made me chuckle. Then,
before he had completed his one month notice period, the remaining backend
developer handed in his notice. I wasn’t chuckling any more. I will be honest,
that felt like a real punch in the gut. I remember firing out some kind of email
asking people to pray for my faith in that moment. I was left asking “God, what
are you doing??” – had I been a complete chump to agree to stay when seemingly
nobody else felt any such sense of loyalty? As the only remaining backend
developer it felt like even the snatches of unpaid leave I’d been permitted to
take each month to work on PrayerMate might be taken away from me.

But it didn’t take long to find the answer to my question. Before that second
developer had completed his notice period, the whole team was summoned in to the
meeting room. “We’re about to find out which of the offers they’ve decided to
accept!”, I thought to myself. Instead, we were informed that not just one but
both deals had fallen through at the eleventh hour, and at such short notice
there was no alternative but to make the entire company redundant (which, I
should add, is a credit to the honesty and integrity of the leadership, who
wanted to do everything right rather than leaving people out of pocket or
continue working when there was no means to pay them their due).

The news brought with it such a wave of conflicted emotions. On the one hand, it
was utterly heartbreaking – all of us had poured so much of our heart and soul
into that company, and for those of us who used Hubbub for our weekly shopping,
we loved it so much! It was such a stressful time for everybody as people
scrambled to work out what was next, and over the following months we ended up
saying goodbye to wave after wave (with so many different people on different
notice periods, it felt like there was a new leaving party every other week!)

The Hubbub team family

But of course, for me, on the other hand came this great sense of relief, that
finally here was my opportunity to walk away without any sense of guilt – and
what’s more, with a very welcome redundancy payment in the bank by way of seed
funding.

When I told the PrayerMate community that I was stepping out and trying it full
time, the response was overwhelming. I will be eternally grateful for the
generosity of so many who stepped up and donated and prayed and generally
encouraged me in my new mission. When I started I had enough funds for me to do
it for about six months – and four years later, here I am still doing it, and
having had a second developer full time for two of those years as well! God is
so good and it has been an amazing journey. It has enabled PrayerMate to grow
closer to that original vision of the app I hoped it might be, and as it
approaches its 10 year anniversary it’s been downloaded getting on for half a
million times and supports over 1.6 million prayers every single month which I
find just mind-blowing – just think what God is doing in response to all of
those prayers!

What’s also exciting is that PrayerMate itself is just the beginning. We’ve
recently launched the Redeeming Time app to help people reset their relationship
with their phone, and turn some of those spare minutes that might have been
frittered away on social media to instead feed on God’s word. In the new year
we’ll be launching a new “Easter Experience” project for school kids in
partnership with UK charity CrossTeach, and I’ve also finally gone back to my
roots to explore again the idea of a Bible-based mobile game.

JOIN ME ON MY JOURNEY

If you’ve made it this far, perhaps something of what I’ve said has struck a
chord. The reality is that it’s actually been throughout that whole journey that
I’ve been using my software skills to serve Jesus, not just the last few years –
whether it was at the newspaper company, the VFX company, at Hubbub or when
working for a Christian charity. There isn’t some sharp dividing line between
“serving Jesus” and “writing code”. And yet, for me, there has been no greater
privilege than getting to work full time directly using my skills to serve the
gospel as I work on PrayerMate and other similar projects. It’s one of the
things that makes Kingdom Code BUILD so fun every year!

If you are a follower of Jesus, I hope that you will be encouraged to continue
serving him with your gifts and talents wherever you find yourself.

God has been so faithful to me through all of this, and I am excited about what
lies ahead (currently, for me, a Bible Overview mobile game experience). I would
love you to pray for me and the Discipleship Tech team in the coming year! You
can subscribe to the email newsletter here to stay informed.

coding for christ

HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE SWIFT AS AN OBJECTIVE-C DEVELOPER

January 15, 2020 Andy Geers

Having been coding in Objective-C for getting on for a decade now, I’d viewed
Swift as something of a minor irritation – yet another new thing to have to
learn. I’d dabbled in it on occasion when trying to develop new features for
PrayerMate – but given very limited available time, I’d often find the overheads
of having to struggle with an unknown language far outweighed any potential
benefits and I reverted back to Objective-C.

With the advent of SwiftUI last summer it was clear that the tide was turning,
and I made a resolve to write all new code in Swift wherever possible, and
actually discovered that it wasn’t quite so bad as previous experiences had led
me to believe. I’m not able to use SwiftUI yet in PrayerMate because I still
support back to iOS 10, but it was increasingly obvious that Objective-C’s days
were numbered. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, the real motivation for
adopting Swift has not been Apple at all, but Stack Overflow – increasingly the
answers there are all related to Swift, with fewer and fewer providing
Objective-C alternatives.

But then over the autumn I started developing a new hobby app (still mostly
under wraps) and since it was just for fun I decided to go all out and do it
100% Swift, using SwiftUI and lots of other things that I wasn’t able to explore
with PrayerMate. And I have grown to not only tolerate Swift, but to LOVE it.
Coding in Objective-C feels positively stone aged now by comparison.

Here are the three features I discovered that helped me to learn to love Swift:

1. TYPE INFERENCE

I’m not a very good one for reading the manual, but with a background in C++ I’d
previously assumed that you had to explicitly state the type of each of your
variables in Swift. I’d been writing code like this:

let a : Int = 5

What a pain! And totally unnecessary. Swift does all the hard work for you:

let a = 5 // : Int is inferred
let b = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6]] // [[Int]] is inferred

2. GUARD STATEMENTS

Previously my experience with using Swift and UIKit was a complete swamp of
optionals and having to explicitly use “!” everywhere and just hating it.
Discovering “guard” statements and the ability to turn an optional in to a
non-optional then has been a revelation:

if ((view != nil) && (view!.frame.size.height > 5)) {
...
}

can instead become:

guard let v = view else { return }
if (v.frame.size.height > 5) {
...
}

3. FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING FEATURES

Combining the two features above, and it then becomes insanely easy to write the
kind of functional code that I’m used to writing as a Ruby developer:

let b = myArray.map { doSomethingCleverWith($0) }
let b = myArray.compactMap { $0 > 5 ? otherFunc($0) : nil }

…only it’s better than Ruby because the compiler checks in advance that your
transformations are actually doing what you expect them to by type checking the
results for you.

CONCLUSION

There’s more that I could have said, but all in all I’m really glad to have gone
all out on Swift for this new project, and it has given me an appreciation for
this language that was not at all my experience previously. If you’ve now
already taken the plunge, give it a try!

Uncategorized

THE ANCHOR FOWEY – EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN CORNWALL

October 9, 2019 Andy Geers

After I graduated from university I spent a wonderful year in Fowey, Cornwall,
working for Philip de Grey-Warter. For issues of conscience, after many years he
has recently made the costly decision to resign from the Church of England and
started a new church plant in Fowey, The Anchor. If you are ever in Cornwall and
looking for an evangelical church, you would do well to pay them a visit.

coding for christ

BUILD 2018 – CHRISTIAN HACKATHON WEEKEND

September 11, 2018 Andy Geers

The Kingdom Code “BUILD” weekend is back for 2018 – 24 hours to form teams and
work on projects inspired by our Christian faith. This year we have two amazing
partner organisations who have set some fantastic challenges:

1. Bible Society: How can digital tools help increase appetite for and
engagement with the Bible in the 21st century?

2. Stewardship: How can we use technology to inspire and enable greater
generosity in the Christian community?

Get your tickets today!

prayermate, Uncategorized

ADVENT 2017 ON PRAYERMATE

November 24, 2017 Andy Geers

I’m delighted to announce this year’s range of Advent devotionals available
through PrayerMate – get the lowdown on the PrayerMate blog.

coding for christ

KINGDOM CODE BUILD ’17 – CHRISTIAN HACKATHON WEEKEND

September 25, 2017 Andy Geers

For the third year running, Kingdom Code UK will be hosting a hackathon weekend
for Christians in the world of technology – an opportunity for Christian coders,
designers, project managers, tech entrepreneurs and general enthusiasts to
gather for 48 hours to build new technologies inspired by our Christian faith.

This year we’re hugely privileged to be partnering with two excellent Christian
charities: Christians Against Poverty and Home For Good. They’ve each set a
challenge (below) and hopefully it will be a fantastic weekend!

Not convinced it’s for you? Read my post from last year: Why YOU should attend
the hackathon (and some bad reasons not to).

With a month still to go we’ve already got 50 signed up but we’re praying for
100. Book your ticket TODAY!

coding for christ, prayermate

HOW TO ENCRYPT A GOOGLE FIREBASE REALTIME DATABASE

May 24, 2017 Andy Geers

THE PROBLEM: PROTECTING SENSITIVE USER DATA IN FIREBASE REALTIME DATABASE

For a while now I’ve been working on implementing user accounts in the
PrayerMate app so that users can sync their private data to the cloud and share
it between their different devices. Think of PrayerMate as being like an
Evernote equivalent but specifically focussed on recording different prayer
needs – some of them ones of a highly personal nature either about yourself or
about close friends that you’re praying for.

Ever since Google announced their revamped version of Firebase a year ago I’ve
been in love with it as a platform – the Firebase Realtime Database in
particular makes authenticating users and syncing their data to the cloud as
easy as pie. But there’s one big drawback: anybody with admin credentials for
the Firebase project can browse all of that private user data at will. Equally,
Google’s infrastructure is pretty rock solid in terms of security (I went to a
presentation about it at the recent Google Cloud Next conference in London – and
it is seriously cool stuff) but the consequences of a hacker getting hold of all
of that user data doesn’t even bear thinking about.

That’s why I’ve been looking for a solution that allows users to still sync all
of their data between their devices via Firebase, but whilst preventing me as
the developer (or anybody else who somehow got hold of a data dump) from reading
that data. At the same time, I wanted to do it in a way that meant a user who
lost their phone wasn’t completely locked out of all of their data for all time
– even people with just a single device are frequently asking me to implement
sync as a backup mechanism.

Thankfully Google’s own infrastructure provides some really cool tools that made
solving this surprisingly easy – and since even people within Google / Firebase
themselves didn’t seem overly aware of what was on offer, I thought it was worth
blogging about my experiences.

STEP 1: A CROSS-PLATFORM ENCRYPTION/DECRYPTION SOLUTION – RNCRYPTOR

My first day of this project was spent looking for an encryption/decryption
library that met the following requirements:

* Data could be decrypted across both iOS and Android phones
* Production ready / stable
* Actively maintained
* Actually secure
* Performant (fast encryption / decryption)

Considering the year is 2017 this was a remarkably difficult exercise. Almost
every library I came across had huge warnings either on the iOS version or the
Android version saying “The library on the other platform uses really insecure
defaults which I had to incorporate for compatibility purposes”, or it hadn’t
been touched in four years, or it had a gazillion issues logged against it.

I eventually settled on RNCryptor-objc / RNCryptorNative. When I last looked at
RNCryptor a few years back the only option on Android was JNCryptor which was
ridiculously slow (multiple seconds per operation) and which I now notice is
covered in warnings saying “Do not use on Android”.

STEP 2: SECURELY SYNCED ENCRYPTION KEYS USING GOOGLE CLOUD KMS

With RNCryptor implemented on both platforms, that just left the little issue of
how to actually sync the user’s encryption key between their devices. A naive
solution would be to store that key within the Firebase database itself – that
would at least prevent me from accidentally reading people’s private data (at
least nothing would be stored in plain text) but would still make it trivial for
anybody with access to the Firebase data to decrypt anything they wanted to.

At Google Cloud Next I came across the Google Cloud Key Management Service, and
could immediately tell there was some potential here. The Google Cloud KMS lets
you create encryption keys which can then be used to encrypt and decrypt data.
My first assumption was that I’d generate a key for every user, but for
PrayerMate’s 25,000 monthly active users that would quickly reach at least
$1,500 every single month. After a chat with some of the very helpful Google
Developer Advocates I quickly realised that wasn’t what I needed at all – just a
single KMS key could be used to encrypt and decrypt a user’s data encryption key
(DEK).

In the end what I came up with was to build a super-simple authentication
service in the Google App Engine Flexible Environment. When a user first logs in
to PrayerMate, the auth service generates them a new DEK which it gives to them,
as well as encrypting it in KMS for storage in Firebase. When the user logs in
to their second device, the auth service takes the encrypted key from Firebase
and again uses KMS to decrypt it for the user to store in their device’s local
keychain (where it is again stored in encrypted form).

Importantly, the KMS key belongs to a different Google account to the Firebase
database, so no one user (e.g. me) has permission to both read the data AND
decrypt it. A hacker would need to compromise both accounts to access the
unencrypted data.

STEP 3: AUTHENTICATION OF FIREBASE USERS VIA GOOGLE CLOUD ENDPOINTS

Where things get REALLY cool, however, is with the introduction of Google Cloud
Endpoints in to the mix. This is basically a proxy layer that sits between your
user and your backend, but which, crucially, understands the concept of Firebase
authenticated users and can validate those logins and tell your backend who
somebody is.

This means that each time we generate a new DEK for a user we can encrypt it
along with their user ID, so that when somebody comes along later requesting to
decrypt a particular DEK the backend can verify if it actually belongs to them.

On the whole, the documentation for Google Cloud Endpoints is pretty good, and
if you persevere long enough you can probably figure out how to get it working.
I got stuck on a couple of points: firstly, I got myself in a muddle about what
to put in the endpoints_api_service section of app.yaml and how it related to
the host property of openapi.yaml. There are so many different deployment
combinations that the Endpoints documentation struggles to make it very clear –
but if you are deploying to the flexible app engine you just use the same
[PROJECT_ID].appspot.com form in both places, and your
endpoints_api_service.config_id is just what you get given when you deploy your
proxy configuration using gcloud service-management deploy openapi.yaml (usually
something like “2017-01-01r0”).

The second place where I got really stuck for a while is how to actually enable
Firebase authentication on the backend. The Endpoints documentation talked about
a X-Endpoint-API-UserInfo header but for the life of me I could not get it to be
injected at all. Eventually, I discovered the missing instruction from the
documentation (and hopefully they’ll soon accept my request to fix that): after
you have added your firebase entry to the securityDefinitions section of
openapi.yaml you then ALSO need to actually use that security definition by
adding a section like this:

security:
- firebase: []

Update: I have now open-sourced the code for my backend service as
firebase-keysafe. Contributions would be welcome if you spot room for
improvement.

FANCY WORKING FOR PRAYERMATE?
ANDROID DEVELOPER WANTED

If solving interesting problems like this sounds like your cup of tea, all in
the aid of helping the world to pray more, then you should know that I’m
currently on the look out for a full time Android developer – ideally based in
London – either on a short-term contract or more permanent. I’m looking for
somebody who is fully committed to the aims of a Christian prayer app like
PrayerMate and who is able to be more than just a code-monkey following a
tightly defined spec but instead is able to partner in helping build the best
possible prayer platform to mobilise the Christian church to pray. If that
sounds like you then please get in touch!

prayermate

PRAYERMATE’S TIPS FOR WRITING PRAYER UPDATES

May 12, 2017 Andy Geers

Between them, users of the PrayerMate app are now praying for over a million
requests every month. Through the PrayerMate Publishing Platform you can publish
prayer feeds to keep your supporters updated and engaged in praying for your
ministry too – whether you’re a charity, a church or an individual. Many
organisations already publish an existing prayer diary or bulletin, and the site
provides tools to quickly and easily get those imported into the PrayerMate
system. But what if you’re not already in a habit of writing regular prayer
requests – what kinds of things make for a good prayer update?

Here are our top tips for writing prayer updates:

1. WRITE THEM PRAYERFULLY

It’s hard to expect people to be praying for your ministry if you’re not praying
for it yourself. When I sit down to write my prayer updates for PrayerMate each
month (yes, PrayerMate has its own feed to help you pray for PrayerMate!), I
find it really helps me to begin by praying myself. It feels like the right
thing to do anyway, to remind myself that this is first and foremost about
inviting God to be at work – and in the process, it usually quickly becomes
obvious which kinds of issues are in need of prayer, what is causing anxiety and
difficulty, and what encouragements there have been to give thanks for.

2. GIVE THANKS

That leads to our second tip: give thanks! Not all prayer updates have to be
requests, it’s often helpful to have some updates which are about giving thanks
for the ways in which God has been answering previous requests.

3. THINK OF SOME GENERAL MINISTRY AREAS / TOPICS

A good means of generating ideas for writing prayer updates can be to start by
writing down some general ministry areas and topics for prayer. For example, if
you’re a church, you might have a children’s / youth ministry, a work amongst
your local community, students, mission partners who you support, and so on.
Most charities will have some particular ministry areas, or perhaps regions
where they operate. If you can think of five relatively broad topics then you
only need to come up with six prayer points for each topic and you’ve got
yourself a month’s worth of prayer points.

4. BE SPECIFIC

Under each topic, you can then write some specific requests. The more vague your
prayer points are, the harder you’ll find it to come up with more than one or
two. So instead of saying “Pray that the kids will grow in their knowledge of
Jesus”, you could single out what the teaching topic will be this week and have
a few specific requests related to the various application points. This is also
usually much more engaging for the people praying as well, since it helps keeps
things fresh as they pray week by week.

5. BE BRIEF

In your desire to be specific, it’s also good to keep things relatively brief.
You don’t need to write a long essay for every day of the week. Just a brief
line for each prayer request is fine – and will help both you and those praying.

WANT TO GET PEOPLE PRAYING FOR YOUR MINISTRY?

prayermate

LENT 2017 WITH PRAYERMATE

February 24, 2017 Andy Geers

RESOURCES TO HELP YOU GROW IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD THIS LENT

This Lent, let PrayerMate help you grow in your relationship with God. We’ve
been working hard to put together a great selection of resources, together with
some new reminder functionality to help you focus on God day by day.

To get started, open the PrayerMate app, tap the “Add +” button, and find the
“Devotionals for Lent 2017” section.

Here’s just a taster of some of the fantastic resources available this Lent,
beginning 1st March 2017, with even more to come soon.

40ACTS

From Stewardship Services, here’s 40 days of giving back, doing good and living
generously.
Last year, over 100,000 people from 180 countries committed 40 days to exploring
what it is like to be generous. Join us again from 1st March 2017.

31 DAYS OF PURITY

You are invited to 31 Days of Purity— thirty-one days of thinking about and
praying for sexual purity. Each day features a short passage of Scripture, a
reflection on that passage, and a brief prayer. Written by Tim Challies, Mike
Leake and others. Subscribe here.

AMBASSADORS’ LENT PRAYER JOURNEY –
THE DIOCESE OF LONDON

Starting Monday 6th March, the Diocese of London are launching their Lent Prayer
Journey in order to help us pray as ambassadors for Christ. With six weekly
themes, from ‘The Ambassador’s Context’ to ‘The Ambassador’s Call,’ they will be
journeying through some daily ideas to encourage ambassadors representing Christ
day-to-day to engage in prayer. Subscribe here

LIGONIER DEVOTIONALS

Between 1st March and Easter we will be running three reading plans from
Ligonier Ministries written by R.C. Sproul. Each devotional calls you to live in
the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God.
Starts 1st March with Getting to Know God’s Son.

LONDON CITY MISSION: PRAY FOR LONDON

Walk with us through London this Lent, and pray for its people and places. This
will be a great guide from London City Mission to praying for the amazing gospel
opportunities the city has to offer. Subscribe here.

If you haven’t tried it already, get the PrayerMate app today and see how it can
help you to grow in your relationship with God this Lent.

prayermate

10 RESOURCES TO REVITALISE YOUR PRAYER LIFE IN 2017

December 31, 2016 Andy Geers

We all find it easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to prayer. Here are ten
resources which you may find helpful in freshening up your prayer life in the
year ahead.

1. THE LORD’S PRAYER

It would be remiss to do a series of resources to help you in your prayer life
without including the prayer that Jesus himself taught us. It’s the starting
point for all Christian prayer, and as well as being great to use as-given it
also works well as a structure for all of your prayers. I’ve written more about
using it this way previously.

2. OPERATION WORLD

If you’ve not come across it, Operation World is a terrific book which gets
updated periodically, with incredibly detailed information about every country
in the world and how to pray for their needs. The current edition is showing its
age in certain areas of the world (e.g. Syria) but it’s still a great way to
expand your horizons beyond the narrow concerns of your own personal needs.

An Operation World “Country of the Day” feed is available through the PrayerMate
app.

3. PRAYING THE PSALMS

Don Whitney’s recent book “Praying the Bible” explores how you can use the words
of Scripture, and especially the Psalms, to inject freshness into your daily
prayers.

Don gives a reading plan of five Psalms every day which will get you through the
entire Psalter every month – or there’s a reduced version available through
PrayerMate which gives you one Psalm every day to get through them all every
five months.

4. TAKE WORDS WITH YOU

Tim Kerr’s manual for intercession “Take Words With You” is an incredible
treasure trove of Biblical promises and prayers organised into categories – as
well as a method for using this to pray specifically into various situations. I
highly recommend getting yourself a copy and giving it a try.

I’ve worked with Tim to incorporate Take Words With You into PrayerMate, and you
can access various daily feeds such as verses to help you Praise God or Confess
Sin, as well as the “TWWY Prayer Builder” that you can use to pull in Bible
prayers and promises related to a specific theme.

5. JOHN PIPER’S “CONCENTRIC CIRCLES”

John Piper has talked in various places about how he prays in “concentric
circles” – starting with yourself and your own relationship with God, then
moving outwards to close family and friends, then to the wider church and
community, and then to the wider world. It’s of course not the only way to pray
but you might find it helpful if you are struggling to give your prayer times
any kind of structure, or get stuck on just one of the “circles”.

From the beginning the PrayerMate app was built with this kind of prayer
structure in mind – you could maintain a “list” for each circle, and since it
always gets you to pray through your lists in order it will naturally work from
the inside out.

6. A CALL TO SPIRITUAL REFORMATION

The book that first got me going in a serious habit of prayer was Don Carson’s
classic “A Call to Spiritual Reformation“. It’s a great book that’s well worth a
read – both for his practical tips on how he uses prayer lists, but mostly to
see what the prayers of Paul in the Bible have to teach us about prayer.

For those who want it, you can download all of the passages mentioned in the
book into PrayerMate by finding the “Praying with Paul” section of the “Biblical
Prayers” gallery.

7. PRAY FOR SEVEN

Pray for Seven is a great initiative as part of the Diocese of London’s “Capital
Vision” project, encouraging everyone to commit to praying regularly for seven
unbelieving friends for an opportunity to share your faith with them. It’s built
on the simple premise that when we pray, God can do amazing things.

You can find a handy guide on how to use PrayerMate to help you Pray for Seven
here.

Pray for Seven. Who could you pray for? from London Diocese on Vimeo.

8. 18 PRAYERS TO PRAY FOR UNBELIEVERS

Do you ever find yourself wanting to pray for your friends who don’t yet know
Jesus, and ending up praying exactly the same thing over and over and wondering
where to go next? Tim Challies has written a great list of suggestions for how
to pray for unbelievers here.

You can download these into PrayerMate by finding the “Evangelism and Youth
Work” gallery.

9. “5 THINGS TO PRAY” BOOKS

This year The Good Book Company published two great little books to help you
pray: “5 Things to Pray for Your Church” and “5 Things to Pray for the People
You Love”. Each page gives you a different aspect of the subject matter to pray
for and give simple suggestions. Fantastic!

You can purchase these books through PrayerMate through the following links:
“http://praynow4.org/church5″>Your Church” or “The People You Love“.

10. THE VALLEY OF VISION

One of my favourite books on prayer is the Valley of Vision. Published by the
Banner of Truth, it’s a collection of prayers inspired by the prayers of the
Puritans and organised by various topics. They’re wonderful prayers for when
you’re stuck in a rut – a favourite of mine has always been the prayer for the
“Lord’s Day Morning”, a great one to pray as you head to church.

You can’t yet get the Valley of Vision through PrayerMate but you could always
sign this petition to say you’d like to be able to!

coding for christ

WHY YOU SHOULD ATTEND THE KINGDOM CODE HACKATHON (AND SOME BAD REASONS NOT TO)

October 19, 2016 Andy Geers

For 2017 Indigitious are helping organise simultaneous #Hack weekends around the
globe – Christian hackathon events where technologists will gather together to
work on projects inspired by their Christian faith. This includes the Kingdom
Code BUILD weekend in London. But chatting to a few people, I realise there’s
lots of people out there who had prematurely dismissed the idea of attending
because they decided it wasn’t for them – what a shame! So I just wanted to
spend a bit of time going through some of the reasons why you should come along
– and then try to debunk a few of the bad reasons you might have for not coming.

REASON TO COME #1: BECAUSE YOU CAN SEE THE POTENTIAL OF TECHNOLOGY

Love it or loathe it, technology is all around us, and it’s not going away any
time soon. In the last 10 years, the amount of time young people spend on their
mobile phones has tripled to almost 28 hours a week. We could decry this as a
blight on our society, but we could also recognise the huge potential in this to
harness technology and use it as a tool to help reach people with the gospel and
grow disciples of Christ.

It could be that you have a specific idea of a way to do this – perhaps an app
or a website that you would like to see built. Then come to the hackathon and
pitch your idea! Or maybe you don’t have an idea, but you would love to support
others who do – either with your dev/design skills or just with your raw
enthusiasm – come! The ideal hackathon team has a real mix of skills – including
people who are simply “a bit like the people who might end up using the final
product”, even if they don’t feel they have the skills to actually “build” it.

REASON TO COME #2: BECAUSE YOU WANT TO USE YOUR GIFTS FOR GOD

For some people, you have very specific skills that are relatively rare in the
church: maybe you can code, or you are a designer or a product manager. No
matter where you are in your journey of developing those gifts, a hackathon is a
great opportunity to channel them into building something that is specifically
kingdom-oriented. It won’t be that every single project is explicitly
“Christian” – but all of them will be reflecting the Christian values and
worldviews of the teams who build them, and it will help you to see how the
person God has made you to be can make a difference in the world.

Some of the projects will just be a “proof of concept”, some will just be a
chance to tinker with an interesting new technology (or one that’s new to you).
But we also hope and pray that for a few of the projects, this will be the birth
of something that will go on to have a genuine and lasting impact for eternity.
If that’s not enough to get you excited then I don’t know what else to say!

REASON TO COME #3: YOU’LL LEARN LOADS

If you’ve ever tried “pair programming” you’ll know how much you can learn by
working closely with another person, no matter how experienced you already are.
A hackathon is a great way to hone your skills and collaborate with others and
pick up new ideas. I have many fond memories of last year getting to peek into
the work that other teams were doing, or answer the odd question about a niggly
iOS bug or obscure syntax error. We had quite a few students who came last year
and I think they’d all testify to the fact that it was a great learning
opportunity for them – I know it certainly was for me! I had the opportunity to
be challenged to think differently about my project by people with a different
breadth of experience to me, and I know that I personally grew through it.

REASON TO COME #4: YOU’LL BUILD SOME GREAT RELATIONSHIPS

In my experience, the best friendships are born out of working side-by-side with
people towards a common aim. Sounds like the perfect description of a hackathon!
You’ll meet all sorts of like-minded people from across the country (and across
the world!) and through the process of working together on a project you’ll get
to know each other and build some great relationships.

REASON TO COME #5: IT’S A LOT OF FUN

Last but by no means least, hackathons are just a lot of fun. Last year’s event
had such an amazing atmosphere to it, of the body of Christ collaborating
together to build some amazing things. Everybody was there to help everybody
else, there was excitement for what we were doing, fantastic food, great coffee,
an awesome venue, and generally it’s hard to imagine you could be doing anything
else more fun than this with your weekend.

BAD REASON NOT TO COME #1: “I CAN’T CODE!”

Irrelevant. As we’ve already said, the ideal hackathon team has a real mix of
skills – and anyway, the actual ‘coding’ part of the weekend is probably
relatively small, in some ways. The weekend starts with the “ideation” stage, as
people pitch their ideas and teams are formed. But then there’ll be plenty of
planning and designing and working out what this thing that you’re trying to
build actually is. The enthusiasm of people who might one day become end users
of the product is just as valuable as the raw coding or design.

Related to this is the “I can’t code very well!” excuse. That’s exactly why you
should come – so that you can learn from others more experienced than yourself.
You’ll get to see how real software is built from the idea stage right through
to completion and then presenting it to others. Awesome.

BAD REASON NOT TO COME #2: “I DON’T HAVE AN IDEA!”

This is a particularly bad reason for not coming. Generally speaking, hackathons
take place in teams. There were a few people last year who worked on their own
(either for all or part of the weekend), but the majority were part of teams of
6-8. So even the people who did have an idea didn’t all get to actually tackle
that idea over the weekend – and there was certainly plenty of room for people
who didn’t have an idea of their own but just wanted to help build somebody
else’s.

BAD REASON NOT TO COME #3: “I COULDN’T POSSIBLY STAY AWAKE ALL WEEKEND!”

No, of course not! I think this is a common misconception of a hackathon
weekend, that you’re expected to forego sleep for the entire weekend. Last year
we did have maybe two people who pulled all-nighters (possibly even an
all-weekender) but they were definitely the exception rather than the norm.
Sheer enthusiasm and a desire to make progress possibly meant some people slept
rather less than normal (we have a dark/quiet area set aside for sleeping bags
etc) but most people know themselves well enough to recognise that they will do
their best work if they’ve actually had some sleep.

BAD REASON NOT TO COME #4: “I HAVEN’T GOT A TICKET!”

Well until midday on Thursday 19th October 2017 it’s still not too late to
remedy this – in London at least! Get your ticket RIGHT NOW.

prayermate

WORKING FULL TIME ON PRAYERMATE

September 27, 2016 Andy Geers

As of last Wednesday I am now working full time on PrayerMate. This is a really
exciting idea as far as I’m concerned, and something that I’ve been wanting to
do for a long time. What held me back was two things:

1. I really loved my job at Hubbub.co.uk. It was a truly extraordinary place to
work and one that I was really not wanting to leave in a hurry. It’s a
privilege to get to enjoy going to work each day and knowing that you’re
going to be working on something that makes a difference to people. Now I
get to do that on PrayerMate instead!
2. PrayerMate was a long way from being able to financially support me and my
family (which as the father of three children is a serious consideration).
It still is, really, but helped by a few generous donations and another
windfall my wife and I decided we were ready to step out in faith and give
it a shot, trusting that our big God is well able to provide for our needs.

As I’ve started to tell people what I’m up to the response has often been a bit
like this: people are generally pleased for me and can tell I am excited about
it, but there’s also a bit of a look in their eye which shows they’re a little
confused – after all, isn’t PrayerMate finished already? “So what will you
actually do?” is often the question that follows. Whilst I know that I could
probably employ a team of five for a year and still not accomplish all that I
have in mind, that’s not readily apparent from the outside. Ultimately it boils
down to my rather ambitious vision for PrayerMate:

PrayerMate’s mission is to mobilise the Christian church to pray

It seeks to do this by using technology to:

1. Help people to actually pray
2. Teach people how to pray in line with biblical principles and priorities
3. Providing timely information about specific needs so that they can pray
informed prayers

Right now that app is barely scratching the surface of fulfilling that vision,
especially when you consider the number of people who try the app once and then
quickly give up on it because they’re too confused or because the effort of
getting started is just too great at the moment. Obviously (and wonderfully!)
not everybody needs a prayer app – and for many people the app is not for them,
and that’s fine. But I know for a fact that there are many people out there who
struggle to pray and for whom PrayerMate would be a really valuable tool – and I
want to help them discover that! Imagine what an awesome thing it would be if
more of the global church was mobilised in praying regularly and boldly for the
good news about Jesus to be spreading around the world and taking root in
people’s hearts – and by God’s grace I now get to be part of that as my day job.
What a privilege!

HOW CAN I HELP?

If you’re as excited about that vision as I am, please please please consider
whether you might be able to support me through regular monthly donations – or
at least as a one off. You can do this in three ways depending on which country
you live in:

UK GIVERS: GIVE TAX-EFFICIENTLY VIA STEWARDSHIP SERVICES

If you’re a UK tax-payer then you can give via Stewardship Services, allowing
you to Gift Aid your donation to make it go even further:

https://www.give.net/20113186

ANYBODY: GIVE REGULARLY VIA PATREON

If you want to make monthly payments to support me (in exchange for various
levels of rewards) then you can find me on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/PrayerMateApp

ANYBODY: DONATE VIA PAYPAL

You can give via PayPal either as a one off or (even better!) as a monthly
recurring payment using a credit card – even if you don’t have an account with
them:

prayermate

BIG NEWS FOR PRAYERMATE

June 23, 2016 Andy Geers

I just sent the following message to the PrayerMate mailing list (which you
should join, by the way):

“For a long time now I have been praying and thinking about whether it might be
possible to go full-time on PrayerMate in order to be able to further develop
it. I’ve got so many ideas for how it might become an even more effective tool
in helping even more people to pray, and “time” has long been the biggest
barrier to putting these ideas into practice. In the last few weeks God has
providentially worked to create a very obvious window of opportunity, so I am
writing to share the exciting news that from mid-September I shall be working on
PrayerMate as my full time job – for as long as I am able to afford.”

But I need your help! Read the full message here for details of how you can help
make this possible.

coding for christ

HOW DOES OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH RELATE TO THE TECHNOLOGY WE USE AND BUILD?

April 12, 2016 Andy Geers

I did a seminar at Kingdom Code UK last week on the subject of “How does our
Christian faith relate to the technology we use and build?“. An audio recording
is now available here.

prayermate

18 THINGS TO PRAY FOR YOUR CHURCH

April 7, 2016 Andy Geers

Jonathan Leeman recently published 18 Things to Pray for Your Church over at The
Gospel Coalition, and he has kindly given permission for these prayers to be
shared through the PrayerMate app.

With the app installed, you can use the add page, switch to your “My church”
list and then hit the “Download prayers” button. Alternatively you can use this
magic URL to access the content directly.

prayermate

HOW TO USE PRAYERMATE TO HELP YOU PRAY FOR SEVEN

April 4, 2016 Andy Geers

Pray for Seven. Who could you pray for? from London Diocese on Vimeo.

Pray for Seven is a fantastic initiative from the Diocese of London as part of
their Capital Vision 2020: encouraging Christians to pray regularly for seven
specific individuals for an opportunity to share your faith with them.

This is something that the PrayerMate app is perfectly suited to assist in – if
you make yourself a “Pray for Seven” list in the app, then every time you use
the app you can get it to give you a different one of your seven to pray for. If
it helps you to focus, you can even attach a little photo to each one.

STEP 1: SELECT “PRAY FOR SEVEN”

To get started, open the app and go to the “Add” page (the + button can be found
at the top on Android and as a tab at the bottom on iOS) and choose the “Prayers
for friends” option, followed by “Capital Vision / Pray for Seven“.

STEP 2: ENTER YOUR SEVEN NAMES

You’ll then want to add your seven names. Type each name on a separate line,
using the enter key after each one. Then you can press the “Done” button in the
top right once you’ve entered all seven.

STEP 3: ADD PHOTOS / CUSTOMISE

On the “lists” page you should then be able to see the names you’ve just added,
and you can tap any one of them to view. Each one will have a pencil icon to
edit it, where you can add a photo to enter some notes.

STEP 4: PRAY FOR SEVEN!

Each time I launch the app I’ll be given a selection of things to pray for, and
over time this will include each of my “Pray for Seven” people (if you prefer,
you can configure the list’s settings to guarantee that it will always give you
one “Pray for Seven” item every time you use the app)

prayermate

PRAYERMATE: A VISION STATEMENT

March 21, 2016 Andy Geers

Since its earliest days, PrayerMate has come preinstalled with the prayer Jesus
calls his followers to pray in Matthew 9:38:

> “36When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were
> harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his
> disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; 38 therefore
> pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his
> harvest.”” (emphasis mine)

I’ve often read that and thought “well if the need is so great, perhaps I ought
to ‘go’ myself” – it’s one of the things that has kept me considering full-time
gospel ministry for more than a decade. But then last week, something
interesting happened. Along with five others, I was “comissioned” by the Bishop
of Edmonton for “leading public worship, preaching & administering Holy
Communion” at Euston Church. John Valentine was preaching at the service, and
his text was Matthew 9:38. He pointed out the surprise of this passage: when
Jesus sees the need in v36 (“the crowds”) you might expect him to say “therefore
‘go'”; but the surprise is that he doesn’t, he instead says “therefore ‘pray‘”.
No doubt some will discover that they themselves are to be the answer to their
prayer, and seeing the vast need surely should make us consider our own calling
if we remotely share in Jesus’ compassion. But the point remains: first and
foremost, to Jesus, the logical implication of the need is to pray.

All of this reminded me of a quote that has been rumbling around my brain for a
while:

> “The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest
> contribution to world evangelization in history.” – Andrew Murray

There are some things that make me nervous about this quote (the over-emphasis
on “the” man, for example) but yet there is something profoundly exciting about
it as I consider PrayerMate. Last month, 25,000 people used the app to help them
pray. 5,500 people have used the Operation World feed over the past year. The
Open Doors USA feed was viewed over 100,000 times, helping people pray for the
plight of the persecuted church. I quote these figures not because there’s
anything impressive to God about large numbers, but rather because I think
sometimes I am prone to underestimate the value of what I do with PrayerMate –
after all, it’s still “just” something I do in my spare time! But, under God,
what a contribution to world evangelisation all those prayers must have been!

PRAYERMATE: A VISION STATEMENT

Somebody asked me recently what my vision is for PrayerMate, and now it seems
obvious:

PrayerMate’s mission is to mobilise the Christian church to pray

It seeks to do this by using technology to:

1. Help people to actually pray
2. Teach people how to pray in line with biblical principles and priorities
3. Providing timely information about specific needs so that they can pray
informed prayers

As you read that, it may be obvious that many of these are still very much
aspirational, and that the app is only just beginning to scratch the surface of
what it could become. I still have so many ideas for ways that PrayerMate could
more effectively achieve these aims, ways that it could be made easier-to-use to
reduce friction, ways that it could be made easier for organisations,
missionaries & churches to get prayer information to their prayer supporters. My
main bottleneck in all of this is time – time to turn these ideas into reality.

WHAT’S NEXT

I’ve been praying a lot about what the future might hold for PrayerMate, and how
to better realise the vision set out above. At the end of the day, time often
really is money, in the sense that whatever the way ahead might be, it needs to
include putting food on my family’s table. Outsourcing development work costs me
at least £200 per day (and often requires plenty of my own time to manage, test
and deploy projects) not to mention server hosting costs, marketing costs, and
so on. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, it’s hard to make money from a prayer app!

If there is a way for PrayerMate to become financially self-sustaining, I
suspect it would include some mix of the following:

* A larger financial contribution from a few headline ‘partner organisations’
* A small contribution from a wide base of churches & charities who publishing
feeds through the app
* A voluntary contribution from some of the app’s users (FYI details of how to
donate found here)

There’s a number of different definitions of “self-sustaining” here – a part
time developer, a full time developer, even a whole team (with dedicated iOS and
Android developers, charity liaison/support people, etc) depending upon how much
comes in. But what’s clear to me is that the sky is the limit – until Jesus
comes back the need is vast, and though a little app like PrayerMate is far from
being the complete answer to the problem of world evangelisation, I believe it
can make a really meaningful contribution.

If you feel inspired to be a part of this, then I would love to hear from you!
You can use the “Send feedback” button inside the app or get in touch via
Twitter.

prayermate

THREE NEW PRAYERMATE SCHEDULING OPTIONS

February 9, 2016 Andy Geers

The last few weeks have revealed what an incredibly engaged and passionate user
base PrayerMate has – if I ever doubted it for a second! The response to the new
PrayerMate v5 has generally been extremely positive, but inevitably with such a
big change it has also revealed a few problem areas. Today there is an
incremental update in the form of v5.1.0 (5.1.1 on Android) which includes three
key changes:

1. A critical bug fixed – unfortunately a particularly thorny and
hard-to-detect bug slipped through the net in the initial release of
PrayerMate 5 that meant all “never-prayed-before” subjects were fixed at a
relatively low priority (equivalent to something you prayed for 12 hours
ago). The result of this was that if you came back to the app after 24 hours
had passed, you’d only ever see things that you had prayed for yesterday –
which needless to say was not what you wanted. I take issues like this
extremely seriously, since it damages the relationship of trust that you
have with the app, and I am very thankful for those of you who brought this
to my attention.
2. Explicit priorities on each subject – something that I have been wanting to
add for an extremely long time is the ability to set a “priority” level on
specific subjects. Now through a subject’s “settings” page you can set the
priority level: normal (the default), low (this subject is five times less
likely to show up), high (this subject is five times more likely to show
up), and importantly, every time. The “every time” setting means that this
subject will always appear in your prayer session – although for those of
you who use PrayerMate more than once per day it can also be combined with
the existing “scheduling mode” setting e.g. to make it appear every time on
Mondays only.

3. Request “all” subjects from certain lists – with PrayerMate v5 came the
option to manually request a specific number of subjects from each of your
lists, but sometimes you don’t know in advance how many subjects you want.
In this new update, you can go one step further and request “All” subjects
from a given list every time.

This Lent why not get the 40acts feed – 40 days, 40 meditations. You can use the
new “Every time” priority setting to get it each day.

prayermate

HOW TO MANAGE WHAT YOU PRAY FOR IN PRAYERMATE V5

January 27, 2016 Andy Geers

In case you missed the news yesterday, there is now an all-new version of
PrayerMate. Judging by the emails in my inbox, this update has caused a great
deal of confusion and anxiety amongst many of you, and I hope that this post
will help clear some of that up. I would also like to apologise if the changes
have come as something of a surprise, and for not communicating better how to
deal with the changes in advance.

Here are some brief notes about the new scheduling and how to deal with it:

1. Firstly, the new scheduler centres around a single total number of items that
you wish to pray for, and then selects cards roughly in order of priority until
it meets that quota. This is what the new +/- buttons on the first “Coming up”
slide are about – it defaults to five but for many of you you will be used to
seeing more, and should just press the + button until you are back to a number
that suits you.

2. The caveat to point 1 is that it does also try to balance things between your
various lists (formerly known as categories), so by default it should only ever
pick one card from each list until it has run out of lists, at which point it
will circle round once again.

3. For those who want more control, you can explicitly tell PrayerMate how many
items you want from any given list, and it will then prioritise those lists
before filling up the rest of its quota from elsewhere. Tap on to the new
“Lists” page using the button (at the top on iOS and at the bottom on Android)
go to the list you want to manage (either by selecting from the “List index” or
by swiping sideways) and then press the “cog”/ settings button on that list and
choose “List settings”. There you can tick “Manually set items per session” and
drag the slider. For example, I have this set to “1” on my “Biblical prayers”
list to make sure that I always start my prayer session by focussing on God, and
I have one item from lists for my wife and for my children, but then I leave
PrayerMate to decide how to fill up the rest of my daily quota from all of my
remaining lists (of which I have many).

4. I’m hoping to add an explicit “pray for this every time” setting very soon (a
somewhat obvious feature that PrayerMate has never had, because before this
update it was too hard to figure out all the complicated interactions with
per-category limits / the global limit / etc). In the mean time, as demonstrated
in point 3, I suggest moving that subject to a list all by itself and manually
setting the items per session on that list to “1”.

5. It should still be respecting any “day of the week” or other advanced
scheduling that you have set up previously. You can access these by pressing the
“cog”/settings button on any of your subjects. If things are appearing on days
that you do not expect then that sounds like a bug and you should hit “Send
feedback” inside the app. If things are *not* appearing on days when you *do*
expect them to then try pressing the “+” button to ask for more subjects in your
session – and if that doesn’t fix it then it also sounds like a bug and you
should hit “Send feedback”.

6. Finally, can I share an email that really encouraged me, that gives you a
feel for the motivations behind these changes? This lady said “I did not use the
app before because it was so hard to use, but since this update it is much
better!” I cannot deny that this recent update requires something of a
transition, and *especially* from users who have invested time to setting it all
up and who have discovered some of these “power-user” settings such as the
per-category item limits. Sadly, for every one of them, there are probably
dozens more who never even discovered that those settings existed, but the mere
fact that they *did* exist created complexity and confusion for them. I
definitely accept that I could and should have communicated better in advance
about these changes, but I want you to know that the time and energy you are
having to invest to adapt to these changes is an act of service to the wider
body of believers.

If you’re not already signed up to the PrayerMate newsletter, do hit the button
inside the app to do so. That’s the best way to be kept abreast of any important
changes or PrayerMate news.

Many thanks for your support and for all of you who have been passionate enough
to email me!

Keep praying,
Andy Geers
PrayerMate Developer

prayermate

ANNOUNCING THE ALL-NEW PRAYERMATE V5

January 25, 2016 Andy Geers

The first version of the PrayerMate app was built almost five years ago, when I
set out to create something to help people pray more faithfully. Since the Code
for the Kingdom Hackathon weekend back at the start of October, I’ve been
working on totally overhauling it to try to make it easier to understand and
use. It’s been a long journey, but I’m delighted to announce that it is finally
ready!

NEW LAYOUT

The app has a new layout, with each of the main functions occupying its own tab.
I’ve also changed how you edit cards, to make the process much more visual: now
you can press the edit button on any card to change the name or description, add
a photo or PDF attachment, or move it to a different list.

Many thanks to Nick Muncey for his fantastic new design.

MANAGING YOUR LISTS

Categories have now been renamed to lists. The new lists page lets you see all
of your subjects on one page (on a tablet this is even more useful). You can
create new lists, or add subjects to your existing lists.

NEW SCHEDULER

The way that PrayerMate decides what you should pray for each time has been
completely rewritten. Instead of having lots of per-category settings, there is
now just one global setting for how many items you want to pray for in total –
press “+” to ask for more, or “-” to ask for fewer. For those of you who want a
bit more control, you can still go in to the settings for a particular list and
manually set the number of subjects you want to see from that list each time.
Update: I’ve written a detailed migration guide here about how the new scheduler
works

TAKE WORDS WITH YOU PRAYER BUILDER

Some of you may have previously tried the TWWY prayer builder with mixed
results. This has been simplified, to focus on just the two core steps: praying
scripture promises, and praying scripture prayers. Once you have chosen a Bible
verse from each section, PrayerMate will then add the results to your existing
card, rather than replacing (as it used to).
Please note that sadly there is a little bug in the iOS version, and no “Select”
button appears after you first tap into a Bible verse. Swipe right then left
again to make it appear.

DARK MODE

Lots of people have expressed an interest in a “dark mode” for when praying at
night, and I’m pleased to say that this is now available under the “Settings”
page (along with a few other colour themes).

BECOME A PRAYERMATE PATRON

Finally, let me mention one last new feature: the option to become a PrayerMate
Patron (iOS and Google Play only). PrayerMate has always developed more slowly
than I would have liked, and this is mostly because it’s just me working on
PrayerMate in my spare time, with a bit of help from some outsourcers. I’d love
for a developer to be able to work on the app full time, and by becoming a
Patron, you can help make this happen.

OVER TO YOU!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the changes, and please feel free to hit the “Send
feedback” button inside the app at any time. There’s bound to be a few bugs and
teething trouble (big shout out to all my amazing beta testers for their help
finding plenty so far!) so do let me know if you find any.

You can download the PrayerMate app for free on iOS, Android and Amazon Kindle
Fire.

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GET YOUR PRAYERMATE MUG

January 5, 2016 Andy Geers

What better reminder to have sitting on your desk at work that a PrayerMate
“Time to pray?” mug. Or what could be a better way to focus your morning than
having Philippians 4:6 ringing in your mind over breakfast?

Get your PrayerMate mug now and a small percentage of each sale will go towards
helping fund future development of the app too!

* US store
* UK store
* Australian store
* Canadian store

prayermate

PRAYERS BY PETER ADAM

January 4, 2016 Andy Geers

The Gospel Coalition Australia has very kindly given permission for some daily
prayers by Peter Adam (recently published on their blog) to be made available
through the PrayerMate app.

In Peter Adam’s own words:

> “These are prayers which enlarge and enrich my praying, and which I need to
> pray every day…
> You may not need to pray these particular prayers, but these prayers may
> encourage you to write the prayers you need to pray, if you find this practice
> helpful.
> …
> This is not a superior way to pray: it is currently a useful aid to my
> prayers.”

You can find them under the “Personal Godliness” prayer gallery, or you can try
using this direct link if you have the app installed.

coding for christ

XCODE 7 FREEZING WHILST TOOLTIPS APPEAR OVER PROJECT NAVIGATOR

December 1, 2015 Andy Geers

I’ve been having an extremely frustrating experience developing PrayerMate
within XCode 7 recently, where the whole editor would just freeze for 30 seconds
at a time. It seemed to work fine as long as I stayed within one file, but as
soon as I needed to switch to another file, I’d have to wait again. Sometimes
I’d see tooltips flash up over various filenames in my project navigator, ones
that perhaps the mouse had glanced over half a minute earlier.

Clearly this is a bug in XCode (and an infuriating one at that!) but the
workaround was remarkably simple and fixed the problem completely: make the
project navigator pane ever so slightly wider, until none of your longer
filenames get truncated with “…”.

Uncategorized

PRAYERMATE IS THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE!

November 15, 2015 Andy Geers

I’m absolutely thrilled that last night PrayerMate won the Premier Digital
“People’s Choice” Award. Of all the categories it could have been shortlisted
for and ultimately went on to win, I think the People’s Choice couldn’t have
been more fitting, since at the end of the day it’s PrayerMate’s wonderful
community of users who, under God, are really the cause of its success – and of
course who I make the app for! Thank you all so much for your support (and your
votes!) and keep those feature requests and bug reports and general feedback
coming!

It’s been a big year for PrayerMate, passing the 100,000 download mark, raising
over £9,000 through a crowdfunding campaign, beginning the process of being
translated into other languages, and now winning this award, but at its heart it
remains a little app to help you pray, and my prayer is that this award simply
means that it can reach, and thus help, a wider audience.

coding for christ

800 CHRISTIAN DEVELOPERS AND DESIGNERS IN ONE GLOBAL HACKATHON

October 5, 2015 Andy Geers

This past weekend, 800 or so Christian developers, designers, entrepreneurs and
technology fans gathered in 13 separate cities around the world for the Code for
the Kingdom global hackathon.

Here in London we had about 120 or so folks gathered, and 18 separate projects –
both ones aimed at helping Christians in their walk with God, and ones aimed at
serving the wider world:

* Flee! – a low-touch accountability app that pings you appropriate Bible
verses when it spots you typing inappropriate web URLs
* My refuge – “AirBnB for refugees”
* Let’s pray for… – a prototype for a fantastic social prayer app, that I
really hope comes to life soon!
* Homely – a service to help people give financial aid to homeless people
* B40 – helping teens pray intensively for breakthrough over 40 days
* Adventure – an evangelistic Christmas treasure hunt
* Tearfund Disaster Response – a practical tool to help responses to emergency
situations
* Peri – find the Christians that live and work nearby
* Biybl – “Bible In Your Best Language”, a simple tool to help international
visitors to your church follow the Bible readings
* SeedBox – Digital Asset Management for church sermon videos / audio etc
* LazyWorship – automatically display the correct verse/chorus on your
projector as the software identifies the audio
* Good News – a place to champion the good things that happen
* Mentorship – a place for younger Christians to find people to mentor them,
and vice versa
* Where’s the meaning? – helping businesses avoid ambiguity in communication
* Power of prayer – a simple SMS based service to help people pray
* Worship helper – a quick way for band members to communicate key signature,
tempo, etc
* Verse of the day – Microsoft Band app to give you a verse each day
* PrayerMate – simplifying and overhauling my prayer app

It was a brilliantly encouraging weekend, so fantastic to see people
collaborating together to build genuinely useful things. The food was great, the
fellowship was great, the projects were great.

Here’s a video that Dan Rackham put together to give you a flavour of our London
event:

Bring on Code for the Kingdom 2016!

Uncategorized

COUNTIN’

October 5, 2015 Andy Geers

Have you ever had that thing where you’re taking tea and coffee orders after a
Bible study, and before you know it you’re running out of fingers trying to keep
tabs of decaf coffee and peppermint tea and normal coffee and water and… well,
it’s hard work, isn’t it?

I’d like to commend you a beautifully simple little iOS app that’s available for
free on iPhone: Countin’. It gives you a grid of customisable counters that
simply count up or down as you tap them. Simple!

It’s by a young man called Matthew Spear who I had the privilege of hanging out
with at the Code for the Kingdom hackathon last weekend, and I know he’d be
really chuffed if a few people downloaded it (and if you were feeling really
generous you’d send a couple of quid his way by hitting the In-App Purchase –
unlocking various colour options and feel-good vibes!)

Get Countin’ here.

coding for christ

DEVELOPERS AND DESIGNERS SERVING GOD WITH THEIR GIFTS

August 24, 2015 Andy Geers

> “Whatever you do, whether in word or code, do it all in the name of the Lord
> Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17, sort of)

When I was working on my Bible-teaching computer game, this was the verse I used
to put at the top of all of my source code files. Obviously I’m playing a bit
fast and loose with the translation, but I think the intent is valid. All of us
as Christians have been entrusted with certain gifts that God calls us to use in
his service. For some of us that’s making a really good cup of tea to encourage
the congregation on a Sunday morning and to make fellowship possible. For others
it’s the remarkable gift of administration – that incredible ability to make
things happen, that sounds really boring on paper but which those of us who lack
it are immensely thankful for. For yet others its a deep understanding of
electrical hardware like amplifiers and microphones and the ability to make sure
that the speaker is loud enough but that the band is not too loud. Whatever our
gifts, God calls us to use them to the glory of Christ. And not just in church –
we can serve God with those gifts by enthusiastically serving others in the
workplace too, or in our communities. The important thing is that we use those
gifts, with the glory of God in mind.

For some gifts it’s easier than others to see how they can be used for
explicitly Christian ends. Software development is one which sometimes seems
harder. In our culture, software developers are like wizards. They have an
incredible ability to make magic happen – to conjure up reality from mere ideas
with the power of language. They have a “secret knowledge” beyond the
understanding of outsiders that has a tendency to inspire awe. To a fault, many
software developers know that they have the power to change the world –
sometimes more so that is actually the case (sorry Facebook – you’re not going
to bring about world peace, however many billion users you manage to sign up).
But yet we often lack confidence that this is true when it comes to the growth
of God’s kingdom and the spread of the gospel.

For many many organisations, which includes Christian ones such as charities and
church plants just as much as for dot com startups and internet delivery
businesses, the single most limiting factor is the technology resource – having
the right person or people in place to design and develop something that can
make a spark of an idea into a living and breathing product (or even just to
support admin staff struggling with a too-simplistic database). If only
Christians with gifts as developers and designers appreciated how precious their
gifts could be in God’s service, I think we’d see some pretty incredible things
happen. Last autumn I had the privilege of meeting Gerald Hinson who gave up a
successful job at Microsoft to follow God’s call and build David vs Goliath, an
incredibly fun and engaging retelling of the classic Bible story for iOS and
Android. I found his story really inspiring – he’d never done anything like it
before, but he saw a need, saw how God had given him the talents and the
connections and the passion to make it possible, and he made it happen, despite
all the challenges and an awful lot of hard work along the way.

From the 2nd-4th October this year, I’ll be participating in a “Christian
hackathon” in London organised as part of a global Code for the Kingdom weekend.
The big prayer is to get together a hundred or so developers, designers and tech
entrepreneurs to dream big dreams, meet like-minded people and hopefully give
birth to a diverse bunch of projects geared at meeting various needs of the
church and the world for the glory of God. It’s a pretty big risk that the
organising team and the sponsors are taking on – they’ve hired an incredible
venue (the Impact Hub Westminster) and there’s no guarantees – but they trust in
a big God and they know that he loves it when people desire to serve him with
their gifts. So will you join us? And will you help spread the word and tell
people and cajole people and pester people until they sign up? Early bird prices
are only available for another few days until 31st August – but even then
they’re not expensive for what you get.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one
who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48)
How will you use your gifts?

prayermate

PRAYERMATE VIDEO PROJECT

August 18, 2015 Andy Geers

Considering it started as a simple Easter holiday project for somebody who had
never made an app before, it blows my mind that by God’s grace PrayerMate is
very soon to celebrate its 100,000th download! I’m always so thankful to hear of
people’s testimonies of how God has used the app to help them in their prayer
life, and so I thought it might be a fitting way to celebrate this milestone by
trying to get as many people as possible to record a super-short video finishing
the sentence “PrayerMate helps me…”

Are you in?

GUIDELINES

* The shorter the better – absolute maximum is 20 seconds I think
* Landscape is preferable to portrait
* Your video must begin “PrayerMate helps me…” – though you can try to be as
creative as you like with the rest!
* Please keep it family friendly!
* You can have as many or as few people in the video as you like
* Submissions can be made however you like – upload it to YouTube and Tweet the
link to @PrayerMateApp, email me a link to something in your Google Drive to
info@prayermate.net, or any other means you can think of!
* If you’re willing, I’ll be adding a subtitle “Firstname, City/Country”, so it
would help if you could tell me that information when you submit your video
* The deadline for submissions is 1st September

Update: Here’s the finished product!

POSTS NAVIGATION

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THOUGHTS OF A CHRISTIAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

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