We spent a great deal of time discussing how we would provide the ability to submit prayer requests on our site, and we selected Formulize (v1.6 + email hack).
Each church will have different criteria, and here are ours:
1. Availability - it should be available to everyone, just as it is in our services
2. Anonymity - some people would like to remain anonymous, and we respect that
3. Privacy - not all details need to be disclosed (specifics about a surgical procedure, for example), and not all subjects of the prayers know the request is being made on their behalf. Submitters are also able to select the type of prayer for their request - private (ministerial staff, only), prayer chain (limited number of trained lay people), and public (offered during a church service)
4. Discretion - while most visitors and submitters will be discrete, there are those on the web that spam every form and deface web sites. Others miss the point of the request and only seek attention. Since we allow anonymous submission, we must filter the requests.
Formulize allows us to create a form to meet all these criteria, and publish reports to the proper groups of people, based on the type of request. We currently do not publish any requests publicly online. With the email hack, staff can be alerted of a new submission.
A forum would be an excellent way of achieving a public prayer list, allowing moderation of the posts and submissions before they are made public. (Our forum was defaced because of permissions that weren't strict enough).
My desired add-ons for a church site - XOOPS Code, or similar way of tagging Scripture references (I manually add links to online Bibles, now), almost like wiki links. A course module (I still have to look more at OBS Classroom) for study groups.
Steve K
Web Steward @
http://www.easter.org