By Christy Barritt

Minister Invents Prayer App

A 25-year-old youth minister in Lubbock, Texas, has created an app that may change the way people participate in prayer.

Logan Fields is in the process of launching a new smartphone application called the “Prayer Button.” The app would enable people to pray together remotely. Users can join as many prayer meetings as they’d like.

The app will calculate how many minutes each user participates in prayer, and that total will be displayed for each prayer group. Fields hopes it will encourage others to pray more and to remind others that people are praying for them.

The website for the app cited 1 Thessalonians 5:17: “Pray without ceasing” (King James Version), as the reasoning behind the effort to keep track and display the minutes users have prayed. 

Fields has been developing the app for the past three years and hopes to have it completed by the end of 2014.

Two American Missionaries Fighting Ebola Virus

Two American missionaries who were working to fight the deadliest outbreak of Ebola virus in history are now fighting for their own lives after contracting the disease.

The Charlotte-based missionary group SIM USA, which was assisting at a Liberia treatment center alongside Samaritan’s Purse, said that Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol are in stable condition but suffering symptoms of the virus. They were flown back to the U.S. for treatment.

SIM and Samarian’s Purse evacuated all nonessential personnel from Liberia in the wake of the outbreak, and several airlines have stopped flying into the country as the disease spreads.

The World Health Organization said that there have been, as of press time, 1,848 people diagnosed with Ebola and 1,013 deaths from it across Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

Ebola is spread through bodily fluids, and symptoms include a sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat.

Atheist TV Launches

The world’s first all-atheist TV channel launched at the end of July, and the creator has promised that the channel will offer “superstition-free programing” for adults and children.

Atheist TV, a project of American Atheists, was launched through streaming service Roku and boasts that it will bring together dozens of atheist content creators, including The Richard Dawkins Foundation, to present the first on-demand television station that presents exclusively atheist, humanist, and free-thought programming. 

David Silverman, American Atheists president, said the channel is geared toward atheists everywhere. He noted that the number of nonbelievers in the United States is on the rise, making up as much as one-fifth of the population.

At the launch party, Silverman criticized other networks like the History Channel, which showed The Bible miniseries in 2013. He said it presented religion as truthful, and that other TV networks “kowtow to the liars who make money off misinformation.”

Christy Barritt is an award-winning author, freelance writer, and speaker living in Chesapeake, Virginia. She and her husband Scott have two sons. 
www.christybarritt.com