Worship apps prompt Minnesotans to pray every day

This year, Patty Ronan is praying with Jesus on each day of Lent.

Well, with two actors who portray Jesus.

Ronan, who lives in Rochester, is one of nearly 179,000 subscribers attempting to complete the worship app Hallow's #pray40 challenge, which features daily prayers read by Jonathan Roumie (who plays Jesus in the show "The Chosen") and Jim Caviezel (from the 2004 movie "The Passion of the Christ").

"Sometimes I make it a part of my morning. I wake up, pop in the earbuds and complete the content before I even get out of bed," Ronan said. "Other times I will use it as a close to my day."

Hallow, which is Catholic, is one of several worship apps seeing a flurry of downloads — and venture-capital funding — in the past few years. There's also the broadly Christian Glorify, which has celebrity investors like Michael Bublé and Kris Jenner. There also are prayer apps for many faiths, including Mindful Muslim and a Torah study app called Aleph Beta.

The popularity of prayer apps spiked when religious services went virtual during the pandemic's early months. It has continued to climb, even as some users and data experts have shared privacy concerns, largely about the prominent social network and app called Pray.com.

Prayer apps track daily progress, let you select your favorite voices or personalities to read the prayers and provide calming options like bedtime bible stories or soothing meditations on psalms to help you fall asleep while listening.

That's the same formula used by the hugely popular meditation apps like Calm, Headspace and Ten Percent Happier. As with the meditation apps, the religious options often follow a subscription model, with some free content but most behind a paywall.

'Praylists' and podcasting priests

Hallow founder Alex Jones, who was raised Catholic and lives in Chicago, knew a lot more about meditation than he did about prayer when he came up with his app, which costs "plus" subscribers $8.99 a month or $59.99 a year.

"I fell away from my faith pretty heavily in high school and undergrad. I would have considered myself atheist or agnostic for most of the time. When I graduated, I got really into the idea of meditation, and quickly discovered the Headspace and Calm apps," he said. "Every time I would meditate, using secular mindfulness meditation, my mind would feel pulled toward something spiritual, something Christian."

He started asking family, friends and faith leaders: Is there any intersection between the meditation world and the faith world?

"They all pretty much laughed at me and said, 'Yeah, we've been doing it for 2,000 years,' " he said.

While meditation apps draw on Buddhist teachings without being overtly religious, Jones decided to incorporate specific meditative Catholic practices like Lectio Divina along with curated music "praylists" and options to set prayer routines.

Ronan downloaded Hallow after learning about it in a Notre Dame alumni magazine a few years ago. While she loved the idea of combining guided meditation with prayer, she only used the app sporadically at first.

"The big turning point was when I realized that regular daily use was making a true difference in my daily disposition and interactions," said Ronan. She doesn't see the app as a replacement for church but as an "adjunct" to it.

When Hallow added content by the Rev. Mike Schmitz, a Duluth priest whose Bible in a Year podcast hit No. 1 on Apple's charts last year, she was "all in."

The app now includes Schmitz's daily bible readings along with other selections, including his calm, soothing rendition of the Gospel of John, which is designed to help listeners fall asleep.

Prayers for peace

Some of the worship apps regularly update offerings, with seasonal challenges or ways for subscribers to connect to world events.

In recent weeks, several have added ways for users to pray for people in Ukraine, often putting these options outside of a paywall so they are free.

Hallow collected several different audio sessions, including Pope Francis' prayer for peace and an "emergency novena," or collection of nine prayers that are given all at once instead of over nine days.

On the Glorify app, there's a three-minute guided prayer that mentions Ukraine specifically, concluding: "We pray for the diplomats and world leaders who are making decisions that will affect the lives of so many. We ask God that you give them wisdom and move their hearts to peace."

Glorify co-founder Ed Beccle, who was just barely out of his teens when he launched the app, said he isn't setting out to create a source of people's faith but to change "user experience" for the faithful and make prayer more accessible.

"I've always looked at faith as a muscle, and something that you've got to come back to and build consistently. Even if it's only for 10 minutes a day," he said. "And to so many young people, and to be honest, for everyone, it feels harder to build that time and space and centering into your day. Yet at the same time, it's not hard for people to build in the time to go onto Instagram, Facebook, and to be scrolling."

The bible might be in the other room, Beccle explained — but the phone is right there.