Two New Releases

Over the last few months I’ve had the joy of being involved in a couple of projects that I’m really happy to finally share with you here.

Baptist Renewal

In the past two years, our church has been privileged to partner with AMBER (The Association of Ministers for Baptist and Evangelical Renewal), a new network of churches and pastors across (mostly Western) Canada I previously wrote about here.

It was in the middle of our spring conference last May, listening to Shaun Martens’ message on congregationalism, that I first thought, “We need to publish this as a book.” Over the past few months we’re re-worked our conference addresses into written chapters and have bundled it with our freshly-updated confession of faith. We’re also honoured that respected historian Dr. Michael Haykin contributed his essay on the origins of the Baptist movement (which he delivered at our conference last year) to this volume.

There are many great books out there which delve deep into the biblical basis for our Baptist distinctives and identity, but not any—that I’m aware of—that are short, readable, pastoral, and which I could confidently put into the hand of anybody in my church. We really hope “Baptist Renewal” fills this gap for many pastors and churches.

We’ve priced this book to make it easy to pick up and give away ($10 CAD for print, $2.99 for Kindle) and pray the Lord will use it for his glory in many Canadian churches. You can check it out here.

And, by the way, don’t miss out on AMBER’s 2026 spring conference, “A Better Story: Celebrating God’s Good Design for Men and Women,” coming up in just a few short weeks.

PrayerPlay

I love praying for my family, my church, and missionaries around the world, and, like many people, I’ve found it necessary to use tools to help me remember names and prayer requests. I simply don’t trust my memory.

Two quick asides here:

1. I don’t agree with the idea that all good praying is spontaneous, and that writing down someone’s name to pray for them at a later time makes your prayer less personal or less meaningful. The opposite is true: writing it down means it’s important enough to make sure you actually do it. If we write down appointments, tasks, or other notes we want to remember, why would we treat prayer any less seriously?
2. I also don’t think that structured, list-based praying is the only kind of prayer we should engage in. Praying in response to Scripture as we read it, praying throughout our day as needs and burdens arise, praying for people as they cross our minds—all of this is important, too. Prayer, like other relationships, should have both structured and spontaneous elements to it.

After reading Paul Miller’s A Praying Life (which I really recommend!) I found his “prayer cards” model to be very helpful. Instead of a giant, intimidating list, a stack of recipe cards allows you to pray for people in a manageable, focused way, as well as keep track of the “prayer stories” that develop as we bring people before the Lord regularly. Daily, weekly and monthly stacks let you pray for different requests with varying frequency. In the last few years I’ve switched back and forth between physical cards and the PrayerMate app which replicates this functionality on my phone.

Here’s where I’ve struggled, though: some of my best times talking to the Lord are not when I’m sitting still, but when I’m driving somewhere, hiking through the woods, or, more recently, walking the neighbour’s dog. Some of this is probably a combination of personality and ADHD; I have a way easier time talking to anybody when we’re out for a walk or a drive compared to sitting still. But there’s also something about the sky, being outside in God’s world, that spurs worship and provokes a response to the person who made all of this.

The obvious problem is that it’s hard to flip through a deck of recipe cards, or look at a screen on your phone, while you’re walking or driving.

Enter PrayerPlay. Using an AI tool (Claude Code), I made an app in my spare time that reads your prayer cards out loud, so you can pray on-the-go. I’ve been really helped by it, and I hope it helps you too!

Here’s a short rundown on some of the app’s features and functionality:

• You can set it up however you like.
  • You can keep it simple with a single list of a few cards.
  • Or, you can make a robust system with multiple lists, dozens of cards in each list, and numerous items on each card.
• You can use it in different ways.
  • Pop in headphones and have your prayer items advance on a customized interval, pausing or advancing at any point.
  • Or, you can turn off audio and swipe through cards manually, for those times where you do want to sit still.
  • Each prayer list has a “play” button at the top so you can pray through just that specific list.
  • Or, the “Pray” tab builds a customized pray session that pulls together cards from various lists.
    • Each list has settings that determine how many cards get included in each prayer session.
    • Cards and items can be shuffled, viewed in sequence, or scheduled for specific days of the week, month. (One time requests can be set for specific dates and optionally auto-archived afterwards.)
• A quick-add shortcut from the home screen (or within the app) makes it quick and easy to add new requests.
• A sharing functionality lets you easily share anything with other users.
• Your data is yours, period. PrayerPlay uses purely on-device technology, from speech to storage; nothing is collected or saved on a server whatsoever. Nobody can see what you’re using the app for unless you choose to export and share.
• Totally free to use. Zero in-app subscriptions. (The App Store description has a link where people can contribute to development costs if they choose to.)

At this point, PrayerPlay is available for iOS only; an Android version is in the works. Check out this link to download (free!).

It’s been a joy to be a part of these projects and I pray that the Lord uses them for His glory.