Community standards

They are not here to catch you out. They are here so that the person who finally works up the courage to type “please pray for me” finds a safe place when they do.

Please read this before you post. By posting you are agreeing to it.

Prayer, first and mostly. Asking for it, offering it, and telling one another what God has done.

Around that: encouragement, a passage that is carrying you this week, a question you are wrestling with, thanksgiving, and the ordinary company of believers who will never meet in person but who can still hold one another up.

This is not a noticeboard, a marketplace, a news site or a debating hall. It is closer to the few minutes after a service, when people find one another and say quietly what is really going on.

What belongs here

1. 1Prayer requests: public, in a group, or kept private to you.
2. 2Responses that pray, encourage, or simply say you have read and you are praying.
3. 3Posts inside a group: a passage, a reflection, an update, a word of thanks.
4. 4Answered prayers. Please do come back and tell us.
5. 5Honest questions, including hard ones.

There is no right way to ask for prayer, and a request does not need to be well written to be heard. Still, a few things help.

Choose who sees it

1. 1Private is for you alone. It is your own prayer list. Nobody else sees it, and it is not reviewed by anyone.
2. 2Group is for the members of one group you belong to.
3. 3Public is for every signed-in member of the community.

If you are unsure, start with private or group. You can widen a request later, and it will be reviewed then before anyone else can see it.

Say enough, not everything

“Please pray for my brother, he is unwell and afraid” is a complete prayer request. You never have to give a diagnosis, a name, a place of work or a photograph for God to hear you, or for this community to pray.

Be careful with other people’s stories

If the request is really about someone else, ask yourself whether they would want it here. Where you can, share less: a first name, or no name at all.

Come back if you can

Marking a request answered is one of the kindest things you can do here. It tells the people who prayed that their prayers mattered, and it gives someone else hope.

Please do not use a prayer request to make a point about another person, to raise money, or to advertise anything.

Speak to the person, not about them. Assume the best. Remember that you cannot hear anyone’s tone, and that plenty of people here are writing in their second or third language, late at night, tired, or in pain.

1. 1Encourage rather than correct, unless correction is genuinely asked for.
2. 2Do not preach at someone who has asked for prayer. Pray for them.
3. 3Do not tell a suffering person that they lack faith, that their trouble is a punishment, a curse, or the work of a witch, or that they would be well if they believed harder. We will remove this, every time.
4. 4Do not tell anyone to stop taking their medicine, to leave hospital, or to refuse treatment. Faith and medicine belong together here.
5. 5If someone’s request unsettles or offends you, you may simply scroll past. That is always a permitted response.
6. 6Disagree with an idea if you must. Never demean the person holding it.

Ardent Word is built by Ardent Africa Foundation in the tradition of the Churches of Christ, and members come from many backgrounds. Genuine differences will surface here, and that is not a failure.

1. 1Bring scripture rather than scorn, and be honest about where scripture is plain, where faithful people have long differed, and where it is silent.
2. 2Ask what someone means before telling them what they believe.
3. 3Do not use another member’s prayer request as the place to open an argument. Start a post, or take it to a group.
4. 4Do not mock, insult or demean anyone’s church, tradition, denomination or background, and do not pronounce on anyone’s salvation. That is not ours to do.
5. 5If a conversation has stopped being useful, let it rest. Nobody has to win.

Doctrinal disagreement, honestly argued, is welcome. Contempt for people is not, and that is the line we hold.

The internet keeps things. Please post as though what you write will be read by someone you did not expect, because one day it might be.

Your own privacy

Do not post your phone number, your address, your email, your bank or mobile money details, your identity numbers, your employer, your child’s school, or a photograph that gives away where you live. There is no reason you need to, and there are people who look for exactly this.

Other people’s privacy

Do not post anyone else’s details, photograph, diagnosis, debts, sins or private conversation without their permission. A prayer request is not a place to expose someone. If you would not say it with them in the room, do not write it here.

Children

Please do not post photographs of children, your own included, and do not post a child’s school, class, route or routine.

If we find personal details in a post, we will usually edit them out rather than remove the post, and tell you what we changed. We would rather keep your prayer request and lose your phone number.

This is the hardest standard for people to hear, and we hold it anyway.

1. 1No asking members for money, gifts, loans, airtime, data or transfers, in a post, a response, a profile or an image.
2. 2No fundraising or appeals, however genuine the need, including medical bills, school fees, funerals and church projects.
3. 3No selling, advertising, promoting a business, recruiting for a business, or sharing affiliate or referral links.
4. 4No investment schemes, trading groups, betting tips, crypto, or anything promising a return.
5. 5No payment for prayer, deliverance, prophecy, anointing, or a "seed" that is said to unlock a blessing. Nobody here should ever pay for prayer.

We are not doubting anyone’s need. Real need is exactly what people with bad intentions imitate, and a prayer community where money is asked for stops being safe within weeks. Ask for prayer about the money. Ask your congregation and the people who know you for the money.

Ardent Word itself is funded by donations, and you will find that in its own place in the app, never in this community.

You are welcome to mention your congregation, and to say where you worship. You are welcome to answer when someone asks.

You are not welcome to use this community to recruit for another church, ministry, movement, prophet, programme, course, conference, political party or campaign, whether by posting about it repeatedly, by messaging people about it, or by putting it in your profile as an advertisement.

The simple test: are you here to pray with people, or to gather them for something else?

None of these belong here, in any amount.

1. 1Harassment. No insults, mockery, pile-ons, name calling, or following a member from item to item to have another go at them. No contacting someone who has blocked you through another account.
2. 2Hate. No contempt, slurs or sweeping claims against people because of their race, ethnicity, nationality, tribe, language, sex, disability, illness, age, or their religion or church. This includes “jokes”.
3. 3Threats. No threatening harm to anyone, no wishing harm on anyone, no encouraging anyone else to harm a person, and no accusing a person of witchcraft or calling for them to be beaten, chained, starved, driven out or “dealt with”.
4. 4Sexual content. No sexual images, sexual descriptions, sexual propositions, sexual comments about another member, or nudity. People bring sexual sin and sexual hurt here for prayer, and that is right and welcome, but write it as a prayer request, without detail.

We treat this more seriously than anything else in this document.

Sexual content involving anyone under eighteen, in words or in images, is never permitted, in any framing, for any reason. Neither is any attempt to approach, groom, flatter, isolate or arrange to meet a child, or to ask a child for images, contact details or secrecy.

Content of this kind is removed immediately, the account is suspended, the evidence is preserved, and the matter is reported to the appropriate authorities. There is no appeal that restores it and no explanation we will accept.

If you are worried about a child, including your own or one near you, please do not post the details here. Contact your local child protection service or the police. You can open Get help in the app at any time to see the services listed for your country. Our full standards are on the child safety page.

Pray for people. Do not prescribe for them.

1. 1Do not tell anyone what illness they have, what medicine or dose to take, what to stop taking, what herb or remedy to use, or that they can come off treatment because they have been prayed for.
2. 2Do not give legal advice, or tell someone what to do about a court case, a contract, immigration or the police.
3. 3Do not give financial advice, or recommend a loan, an investment, an app or a scheme.

Encouraging someone to see a doctor, a lawyer or a qualified adviser, and offering to pray while they do, is always welcome.

If a member contacts you asking for money, that member is breaking this standard, whatever the story. Please do not send anything, and please report them.

Be alert to the ordinary patterns: an urgent need with a deadline, a wrong transfer you are asked to return, a job that needs a fee first, a “man of God” who requires a seed, guaranteed returns, someone who wants to move the conversation off the app, and anyone asking for a PIN or a code. Never share a PIN or a one-time code with anyone.

Reporting one of these takes a few seconds and can protect someone who is more desperate than you are today.

Use your own name or a name you are known by, and your own photograph or none. Do not pretend to be another person, a pastor, an elder, a doctor, a counsellor, a charity, a church or Ardent Word itself, and do not claim qualifications you do not hold. Do not run more than one account to get around a block, a suspension or this policy.

You do not have to give your full legal name, and you do not have to show your face. You do have to be a real person being honestly themselves.

Ardent Word is for people aged thirteen and over, and in some countries the minimum age is higher. If you are between thirteen and eighteen, a few things are set up differently to keep you safer, and you can see and change some of them in Settings.

1. 1New prayer requests start as visible to your group rather than to everyone. You can still choose to make one public, and we will explain what that means before you do.
2. 2Your bio is hidden by default.
3. 3Your age is never shown to other members.

Two things worth saying plainly. First, no adult here should ever ask you for your phone number, your address, photographs, or to keep something secret from your parents. If anyone does, report them straight away, and tell an adult you trust. Second, you are not too young to be prayed for, and you are not too young to pray for someone else.

Most of the time, very little drama.

Everything posted publicly or to a group is read by an automated check before it appears. Private prayer requests are never read by that check, and never by us.

1. 1Most content is published within a few seconds.
2. 2Some content waits for a person to look at it. You will see it marked as waiting. This is normal and is often about a detail like a phone number, not about you.
3. 3Some content is not published. You will be told, in plain words, which standard it ran into, and you can appeal.
4. 4If something you write suggests you are going through something very hard, we will quietly show you the help card for your country, and a person will read your post with care before it appears. This is not a punishment and it is not a warning. It means somebody noticed.

When it is repeated or serious

1. 1A word from us. A private note explaining what happened and what we need to be different.
2. 2An edit. We remove personal details from your post and leave the rest standing, telling you what we changed.
3. 3A pause. Your account is suspended from posting for up to thirty days. You can still read, and you can still keep a private prayer list.
4. 4Removal. In the most serious cases the account is closed permanently. We reserve this for harm to children, credible threats, organised scams and similar.

We do not publish anyone’s punishment, and we never discuss one member’s case with another.

Every prayer request, post, response, group, profile and image has a Report action. Use it whenever something looks wrong. You do not need to be sure, and you will never be in trouble for reporting something that turns out to be fine.

1. 1Choose a reason, and add a sentence if you want to. That sentence is private and encrypted.
2. 2The person you report is never told who reported them.
3. 3You will get a short note when we have finished looking, though we cannot tell you what action we took, because that is private to them.
4. 4If several people report the same thing, it may be hidden while we look.
5. 5Please do not report someone because you disagree with them. Deliberately false reports are themselves a breach of these standards.

If something is urgent, and especially if a child is at risk or someone may be hurt very soon, report it and contact your local emergency services. We do not watch the community as it happens, and we cannot send help.

If we hold, remove or edit your content, or restrict your account, the notice we send you contains an Appeal link.

1. 1Tell us briefly why you think we got it wrong. A sentence or two is enough.
2. 2Wherever we can, the appeal is read by a different moderator from the one who made the first decision.
3. 3We aim to answer within three working days.
4. 4If we were wrong, we restore the content, remove the mark from your record and tell you so. If we were right, we explain the reason more fully.
5. 5Appeals about content involving children are handled differently and the content is never restored.

You may appeal once per decision. If new information appears later, write to us through support and we will look again.

Every profile and every item has a Block action. When you block someone, their content disappears from your feeds and groups, yours disappears from theirs, and neither of you can respond to or react to the other. It happens quietly: they are not told, and they see no notice. You can unblock at any time in Settings.

Blocking is not an accusation and you never need a reason. If someone’s presence is hard for you, block them and be at peace. If they have broken a standard, please also report them, because blocking protects you while reporting protects everyone else.

If you or someone else is in danger right now, please contact your local emergency services.

Ardent Word is not a crisis service, a counselling service or an emergency service. Nobody is watching the community as it happens, and we cannot contact anyone on your behalf. Get help in the app menu and in Settings shows the verified services listed for your country, and it works without a connection and without posting anything.

Please still ask this community to pray. Just ask the people who can reach you as well.

If you create a group, you set the tone of it. Give it an honest name and description, say what it is for, and welcome people in. You can approve or decline requests to join and remove members from your group.

You are not a moderator of Ardent Word, and you are not expected to police anything. Report what concerns you and we will act. A group whose owner uses it to recruit, to sell, to raise money or to shelter behaviour these standards forbid will be removed, and its owner may lose the ability to create groups.

We will change these standards as we learn. The version and date are at the top of this page, and we will tell you in the app when something material changes.

If you think a standard is wrong, or we have treated you unfairly, write to us through support. A person reads every message.

Thank you for making this a place where someone can say the true thing.