How JOEL OSTEEN Is Saving
Souls With Facebook
CLICK ‘PRAY’
TO PRAY
HUFFINGTON
06.09.13
BY BIANCA BOSKER
PREVIOUS PAGE: COURTESY JOEL OSTEEN MINISTRIES
HALFWAY THROUGH MEGAPASTOR Joel Osteen’s sermon
at Marlins Park stadium, seven frazzled people sitting in a
press box overlooking the field realize they have a problem:
The prayers aren’t going through. ¶ “I can forward ‘prayer’
to ‘prayer request,’” volunteers a member of Osteen’s
technical staff as a possible fix. He fiddles with the trackball of his BlackBerry as he tries his best to reassure
Osteen’s marketing director, Jason Madding, that they can
redirect people’s emailed prayers to the proper place and
prevent them from disappearing into the digital ether.
Hunched over a MacBook, Madding flips back and forth between
a Skype chat and a page tracking
traffic to Osteen’s sites. He coordinates with a remote team of developers as he monitors the popularity of Osteen’s page to gauge
whether the surge of visitors will
overwhelm the servers and bring
down the site.
On the field below, a musician blows two long blasts from a
ram’s horn while drums thump in
the background. “Every day has
your name on it,” Osteen shouts
to the crowd.
Osteen, a 50-year-old Texas native with an impeccable complexion, thick head of dark hair and a
gleaming white smile, is the pastor
of the largest church in America.
On this April night in Miami, nearly
36,000 cheering people have gathered in the stands of the stadium
to hear him speak. But for Madding, the crucial action is playing
out on an iPad propped on a desk in
front of him: He is watching the live
stream of the pastor’s sermon as it