New North Church
Local ChurchTripling our time spent in prayer
Key Impact
3x
More Time in Prayer
For prayer team
111
Healing Altar Call
People responded to Spirit-led moment
48
Prayer Campaign
People praying for Thailand missions
75%→25%
Admin Reduced
Flipped from 75% admin to 25%
"
"I have been able to triple my time spent in actual prayer as is my prayer team because of Seedling. You have to be organizationally minded and that takes admin time, we need to log data, follow-up, and do pastoral care—it's difficult."
About New North Church
New North Church is located in the San Francisco Bay Area—often described as the most unchurched region in America. Roughly 50% of people coming through their doors are brand new to faith, skeptical, or returning to church for the first time since COVID. When Lead Pastor Rob sensed a clear prompting from the Holy Spirit, the church made a rare decision: surrender his plans for the church for that year and receive God's plans. That moment became the foundation for a Year of Prayer, reshaping everything from sermons to staff rhythms to Sunday services.
The Challenge
Our systems didn't reflect that prayer mattered
Like many churches, New North deeply valued prayer. But the way prayer was collected and stewarded didn't match their desire to level up prayer. They wrestled with three core challenges: prayer felt intimidating for faith-curious people who don't know how to talk to God, leaders lacked visibility into real spiritual needs since prayer team knowledge was separate from leadership, and admin work limited actual prayer—they were doing about 25% prayer and 75% logging prayers.
"Prayer really is that heartbeat metric to understand exactly where your congregation is… and it's the one metric that most often goes uncaptured."
Annabella Sils, Pastoral Resident
The Solution
Make prayer accessible
Annabella wasn't looking for another complex church system. Seedling was introduced as logistical support, not a replacement for real ministry or spiritual discernment.
With Seedling, the team can:
- Lower the barrier for faith-curious people to engage with prayer
- Give leaders visibility into congregation's spiritual needs
- Free up prayer team to actually pray instead of doing admin
- Connect prayer across locations—even to mission trips overseas
"We didn't want to bombard our prayer team with something difficult… we just wanted to get people praying."
— Annabella Sils
The Impact
The Impact
Seedling transformed how New North approaches prayer—from reactive to Spirit-led:
From Reactive to Spirit-Led
When prayer insights revealed health and healing as a top theme, leaders opened the altar for healing prayer. 111 people responded to that Spirit-led moment.
Prayer Time Tripled
As administrative burden decreased, Annabella and the prayer team spent three times more time actually praying.
Prayer Reaching Thailand
Voice-note prayers were shared directly with the missions team overseas. Girls in Thailand listened to prayers from the Bay Area and were encouraged.
Culture Shifted
"I don't want to go back to the way it was before." Prayer is now central to everything—sermons, initiatives, community groups, youth and children.