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From Help For Shepherds
[edit] Welcome to Help For Shepherds.
We are a brand new site dedicated to trying to find and make resources that can help make a Christian pastor’s job easier. We don't want to tell you what to think but to provide resources that can help spur your thinking further onwards. This site is the result of three years of talk between several pastors about what is missing and what they would like to see in a pastoral help website. After talking about it for three years, and getting even more input from other pastors, this site was born.
The goal of this site is to help out pastors, bottom line. We all are pastors ourselves, so we know what sort of stresses there are. None of us are fully trained for our jobs, and even if we’ve been on the job for years new challenges keep coming up. From figuring out how to incorporate a church, to finding a way of teaching youth about communion, getting a jump start on a sermon for a passage you’re struggling with, or even just wading through all the resources that are out there to find something valuable, we hope to be able to help you out.
No one pastor has all the answers. The pastors who founded this site know that full well and are seeking answers and help just as much as anyone else. That is why this site has been designed on a wiki format. What that means is that any pastor viewing this site can add content and ideas that they have found helpful in their own ministry. Every pastor can add their ideas here, and can learn from others as well. As each pastor shares from their experience we can arrive at a level of knowledge that none of us could master alone. And yes, that means you, the pastor reading this, yes you. We need your help too, because we really think you have something to share with other pastors.
After asking a great many pastors what they feel they could use help with the most we have arrived at several areas that this site will be concentrating on. These features will be rolled out over the next several months in three stages. If you wish to help with any of those stages before they are officially released please post in the Forums and let us know. Also, if there is something that you really feel you could use but we aren’t doing, let us know. There is a forum for that too. If you have any other questions about the site or how to help, we hopefully have answered them in our FAQ, and if not, just check out the discussion forums.
[edit] Phase One:
Discussion Forums - Pastors have a hard time turning to anyone for support, ideas, or anything else. We are often seperated from other pastors relationally even if we live very close together. We are trying to have a safe place here to talk with other pastors about what is going on and ask for help if we need it.
Resources - There are tens of thousands of good books out there for pastors, and thousands of websites as well. None of us have the time or the money to check them all out. We don't know all the good spots but we each have the books, sites, conferences, and groups that have helpd us a great deal. This is the place to share the resources that have helped you out in ministry the most and get tips from other pastors on the best resources to check out next and continue to grow.
[edit] Phase Two: (coming soon)
In order to make this site really helpful, we do need your help. Right now we have 10 Message Ideas, 24 Chapters in our commentary, and 12 experiential learning ideas.
Message Ideas - We recognize that much of the meaning from a message comes from you as the pastor listening to God, reading through scripture and coming up with a message that fits your context. But we also recognize that sometimes we just draw a blank. So we are gathering jump start ideas from pastors to help get those juices flowing.
Commentary - There are excellent commentaries out there, but they also usually cost a tremendous amount of money. Well worth it if you are doing a sermon series on a book, but well beyond the price range of most of us if we’re just preaching one message from that book. So we are creating an online commentary, created by the research of other pastors as they were writing their sermons.
[edit] Phase Three: (we’re working on it)
Experiential Learning – Games and illustrations are good. But if we can not just entertain but teach and transform that is so much better. We are building a collection of meaningful events and ideas that help people learn through doing because we know that while they are the best way to go, coming up with them takes far more time than we often have as pastors.
Administration – One of the top things that we all agreed we needed help with is administrative work. From how to incorporate a church, to how to lead a board meeting, the legalities of background checks, permission slips, all the information you need we’re trying to gather up.
Essays – As pastors, we have all learned different lessons at different times. And we all have something to pass on. This will be a place for pastors to write essays and publish their thoughts on ministry.
