Category: App Support

The rhythms of pastoral ministry follow the rhythms of life. Births, baptisms, weddings, deaths, illnesses, job changes — Shepherd calls these life events, and it treats them as first-class entries on a person’s timeline.

What counts as a life event

The Life Event Type enum covers:

• Birth — a child is born into the family.
• Baptism — the person’s own baptism, or a child’s.
• Confirmation — confirmation or a comparable rite.
• First Communion.
• Wedding — marriage.
• Anniversary — a non-wedding anniversary you want to remember (ordination date, sobriety milestone, day of a conversion).
• Death — of the person themselves, or of a loved one.
• Illness / Diagnosis — a significant medical event.
• Recovery — healing, remission, discharge.
• Job Change — new job, retirement, unemployment.
• Move — relocation.
• Graduation.
• Other — anything else worth a dated mark on the timeline.

The sacramental types (baptism, confirmation, first communion, wedding) also surface on the person’s Sacramental Dates card when they are set — Shepherd pulls the most recent of each type into the compact readout.

Adding a life event

From the Person detail view, scroll to the Life Events section and tap +. The sheet asks for:

• Type — from the list above.
• Date — defaults to today. Life events can be backdated freely.
• Title — pre-filled based on the type. A baptism defaults to “Baptism of Jane Doe”, a wedding to “Wedding of Jane and John”. Edit as needed.
• Notes — context. The baptism liturgy used, the cemetery the deceased was buried at, the name of the hospital.
• Minister officiated — a toggle for your own records. Filter on this later to build a list of “every wedding I’ve officiated since ordination.”

If the event is also on your ministry calendar — a wedding you’re planning, a funeral you’re presiding over — you can link it to aMinistryEvent via the Linked event picker. The same reality appears in two places without duplicating data: the wedding shows up in the person’s life timeline and in your Events tab with its full planner.

Anniversaries on the Dashboard

Life events with recurring significance — birthdays, weddings, baptisms, ordination anniversaries — roll forward automatically. TheUpcoming Anniversaries section of the Dashboard uses each event’s nextAnniversary(from:) calculation to surface the ones falling within your anniversary lookahead window (Settings; default 14 days).

What surfaces:

• Birthdays — computed from Person.birthdate, not from a life event. You only need to set the birthdate once.
• Wedding anniversaries — from a life event of type wedding, or from Person.weddingAnniversary if you set that field directly.
• Baptism anniversaries — from a life event of type baptism, or from Person.baptismDate.
• Other recurring dates — any life event of type anniversary.

Each card exposes a quick Log Contact action so you can mark a birthday call or anniversary card without leaving the Dashboard.

Using life events pastorally

A few patterns worth adopting early:

Always log a death

When a member dies, create a life event of type death on their own timeline. Shepherd preserves the person record — death doesn’t remove someone from your congregational history — and the life event gives you a dated anchor. The first anniversary of the death will surface on the Dashboard, prompting you to reach out to the bereaved.

Also log a death on the bereaved

When Linda’s husband dies, log the death on Linda’s timeline too. Either as a second life event of type death with the deceased named in the title, or — if the deceased was in Shepherd — just the relationship is enough. Combined with a pastoral visit of type bereavement, this is what keeps the Continuing Care Dashboard section pointed at Linda for the month after the funeral.

Use illness and recovery as a pair

When someone is diagnosed, create an illness life event. When they recover, create a recovery event. The pair tells a story the timeline alone couldn’t.

Job loss and job change are pastoral concerns

They don’t feel as sacramental as a baptism, but they shape people’s lives as much. A jobChange life event, even a spare one, gives you a dated reason to check in three weeks later.

Linking to a MinistryEvent

When a wedding, funeral, baptism, or memorial service is something you’re planning, create it in the Events tab with the appropriateEventType (wedding, funeral, baptism). Then, from the Life Event sheet on the relevant Person, set Linked event to that MinistryEvent.

You get:

• A full planner in the Events tab (sacrament component for candidate names and prep notes, liturgy component for presider and readings, hospitality component for the reception).
• A dated life-event marker on the person’s timeline.
• Both pointing at the same reality.

Sacramental history

The Sacramental Dates card on the Person detail view shows:

• Baptism date.
• Confirmation date.
• First communion date.
• Wedding anniversary.

These come from either the direct Person fields (set in the person edit sheet) or from the most recent corresponding life event. Use whichever is more convenient — set the person field when you know the date but don’t need the context, create a life event when the context matters.

Exporting life events

Life events are included in the People CSV export as a separate sheet (or separate CSV file, depending on export mode). Useful for:

• Generating a list of every wedding you’ve officiated.
• Pulling sacramental records for an insurance or denominational report.
• Sharing a family history when a member transfers to another congregation.

Shepherd keeps two different records of your pastoral touch: contact logs (lightweight) and pastoral visits (substantive). Understanding the distinction will save you time and keep your Dashboard honest.

Contact vs. visit

A contact log is a quick, utilitarian record:

• A phone call to confirm a Sunday ride.
• A text checking in on a sick child.
• A hallway conversation after service.
• An email sent, a card mailed.

A pastoral visit is a substantive encounter — something you’d write about in a pastoral journal:

• A hospital visit.
• A counseling session.
• A home visit with a homebound member.
• A bereavement call after a death.
• A discipleship or catechesis meeting.

Both count as “touch” for Dashboard disengagement math. The difference is in what Shepherd records and how it surfaces later. A contact is a one-line entry. A visit carries structured fields: subject, type, confidentiality, follow-up.

Err on the side of logging a contact rather than a visit when you’re not sure — it takes five seconds and still keeps the Dashboard accurate.

Logging a contact

From the Dashboard, the Person detail view, or any person in a list, tap Log Contact (often a swipe action on list rows).

The sheet asks for:

• Date — defaults to now.
• Method — phone, text, email, letter, in-person, social media, other.
• Notes — one or two lines of what was discussed.

Save. The contact appears on the Person detail timeline and resets their “days since touch” for Dashboard purposes.

Logging a visit

From the same places — Dashboard quick action, person detail view, household detail view — tap Log Visit.

The visit sheet has:

• Visit type. General, pastoral counseling, hospital, homebound, bereavement, discipleship, premarital, new member, reconciliation, other.
• Subject. A short title — “Discussed mother’s decline”, “Pre-op anxiety”, “Catechesis #3”. This is what appears in timelines.
• Date and duration. Defaults to now; duration is optional.
• Notes. Long-form — the substance of the visit.
• Confidential. Hides notes behind a confidentiality banner. Counseling and bereavement visits default to confidential.
• Follow-up needed. When turned on, reveals a follow-up date picker.

Save. The visit appears in the person’s timeline and, if you toggled follow-up, is queued for the Dashboard’s Follow-ups Due section on its follow-up date.

Household visits

From the Household detail view, Log household visit opens the visit sheet pre-linked to the head of household. A home visit to the Smith family is usually logged this way — pick head of household, write once, and the visit appears on their person timeline while still being readable as a family event.

Follow-ups

The Dashboard’s Follow-ups Due section is the most-used feature you haven’t used yet. Whenever you end a visit saying “let me get back to you next week,” toggle Follow-up needed, set a date, and trust Shepherd to remind you.

When the follow-up date arrives:

1. A card appears in the Dashboard’s Follow-ups Due section.
2. Tapping the card jumps to the source visit in the person’s timeline.
3. Re-read what you promised. Make the call. Log the new contact or visit.

The original visit doesn’t disappear from Follow-ups Due automatically — log a follow-up contact or visit on the same person, and Shepherd resolves the follow-up.

Homebound visits

Homebound members don’t show up on attendance rolls. Without pastoral visits logged against them, they look invisible to the Dashboard. Shepherd handles this with a specific section:

• Any member whose pastoral status is homebound and whose last pastoral visit was more than half your disengagement thresholdago will surface in Homebound — Needs Visit.

In practice: set homebound on every homebound member, log visits when you make them, and the Dashboard will never let you forget them.

Confidentiality

Visits marked confidential display a banner in the timeline:

This visit is confidential. Tap to view notes.

Notes are revealed on tap. Confidentiality is stored with the visit and respected in exports.

A note on the trust this implies: confidential notes are not yet encrypted at rest. They are protected by your device passcode and your iCloud account security. A future Shepherd release will add field-level encryption for pastoral notes. Until then, treat your device the way you would treat a filing cabinet of paper pastoral notes — with a lock on the door.

Viewing history

The Person detail view shows contacts and visits as two separate timelines. Filter by date range or type from the section headers.

The Household detail view collects visits logged against any household member into a single family-level timeline, so you can see “when was this family last visited?” at a glance.

Exporting

Pastoral visits and contact logs can be exported as CSV from Settings → Export Data. Confidential notes are not included in the CSV export unless you explicitly include them via the “Include confidential notes” toggle. See the Importing and Exporting Data article.

The Dashboard is the first screen you see when you open Shepherd, and it’s the reason the app exists. It answers the question every pastor asks on Monday morning and Saturday night: Who needs me this week, and what did I say I’d do?

How it works

The Dashboard is a stack of cards. Each card is a section; each section surfaces a different pastoral concern. Sections order themselves roughly from most urgent at the top to keep in mind at the bottom. When a section has nothing in it, it collapses quietly — you won’t see empty cards cluttering the view.

Most sections come from the Disengagement Calculator, a pure-function engine that looks at every person you’ve entered and decides whether they need attention. It considers:

• Attendance — have they shown up recently?
• Contact — have you talked to them recently?
• Visits — when was the last pastoral visit?
• Pastoral status — is it set to something urgent?
• Follow-ups — did you promise to circle back, and is that date past?

Each person is bucketed by severity and given a human-readable reason string so the card can tell you why they surfaced. The Dashboard doesn’t just say “check on Linda” — it says “No contact in 73 days; last visit October 4.”

The sections, in order

In Crisis

Anyone whose pastoral status is explicitly set to inCrisis. This wins over everything — if you’ve flagged someone as in crisis, they belong at the top of the screen. Tap to open their detail view; a quick Log Visit action sits on each card.

Follow-ups Due

Pastoral visits you logged with Follow-up needed turned on, whose follow-up date has arrived or passed. Tapping a card takes you to the source visit in the person’s timeline, so you can re-read what you promised and act on it.

Disengaging

People whose pastoral status is disengaging, plus any active member whose total touch-gap (no attendance, contact, or visit) has exceeded your disengagement threshold (set in Settings; default 60 days).

New — Needs Follow-up

People with pastoral status new who have had no touch for 21 days or more. Visitors who came in and haven’t been circled back to. This section is where evangelism quietly becomes neglect if you aren’t careful.

Homebound — Needs Visit

Homebound members who haven’t received a pastoral visit within half of your disengagement threshold. Homebound members don’t register on attendance, so the normal signals don’t catch them — this section exists specifically so they are never forgotten.

Upcoming Anniversaries

Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, baptism anniversaries, and other recurring life events falling within your anniversary lookahead window (Settings; default 14 days). A quick Log Contact action lets you mark a call or card without leaving the Dashboard.

Continuing Care

Recent pastoral visits of type hospital or bereavement, within your continuing-care window (Settings; default 30 days). A reminder that a pastoral arc is still open — the funeral was two weeks ago, the family still needs you.

Pressing Tasks

Event tasks and standalone ministry tasks due soon or overdue, ranked by component importance and urgency. Tapping a task takes you to its event (for event tasks) or opens it inline.

Upcoming Events

The next five events on your calendar. Each card shows type icon, date, and — for events with a planner — a progress bar.

Prayer Reminders

A compact count of stale prayers and urgent prayers, with a Pray Now button that launches the Prayer Carousel.

Tapping through

Every card in every section is tappable. The Dashboard is a triage surface, not a do surface — it points you at the right person or task, and you act from there. Don’t try to resolve everything from the Dashboard itself.

Quick actions

Where it makes sense, cards expose a single quick action without requiring you to navigate:

• In Crisis / Disengaging / New / Homebound cards → Log Visit.
• Upcoming Anniversaries cards → Log Contact.
• Follow-ups Due cards → Open Visit (jumps to the source visit).

Tuning what you see

Three settings shape the Dashboard:

• Disengagement threshold — how many days without contact before an active member surfaces as disengaging.
• Anniversary lookahead — how far ahead birthdays and anniversaries appear on the Dashboard.
• Continuing-care window — how long after a hospital or bereavement visit the Continuing Care section keeps reminding you.

Adjust these in Settings to fit your tradition’s rhythm. A small-town parish where you see everyone twice a week will want a shorter threshold than a large suburban congregation.

What the Dashboard won’t do

• It won’t surface people you haven’t entered yet. Start with a roster import (see Importing and Exporting Data) if your congregation is large.
• It won’t make pastoral decisions for you. The reason strings are there to inform, not to accuse.
• It won’t replace your own prayerful attentiveness. Shepherd catches what you might miss; it doesn’t carry what you’re called to carry.

Shepherd is built around two linked ideas: the person (an individual you pastor) and the household (the family unit they belong to). Most pastoral work happens at one of those two levels, so Shepherd lets you switch between them freely.

The Person/Household toggle

Open the People tab. At the top you’ll find a segmented control:

• People — a flat list of every individual in your congregation.
• Households — the same people, grouped into family cards.

The toggle is not a filter. It’s a change of lens. The underlying data is the same; you’re choosing whether to think family-first or individual-first for the task at hand.

A “Needs Care” filter in the toolbar narrows either view to only the people (or households containing people) that the Dashboard is currently flagging for attention.

Creating a person

Tap + from the People list. The create sheet has collapsible sections:

• Identity — first name, last name, preferred name, pronouns, photo.
• Contact — phone, email, address (address auto-inherits from household if one is set).
• Pastoral — Church Role (member, regular, visitor, minor, staff, layLeader, volunteer, other) and Pastoral Status (active, new, homebound, inCrisis, disengaging, inactive, visitor, bereaved, transferred).
• Sacramental dates — baptism, confirmation, first communion, wedding anniversary. Leave blank if not applicable.
• Household — pick an existing one or tap Create new household to spin one up inline.
• Notes — pastoral notes (see the confidentiality note below).

Only a name is required. You can always fill in more later.

The Person detail view

Tapping a person opens their full pastoral file:

• Header card — name, photo, pastoral-status badge, church-role badge, and a link to their household.
• Contact card — tap a phone number to call, an email to compose, an address to open Maps.
• Attendance timeline — every event they’ve been checked in to.
• Contact log — lightweight outreach (a phone call, a text, a hallway conversation). Use Log Contact for these.
• Pastoral visits — substantive encounters. Use Log Visit for these. See the Logging Pastoral Visits and Contacts article.
• Life events — births, baptisms, weddings, deaths, job changes. See the Tracking Life Events and Anniversaries article.
• Prayer requests — any requests currently open for this person.
• Groups — every group this person belongs to, with their role in each.
• Sacramental dates — a compact readout of baptism, confirmation, first communion, wedding anniversary.
• Pastoral notes — long-form notes behind a tap, with a confidentiality banner.

From the header you can also tap Pray for this person, which creates a prayer request already linked to them.

Creating and editing households

In the Households view, tap + to create a new household. A household has:

• A display name — auto-derived (“The Smith Family”, “Smith & Jones”), or set your own.
• Address, home phone, and household notes.
• Members — added by picking existing people or creating new ones.

The Household detail view shows the whole family on one card with role badges, pastoral-status dots, contact info, and anniversaries. From here you can:

• Log household visit — opens the visit sheet pre-linked to the head of household.
• Add member — pick from the roster or create a new person already linked to this household.
• Pray for household — create a prayer request linked to the whole family.

Household roles

Each member has a Household Role: head, spouse, adult, child, dependent. These inform the default family-card layout and the household’s computed display name. A household can have multiple adults without a “head” if that fits your family better.

The family-card PDF

From any household, tap the share icon to generate a one-page PDF family card — names, contact info, photos, anniversaries. Hand it to a visiting pastor, elder, or care-team volunteer.

Roles and statuses, briefly

• Church Role describes who the person is in your congregation: member, regular, visitor, minor, staff, lay leader, volunteer, other. This is about belonging.
• Pastoral Status describes the shape of your current pastoral relationship: active, new, homebound, in crisis, disengaging, inactive, visitor, bereaved, transferred. This is about care.

A person can be a member whose pastoral status is homebound — they fully belong and they need a specific kind of care. The two fields work together; don’t collapse them into one.

A word on confidentiality

Pastoral notes and any visit flagged as confidential are hidden behind a tap with a visible banner. Counseling and bereavement visits default to confidential. These notes still sync through your personal iCloud, so the device-level protections that apply to the rest of your phone apply here too.

Shepherd is built around two linked ideas: the person (an individual you pastor) and the household (the family unit they belong to). Most pastoral work happens at one of those two levels, so Shepherd lets youswitch between them freely.

Welcome to Shepherd. This guide walks you through your first launch and the
handful of decisions that shape the rest of the app.

What Shepherd is

Shepherd is a pastoral-care companion for ministers. It tracks the people in
your congregation, the households they belong to, the events you plan, the
groups they join, and the prayer needs you carry on their behalf. Its
Dashboard is built to answer one question every morning: who needs me today?

Shepherd runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Your data syncs privately through
your own iCloud account — there is no Shepherd server holding congregational
information.

First launch — the onboarding flow

The first time you open Shepherd, you’ll walk through a short setup:

1. Ministry name. The name of your congregation, parish, or ministry.
   This appears in exported documents and across the app.
2. Your name and role. How Shepherd addresses you in the Dashboard
   greeting.
3. Terminology. Choose the words that fit your tradition — “member” vs.
   “parishioner”, “congregation” vs. “parish”, and so on. These flow through
   every screen.
4. Disengagement threshold. The number of days without contact before
   Shepherd starts surfacing a person as disengaging on the Dashboard.
   The default is 60 days; adjust to match your tradition’s rhythm.

You can revisit any of these later in Settings. Nothing you choose at
onboarding is locked in.

The five tabs

Once onboarding is complete, you land in the app proper. Shepherd is
organized into five tabs:

• Dashboard — your pastoral-care triage screen. In Crisis,
  Follow-ups Due, Disengaging, Upcoming Anniversaries, Continuing Care,
  Pressing Tasks, Upcoming Events, Prayer Reminders.
• People — every individual and household you serve. Toggle between a
  person-centric and a household-centric view at the top of the tab.
• Events — worship services, weddings, funerals, small-group meetings,
  mission trips, retreats, everything on your ministry calendar.
• Groups — small groups, Sunday school classes, committees, ministry
  teams. First-class citizens in Shepherd.
• Prayer — the prayer requests you are carrying, with a distraction-free
  Carousel mode for use in your own prayer time.

On Mac and iPad the same tabs appear as a sidebar.

Adding your first people

Before the Dashboard becomes useful, Shepherd needs to know who it is
caring for. You have four routes in:

• Add one at a time. People tab → + → fill in as much or as little
  as you like. Only a name is required.
• Import a roster from CSV. Settings → Import Roster. Shepherd reads a
  spreadsheet of names, contact info, and pastoral fields. See the
  Importing and Exporting Data article for the column format.
• Import contacts (vCard). Settings → Import Contacts. Shepherd can
  pull from a vCard file and will offer to cluster same-surname,
  same-address contacts into a household.
• Add as you go. Every list that touches a person has a + button to
  create one inline.

What to do next

• Read Managing People and Households to understand Shepherd’s identity
  model.
• Read Understanding the Dashboard once you have a few dozen people
  entered — that’s when the triage view earns its keep.
• Adjust Settings and Customization to match your tradition’s vocabulary
  and cadence.

Privacy and data

Shepherd stores pastoral data in your personal iCloud container. It is not
visible to Shepherd’s author, Apple, or any third party. Confidential
visit notes are flagged in the app and hidden behind a tap; a future
release will add on-device encryption for these fields. Treat Shepherd
the way you would treat any other device holding congregational
records — with reasonable care and a device passcode.