About
Why I Built Shepherding Tools
My name is Jacob Gerber, and I serve as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Since my ordination in 2011, I have been deeply committed to helping Christ's undershepherds care faithfully for His flock.
I have also spent most of my life building technology. I created my first website in 1997 and later, while serving churches as a bivocational pastor, worked for a software startup that developed website platforms for apartment companies. Throughout the years, I kept asking a simple question:
Why don’t pastors have better tools for shepherding?
In 2015, while serving my first full-time pastoral call, I became increasingly convinced that our Session could care for people more effectively if we had better systems for communication, coordination, and accountability. Existing church software helped us manage information, but not shepherd people.
In 2020, I built the first version of Shepherding Tools. Our elders used it to track shepherding contacts, coordinate follow-up, and ensure that no member was forgotten. The results were immediate. We were more intentional, more organized, and better equipped to care for the congregation entrusted to us.
When I accepted a new call in 2025, I began rebuilding the platform from the ground up. The result is Shepherding Tools — a suite of applications designed by a pastor for pastors, elders, and deacons. These are not theoretical tools. They are tools I use every day in my own ministry, continually refining them as our officers put them into practice.
Technology will never replace pastoral ministry. The Lord Jesus shepherds His people through personal relationships, faithful oversight, prayer, and the ministry of His Word. Software cannot do those things.
What software can do is help church leaders communicate more effectively, coordinate more faithfully, and follow through more consistently.
That is the vision behind Shepherding Tools.
This is not church management software. It is church leadership software — built to help officers care for every person entrusted to them and to pursue Christ's sheep who are not yet in His fold.
If Shepherding Tools can help your church shepherd more faithfully, I invite you to try it for free.
May the Lord bless your ministry and oversight of His flock.
In Christ,
Pastor Jacob Gerber
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