Session Shepherding Records: What to Write Down, Who Sees It, and the Review That Catches Drift

By Jacob Gerber — a pastor and the founder of Shepherding Tools.

In the previous two articles, I covered tracking pastoral care and dividing your congregation into shepherding districts. This article is about the records themselves: what an elder or deacon should actually write down after a check-in, who should be able to see it, and the monthly review that turns individual notes into shared oversight. Here's the short version:

1. Record the note immediately after the call, since memory fades fast.
2. Always capture four things: dates, follow-ups, promises made, and prayer requests.
3. Don't ask "is this worth recording?" Ask "who needs to see it?" Then set the permissions on each note accordingly.
4. Review every district at every session meeting: go through the names, report the highlights.

When Should You Write a Shepherding Note?

The best practice is to record your note immediately after the call. It is just so hard to remember things later. Our memories are so fragile and so fallible that it is really beneficial to commit things to writing as quickly as possible.

For this reason, I often try to take calls with some kind of hands-free assistance (headphones with a microphone, whether corded or through Bluetooth) so that I can simultaneously take notes at my computer as the conversation goes along. When there are a lot of details on a longer call, these almost always go into the private notes box, so that I'm not forgetting things, but I'm also not cluttering up the display for others.

The longer the call, the more likely that someone is pouring out his or her heart, and those are the details that I don't want to forget.

What Should Go in a Shepherding Record?

Four things belong in the record every time.

Dates

One of the key insights of a detailed shepherding tracking system is knowing how long it has been since anyone was in contact with a person. To do that well, you obviously have to record the date when a contact happened.

Beyond the date when you spoke to someone, it's also important to capture the other dates that come up in the conversation, too. Maybe the individual mentions a surgery coming up in a few weeks, or a relative's surgery. They know those dates because the dates represent the weights that are heavy on their hearts. Write those dates down too so you can pray for them and so you can have them on your radar when they arrive for any other follow-up that might be helpful.

Follow-ups and Promises Made

If you make a promise, write it down and set yourself a to-do, because forgetting is how you burn trust with people. We want to be above reproach in all of our dealings with the people we're shepherding. If we say we're going to take care of something, we must fulfill that promise, to let our yes be yes and our no be no.

Prayer Requests

Many prayer requests aren't the most urgent, life-altering points. Yes, if you learn that someone was just diagnosed with cancer, that information should certainly be put in your list of prayer requests.

But you should also add the little details to your list: when someone's child is struggling in a specific class at school, or when a family is needing to put down their dog, or when someone has been dealing with a nagging sore back. Those items might not need to go out to the church's prayer chain, but if you take a note in a place where you will find it the next time you're praying for that family, you can pray very intentionally for that request.

There is an important catch in that last clause: a place where you will find it. You have to have a system that puts the prayer request in front of you when you're actually praying. This is where the integration between Shepherding Tracker and Shepherding Tools Prayer works so well. You can write down the request in Tracker, and the next time that family comes up in your prayer rotation, the request is right there to remind you about it.

What Should Stay Private, and What Belongs in the Shared Record?

There is very little from a shepherding call not to record. But some things don't matter for everybody. If I'm doing a get-to-know-you phone call and someone is sharing their life story, those are details I want to remember, but they may not be important to anyone else. You don't need to clutter up what other people see with a detailed log of your phone call.

So the dividing line isn't "record it or don't." It's "shared record or private note." Keep the detailed personal material in a private note that helps you the next time you talk to that person, and put the things the other officers need into the shared record.

Who Sees What Inside the Shared Record?

At our church, everyone who logs into Shepherding Tracker can see the dates when people were contacted. The first version of Shepherding Tracker that I built tracked only dates, and even that was very helpful for us. If I was thinking about following up with someone and saw it had only been a couple of days since their district elder contacted them, I'd reach out to the elder first: did anything significant come up? Were you already addressing this? By knowing who to talk with, that communication clarified what I should say when I called.

The shepherding notes live directly in the record, but the permissions manage the different levels of communication natively:

• Counseling notes stay private to me. In counseling I take a lot of notes, such as assignments I've given, significant concepts we discussed, ideas that were helpful for the people I'm counseling. With those notes, I'm able to pick up in the next session right where we left off. Nobody but me needs to see those, or should see those.
• Routine shepherding for the session gets a public note that the check-in call or visit happened, and then a private note marked for pastors and elders with the sensitive spiritual details. The deacons don't necessarily need to see those.
• Some needs belong to both offices. Maybe a husband lost his job, and it's an embarrassing thing for him. That note might be set so pastors, elders, and deacons can see it. That kind of a situation affects how the elders shepherd that family, and it also raises questions of benevolence and mercy ministry as the family looks for work and has bills to pay in the meantime. Both sides of the officers see exactly what's going on. There needs to be shared communication.
• The church secretary or administrator is shielded from information that they shouldn't have, even if they stumble onto the family's record.

By the way, this is why it's really important to have a high level of security in the system. (Learn more about the security system at Shepherding Tools here.) Then, it's just as important to observe the permissions: don't put sensitive shepherding details in public notes, and don't give people permission to see what they shouldn't. It requires a clear vision in your own church of the roles of each office: what pastors do versus elders versus deacons, what's shared with whom and when. Then, people need to exercise care in choosing the permission level that each private note should receive.

How Does a Session Review Shepherding Districts Each Month?

Our shepherding meetings have a set agenda item for district reviews. Our districts are alphabetical (I covered how we divide them in the districts article), so we simply go around the alphabet, the A's through the C's, and on, and each elder reports.

What does a shepherding report contain? Our elders share whom they contacted that month, and the highlights of significant things the session should be aware of. In our Code of Culture we have set a standard for contacting people in each elder's district at a bare minimum of once a quarter, though many officers are in touch with most of their members monthly or every other month. When they report, we don't need a member-by-member rundown, which would take a long time. Still, I have often seen that as an elder just reads through his list in the meeting, it jogs his memory about something that wasn't top of mind, but that needs to be shared with the session.

Two things make these reviews better. First, other elders chime in when they may have additional information. An elder outside that district may know something about a family being discussed from a closer personal relationship. Or, the pastor may have had contact with the family that week and can add context. If there was a significant hospital visit and several elders went, each can share what happened.

Second, joint session-diaconate meetings are really helpful for reviewing districts. When we do district reviews in a joint meeting, we ask both the elders and the deacons to comment on what's going on in their districts. The deacons share the same things in their own deacons' meetings, but it's really valuable to talk together about the issues that affect both offices jointly.

The structure behind all of this is the Jethro principle from Exodus 18: dividing the work among particular men assigned to particular districts. The district elder is the front line, the first contact. But the whole session has responsibility for oversight of the whole church. We don't have individual bishops overseeing their own territories; when issues become more serious, they come to the session, and the session makes the ultimate judgments.

What Stays on the Pastor's Desk?

I pastor a medium-sized church, and it is not possible for me to personally pastor everybody on a regular basis. That is exactly why the officers matter: they take on a tremendous amount of the week-to-week work. But that doesn't mean I've delegated shepherding away. I am still the pastor, and I am still directly pastoring essentially every person in the congregation. It's just a matter of when and how.

Over the course of time, I'm trying to check in with the whole church, although it will take me much longer to get through everyone than it will for the elders to check in on their districts. Yet, when a crisis comes, I drop what I'm doing to be there. So, I'm there as soon as possible when I learn that someone is in the hospital, or someone receives a big diagnosis, or through all the details of a discipline case, or in heavy counseling, or just the kind of shepherding situations that require a lot of time and a lot of being there.

Beyond me, I try to bring their ruling elder and maybe their deacon along so we're shepherding those people together. I cannot treat the entire church as though it were my personal district; there are too many people for that. But when the hard things arise, I want those crises on my desk.

What Does the Monthly Review Actually Catch?

Reviews in session meetings catch important details often. This usually isn't some dramatic story, but just the normal fruit of the rhythm.

The family that said they were fine

I have often seen a district elder do his check-in and hear that everything is going well. Maybe that family didn't want to bring something up, or maybe the check-in happened before the significant event did. But when he reports that the family is doing well, someone else around the room says, "actually, I just learned that this family is going through something big right now." That helps the district elder know that he needs to circle back to someone who might not have received another check-in for a while, through no fault of his own.

The surgery nobody had heard about

Even the officers of the church don't necessarily hear about all the surgeries going on. Plenty of times I find out in a district review that so-and-so has surgery the next day. When I learn that, I learn the people I need to be calling, visiting, and praying with. But without the in-meeting report, I wouldn't have known it at all.

"I haven't seen so-and-so in a while"

Sometimes in that reporting an elder comments, "You know, I haven't seen so-and-so for a while." Others might add that they haven't either. When there is a chance to think through who hasn't been there, the session is often able to realize that they missed someone who had quietly slipped away. Then the district elder can make a to-do list to follow up. Without that kind of regular check-in, the memory doesn't get jogged about the people who haven't been there. That's how families drift.

What Does a Session Shepherding Report Look Like?

Download a sample monthly session shepherding report (free, no email required). It is the concise shared view our session reviews: contacts made, and district health at a glance.

FAQ

Does a deacon see an elder's notes?

Only if the note's permissions include him, and sometimes they should. Spiritual shepherding details are typically marked for pastors and elders. But a need that touches mercy ministry (a job loss, bills to pay) can be shared with the deacons too, so both offices see what is going on. A church administrator without a shepherding role is shielded either way. The point is to decide explicitly, note by note, based on a clear vision of what each office does.

What does a useful district report sound like?

"I contacted these families this month; in this family, here's what's going on, and the session should know about it." Names plus highlights. A vague report ("everyone's doing pretty well in my district") tells the session nothing and catches nothing.

How often should officers check in with their districts?

Decide it explicitly as a session and write it down. That shared, stated expectation is what actually changes behavior. We shoot for once a quarter at minimum, and many officers are in touch monthly or every other month.

Shepherding Tracker keeps all of this for our church: the notes with per-note permissions, the follow-ups, the prayer requests that surface when you pray, and the contact reports our session reviews each month. See how it works or start free.