Our Story
It began with a question nobody was asking.
Who looks after the one who looks after everyone else?
Ask almost any congregation who their pastor turns to when life goes wrong, and you will usually get a pause. The question has never occurred to them. Their minister is the one who arrives at the hospital, sits with the grieving family, finds the school fees for an orphan, and stands in the pulpit on Sunday with a word that sounds as if nothing at all is wrong at home.
Often something is.
Shepherds Only Foundation grew out of years spent close to ministers and their families, long enough to see what happens behind the vestry door. What we saw was rarely a lack of faith. Far more often it was a faithful servant of God quietly running out of road.
What we kept seeing
Faithful people in hard places.
Some ministers serve congregations that can comfortably care for them. Many do not. A pastor sent to a farming community may be paid in whatever the harvest allows. An evangelist planting a church in a new town may have no congregation at all yet, only a calling and a rented room. A teacher of the Word may give a lifetime to a flock that loves him dearly and simply has nothing to spare.
We have known ministers put out of their homes because the rent could not be found. We have known children sent home from school in the middle of a term. And we have known shepherds who died of illnesses that a modest sum of money, at the right moment, would almost certainly have treated.
None of this made the news. These ministers did not complain from the pulpit, and most never told anyone. That silence is exactly why the need goes unmet.
I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.
Matthew 26:31
Jesus quoted Zechariah on the night He was betrayed. The principle has not changed. When a shepherd is struck down, the damage never stays with the shepherd.
What we decided
Build something that does not depend on a good year.
Generosity that rises and falls with appeals is a blessing, but it is not a foundation. Ministers in genuine need deserve help they can count on, so we chose a different shape.
An endowment, not a campaign
The Foundation is a beneficiary of the Shepherds Trust. The Trust’s capital is protected and put to work, and the support it yields is shared out with care, year after year, so the help continues long after any one season.
By stewards, for stewards
We do not appeal to governments, corporations or outside bodies. The work is resourced only by those who are themselves called to ministry, so it answers to the Lord of the harvest and to no one else’s agenda.
Shepherds only
We resisted the temptation to help with everything. Our care rests on members of the five-fold ministry and their households, because that is where a single act of support reaches the most lives.
How we work now
Quiet, careful and for life.
A minister who is verified and welcomed into the Foundation is not helped once and forgotten. Once onboarded, a minister stays with us for life, and their household is cared for alongside them: through financial support, counselling, prayer, scholarships for children, development for spouses, and retreats and seminars the Foundation pays for in full.
Because trust matters so much, we guard it closely. Applications are checked thoroughly, sometimes in person. Decisions are made against written policy, not by personal favour. And we never publish the name or circumstances of anyone we support.
- Who we serve. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers in active ministry, full-time or part-time.
- Who else we hold. Their spouses and children, treated with the minister as one household.
- How we decide. On legitimacy and genuine need, confirmed by verification and strong recommendation.
- How long we stay. A verified minister, once welcomed in, is retained for a lifetime.
- What we never do. Publish the details of the shepherds who receive help.
The story continues
We are still at the beginning, and we intend to be here for generations.
Each year we will give an honest account of what the Lord has allowed us to do, in our Reflections report.