Sidewalk Shepherds Team: Friends Helping at the Worship Event
The shepherd team will need to be recruited, team leader chosen, and methods of communication with the local Sidewalk Director established. The shepherds have 3 main responsibilities: to take the faith community's prayer requests, to help with site discipline, and to be a friend to all. The team becomes the loudest cheerleaders, the mightiest singers, game counters and sometimes even a player if a child picks YOU! This team will need to be trained in the areas of prayer requests, site statistics, site visitation by visitors (incl. NonUMC clergy) and noted guests, promotion give aways, discipline, child interaction and child abuse guidelines. A schedule of Shepherd participation dates may need to be established by the team leader, but this is generally not necessary. Initial training meetings as well as ongoing training events are essential. The biggest problem with shepherds in a well run site is that they are so excited about what's happening on the platform, they forget they're supposed to be watching the kids. This is absolutely, along with visitation, so rewarding. The greatest danger to either of these teams is that...you fall in love.