As promised, we have the Shepherding Program in progress this week with our first set of new members. My thanks to Cindy Broyles for her prompt forwarding of the new member information.

With any new launch there will always be some unexpected hiccups. Our first batch of assignments have been made, but we also learned that a few of them were "old-new members" in the sense they have been attending and involved in church programs for quite a while, yet only decided to formally join recently. In the future we will try to get this information clear in advance, however, we cannot guarantee we will always know this. As a result I have modified the "Shepherd's Checklist" (script) to include initial icebreaker questions about their involvement with the church to date. The updated copy is attached and is also posted to the website under the "Shepherd's Toolkit" section.

If you have not done so already, please take a minute to look at the website (http://pages.sbcglobal.net/rkskaggs/MoodyMethodist/Shepherds/home.html), in particular the "Current Rotation Schedule" link in the upper right corner. I will try to keep this up to date so everyone on the team knows the general status of assignments and when they may be next up on the rotation. I color coded the boxes green for those team members that have confirmed with me their acceptance of the assignment. Clear cells indicate I do not have confirmation at this point. Also, when you are finished with your assignment, please drop me an e-mail or call (740-2601) to let me know so I can change that status to the color blue.

Also, I request that you use moodyshepherds@sbcglobal.net for e-mail communications to me related to the Shepherding Program. This will help me keep the messages separated and better organized.