We are here for you
Shepherding & Pastoral Care
Are you struggling or hurting and desire the counsel of the Word of God applied to your specific circumstance? Do you need a safe space to sit with a brother or sister in Christ to ask questions or just talk about a difficult moral decision or deep hurt?
As a member of Perimeter Church, you are part of a caring family, and the Shepherding team is available and equipped to come alongside you in the areas of spiritual formation and spiritual care.
Caring for you
Connect With Us
Pastor on Call
We are available to chat with you via Zoom during on-call hours. No appointment is necessary. Once you connect to the Zoom call, you will be placed into a virtual waiting room, and the host will let you into the video conference in the order in which you connected for one-on-one conversations.
Schedule an Appointment
Make an appointment with a specific individual.
Medical Procedures
Contact us for support if you have an upcoming medical procedure or diagnosis.
Ways we serve
Shepherding Ministries
Explore the various ways we are here to shepherd and care for you.
Pastoral Care & Counsel
The human soul is nourished, restored, comforted, kept, and guided by the Good Shepherd. At its most basic level, shepherding and pastoral care is the outworking of this remarkable claim. It is about the care of the soul.
Deacon Ministry
The deacon ministry serves those who are experiencing material need due to illness or loss by distributing the gifts of the people. The deacons also develop the grace and liberality of the members of the church and care for the widow.
Bereavement
It is our privilege to come alongside those who are bereaved or grieving. Our relationship with you extends past the funeral to a long-term pastoral care relationship through one-on-one counsel to grief support groups.
Funerals
A funeral, or celebration of life service, is one of life’s most difficult and emotional occasions. Learn more about our Funeral Ministry.
Parish Ministry
Perimeter is a large church, with members from all over Metro Atlanta. To shepherd our flock well, we have divided the area into geographic parishes, to better care for and connect with our members. Each parish has an Area Pastor who shepherds and oversees the elders and members within that parish.
Church Leadership
Church members elect elders and deacons to work with our pastors in providing leadership for and shepherding care to our church members. The Shepherding department oversees the election, care, and shepherding of our church officers as they, in turn, shepherd and care for our church members.
Hospital Visitation, Prayer and Anointing
As we shepherd the flock, we step into their lives and situations, and many of the people we minister to desire specific prayer and action. We pray together with the goal of seeking the mind of Christ and to discern what the Spirit and the Word is teaching us. We pray with the assurance that the Spirit comes to us in our weakness and intercedes for us.
Shepherdess Ministry
Our Shepherdess team is here to serve as advocates for women with church leadership, as well as advocates for the church to women. They are often a bridge between women who are struggling and the church. A Shepherdess may assist with crisis care, or she may come alongside another woman for strategic friendship, to help her grow and mature in a particular season of life.
Support Groups
We have many groups available to come alongside you in times of challenge or for specific discipleship needs.
GriefShare
A GriefShare support group is a safe, welcoming place where people understand the difficult emotions of grief. Meets for 13 weeks. Join anytime.
Celebrate Recovery
If you’ve had a hurt, habit or a hang-up that you would like to change in your life, but couldn’t, join us weekly on Wednesdays.
Crossroads Career Network
Crossroads seeks to provide counsel and encouragement to help you find your calling, job, or change in career. Meets virtually (Zoom).
Heart Wounds
A gospel-centered six-week group to help people recover from painful experiences and reconnect with God, others, and themselves.
Parent Connect
This is a confidential weekly support group for parents whose teenager or adult children are involved in self-destructive lifestyles, particularly drug or alcohol abuse. Led by Pastor Bob Carter.
On Belay
A belayer helps navigate the emotions and spiritual questions that come with a serious medical diagnosis. Contact Kelly to discuss more.
Shepherding Events & Funeral Announcements
About our leadership
Shepherd Elder
Perimeter is great place to worship, but it can also feel like a BIG church, which may be a bit overwhelming. Since our desire is for everyone to feel at home and to feel cared for we have established shepherding teams for each geographic area of our church and we have called these geographic areas parishes.
What is a parish?
A parish shepherding team is made up of many elders and deacons that live in the parish. Their role is to connect with and care for the people and families in their area. Each Perimeter member is assigned a specific Shepherd from that team.
What is shepherding?
Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood. — Acts 20:28
As we are a discipleship-oriented church, some people may confuse shepherding with discipleship. Discipleship is well-defined in the Life on Life curriculum. Shepherding is overseeing the life of members and member families in a holistic way without necessarily getting into day-to-day equipping of those members. In other words:
- A discipler would equip a man to have a personal worship time. A shepherd would make sure he knows where to get equipped.
- A shepherd speaks truth into the lives of members, but does not necessarily massage it in fully, as a discipler would.
- A shepherd exhorts members to have real accountability, but does not necessarily play an active role in weekly accountability.
You get the idea. The shepherd is herding and watching. The discipler is getting his hands messier week to week. The shepherd is discerning the lay of the land and whether or not there are storm clouds on the horizon. That is different work over a larger area. That is why we want to give each elder, together with other elders, a definable piece of land to cultivate; a city.
What are the basic activities of a shepherd?
Well, they are at least three:
- Rule gently over the flock with truth, strength, and love
- Supply safe pasture for the flock
- Nourish the flock with heavenly food
So how do we do it? Well we could have just divided the elders into the number of people and told you to have a go, but we believe God has called us, and Scripture teaches us to connect to people in a relational way, at the heart level, so that they are not just a number in a herd. That is why we have decided to connect elders to people close to where they live whenever possible.
Time spent is a qualifier for watching over the flock. To be able to minister to someone at the heart level is not a “drive-by event” or a “one-minute manager” occurrence. It takes time; and a move of the Spirit. It includes heads of households and family. It includes regular contact.
For Current Officers
Are you a Perimeter Officer looking for the Shepherding App? Please use the link below to access.
