Last updated: July 20, 2026
These Terms govern your church’s use of Shepherd. By creating an organization or using the service, you agree to them. If you are acting for a church or ministry, you represent that you have authority to bind it.
1. Who we are
Shepherd is operated by Extant 2000 LLC, a Virginia limited liability company. Extant 2000 LLC is a for-profit company. It is not a church, not a ministry, and not a tax-exempt organization, and it does not solicit tax-deductible donations.
2. Availability: United States only
Shepherd is offered only to churches and users located in the United States. Access from outside the United States is blocked, and the service is not directed to or intended for users in any other country.
3. The service
Shepherd is hosted church-management software. Your church is an organization on servers we operate; there is no server for you to run. Depending on the features you enable, Shepherd can hold member records, attendance and child check-in, giving records, groups and events, messages, documents, prayer requests, and pastoral-care records.
4. Who controls the data
Your church is the data controller for its records. Extant 2000 LLC is the service provider and processes those records on your church’s behalf and under its direction. Because Shepherd is hosted, our personnel have technical access to the systems holding your data; we restrict that access and use it only to operate, secure, back up, and support the service, or where the law requires. This is described in full in our Privacy Policy.
5. Your responsibilities as a church
Your church decides what to collect and who may see it, and is responsible for:
- Choosing who has administrator and staff access, and removing access when someone leaves
- Obtaining any parental consent required to keep records about children
- Telling members what it records and how it is used
- Deciding whether sensitive pastoral records belong in a hosted system at all
- The accuracy of the records it enters
6. Sensitive records
Prayer requests, pastoral-care notes, bereavement records, confessions, and children’s check-in records are stored on our servers like any other church data. They are access-controlled and encrypted in transit. Confessions and pastoral responses are additionally encrypted at rest, using a key held outside the database, so they cannot be read from a database backup or a stolen copy of the database. They are still not end-to-end encrypted, we hold the key, so our systems can read them in order to show them to the church leaders your church authorises, and they could be disclosed if we were compelled by valid legal process.
If your church handles confessions or pastoral communications it considers legally privileged, it should decide deliberately whether to record them in Shepherd and should consult its own counsel. We cannot guarantee that storing such records in a hosted system preserves any clergy privilege that would otherwise apply.
7. Acceptable use
You agree not to use Shepherd for anything unlawful or deceptive; to upload malware or attempt to breach, probe, or circumvent our security; to access another church’s data; to resell the service without our written agreement; or to place load on it that degrades it for others. We may suspend an organization that puts the service, other churches, or our infrastructure at risk.
8. Giving and payments
Online giving is processed by Stripe. Contributions given to your church through Shepherd go to your church’s own payment account, not to us. Your church is responsible for issuing contribution statements and for its own tax and reporting obligations. Card details are handled by Stripe and are not stored on our servers.
9. Fees
Shepherd is currently provided free of charge to churches. We may introduce paid plans in the future, but we will not begin charging for access you already have without advance notice. Payment processing fees charged by Stripe are separate and are set by Stripe.
10. Your data and export
Your church’s records remain your church’s. We do not sell them, use them for advertising, or use them to train machine-learning models. You may request an export at any time. If your church stops using Shepherd, it may request an export, and we will delete its data within 90 days of the request unless the law requires us to keep it.
11. Uptime and support
We work to keep Shepherd available and to fix problems promptly, and support is by email. Because the service is provided free of charge, we do not commit to a specific uptime percentage or response time.
12. Warranty disclaimer
Shepherd is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. We do not hold SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or PCI certification and do not claim to.
13. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Extant 2000 LLC will not be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or for lost data. Because the service is provided free of charge, our total liability for any claim relating to it will not exceed one hundred U.S. dollars ($100). Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
14. Termination
Your church may stop using Shepherd at any time. We may suspend or terminate an organization that breaches these Terms or where required by law. If we terminate without cause, we will give a reasonable opportunity to export data first.
15. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. The date at the top reflects the most recent revision, and we will notify churches of material changes. Continuing to use Shepherd after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.
16. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Fairfax County, Virginia, and you consent to personal jurisdiction there.
17. Contact
Extant 2000 LLC
7051 Brookfield Plz
Springfield, VA 22150
United States