Terms of Service

By accessing or using Shepherd, you confirm that you are authorized to act for your church and that your church agrees to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use Shepherd.

Shepherd is church engagement software. It syncs member and attendance data from Planning Center, scores engagement to surface members who may be disengaging, and helps your team prepare and coordinate outreach. Shepherd prepares drafts and recommendations; a person on your team always reviews and sends the actual messages.

• Your church authorizes Shepherd and connects its own Planning Center (and optionally Gmail) account.
• Staff accounts have roles — admin, pastor, or viewer — that determine what each person can see and do. Each user belongs to one church.
• Administrators manage connections, staff, and roles.
• You are responsible for keeping account credentials secure and for activity that happens under your church's accounts.

Your church's data remains your church's. You authorize Shepherd to access and process your Planning Center and Gmail data as described in the Privacy Policy in order to provide the service. Your church is responsible for:

• Having an appropriate basis and any necessary permissions to use your members' information in Shepherd.
• The accuracy of the information in your connected systems.
• Your own commitments and obligations to your members and visitors.

Shepherd creates drafts; it never sends messages on its own. A person on your team reviews and sends every message. Your church is responsible for the content it sends and for complying with applicable communications laws and rules — including anti-spam and text-messaging regulations — and with your recipients' preferences.

Shepherd works with Planning Center, Google / Gmail, OpenRouter, and Supabase to operate. Your use of those connections is also subject to those providers' own terms, and you agree to comply with Planning Center's and Google's terms when you connect them. Shepherd is not responsible for third-party services, and their features, availability, and terms may change.

You agree not to:

• Use Shepherd unlawfully, or to harass, harm, or mislead anyone.
• Attempt to access another church's data or any data you're not authorized to see.
• Reverse-engineer, disrupt, overload, or attempt to break the security of the service.
• Use Shepherd in violation of Planning Center's or Google's terms.

Shepherd is offered on an early-access basis and is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, to the maximum extent permitted by law. We don't guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Engagement scores and generated drafts are aids for your team's judgment — they are not guaranteed to be accurate and are not a substitute for pastoral discernment.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Shepherd and its operators will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, arising from your use of the service. This section does not limit liability that cannot be limited under applicable law.

Your church may stop using Shepherd at any time and disconnect its integrations. We may suspend or end access for misuse or to protect the service or others. On termination, data deletion is handled as described in the Privacy Policy — contact us to remove your church's data.

We may update these Terms as Shepherd evolves. When we do, we'll update the “Last updated” date above. Continued use of Shepherd after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

These Terms are governed by the laws of [governing jurisdiction — to be finalized], without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.

Questions about these Terms? Email shreeshkumar.lillyprabhu@gmail.com.