‘Shepherd’s Guide’ is Christian Business Directory

By Anthony Hatcher, The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C.

Jun. 21–DURHAM — If it’s important to you that your plumber, mechanic or accountant shares your Christian values, there is a resource available that can help you find like-minded businesses to suit your needs.

Just let your fingers do the walking through “The Shepherd’s Guide,” a religious Yellow Pages that bills itself as “North America’s premier Christian business directory.” The guide is a free annual print publication with business display ads and lists of local Christian churches, ministries and schools in each region in which the directory is published.

“The Shepherd’s Guide” is available in nine cities and regions around North Carolina, and in some 100 cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Doug Scheidt founded International Publications Inc., corporate parent of The Shepherd’s Guide, in Baltimore in 1979, and still serves as its president. The first print directory came out in Baltimore in 1980. An online directory was launched in 2003, and the Web site, www.shepherdsguide.com, was revamped in March of this year to include an interactive events calendar and a classified ad section.

According to the online site, 3.5 million copies of the print guide are distributed on the North American continent annually. They are usually found in restaurants and other businesses that advertise in the guide.

Businesses pay for the ads in the guide, but area churches and religious organizations are listed in each directory for free. Dave Moyer, vice president of International Publications in Baltimore, said in a telephone interview that “The Shepherd’s Guide” is a for-profit venture, “but not for the sake of profit.”

In the company’s first two decades, “The Shepherd’s Guide” sold franchises to those who wished to publish a local Christian Yellow Pages book. Now there is a licensor-licensee arrangement, Moyer said, and those who own a local book are called publishers. Often these are single owners, or a husband-and-wife team.

The average book earns about $75,000 a year for its individual regional publishers.

There are 55 publishers in North America, and each publisher covers two markets. The guides for both the Triangle and the Piedmont Triad (which covers Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) are based in McLeansville. The local publishers are Les and Nancy Helms.

The most recent Triangle guide is the 15th annual edition, and covers April 2008-March 2009. At the close of a statement at the front of the guide, the Helmses sign off with the salutation, “For the King and His Kingdom & on behalf of the Shepherd’s Guide Staff.”

Each publisher typically employs one or two salespeople who call on businesses. Before a business can advertise in “The Shepherd’s Guide,” the publisher and the business owner meet to assure each party the business is a good fit.

Bryan Yeargan, who owns Yeargan’s Top Notch Automotive in Carrboro with his wife Joanie, has advertised on and off in the guide for 15 years. “I feel I’m supporting other Christian-owned businesses” by advertising in the book, he said. He said he probably gets two to three customers a month from the guide.

“Customers come in and say, ‘It just feels good to have a brother in Christ work on my car,’ ” he said. “They feel like they won’t get ripped off.”

Yeargan said he gets many non-Christian customers, even though he has a Christian fish symbol prominently displayed on his shop. He says he has never had a negative reaction or a disagreement over religion with a customer.

Yeargan said some customers have commented, “I see we may have a difference of opinion on who to vote for.” He says his reply is, “We’re working on your car and you’re paying me, so we don’t have to discuss politics.”

Yeargan, a Baptist, said that his meeting with the local Shepherd’s Guide publishers prior to placing an ad was a good experience. “They talk about where you go to church, get your testimony,” he said.

The company’s Web site says “the goal of ‘The Shepherd’s Guide’ is to help bring the Christian community closer together while providing Christians in business a unique way to communicate their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.” Advertisers are offered the opportunity to sign a statement of faith.

Moyer says that businesses are not required to sign the statement, but the ones who do have a small silhouette of a shepherd with his sheep appear in the lower right-hand corner of their ad.

“The Shepherd’s Guide” corporate office has 15 staffers, and four are devoted to creating the graphics for the regional display ads, such as Yeargan’s. They also create Bible verse graphics that can be used throughout the books to fill space between the ads. All books are printed in and shipped out of Oklahoma City.

Church listings with address and phone number are free. Churches may ask to be listed in the directory, as long as they adhere to the philosophy spelled out in the statement of faith. “It’s pretty clear that it’s a Christian Orthodox statement,” Moyer said.

“Any denomination can be part of the book,” he said. “Any Christian denomination.”

In the Triangle edition of the directory, 233 Baptist churches are listed. There are Church of Christ and Church of God churches, as well as Lutheran, Episcopal and Methodist and others. There are no listings for Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons.

“It’s not our policy to prohibit a Catholic Church from advertising,” Moyer says. “Although that would be the decision of the individual publisher, I would tell you that most publishers would gladly list that Catholic Church.”

Moyer said he is aware of at least 100 religion-specific directories around the nation, and there are probably many more than that. A cursory Web search turned up numerous listings for assorted guides, from Catholics Supporting Catholics in Southern California, to the Jewish Yellow Pages in Kew Gardens, N.Y., to the Muslim Yellow Pages in Garland, Texas.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, would not be included in the Shepherd’s Guide church listings, Moyer said, for doctrinal reasons. “Nor would we do Jehovah’s Witnesses, nor would we probably do a Church of Scientology.”

A Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon could not sign the company’s statement of faith in good conscience as written, he said. “That does not mean that Shepherd’s Guide thinks that they’re not qualified to be good businesspeople or to be good folks.”

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