From the beginning, the Shepherd’s House staff began training youth leaders in churches how to deal with real problems. By the 1980’s we were working with an addiction research group while trained counselors were providing: family counseling, lay counselor training and a growing abuse recovery program that reached to about 200 churches. At one point Shepherd’s House was seeing over 1,200 appointments a month – almost all were sexually abused women. Many counseling innovations were introduced by Jane Willard who lead the staff strategically toward effective prayer interventions.

Shepherd's House established counseling centers in some ten local churches to better cover a large area including the San Fernando Valley, Simi Valley, San Gabriel Valley and the Antelope Valley. We worked publicly with these churches but privately with a number of high profile churches and ministries that publicly disavowed anything "tainted" by psychology. Shepherd's House earned the trust of even some of the strongest critics of Christian counseling and when they needed wisdom and help we worked with their pastors and people.

Perhaps the best way to understand this relationship between ministries that criticize psychology openly and seek some help privately is to think of picking and eating mushrooms. If you really know your mushrooms very well this is a tasty adventure. If you pick the wrong mushroom and get poisoned it is a very bad thing. Many pastors have watched the results of someone "eating" a poisoned (or even "magic") mushroom and are loath to tell people that mushrooms are safe to eat.

By the 1990’s Shepherd’s house was providing consultations to pastors about their toughest problems, providing training to professional and pastoral counselors at conferences across the nation and providing services to a high number of missionaries, pastors and counselors who were themselves suffering from traumas and addictions. Leaders with pain came for help for their personal lives and families. We also had a chance to examine and help a large number of "failed" leaders. We discovered frequent patterns.

1. Leaders who were pushed or pushed themselves beyond their earned maturity.
2. Leaders with a "slow leak" in their joy levels.
3. Leaders with unrecognized attachment pain.
   

While all these factors were corrosive, when they combined together the results were explosive. Leaders with huge gifting, high intelligence, charisma, early success and good education were most at risk if they had unhealed wounds or the leader was missing one or more of the joy related brain skills.

During the 1990’s Shepherd’s House undertook a careful review of why some people with the same level of trauma and treatment recovered while others did not. One visiting psychiatrist commented that the average case at Shepherd’s House was worse than the worst cases he saw in the hospitals where he consulted. The group ranged from victims of government torture to terrorism and multigenerational cults. Even with support from their churches most could not raise the fifteen million dollars estimated cost for a full professional recovery program. Some were healing with what they received and others just kept relapsing. The results of the case-by-case study at Shepherd’s House resulted in the creation of a new recovery model the staff called The Life Model describing the five elements it takes to thrive. The staff wrote an introductory version of these ideas in a book called Living From the Heart Jesus Gave You that is now in five languages and in its seventh printing.

By the 2000’s Shepherd’s House was training leaders and counselors internationally. Our offices had moved to Pasadena, California under the direction of Dr. Jim Wilder. We focused on developing the brain skills and prayer healing needed for people to live in joy. Recently published research indicated that heightened experiences of joy were required to recover, heal and grow as either an individual or as a group. Joy was the engine that drove thriving, recovery and even produced the strength needed for prevention of trauma and addiction. While all the Shepherd's House program development funds up to this point had come from counseling fees, it seemed unfair to “tax” the most wounded to develop a recovery program for the church and the world. Instead, Shepherd’s House developed books, tapes, videos and conferences that would teach the full range of thriving – from the brain skills to prayer ministry to multi-generational community growth. These programs, called THRIVE: Changing My Generation and Thriving: Recover Your Life, are probably the next step you, your family and church need but didn't know about until now.

Now it turns out that building joyful maturity and brain skills is not quick, easy, cheap, fast or painless. Most people who come for our training have tried all the easier and faster solutions but still did not have the character change they wanted or the thriving life either.

• Have you tried the easier, cheaper and quicker solutions and you still didn't thrive?
• Isn't it time you experienced some joy?
• Are you ready for some brain training?

The THRIVE and Thriving programs start with an entirely different understanding about how character is developed and changed. We have witnessed an increasing failure by contemporary Christianity to achieve moral and character change. Character failure has been only too blatant in one high profile leader after another. Instead of the standard 17th century philosophies that underlie what many American incorrectly view as the only "biblical" approach to developing character, the Life Model has made some strategic changes based on scripture and brain science.

At Shepherd's House we are pressing forward with applications of the life changing and maturity building aspects of the Life Model. We invite you to visit and share in our project development programs as a participant, donor, volunteer or by telling others what you are discovering that has changed your life. For more on our projects ...

You can read more about our philosophy of ministry.

Come experience the joy!