How to Get Freelance Ministry Talent for Your Church — A Step-by-Step Guide to Shaar

Ready to expand your flexible, remote team? Great. We are here for you.

In case you didn’t already know, Shaar is a platform (like Upwork or Fiverr) where churches can get freelance ministry talent on demand.

Problem: Church needs someone to edit Sunday sermons. No one on staff has the bandwidth to do it. People are getting stressed out. It has been suggested that someone could be hired to do the extra work, but the church doesn’t have the budget for another employee.

Solution: Go to Shaar.work, make a profile and post a project. Get proposals from freelancers (usually within the first day), all with transparent pricing and allowed number of revisions. Pick your freelancer. Pay Shaar (and don’t worry about a 1099, we handle that). Receive your videos. If necessary, you can set this project to recur weekly. Done.

Now then, I’ll pull back the curtain so you can see how it works. Let’s break it down…

Step One: Email, Church Name & Password

Setting up your profile should not take longer than 5 minutes. Here’s what to expect:

Once you type in your email and hit “Go,” you’ll be taken to a screen where you begin your profile as a Freelancer or a Church.

You enter your email again, the name of your church and choose a password. Or you can just click one of the links below to enter with Google or Facebook.

Enter a referral code if you have one. The code lets us know if you heard about Shaar from one of our Network Partners.

Step Two: Church Information

On the next screen, you’ll get this pop up. You don’t have to fill this information out right away, but it will only take a couple minutes.

For your church’s description, you can follow Pastor Will’s example — just copy and paste from your church’s website.

Once you enter the information, the pop up will disappear and you’ll see your church’s profile nearly complete.

Step Three: Profile picture (Optional)

Click the pencil icon in the top right-hand corner of the first box, then click the profile photo to upload an image. You can use your picture or your church’s logo.

Step Four: Post a Project

There are a few ways to go about this step. First, click the Post a Project button on the left-hand menu.

You’ll see this.

If you find that screen overwhelming, or you’re not sure what to put, you have two options.

Option 1: Return to the previous screen and click on the Resources tab on the left-hand menu.

Here, you’ll find project guides that walk you through some of our most popular projects, videos to help you understand the platform and links to our helpful articles.

If you still don’t know what to do after looking through the guides, you can click the delightfully green “Get Help” button.

Click on “Let’s Get Started” and you’ll be whisked away to Matt’s Calendly link where you can pick a time that works best for you.

Be aware that you may speak to another member of the Shaar team, but rest assured, we can get your project posted. Once you pick your time, you’ll get an email to confirm and you’ll be on your way to posting a project.

Once you post your project, you should start receiving proposals from freelancers within the first few days. Most projects have proposals within hours of being posted.

Once you select the proposal you want, you will pay Shaar. Shaar will hold the money until the project is completed to the church’s satisfaction (in accordance with the number of revisions agreed to in the initial proposal). Once the church accepts the final product, Shaar releases payment to the freelancer.

We do payment this way to provide churches with the assurance that the freelancer will complete the work and freelancers with the knowledge that the church will pay for the work. Shaar takes care of all the accounting documentation, so the church doesn’t need to worry about issuing a 1099 at the end of the year (although we always recommend churches keep records of the work done through Shaar).

That’s about it. It took longer to read this article than it will take to get started on Shaar, so what are you waiting for? Tally ho!

If you come across any further problems or have a question, you can always send us an email at info@shaar.work. A member of our team will happily respond to your request.