Wendy Puffer: Designing a Shepherding Relationship

Designing a Shepherding Relationship

Shepherding to Wendy Puffer by Amy Boyle

Wendy Puffer is a designer, entrepreneur, teacher, CEO, and soon-to-be grandmother.

She is a sixty-something “discontent with the status quo,” and her shepherding story is no exception to demonstrating so.

From growing up a pastor’s kid, to becoming a student of design, serving with CRU, raising children of her own, pioneering academic initiatives at Indiana Wesleyan and even founding Marion Design Co., Puffer’s life has and continues to be an artistic journey, demonstrating discipleship from a design thinking perspective.

Her life frames design as more than “merely a visual act,” but also “a way of being and acting that is different for every person.” Discipleship, she describes, is the “showing up... prodding, and presence in the pasture of another’s pain.”

“Fully human with the capacity to do Holy Spirit-like things... stepping into spaces to help others” see where God wants them to go, and learning to let go of what you cannot control.

There is “no right or wrong” design, Wendy reminds. Because, relationships are not textbooks and ultimately, the Holy Spirit who’s at the center will bridge the gap.

In Wendy’s words, this “unpeeling of the human being... from what keeps them from following Christ,” is the design and definition of shepherding.

From family to students or clients to coworkers, there are many pastures where Wendy has experienced shepherding of her own, and many others where she has extended it to others.

Beauty and creative arts have become her design and pasture in discipleship relationships.

Puffer’s introduction to the creative industry became more involved when, as a young adult, she enrolled as an Interior Design student during the early 80s.

Around that same time, Wendy served with a college ministry in Chicago, where she came to a clearer sense of shepherding upon meeting Becky, a woman whose kindness and friendship emboldened her “to do things I didn’t feel safe to do before.”

Shortly after graduating, she became a mom. While her children were still young, she returned to school to continue her education at Ball State, where she learned skills to teach, which eventually led her into an adjunct position in the Arts Division at Indiana Wesleyan... the beginning of over two decades she’d come to spend in education.

Even before being full-time at IWU, Wendy was intent on being available and accessible to connect with students. So, the art storage room became her office, and the struggle to shed expectation of returns was born, as she learned to shepherd as a teacher, not just a friend.

As a faculty member, Wendy wrote the interior design program that would later be called, “Design for Social Impact,” which eventually gave way to Marion inviting her team to design a logo for the city. So what started as a 2015 summer project with seven unpaid interns and the support of surrounding organizations and community members birthed a business and movement which Wendy now shepherds as the CEO... Marion Design Co.

For Wendy, what began as a design request, turned into a full-time business in the creative industry, where she now shepherds a pasture she describes as “the hardest yet.”

Finding others who she can be discipled by, as a female business owner, is admittedly challenging, and the regular responsibilities of resourcing those she leads is always unfolding.

“There was a Saturday,” Puffer recalls, “when a homeless man entered and was not respectful of the space” while she and another were working. She remembered him entering the Design Co., its adjoining AirBnb with an “erratic” and "aggressive" presence.

“He came in cleaned-up a couple of months ago,” she recounted.

Initially unrecognizable and full of apology, “he has come in every other day since,” to gaze at a photograph that caught his eye. So the team, after noticing how the man kept returning to see the image, decided to gift it to him.

“You don’t know what someone’s needs are, but you don’t have to,” to ask “how do we meet them?” Wendy shared.

To Wendy, shepherding—whether witnessing unhoused walk-ins or coming alongside coworkers through consistent check-ins—is “knowing the sheep well enough to... learn what kind of leader they need” and recognize “whether I am the person to meet the need or not.”

Now, in her mid-sixties, the design is shifting. While the creative industry remains her pasture, Wendy is learning a new way of shepherding... from parenting and teaching, to now grandparenting and business leading.

“Balancing the pressures of being profitable...” while staying committed to the unpaid “slow work” of “person-oriented” shepherding, is not straightforward or perfect in design. However, it is the honest “unpeeling of the human being” from what keeps him or her from following Christ.