7 Simple But Effective Ways Church Members Can Appreciate Their Pastor

It’s Pastor Appreciation Month, and you may find yourself wondering what you can do to show your appreciation to your pastor this month or any other month. Here are seven simple but effective ways (plus over 20 examples) church members can show their appreciation to their pastors during and after the month of October.

1) Show love to your pastor’s family.
Throughout the year, pastors must often forfeit time with their families to love and support their church families. It can be hard to strike a healthy balance between serving both the family at home and the family at church well. Your pastor likely feels that tension. So, one of the best ways you can show appreciation is by loving your pastor’s family.

Learn as much as you can about your pastor’s spouse, children, or even grand children. And then come up with ideas to make it easy for your pastor to enjoy family time.

A.Offer free babysitting for a night so your pastor his/her spouse can go out to eat.
B. Pay for tickets for the whole family to go to your nearest, local amusement park with some extra money for food and games.
C. Put together a basket to make it really easy for the family to enjoy backyard campfires.
D. If your pastor’s family enjoys board games, buy them the newest version or expansion pack of their favorite game.
E. Do they like playing sports together? Update some of their equipment.
F. If you’re good at planning, take the effort out of a family day out, and write up some itineraries for fun filled days exploring local attractions and restaurants.

2) Tell your pastor about the effect his/her ministry has had on your life.
Part of why pastors are in ministry is because they want to help people. Sometimes they grow discouraged because they don’t realize the difference they’re making in their congregations’ lives. You can change that! With just a simple hand-written note in a card, you lift your pastor’s spirits. Just be genuine, and specific. Let your pastor know:

A. How God used a specific sermon/series in your life.
B. How his/her example of Godly living has encouraged you.
C. How you notice and appreciate the sacrifices he/she makes to serve you and others in the church.
D. How you’ve grown in your faith and in your study of the word after sitting under his preaching.
E. Of a time where you were struggling and the Lord used something he/she said or did to lift you up.

3) Get more involved in your church.
One of the best ways to show appreciation to your pastor is to show up. As pastors work to organize events, and ask for help, it can be disheartening to have few attend or raise a hand to help. Even if you’re in a very busy season of life, commit to being just a little bit more involved than you already are.

Here are some examples of goals you can set for getting more involved even in the busiest seasons of life:

A. Ask your pastor what you could do to help during Sunday service once a month.
B. If you have a hard time making it for weekly prayer meetings, commit to attending just one more a month than you usually do.
C. Share a list of your skills/gifts/talents and ask which ministry you could get plugged into.
D. Pray about increasing your tithes and offerings.

4) Pray for your pastor and ask others to pray too.
The best thing we can do for our pastors to encourage and love them is to pray for them. Here’s a list of ways to cover your pastor in prayer and encourage others to do so.

A. Recommit to praying daily for your pastor as a family. Ask your family to hold each other accountable.
B. Ask your pastor for specific ways the congregation can be praying. Then with your pastors’ and/or elders’ approval arrange and distribute a calendar where the church body can commit to praying for specific requests each day/week.
C. Create a calendar for the year and ask families to sign up to pray for your pastor every day for that month. Offer specific prayer points. And send reminders when their month is approaching.

5) Help your pastor fulfill his/her responsibilities at home.
This point goes along with point number one. Between trying to balance serving the church, and serving and leading their families, pastors also have to find time to keep their homes running smoothly. Pastors experience broken washer machines, and cars that break down, and yards to mow just like the rest of us. Think outside the box and use skills that you and others in your ministry have to serve your pastor at home.

A. Consider organizing a ministry of people who are handy who the pastor can call when things go awry.
B. Have the church teens offer a day of free landscaping to your pastor and his neighborhood.
C. If you’re a mechanic or know one, offer you pastor a free oil change and tire rotation.
D. Offer a maintenance day in the fall and spring where people from your ministry show up and do repair work.

6) Help your fellow church members write notes, texts, emails expressing how much they appreciate the pastor.
Plan to keep your pastor lifted up with genuine encouragement from the entire congregation.

Find a way to reach as many of your church members as possible without making announcement the pastor is going to hear (maybe an email, or maybe reach out by contacting all the home group leaders in your church and asking them to share with their groups). Then, you can do this one of two ways.

A. Communicate with fellow members asking everyone to, as they feel led, reach out to the pastor with an encouraging communication showing their appreciation.
B. Create a schedule for the next three to six months. Each week, reach out to the assigned person on your schedule and ask them to reach out to the pastor that week with an encouraging word.
C. Plus, set a reminder on your phone for yourself to reach out one Sunday a month thanking your pastor for something specific that month, whether it’s a sermon, or an event they held etc.

7) Give your pastor effective church management software.
Does your church have a way to effectively manage the ministry and make it easy for your pastor to serve and build ministry relationships with the members?

Servant Keeper church software will help your pastor save time and manage ministry well. Your pastor will find help to do everything from tracking attendance, to communicating with other team members, and even to help with visitation and counseling.

Plus, there are plenty of tools to keep the rest of your ministry team running well, and even to help your members connect.

Ask us today how a more effective, efficient, healthy ministry is possible with Servant Keeper. And we’ll share with you more specific ways that Servant Keeper will help your pastor specifically.