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Here are 11 ideas to celebrate your pastor, perfect for your small church – whether it’s Pastor Appreciation Day, a birthday, or any time of the year.
Whether you are in a church of 10 or 100, appreciating your pastor is easier than you think. There’s no reason to stress out or get overwhelmed searching the internet for dozens of ideas that won’t work in your small church.
These 11 ideas are perfect for any size congregation. Choose one or choose them all and scatter them throughout the month or all year long.
Why Celebrate Your Pastor?
Pastors have challenging jobs, and they are put in tough positions more than most people know. Many people in a congregation don’t realize the stress and pressures that pastors feel – in fact, some think your pastor only works one day a week!
Celebrating your pastor gives everyone an opportunity to share their love and thankfulness. It also can be the boost your pastor needs to press on and accept the next challenge.
October Is Pastor Appreciation Month!
While the second Sunday in October is recognized as Pastor Appreciation Day, you can celebrate your pastor on any holiday, birthdays, or all year long! Some congregations choose to celebrate for the full month of October, with different things happening each week.
Here’s a list of ideas for small churches that don’t …
- Require a huge budget
- Need a lot of planning
- Need a big congregation
Whether you choose one or more of the ideas below, be sure to take time to promote your ideas well. Getting the word out (maybe even secretly!) to your congregation members will increase participation and excitement!
Budget-Friendly Ideas To Appreciate Your Pastor In A Small Church
1. Cards Of Appreciation For Your Pastor
Instead of just encouraging people to send cards, make it super easy by giving everyone a head start and providing the cards and an instant way to deliver them.
Start early in the month for better results! Place an empty basket as well as small piles of thank you cards and envelopes on a table in your church lobby. Packs of cards are fairly inexpensive. Dollar stores sell them in packs of 6 or 8 for $1.
Encourage your congregation members to take a card, write a note of appreciation to your pastor, and then return it to the basket. On the last Sunday of the month, give your pastor the basket filled with the cards.
2. Prayer Calendar For Pastor & Family
Print out a 31-day calendar with no month listed (or draw one on a piece of poster board). Ask congregation members to commit to praying for your pastor & family once a month, on a given date.
People put their initials on the date that they commit to praying for your pastor; they can choose more than one day if they want. Present the calendar to your pastor, letting him know that your congregation cares about him and covers him in prayer.
(Hopefully, on each date you have at least one person praying.)
3. Pastor Survival Kit
Present this to your pastor during a church service. Put these items in a small box with the following explanations:
- Pack of lifesavers: for the times you were a lifesaver to me.
- Gum: because you help everyone stick together.
- Rubber door stop: because your door is always open to us.
- Hershey kisses: to remind you that your church loves you.
- Rubber band: because you challenge us to stretch and grow.
- Puzzle piece: because you are an important piece of what God is doing at our church.
- Cotton ball: to soften any rough times ahead.
4. Throw A “Dinner For The Week Party” For Pastor Appreciation
Encourage congregation members to bring in a future meal for the pastor & family.
Ideas include restaurant gift cards, pre-made frozen meals, or a basket filled with everything needed to make the dinner (box of pasta, jar of sauce, cans of vegetables, box of Bisquick for biscuits, box of cookies, jar of applesauce).
5. Grow A “Gift Card Tree” For Your Pastor
Use either a small live tree, a fake tree, or “plant” a stick with several branches in a bucket of sand and rocks.
Ask congregation members to bring in gift cards of any denomination – even $5 coffee cards or hamburger cards. Clip them to the “tree” with mini binder clips or paper clips.
Either keep this a secret or have it in your welcome area at church for people to add their gift cards.
Allow 2 or 3 weeks for people to bring in cards. Then present it to your pastor during the church service.
(Special note about gift cards: Some people feel that a $5 gift card is of little value. Just let them know that if 4 people each bought a $5 gift card, that would be worth $20. A gift card of any amount is appreciated.)
6. Organize A Church Potluck Dinner Or BBQ To Celebrate Pastor Appreciation
Members should feel free to bring a card or gift, but it is not required.
Clever Food Signs For A Pastor Appreciation Dinner:
- Thank you for your “fruitful” leadership – fruit tray
- We “Do-nut” know what you’d do without him – box of doughnuts
- You make a “Mound” of difference in our church – Mounds candy bar
- We want “S’more” of your good teachings – sandwich baggies with a small chocolate bar, marshmallows, and 2 graham crackers
- Your “commit-mint” to our church is appreciated” – bowl of mints
- Thank you for helping us “grow” – make this a sign and put it in a plant
7. Host An Award Ceremony For Your Pastor
Give awards for the best smile, funniest joke, best sermon, snazziest dressed pastor, etc. ALL awards go to the pastor! Be creative and create an award for anything wonderful or great about your pastor. Make certificates, trophies, medals, or prizes to go with each category.
8. Pastor Appreciation Coupon Book
Ask a youth group, men’s group, or any other group, to create coupons for a themed workday like “outside workday at the pastor’s house” to do yard work, trim bushes, sweep the walk, etc.
9. Pastor Appreciation Hand-Made Cards
Hand-made cards from KidsChurch, youth group, other ministries, or families in your church will always mean a great deal!
10. Pastor’s Favorites Basket
Create an All-About-You Basket filled with the pastor’s favorites: favorite candy, favorite cookies, favorite snacks, wall art of favorite Bible verse, something to support his hobbies (guitar picks, fishing lures, bookmarks, golf balls, etc.), a bag of his favorite brand of coffee, or gift cards to his favorite restaurant or coffee shop.
11. Fill The Mailbox Campaign
Schedule parishioners so that each day of the month at least one person mails a card to the pastor. Don’t limit the cards; if one family wants to send a card every week or a card each day, welcome the idea!
Do You Have Another Idea That Has Worked Well In Your Small Church?
These are some of our favorite ideas. If you have other great ideas, leave your favorite ideas in the comments below – maybe you’ll see them in a future post!
Looking For Other Appreciation Ideas? Check Out …
Very uplifting ideas. May I copy and paste a few of your ideas on our church Facebook page? People really don’t know how much work our pastor does for us . May God continue to bless you.
Yes! So glad it is helpful! You can absolutely share some of the ideas for use in your local church. Just make sure to attribute to http://www.thecreativelittlechurch.com 🙂
We made a tree, by painting a branch and imbedding in a can of gravel, and cut out leaves from paper in fall colors, in the shape of praying hands. Each leaf was cut on a fold in the paper, so it could open and have writing hidden inside. We mailed these, one for each family member, to each family that were members. (If John and Mary had 3 kids, we sent 5 leaves to their home.)
The instructions were to write a special thankyou for something the pastor had done, and bring it to church. We hung them on the tree with tree ornament hangers. It really looked amazing.
Then we took a special collection, cooked his favorite foods and favorite desserts and gave a huge party at the church. Also had a skit and someone had written a poem. It was a gala affair! Ha!
And he liked it a lot.
One year, before we were members there, the women made a friendship quilt. That was VERY well-received and hardly costs anything. A very elderly woman was delighted to show them how to quilt it, many hands made light work, and it really did not cost much at all.
WOW!!! Thank you for sharing!
One years one of our older ladies wrote up a tribute to our pastor as our shepherd. She included verses about shepherd and sheep, and included personal examples of things he had done as our shepherd. She had also found some tiny toy white fluffy sheep that when squeezed said “Baaaa”. She handed thise to some of the congregation ahead of time to hold secretly. Then as she read the tribute each time she said the word “sheep” the folks squeezed their sheep and the “Baaaing” was heard throughout the church. At the end she gave him all the sheep. It was a fun little presentation.
Another year we based our tribute on the verses about how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel. Had the pastor sit down and put his feet up on a stool and relax. Again using various scripture and personal examples of our pastor through the year. At the end of the presentation. We gave him a small plastic tub filled with foot products.
I love this so much!! Thank you for sharing such beautiful ideas!!
Do you have the tribute letter you use for your pastor available to share. I love that idea and would like to get more details on how you did it
Hi Anna! – I do not have a tribute letter however our Facebook community is an incredible resource for these types of things! Are you part of it yet? If not, here’s the link to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry/
If you post your question in there, we can even help tag a few people to get some more ideas too!
Great ideas….thank you for publishing the pastor appreciation celebrations. At our church we choose a different theme each year. This year it is “The Vision and the Victory”. Last year it was “Rise Up O Men of God”. We decorate our social hall according and have a church wide meal. All departments make cards, Sunday school classes, children department etc. we incorporate our worship leader as well.
Wow. It sounds like you do a great job appreciating your pastor! I’m sure they are blessed!
That is great! Your pastors are blessed to have such supportive church! I love that all departments make cards – that’s amazing!
We cut out sheep. Every family wrote on the back of their sheep. Then we put the sheep in the church yard for the pastor to see on Sunday morning. He was overwhelmed.
Sweet! What a beautiful showing of so much love! Thank you for sharing this!
That is a great idea! I love putting the sheep in the church yard, that would’ve so amazing to see!!
This year we set up a video spot in our church’s cry room after service (it’s decorated simply and peacefully for the moms), and slipped everyone a small flyer telling them to stop by the cry room before they leave, to record a short ‘thank you’ for the pastors. We assured them that it didn’t need to be long or eloquent; it could *literally* just be “thank you,” because we’d love to have dozens of simple “thank yous” too! When the pressure of eloquence was removed, LOTS of people participated! Our team is editing the videos together; full length versions to give each of the pastors, as well as a shorter video montage of short clips reflecting how our pastors have touched peoples’ lives. The short montage ends with all of those, “thank you,” “thank you,” “thank yous”. I am not usually a mushy person, but I LOVE it, and can’t wait for them to see it!
That’s a beautiful idea! Are you in our FB community? I’d love to share this idea there too!
That’s a fantastic idea! I love doing it in the cry room just because it takes the pressure off even more to be perfect… less people watching you. thanks so much for sharing !
WE made a large card from poster board and wrote a story about the pastor and his life. We used candy bars to tell the story such as Baby Ruth’s, Hershey Kisses, Fifth Avenue, Butter Finger etc. It was real cute and everyone really enjoyed it.
That’s AWESOME! Thank you for sharing!