Building on the idea of October being pastor’s appreciation month, we recently had a community expression of thanks to pastors that I think could be duplicated by other communities. In our case, we worked through an ecumenical counseling agency but it would be equally if not more effective to work through denominational judicatories. I will describe the process with that in mind.
The event was a community wide banquet of appreciation for pastors and their spouses. It took place in a small city in which there were churches from most denominations present. The first step is for the judicatory leaders to communicate with each other and agree upon a date for the event. Then, someone needs to find a local hotel or conference center and negotiate a price for the room and food choices for the banquet. We wanted this to be a nice event so we chose a buffet of several entrees, salads, and desserts. The cost for the event was around $40 per person.
Next, we communicated with the churches in our community. The biggest challenge was securing the contact information for a lay leader in each congregation. For this event, you can not work through the pastor. They were contacted and asked to do two things. First, to agree to pay $50 for their pastor and $50 for his or her spouse to cover the cost of the event and inform the pastor that s/he was to set aside that night for a banquet with their spouse. Next, they were to compose a letter of appreciation about the pastor’s work and send it along with the money as part of the reservation.
Each of those letters was delivered to the pastor at the banquet. In addition, ten times throughout the night one of the pastor’s names was drawn and the pastor and spouse were given a free night at a local bed and breakfast. The cost of this was drawn from the money collected beyond the cost of the meal. We contracted with a local musician to take a familiar hymn tune and compose new words for it that celebrated the work of ministry. This was sung during the night as an anthem of appreciation for their work. We invited a special speaker to address the challenge of the pastorate as well as a comedian to add some levity to the event.
The end result was a fun evening that celebrated and expressed appreciation for the pastors of our community and strengthened the ecumenical bonds among them. It can be a good way that the judicatories can nurture the life of their hard working pastors.
