October: Pastor Appreciation Month. Just the kind of thing Hallmark would invent to sell more cards.
That’s what I figured at first.
Several years ago, when I received my first pastor’s appreciation greeting card, I shrugged, “Ah, another lame holiday to put on the calendar.” Then I re-read the card, and, you know, I felt the love. The printed poem and scribbled note expressed sincere appreciation and affection.
Soon I received a few other cards and recognized that all the card-senders were the folks that listen to KSBJ radio — the local contemporary Christian station in Houston. I tuned in, and, wow, the radio show hosts were urging their listeners to love their pastors in tangible ways. And, on their invitation, listeners were calling in to broadcast their thanks for the service of their own pastors.
Why? Why show special appreciation to your pastor(s) or commissioned lay pastor(s)? Isn’t a paycheck enough? A few folks get their own appreciation days (administrative assistants, laborers, veterans, moms, dads, God), but who gets a whole month? Frankly, shouldn’t we be expressing thanks to one another all the time, without making a holiday out of it? As Robert Caspar Lintner said, “Thanksgiving wasn’t intended to be shut up into a single day” (or a single month, for that matter.)
Why do it?
Because a pastor’s relationship to the congregation is profoundly complicated: unlike any other. The pastor is employed by the congregation to be its leader. She provides continuing education, spiritual encouragement, motivational prompting, emotional comfort, and moral correction. He is seen as different – God’s representative – yet a regular part of the family (in the old days, some country folks would set an extra place at the table in case the parson should drop by.)
The pastor once felt a profound heaven-expressed call to this vocation, yet that call required and continues to require confirmation by a group of people. She hopes someday to hear from God, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant,” yet she also enjoys hearing from the members, “Great sermon today, Pastor” or “God spoke to me through you” or, simply, “Thanks.”
And this is where the problem lies. Many of our pastors are drowning in a sea of loneliness and congregational coolness. The vocational obligations can accumulate to a 24/7work schedule, unrequited affections, interpersonal alienation, and spiritual exhaustion. When the calling is pursued valiantly, and is met with disinterest or contempt, it can crush a person’s spirit.
Vince Lombardi, the greatest football coach of all time often said, “Praise in public, criticize in private.” Most churches are notoriously guilty of doing the opposite.
That’s why we in the Outlook came up with the idea of selling classified ads modeled after those KSBJ phone calls and local newspapers’ Valentines Day personals – where congregations and others could express a very public thanks to their pastors for a nominal price.
That’s also why we have tried to offer some insights to church members as well as pastors to help us better understand the complex dynamics of pastoral ministry, and hopefully to remind all of us to do the obvious — love and be loved.
How do you show your love and appreciation to your pastor? And while we’re at it, how do you show love and appreciation to your pastor’s spouse, if one is in the picture? He or she may well be sacrificing even more for being in that position, and that spouse is even more likely to feel taken for granted.
Many are the ways to show love — from a bouquet of flowers to a gift certificate for a weekend at the beach, from a nice dinner out to a sabbatical journey, from a new preaching stole to – yes – a Hallmark card, from a “So how are you doing, Pastor, really?” to a “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
Appreciation of pastors ought not be shut up into one month of the year. Maybe someday we can drop the whole calendar thing by being such appreciative people that it will feel like a redundancy. In the meantime, let’s work at showing our appreciation in the here and now, this October: Pastor Appreciation Month.
— Jack Haberer
