October is Clergy Appreciation Month (CAM). Here are some ideas for demonstrating your appreciation to the ministry staff at your church…

Update September 16th: Right now, the most popular search leading to this site is for ideas for Pastor Appreciation Sunday. You may have some suggestions for what your church has done to bless your pastor. If so, tell us in the comments below.

Pastors – (you may post anonymously) tell us what you WISH your church would do for you. I remember that, when I was pastoring, one of the primary desires for me is to be relieved of my “opportunity” to preach on Pastor Appreciation Sunday.

Here are a couple “one line” descriptions that I found  on the Internet – to get you started.

• Oct 11 Pastor Appreciation Day. Oct 13 Flu Shots Given in Conjunction with… (actually, I think this was not intended as part of Pastor Appreciation <grin> but it comes across that way at first reading…
• Plan a Beach Party or Bonfire. This is actually a pretty cool way to show the pastor that he *IS* allowed to have fun sometimes (under proper supervision, of course)

Update: Here are a couple other ideas to show your pastor that you appreciate his/her care for your church family:

• Today’s Christian offers a post “8 Ways to Encourage your pastor“: http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/1999/sepoct/9r5035.html ( Actually, these could – should? – be used all year round.)
• They also have “9 Ways to Love Your Pastor“: http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2001/sepoct/1.11.html
• And “Ideas to Honor Your Pastor“: http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/clergy/features/honor.html

A few of *MY* favorites:

• Give your pastor & spouse an UNEXPECTED PAID VACATION!
  
• Display a visual of your pastor’s life (old photos, etc) in a prominent place
• Play a video in church of short testimonies from members of how your pastor has made a difference in their lives

Updated again:

Focus on the Family’s pastoral support site Parsonage.org has a Clergy Appreciation Month guide available for download (in PDF). Here are some that I like from the guide…

• Invite the extended family of your pastor to visit and assist them by underwriting the cost.
• Schedule a family portrait sitting or other similar activities.
• Distribute individual quilt squares to congregation members and encourage each contributing family to personalize its square. The finished quilt would become a long-lasting reminder of appreciation.
• Have various congregation members sign up for each day of the month on which they would assume responsibility for providing some tangible expression of appreciation (meals, handcrafts, small gifts, bouquets of flowers or balloons, personal poetry). This will assure that your pastoral family feels affirmed throughout the entire month.

We will run this article for a couple more weeks and see how many suggestions we can get. Then I will update the LISTING of suggestions again.

HOW ABOUT POSTING YOUR IDEAS IN THE COMMENT BOX?

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Pastor Appreciation

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