Is your pastor a gangster?  Like the good kind of gangster that is always encouraging you and will always show up in your time of need?

If so you'll want to make a special effort to let him know sometime during October during Pastor Appreciation Month!!

Here are some ideas for you.  Get a card but make sure write something that conveys what they mean to you.  Skip the "Thank you for all you do for me" and just tell them what they mean to you!  Tell them about an actual moment their work touched you in an unforgettable way. The formula is simple: one specific memory, one sentence about what changed, one verse.

Something like: "Two years ago you preached on the manna, and I stopped stockpiling worry. Our family still talks about it." Or: "You sat with us in the hallway at St. Joseph's until 2am. We have never forgotten." Pastors hear "great sermon" every single Sunday. They almost never hear which sermon mattered, to whom, and what happened next. That sentence is the whole gift.

These are the passages written for exactly this. Pick one, not five.

"But we ask you, brothers, to acknowledge those who work diligently among you, who preside over you in the Lord and give you instruction. In love, hold them in highest regard because of their work." (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13). This is the pastor-appreciation verse, written before the month existed.

"Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9). For the pastor in a hard season. Every pastor is in more of a hard season than the congregation can see.

"Elders who lead effectively are worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching." (1 Timothy 5:17). Honor, in Scripture, is not a feeling. It is something you do.

"But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:31). The classic, and still the right one for a shepherd running on fumes.

There is a fuller list, verses to send and verses to pray, at Bible verses for pastors.

These are legit suggestions.  Please let me know what you decided to do here!

1. Pray for them by name, on a schedule. Paul asked the churches for exactly two things: words and boldness (Ephesians 6:19-20). Tell your pastor you are praying for them every Tuesday morning, and then actually do it. Tell them which day! It changes their Tuesdays.

2. Give them a real Sunday off. Not vacation they have to arrange coverage for. A Sunday where the elders have already handled everything and the only instruction is: worship somewhere you are nobody's pastor.

3. Collect notes, not signatures. A card signed by forty people reads once. Forty index cards, each with one specific memory, gets kept in a desk drawer and reread in February when ministry is hardest.

4. Appreciate the family too. The pastor's spouse carries a ministry nobody claps for, and pastors' kids share their parent with two hundred people. A separate card for the family says you see the whole cost.

5. Fund rest, not stuff. If the church is spending money, spend it on a retreat, a counseling stipend, or a night away, the things a pastor's budget and conscience never allow them to buy for themselves.

6. Show up changed. Hebrews 13:17 says to let leaders lead "with joy and not with grief, for that would be of no advantage to you." The deepest appreciation a pastor ever receives is a congregation that actually does the thing they have been preaching. What sermon from this year could you put into practice this month, and then tell them about?

7. Say it in public. Appreciation whispered privately is kind. Appreciation spoken where the congregation, the elders and the pastor's own kids can hear it is fuel. Has your church ever heard, out loud, what your pastor's ministry has cost and produced?

Pastor Appreciation Month (some churches call it Clergy Appreciation Month) settled onto October in the early 1990s, when Christian organizations began promoting a set-aside month the way the culture already had one for teachers and nurses. The idea is older than the marketing, though. Paul was organizing pastor appreciation in the first century; 1 Thessalonians 5 and 1 Timothy 5 are him telling churches, in writing, to honor the people who labor over them.

Here is the trouble with a month, and everyone quietly knows it: appreciation with a date on it can become appreciation with an expiration on it. The pastor who is drowning in February does not need October's card. So use the month the way you use an anniversary. It is not the only day you love someone. It is the day you make sure you said so.

Somebody probably sent you this page, and that was not an accident. Let them honor you! Many pastors are terrible at receiving what Scripture plainly says they are owed, deflecting every kindness back to the God who gets the glory anyway. Receiving well is part of shepherding too. It teaches a congregation that honor is normal.

And take the passage that is yours: "And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away." (1 Peter 5:4). The card aisle will do its best this October. The crown is not coming from the card aisle.

Pastors are professionally required to seem fine. They preach through their own dry seasons, counsel through their own grief, and generally cannot tell the congregation which weeks nearly broke them. Jeremiah 3:15 calls them "shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding", and shepherds, famously, eat last.

So the note you are hesitating to write, because it feels small? It is not small. It might be read twelve times. Write the Tuesday. Send the card. And do not wait for October to do it!

Go further: Bible verses for pastors · Tell the story of what your church's ministry meant: share a testimony