Brian how's it going good to see you finally in the video there so I'm good to
see you working it's not done yet I probably and you have three little ones come in it's hot out here
she's the middle yeah okay
hey everybody I have Brian Kluth here today and we're talking about ways you can bless your pastor and this is
something that Linda and I have really been interested in we have always had a
heart for our staff in particular but also our pastors that are church staff
and so tell me a little bit about some of the challenges because you were
pastor for a decade that pastors face and why this campaign you're putting
together something that you know we should get behind yeah the I think the
big thing is most people don't realize that Pastor struggle financially I mean
they put something in the plate and there's this kind of innate assumption
that the board probably takes care of the pastor and they do to the best of
their ability but but only 1% of pastors are in churches of over a thousand yeah
okay and so so what is it now so 80 percent or under 200 people and 55
percent under a hundred so in their small churches yeah and that's the
majority of churches in America yeah so and then 50% of pastors have make less
than fifty thousand a year even though they're working all the time it had
schooling and all that and then the other thing is 60 percent no retirement
no health care no benefits from the church so I'm the notes so unbenownst
Christians the pastors are kind of struggling but they don't really know
they can't really say - yeah yeah it's when they can't they can't go up on
Sunday morning and say that you know like it and so it's just a struggle that
a lot of them are bearing quietly yeah yeah very good I call it suffering in
silence yeah there you go you know the pastor and their wife they're just like
well we're serving God we're serving our people we'll just kind of try to make it
work you know that's the struggle and and so the Bless You Pastor kind of
really kind of works around that and it really tries to engage Christians
and church boards to really step up and do some pretty amazing things alright so
let's talk about some of the practical things that anybody can do to bless our
pastor let's just start diving into a few of them yeah I want is pray I mean we
just need to say that but but it's real I always say if you want a better prize
if you want a better pastor pray for the one you've got yeah correct prayer will
help shape that person to become a better person and a pastor and they need
the prayer and you need to practice I tell people that's so true like I
think about you know this is a lesson I learned with my wife Linda you know
because for so many years when you get began to get married you're like okay
there's this issue with my wife that I would love to see change and at least
for me I try to do it in the flesh try to do my own strength try to do it by
nagging whatever that doesn't work you know but prayer does and I've seen this
time and time again where I will pray for something that she's doing it's
bothering me or whatever and inevitably that thing will change or the thing in
me either way either way there's a change yeah it's her prayer is really
critical so I had a woman in my church she was like 88 years old she would come
up and say pastor here's what I pray for you every day
Wow if she had a list and she would say what do you want me to add to the list
yeah and I were like it was a great list so I added a few things but we put that
into this brochure flyer you know 16 ways to pray for your pastor you know marital
intimacy a spiritual spiritual time with God helping a sermon prep finances provisions
you know their child being parenting in their parenting skills how do you pray
for your pastor they need the prayer and so one of the things we want people to
do is really engage in prayer for their pastor yeah it's really their pastor and
their spouse and the family and church staff members it's all of that yeah yeah
great all right let's keep going what else one thing I like to tell people is
a gift cards are just like an amazingly good way to bless your pastor simple quick easy
yeah quick easy but game-changer so I was with a pastor a while back they did
not go out on a date for a year they they went on two dates
in an entire year and it was because they didn't have
childcare they had three kids you have three kids you know
and it was $60 for childcare and all they could do was afford to go to
Starbucks yeah so they only went out twice so when you get a pastor Starbucks
card gas card grocery card Lowe's Home Depot you know restaurant fast-food
absolutely will bless your pastor and it's something that anybody can do
whether it's ten dollars 25 50 hundred whatever it is it's really a great way
to really bless a pastor and to end and their family yeah and it's gonna get
used to use yeah gonna be wasted like you know cuz I I would watch our pastor
Christmas time and I'm curious view this experience but they'd get all kinds of
gifts which is great but a lot of them like I could tell because I knew my
pastor really well in church a long time I could tell he's not gonna be
interested in that but you know you know you obviously have to accept the gift
and you know graciously and you know it but I'm I right like no your gifts come
from a lot of people some gifts are gifts else are yeah yeah so what am i a little
story I had so I had a wife who had cancer and it was a tough journey but people
were bringing us food all right so they brought us food well some food isn't
that great so you got young kids they don't like it so then you have to answer
the question how do you what do you say to the person when they say how'd you
like the food so we came up with the the answer was food like that doesn't last
long in our house which is true and then they would thank me because they thought
we loved it so much but so there are gifts and our gifts yeah that's a whole
nother element of trickiness of the you know question behind the gift and the
follow-up and yeah anyway all right okay so gift cards all right what else
another big thing is services anything that somebody can do you know someone
who does tax returns they are a beautician a barber a
doctor a lawyer anyone who has a profession if you offer that service not
a discount I will give you 20% off pastor no offering that service to the pastor
and the spouse or the staff it's a really really huge benefit because a lot of
times they can't afford services and it's really a big help but even
something as simple as cutting the grass a pastor works 50 60 70 hours a week if
somebody steps up just says hey pastor I'll take care of that or we'll plant
flowers in your garden I mean just any kind of a service thing you can do for a
pastor or staff member is just huge that that's a big big thing I remember
actually remember that pastor the church we're at in st. Louis actually I believe
somebody snuck over to their house and while they're on vacation or something
like just planted all these flowers and did all this stuff then we heard about
in the service you know I had a pastor recently telling me he was telling me
that 10 people did that once at his house now it happened 25 years ago and
he was crying this is like three months ago he was crying 25 years later over
the fact that people came his wife was bedridden at the time with a pregnancy
and and people came from his Bible study group and just to totally took care of
the garden in the yard and he was crying 25 years later yeah touched he was yeah
okay so what else another thing if people have vacation homes or timeshare
or mileage points I mean that's a really pastor's frequently cannot
travel their families cannot take a vacation and if somebody offers them get
a place to stay for vacation or gives a mileage point it completely changes the
dynamic for that couple for that family or for that pastor even go into
conferences sometimes they can't go to national pastors conference because they
can't afford to get there and if somebody steps up that's a really really
big one yeah yeah that's cool that's really cool because we we've got a whole
bunch of points my wife and I on some of our credit cards and we've been able to
you know fly other people places to places yeah and that it doesn't even
feel like money you know it is a form of currency but it's like it doesn't really
feel like it so it's so much easier to give so that's a great idea yeah and I
just recently did I got the Southwest credit card thing going so I got all the
points like in a free companion pass so just yesterday I email
my pastor he's always said because I work out of I live in Denver but work
out I mean my office the national office is in DC and my pastor so I really want
to go to Washington DC with you sometime share the hotel room and now I have a
Southwest companion pass he can come for free yeah so the hotels paid for and the
flights paid for and all he has to do is come with me for a couple days and he's
gonna see he's gonna check out DC and that's something I could do to bless my
pastor yeah very cool all right you got one more for us oh I think the thing is
sharing what you have my church recently our worship pastor announced they were
gonna have a birthday party for their for their one year old but they didn't
have a house big enough for it and we have a house with a big deck so we
hosted 40 people at our house yeah so we did that and then we actually gave the
little girl the one year old we gave them a cash gift open up a 529 college
fund because there's like twenty four year olds they're not thinking about
that and so that was a fun idea for us to host them and then also to you know
to give this child a gift card yeah I'm not a gift card a college fund gift yeah
that's really cool so the interesting thing about all this is well let me the
only step back so you created something with 50 Ways so you have a PDF we can
download right that can just continue to you know let some ideas percolate and
what I love about this I mean because I think it's just a good starter for
people to who maybe don't have any great ideas on how to do it other and just
give money you know but I'm assuming you have plenty of different ways oh yeah
don't require money and using a little bit of creativity you know we can all go
out and bless our pastors and and it's something that is so necessary I I'm
really glad they're doing this applaud you for doing this because yeah I mean I've
been and really been in three main churches over the last really over a
whole time I was a Christian and I've seen some of the struggle and some of
the challenge and I yeah I'm just really glad you're doing it and I think we just
all need to step up and I don't know make a concerted effort yeah the
to move forward in this direction yeah that's the hope and so there's
materials on the BlessYourPastor.org website the 50 ways list but we also
have a seven-minute video for the church board okay because the pastor can't ask
for this yeah it has to be Christians and the church board doing it so the the
board just watches the video they just make copies of the flyer they send it
out and we're encouraging churches to also take a pastor appreciation offering
okay at my church I took a big pay cut but they did an annual Christmas
offering so I got anywhere I myself and staff I got 500 to 1500 dollars every
Christmas and that was a huge help to us really really big help and so and the
cool thing is because this is a grant related project every church that does
that and tells us they did it will give the pastor of gift card one hundred one
hundred fifty dollar gift card just because the church did it and we're
applauding there that they did it and we want to get in on the blessing
all right so board leaders any congregants go to BlessYourPastor.org
right exactly okay and pastors and church staff can also go because we do
have some free resources for them the specific their church does this or not
we have some materials that will help them okay great all right well this is
really helpful appreciate it and for anybody watching them let's go out and
let's do it let's make some sort of effort in the next couple weeks
Bless our pastors and to do something right that's all for now take care God Bless
and if you haven't already head over to SeedTime.com so you can get
your free email course from us on how to master your money using biblical
principles so that's all for today have a great rest of your day. adios