Giving
Your Pastor a Christmas Gift
In 1996 one of my
denomination’s General Superintendents at the time dubbed me as “the Bishop of
the Internet.” That remark was mostly in jest I think but I’ll pretend the
title for a day so I can issue this “Pastoral letter” to laity who read my
column. I urge you to give your pastor a nice Christmas gift. There are
several ways to give a Christmas gift to your pastor:
1. Most churches give their pastor an “employee gift.”
Most churches already have
some sort of Christmas gift policy for their “employees” including the pastor
and staff. If the church has multiple staff usually these gifts are divided up
across the board so every staff person gets a gift—usually based on their
salary.<[1]> But the church tries to recover some of this money. It works like this: the church budgets the gift
by policy, then distributes little envelopes calling on the people to contribute
pretending they’ll pass on whatever comes in. This usually works since less
comes in that they designated. In fact many lay people have caught on to the
fact that the pastor gets the gift no matter what is collected so many don’t
pitch in. This employer-gift-with-a-collection means the giver gets a tax deduction
for their giving to the pastor. Since it is technically given to the church, a
$20 gift really only costs the taxpayer-giver maybe $17. However sometimes
churches get painted into a corner with this charade. Like one church I heard
of where a wealthy member gave $5,000 toward the pastor’s Christmas gift. The
board’s make-believe “love offering” was exposed since they really didn’t pass
the gifts through but were only trying to recover the policy-set gift cost. Since they wouldn’t pass the five grand on, they
had to return the gift to stay honest. Of course this method means when it comes
to taxes, what the giver saves the pastor pays. A Christmas gift from an employer
is taxable income to the pastor—so he or she will have to fork out 15% Self Employment
Tax, plus another 10-15% income tax on such a gift. Thus the $20 the pastor gets
in this sort of employee gift means they have to pay a third of back out in taxes
to stay honest—the $20 gift becomes $13 after taxes. This is why some churches
choose another way to give Christmas gifts to their pastor.
2. Centralized envelopes urging individual giving.
To avoid the impersonal institutional
gift-giving of the first method some churches print up “My Christmas gift to
the pastor” envelopes and urge people to send their own personal Christmas gift
directly to the pastor. Some even hand out addressed and stamp envelopes. In
this method anyone who wants to give adds their cash to the envelope and mails
the gift directly to the pastor’s home, usually with a little thank you note. The
disadvantage of this method is the giver gets no tax deduction for their gift.
The corresponding advantage is the pastor gains since he or she owes no taxes on
small personal gifts like these. This means a $20 gift is $20. Pastors who have experienced this method say
the real joy, however, is getting all the personal notes at Christmas citing
sermons, hospital visits and the like which encourages them to survive the “pastoral
winter doldrums” that often follows the Christmas season.<[2]> But a
disadvantage in larger churches is that attendees often send only a gift to the
senior pastor and staff pastors are left out in the cold.
3. Decentralized individual giving to the pastor.
In a third modification of
the above a few churches simply announce they will be giving no [institutional]
gift at all to the pastor and urge individuals
to send a note directly to their pastor [wink-wink-hint-hint—tuck in a $20]. Of
course many do and their gifts are invariably larger than they would have given
to the centralized kitty in method #1 above. The disadvantage is the pastor could
feel beholden to the most generous folk and they might even remember those who
forget. In many churches where they use #1 method abuve (employer-gifts-by-policy)
many individuals also send their own personal gift to the pastor.<[3]>
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There are probably other ways
churches give Christmas gifts to their pastor and I suspect some of you will add
them to the comments on this column, but these are the three most common
methods I’ve seen. Nobody has to give
a gift to their pastor. A gift is just that—a gift. Why not address an envelope now and tuck in a $20 (or more?)
to your pastor.<[4]>
So what insights do you have
on giving gifts to pastors (and if you are
a pastor read the footnotes below).
So what do you
think?
During the first few weeks, click
here to comment or read comments