A Front Row Seat to What Ministry Actually Costs

Pastors Appreciation Sunday, 30 November 2025. Two hours in which the church, cell group by cell group, says out loud what it usually only notices in passing.

The tributes come from the Bluff cell, the Queensborough cell, Sister Noeline, Stephanie and Chloe for the next generation, and the children's church, who could not all give the bear hug they wanted to and left their fingerprints on a gift instead. One of the tributes is from a daughter, and it is the one the service turns on. She says she was given a front row seat to what real ministry looks like: the praying late into the night for people who had no idea they were being carried, the giving when nobody was watching, the serving while tired, and the odd hour phone calls she did not understand as a child.

Another cell works through Galatians 5:22 fruit by fruit, noting that Scripture does not list pineapples and bananas but that the pastors produce a whole spiritual fruit salad every week. Gentleness that corrects without crushing. Peace that holds when the sound system needs deliverance again. Faithfulness that shows up week after week, load shedding or not.

The service closes with the whole church standing, hands lifted towards their pastors, making a commitment out loud: to follow, support, pray for, love and encourage them, and not to be a body of Christ that criticises its pastors or loads them with expectations. Then the seed is brought to the stage.