3 Steps to Bless Your Pastor With Brian Kluth

Many people are using the FaithFi app to help provide the wisdom, community, and money management to stay on track, financially speaking. To date, over 37,000 members are using its digital envelope system, participating in our community forums, and engaging in virtual workshops. And one of the most convenient features is the ability to keep all your accounts in one place for an easy-at-a-glance view.

You can choose from one of three options, depending on your management style, and it's available on desktop or mobile. Go to faithfi.com and click app to get started. October is Pastor Appreciation Month, and we'll talk with Brian Cluth about that today. Then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, Brian Cluth is a bestselling author of several books on generosity. He was a pastor himself for 10 years and is now the spokesman for the annual Bless Your Pastor initiative, organized by the National Association of Evangelicals. Brian, it's great to have you back with us. Hey, Rob, great to be with you and your listeners. And we really want to encourage them today and give them some wonderful ways they can be part of blessing their pastors and their church staff. So bless all of them. We'll give them some free resources and great ideas, but so glad they're listening right now. Well, thank you.

Let's dive into that. I know you have an easy three-step program for folks who want to get involved, so tell us about it. Yeah, people just go to blessyourpastor.org, and there's three steps. And what you do is you download the materials, free materials for your church, share with some of your church leaders. But there's a flyer I wrote, 50 ways to bless your pastor or bless your pastors and church staff, so that gets distributed to all the families. Then you take up an appreciation offering, and then you honor them publicly. And when your church does those three things, then we will give your pastor a marriage retreat scholarship to a weekend to remember.

And it's an application to do that, and they just go online and get that. We also give them access to other free and discounted weekend retreat and vacation opportunities. So it's a wonderful way to bless your pastor and staff, and over 3,000 churches have already done it, and so we're looking forward to how many more are going to join us this year. Brian, I love the resource you mentioned, 50 creative ways to bless your pastor.

Give us some examples from that. Yeah, we really help people unpack the importance of how to pray for your pastor. There's different ways to pray for your pastor.

How to affirm your pastor, how to encourage them, and then practical ways to help them. I like to say if you're a doctor, give them some doctor care. If you're a dentist, give them some dental care. If you're a mechanic, fix your car.

If you like to cut grass or plant flowers, go over to their house and do it for them. But just very creative and practical ways that any Christian can look at doing, because the Bible calls us in 1 Thessalonians 5-12, that we are to show, not just say, we are to show our deep appreciation for those who minister among us. So this 50 ways gives people ideas on what they can do to show their deep appreciation for their pastor and staff. Yeah, you can go download that right now at blessyourpastor.org.

All right, step two was collect. How does that work? Yeah, we ask the leaders to send out a note to the congregation and say, we're going to take up an appreciation offering and we're going to gift it to the pastor or the pastor and the staff. And I know when I became a pastor, I took a $70,000 pay cut to become a pastor, so that was a major challenge in my life. But my church, every year they took up an appreciation offering, and it happened towards the end of the year, and they would give that to me and the staff, and boy, you know what, that allowed us to have Christmas. That offering is what allowed us to travel at Christmas to see family or to pay for Christmas presents. So just to get that, and then we just felt the love of people. That appreciation offering really helped us, because we weren't making a lot of money, but that really made a difference in our life. Yeah, we're about out of time. I know the third step is celebrate.

Give us one example of what that looks like. Yeah, well, it's simple as praying for them up on the platform, or sometimes there's an appreciation meal or something, but any church can do it very creatively, however they want. Sometimes they do appreciation notes, but you just want to honor them publicly.

I love it. Well, Brian, I know you and your team have put together a ton of materials to help folks bless their pastors and church staff this month. Where can they download those materials and get more information? Yeah, everything is at blessyourpastor.org. blessyourpastor.org.

It's in English and in Spanish. Oh, that's incredible. Brian, so thankful for your work, and we appreciate you stopping by today to tell us about this exciting initiative. We appreciate it. Hey, thanks so much.

All right. That's Brian Cluth. He's national spokesman for the annual Bless Your Pastor initiative, organized by the National Association of Evangelicals. Again, just head to blessyourpastor.org. Back with your questions just around the corner.

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They're distributed by Foresight Funds Distributors, LLC, which is not an advisory affiliate, a registered investment advisor, nor do they provide investment advice. Well, it's great to have you with us today. On Faith and Finance, I'm Rob West. It's time for your calls and questions today. This is the portion of the broadcast that we dedicate to you. So you can call with the things that you're wrestling with in your financial life as you try to be a wise and faithful steward of God's money. That's my desire. I know it is for you as well.

And we want to help you do that, give you practical ideas that really come from the principles that we find in Scripture and help you apply those today. The number to call is 800-525-7000. We've got some lines open today. We'd love to hear from you again.

800-525-7000. Let's begin today in Indiana. William, you'll be our first caller. Go right ahead. Yes, thank you, Rob, for taking my call.

I appreciate your ministry. My question is, I've been retired for a couple years, have no debt, and I've got about only 20% of my retirement money in a Roth between my wife and I. My accountant mentioned that I should try to maybe transfer some of that out of a regular 401k and pay the taxes and convert it into a Roth, and I didn't know if I've done some of that, but whether I should continue or just leave it as is.

Yeah. Well, I'm always hesitant to disagree with your CPA because I am not a CPA, and so from a tax standpoint, I would value his counsel there. But let's talk about what's going on in your financial life specifically. So give me a breakdown, how much you have roughly in Roth accounts right now, and then how much you have in traditional. About 300,000 in a Roth and the rest is in regular retirement 401ks. Okay, and what would that total about?

I'm sorry, 1.5 roughly. Okay, so 1.5 in traditional accounts, be it IRAs or 401ks, all together, and then about 300,000 in the Roth, and he's saying you ought to move more of it over to the Roth, and has he given you kind of a schedule of how much in total he'd like you to convert and then over how many years? Well, he didn't actually say that, but I moved some because I think I've moved 100,000, so because a couple years ago, I was only at 200 in it. So he was thinking of, well, the taxes now or whatever it would be, and you don't know what the tax is going to be later. It might be higher, you know, so that was his reasoning, but I'm taking money out of the retirement to pay the tax.

Okay, yeah. So when you incur that tax bill on the conversion, you're taking extra so that you can satisfy that and you don't impact your current cash flow. Well, I like you having both. I would love it if you had more in the Roth. The question is whether it makes sense to go ahead and, you know, pay that tax now. I would agree the likelihood of taxes, tax rates being higher in the future than they are today is high.

We certainly know that in 2025, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from President Trump expires, and unless that's renewed or something replaces it, tax rates are going up. Now, are you currently fully retired or are you still working? My wife's working just a little bit, not much, and everything's covered. We're not really pulling money out of retirement yet.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, you know, you're not working like you were previously, so obviously your income is down and therefore you're in a fairly low tax bracket, which I suspect you would stay in, but again, if marginal rates increase as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires, perhaps you could save some money now. Yeah, I would certainly be amenable to that. I think, you know, the benefits to the Roth are you'd go ahead and lock in the taxes based on what's known today, and we're probably not going to see taxes much lower, the likelihood is they go up. Secondly, you wouldn't have to think about the required minimum for the portion that's in the Roth. You could let that just continue to grow and then pass it on or give it away at your death, whereas with the traditional IRA, you would have to start taking it out.

At some point, either 73 or 75 down the road. So I like that. I think I would just work with him on the right schedule for how you'd want to do that because you wouldn't want to take out too much where you're pushing a good portion of this up into a higher bracket based on the current tax rates. And so you'd want to do that slowly so as not to incur more taxes because the whole idea behind this is to save on taxes. The only other thing I would throw out is one of the benefits of the traditional IRA, which we could roll the 401k over to is the qualified charitable distribution. So any giving that you all are doing now or in the future that you were planning on doing out of current cash flow or out of taxable savings, you could replace that with giving coming right out of the traditional IRA. And that would not be added then to your adjusted gross income. So that's a way to get it out of the IRA or what is today the traditional 401k and not have to pay tax on it. And it doesn't necessarily mean you have to increase your giving. You could just use it to replace giving you were already doing.

And it satisfies the RMD. You, of course, don't have that with the Roth because that's all after tax money. But that is one benefit to the traditional IRA that you don't have with the Roth. So I would say I like the idea of you having both buckets and that way, regardless of what happens with taxes in the future, you can determine which bucket to pull from.

And I would just work with your CPA on the target for the total amount you want to convert in your lifetime and then the schedule of how quickly you do it as to not push it up into the next tax bracket. Does that all make sense? Yes, it does. I didn't know about the traditional IRA. You could kind of give off that. Yeah, it's called a qualified charitable distribution. You can give up to $100,000.

You can start doing that at age 70 and a half. And then whenever you start having required minimums, any giving you do as a qualified charitable distribution not only comes out without it being added to your taxable income for the year, it also satisfies your RMD for the year. So it's a really powerful giving tool that you can use to get money out of there.

And again, if you're using it to replace money you would have otherwise given just out of savings, then you're given the same amount you would have given, but you're not adding any taxable income, which is a nice benefit. Okay, well, thank you very much for your information. Appreciate it. Absolutely. God bless you, my friend. Thanks for calling today. Let's see quickly to Aurora, Illinois. Hi, Jeremy. Go ahead.

Question. I'm looking to set up a Roth. I have about $400 to $500 a month that I can put. I have no other form of retirement.

My work does not offer too much and then they don't offer any matching. Yeah, I like the Roth as a great starting point and hopefully they'll add something down the road or you could look at another option. But given that you have $400 to $500 a month, this is perfect because you can put in $6,500 a year into the Roth. In terms of where I'd open that, I'd open that at either Fidelity or Schwab, one of the discount brokerages. I'd put it either into an index fund where you're just capturing the broad moves of the market or several of them. You could use a robo advisor if you want that would essentially automate this very low cost and it would build based on the questions that you answer, just a broad diversified exchange traded fund portfolio of indexes. So you'd capture a small portion of the bond market and a bigger portion of the stock market and it would be diversified among small and large cap, international and domestic. I'd probably look at the Schwab intelligent portfolios. If you wanted to take a more active approach, our friends at soundmindinvesting.org could help with some mutual fund suggestions or at faithfi.com, you could find some faith-based investing mutual fund options. But bottom line is I think that's a great plan, Jeremy. I'd open that Roth IRA up immediately and start systematically making those contributions. God bless you, my friend.

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Welcome back. This is Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls today, 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. By the way, you don't have to call, just send an email, askrobatfaithfi.com.

That's askrobatfaith, the letters F-I dot com. Let's head to Knoxville, Tennessee. Hi, Jackie. Go right ahead.

Hey, thanks so much for taking my call. I'm looking at retiring, but not quick working until probably 66. I'm 61, be 62 in December. But I've already transferred my 401K money. It's about $300,000 over to be invested. But I have a pension and needed to know if I should take a lump sum. I've always heard that, that we should take that. I want to kind of keep this money liquid as much as possible just in case we need it.

What's your thoughts on that, sir? Yeah, you know, I think that's really the key when you look at this, the lump sum versus the annuity option, because the first and foremost consideration is just this fact that you will not have access to the full amount if you take the annuity payment. The other factor is with inheritance, whether it's a single life annuity or you plus a spouse, that would give you income for the rest of your life and your spouse's life.

But then it goes away and there's nothing to leave behind either to leave as an inheritance or give it away to ministry or charity. The other consideration is around just your peace of mind and security. So if you have multiple pools of retirement assets, one approach is to say, well, I've got a lump sum over here that I could tap into if I needed it for, let's say, long-term care. But with this portion, the pension, I like the idea of shoring up income for life that will meet the gap that exists between Social Security and my lifestyle spending. And so that way, I just don't ever have to think about it.

I don't have to worry about the market results and I'm going to sleep better at night knowing that that portion is covered. And then I've got other assets that I can tap into in other accounts. So I think there's a lot to consider there. Beyond those big considerations is ultimately the internal rate of return calculation that an advisor could help you do where you would look at the present value of that lump sum versus that annuity stream just to see what type of rate of return you would need to achieve on that lump sum to generate the same income. But again, the benefit of the lump sum is having access to the capital if you need it.

So talk to me about just how you're thinking about retirement, the various income sources that you have, and whether there is a gap that perhaps this monthly payout could shore up in your situation. Well, we certainly, with the monies that we just invested out of my 401k, we're actually starting to invest. That's about $300,000. I probably have another $140,000 and an annuity as well. And it starts paying at $65,000, I believe it is. And then this monies here is probably in the area of probably $400,000 probably. And so, I mean, that's kind of what we're doing. We're thinking about keeping that liquid so that we can get to it. And with the market the way it is, we don't want to put it somewhere and just start losing.

Yes. So obviously, you've really got three options. You could take the annuity from your company as long as it's healthy and you feel good about it. You could take the lump sum and buy your own annuity, which would give you the ability to also generate an income stream but have the peace of mind to know that it's not at the risk of the market. Or you could take the lump sum and then invest it yourself or hire an advisor to do that. Generally, I like that option because it just gives you ultimate flexibility in terms of how the money is managed, the income that you can draw out, and being able to access more as you need it. And then ideally, if you could generate the income you need on the lump sum through the investments without taking unnecessary risk, you'd still be able to preserve, if not the whole principal balance, a good portion of it so that at your death you have something to leave as an inheritance. At the end of the day, I think it really does require some pretty thoughtful retirement planning just to look at the full scope of your retirement picture, the various assets that you have, the actual annuity payment stream that they're offering versus the lump sum amount so that an internal rate of return calculation can be run, and then ultimately the decision becomes really clear. But if you just say, generally speaking, which do I like, I certainly do like the option of the lump sum for you to have access to the capital to do with what you want. And just take the hit on the taxes. You've got to pay them anyway, right? Well, yeah. I mean, it's going to be taxable either way.

What you would do with the lump sum is roll it to an IRA, and then you'd keep it in a tax-deferred environment, and then you'd just pay tax on the amount that you pull out each month. Okay. Okay. Perfect. And once you reach 70 and a half, you could do some qualified charitable distributions as well. So if you were doing giving out of current cash flow or savings, you could replace that with giving out of your IRA, and then there wouldn't even be any tax on it when it comes out, and you could hang on to that cash in your savings account.

So there's a lot of flexibility there, but I encourage you to do some retirement planning with an advisor before you make the final decision. And if you need to find one, you can do that on our website. We recommend the Certified Kingdom Advisor designation.

You could go to faithfi.com and click Find a CKA. Jackie, thanks for your call today. We appreciate it.

To Fort Lauderdale. Hi, Marie. Go right ahead. I have $30,000 sitting in a checking account, which really isn't earning any interest, and I don't need it, and I don't know what to do with it.

I don't like it sitting there just doing nothing. Yeah, I would definitely put it to work, Marie. Let me ask you, is this what I would refer to as your emergency fund, the place you would go if something unexpected happened, or is this beyond that? Beyond that. Okay, great. Yeah.

And so I assume you're not wanting to take any risk with this. Is that right? Right.

I'm 80 years old. Okay. Yeah, no problem. So what I would do then, Marie, is I would take advantage of these high interest rates and put it into a CD. Now, if you wanted to keep it completely liquid because you felt like you wanted to be able to get to it, you could put it in a high yield savings account with FDIC insurance. But if you were willing to lock it up for between 10 months and a year with, again, FDIC insurance, so it's backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, I'd put it in a CD, and you can get five and a half percent on it over the next year. Are you comfortable using the internet?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I would go to bankrate.com, bankrate.com, and you could search for a high yield savings account or a CD. It's going to give you a listing of the online banks, and that's who you're going to need to use to get these rates. But I have no concern with that because there's still FDIC insurance. It'll give you a listing of the ones that offer the most attractive rates right now. Thanks for your call today. I hope you'll make plans to join us again next time for another edition of Faith and Finance. Faith and Finance is provided by Faith Buy and listeners like you.