Waffle House staff working on Christmas Eve gets $3.5K tip from church

Employees who were working on Christmas Eve at a Waffle House in Ohio got a pleasant surprise when a local church left them with a generous $3,577 tip.

Rev. Mick Whistler, the lead pastor of Grand Lake United Methodist Church in Celina, Ohio, had encouraged members of his congregation to save $1 every Sunday and bring the money to the church on Christmas Eve so that they could take it to the nearest restaurant open for Christmas.

The congregation then went to the Waffle House in Wapakoneta to surprise the servers who had been working 24 hours at the restaurant

"We'd like to give you an offering tonight," Whistler told the staff. "We'd like to give you a big tip for what you're doing here so we raised $3,577. Now that's for you guys to split however you want to split," he added.

The five women working at the restaurant were noticeably touched when Whistler announced the gift. "Are you kidding us?" one employee asked.

Whistler told InsideEdition.com that he was inspired to leave a generous tip to the staff because of a short story in Jorge Acevedo's Christmas book, "Sent: Delivering the Gift of Hope at Christmas," by Pastor Jacob Armstrong.

In the story, the protagonist takes his kids to a Waffle House in the early morning while it was still dark.

"Armstrong then compared the ladies who work all night at Waffle House with the shepherds from the nativity story. Armstrong closes his story saying, 'And I wondered, if that grand announcement came tonight, would God go to Waffle House while it was still dark and tell the ladies who work all night?'" Whistler said.

Church member Barb Vorhees said that about 60 to 70 church members went to the restaurant despite the snow and poor road conditions.

Whistler noted that the point of giving away the generous tip was to demonstrate how saving $1 for five weeks had hardly any effect on individual families, but when the whole congregation came together, they were able to make a huge difference.

This was not the first time that Waffle House employees had received a large tip for their hard work.

In July, actor Donnie Wahlberg had left a $2,000 tip for an $82.60 meal for Waffle House staff in Charlotte.

Wahlberg had also left a $500 tip for three servers when he visited a Waffle House restaurant in Edgewood, Maryland.

The news about the church's generous tip came after a series of bad publicity that the Waffle House had received in the past year.

Late last month, a Midlands man went to a Waffle House very early in the morning only to find the crew sleeping. The man went on to make his own meal and posted pictures of himself frying bacon on the grill, as well as pictures of the sleeping staff member on social media.

According to The State, there have also been incidents of armed robberies, shootings and stabbings that took place at Midlands Waffle House restaurants, or in the parking lots.