Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? – Part Six, Three Helps to Come Up With the Numbers

          You are an independent Baptist. No overarching denominational board tells you how much you are to pay your pastor. You want to do a better job of it but you don't know how to go about it. In today's post I offer you three suggestions to help you come up with the numbers.

     

     The first and probably simplest way to do it is to purchase some resources from others who have studied such things. I recommend churchlawandtax.com. In addition to a wide range of clergy law, insurance, and tax supports it issues an annual book called the Compensation Handbook for Church Staff. Not only is this updated every year but it has editions tailored to a wide range of employee types and church sizes. It is carefully researched, detailed, and legally accurate. For a small amount of money the committee that determines the pastor's pay could educate themselves rather well and do so on an ongoing basis.

          The second way is to do your own work comparing the pay structure of other churches in your particular area. When I came to Chicago eleven years ago I felt I was underpaid. This was the route I chose to go to address it. No, you cannot find information on independent churches this way but almost every mainline denominational group publicly posts its pastoral salary structure and recommendations. Further, they generally do so broken up by geographical regions. With some digging, I was able to determine what Presbyterian, Methodist, Church of Christ, and Assembly of God churches of equivalent size to ours in the same geographical region paid their pastors. I was able to gather the forms they sent to their local church clergy salary committees. Printing off stacks of such information several years in a row I took them to my annual budget meetings with the men of our church. I used them to explain the areas in which I thought our church should improve and why those requests were reasonable. This made sense to our men because their unions often use a similar concept to compare pay rates across an industry. Over a roughly four year span I was able to gradually bring my church to improve to a position roughly average to a little above average in that department. Through these years they have ungrudgingly maintained it and appropriately added to it from year to year.

          To do this one must needs be comparing apples to apples. In other words, if your pastor is making the same salary as the custodian at the local Presbyterian church everything is not hunky dory.

          The third way is to build a formula.

          In my research, in addition to benefits, I have generally found three criteria used to determine a pastor's pay rate. The first is his level of education. This is widely used as well in the secular world in areas such as medicine and education. The working assumption is that a higher level of education usually corresponds with a greater effectiveness on the job. This is essentially true when that work involves some sort of research, study, or relatively arcane expertise. I know people who dispute this as being reasonable. I am not one of them. Generally speaking, I would rather learn from a professor with a doctorate than one with a master's degree. There are exceptions to this, and the ministry lends itself to such. Many a man without advanced degrees makes a wonderful pastor. Such a man can even be a deep preacher if he diligently follows a program of self-directed study. But the truth of this does not rule out the wisdom of using an educational level as one of a number of such criteria.

          The second widely used benchmark is the size of the congregation to which the pastor ministers. Please do not hang me here. I do not believe there is anything inherently more spiritual about a larger church. But there is generally a larger, broader, heavier responsibility in a larger church. For instance, right now the only staff I supervise at my church is a secretary. In a larger church the pastor might need to supervise assistant pastors, a Christian school staff, etc. That adds a layer of complexity to his work. I have more work to do now as the pastor of an average size church than I used to have as the pastor of a start up church. I do more counseling. I do more long range planning. I do more financial administration. I do more mentoring. I do more shut in visitation. As my work load has increased in the past 19 years as a pastor so has my pay. That just makes sense.

          The third point of comparison is experience. I cannot think of a single vocation in which this is more valuable than the ministry even more so than academics. Let's take two pastors for example. Pastor A has a church of 130 members in a city of about 100,000 people in a southern state. Pastor B has a church of 150 members in a city of about 80,000 in a southern state. They both have bachelor's degrees from a reputable Bible college. But Pastor A has been a pastor for 25 years while Pastor B has four years of experience as a youth pastor. It is patently obvious that Pastor A should make more money. He offers his congregation a veritable plethora of Bible knowledge, life experience, and people knowledge that Pastor B does not. Pastor A's sermons are richer and deeper. Pastor A's diagnosis and consequent treatment of weak Christians in his church is much more accurate than Pastor B's. Pastor A's counseling is almost always spot on while Pastor B's is more hit and miss. Again, please do not misunderstand me. I am not criticizing Pastor B. I used to be him. He is tremendously useful to the cause of Christ. He is helpful to his church. But Pastor A is more helpful to his church and that hard won experience will be rewarded if his church is a wise church.

          Of course these three criteria cannot take everything into account. For instance, if a pastor with one child leaves and the pastor who follows him has seven children the church must needs notice that. Additionally, these criteria do not take into account the financial health of a church nor the average condition of its members. If the formula states that a pastor should make $100,000 a year but no one in his church makes more than $30,000 a year than paying him the formula's salary will breed resentment and distrust among the very people he is trying to reach. By the same token, if the board of deacons averages a personal salary of $75,000 a year but the formula only says to pay the pastor $25,000 those deacons will struggle to respect their pastor. Another way of saying this is that formulas are only helpful. They are more like guidelines than actual rules.

          The advantage, though, of using the formula as a guideline is there is no need for emotion or hurt feelings. Once it is determined it chugs along the track by itself. What percentage of pay is a year of experience worth? What percentage of pay is a master's degree worth? What percentage of pay is a 50 person increase in average attendance worth? Plug the numbers in, include a yearly addendum based on inflation, and the formula spits out an answer that no one can be offended by.

          With this post I leave the subject of pastoral salary. Much more could be said on the subject surely but I have spoken my piece for the moment. As always, I invite you to share your response if you so choose. My aim has been to cover the basics of a necessary approach by both the pastor and the church. In short, may God's men be contented, sacrificial, wise, and bold in their leadership. May God's people be conscientious and generous in their support.

          New series launches next week… Stay tuned. 

Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? – Part Five, Three Necessary Elements

          Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward. (I Timothy 5.17-18)

          Let us assume, for the moment, that we are dealing with an American church that is healthy numerically and financially. Let us also assume it has a sincere desire to follow the Lord in obedience to these two verses. In practical terms what does that look like? How should a pastor's pay package be structured?

          In today's post I will attempt to answer that. I realize that my opinion is not infallible and, as always, I certainly welcome yours. But I do think my opinion is both experienced and educated. I offer it for your consideration.

          First, the pastor should receive a generous salary. Next week my post will discuss how to arrive at the specifics of these numbers for each pastor and church. But for the moment let us just mention the necessity for the pastor to receive regularly a good amount of plain old money.

          On a related note, many churches undercut the salary because they reason that they are furnishing the pastor with a place to live. May I just be brutally honest with you? I wish every church in America would sell their parsonage. A church owned house is almost always poorly maintained. The only way for a pastor to correct that problem is to ask the church to spend money on the house he lives in. That is problematic because it looks selfish and because there is always some other necessary and more public expense at the church. Even if it is well maintained (and I have yet to see one of those, including my own) the pastor's family still has no choice in its own housing arrangements. Again, this is something no other family in the church would willingly consider acceptable. Still more important, a pastor living in a parsonage may pay no mortgage but he consequently builds no housing equity either. The average homeowner in America uses his house as his single biggest investment vehicle. A parsonage situation automatically takes that opportunity away from a pastor.

          On the other hand, if a church sold its parsonage it would be forced to realize that it is necessary to pay the pastor enough to allow him to purchase his own home. This would also let the family choose where it lives and the level of maintenance that it finds acceptable. Additionally, year after year the pastor would accumulate equity. Pay the pastor well, including enough to be able to afford to buy a home that is roughly equivalent to the average homeowner in his church. If the pastor wants to structure that salary in such a way that some of it is called a housing allowance – which to this point the IRS still finds acceptable – certainly let him.

  

        Second, the pastor should receive a number of additional benefits. I will list the ones I think the typical salary package should include and the reasons why.

                   

                 -health insurance: Let me encourage you, if your church is able to afford it, to purchase actual health insurance for the pastor and his family. I realize many churches choose to use Christian sharing ministries but the truth is that those ministries often are not given the same price of service discounts that health insurance companies are. Additionally, medical providers are often wary of them and accessing specialist care in this way is often complicated and difficult. To some extent the same is true with Medicaid which many pastors and their families also use in lieu of insurance. If you cannot afford insurance than make sure one of these are available but aim for a widely reputable insurance carrier if you can.

                   -vacation: Lazy pastors exist, sadly, but do not assume the pastor will become one of those if you are generous with him in relation to vacation time. In fact, the typical pastor will not actually use all of his vacation time. He feels most keenly his absence from the church and he fights to be there. Do not let him. Send him away. Give him a few weeks a year in which he is released from his duties. Certainly let him choose his own pulpit supply but do not make him furnish the expense from his own pocket. Such a position is atrocious. Give him and his wife a week or two away at conferences at the church expense. Send him on missions trips. Let him steal away for a week or two of prayer time each year. I am laughing to myself picturing the horror on some people's faces as they read this. What? All that time off? First, much of it is not time off. Second, he will not use it all. Third, sharpening the ax is not wasted time. Your church will be a better church if its pastor is often physically rested and spiritually refreshed.

                   -a day off every week: I am writing this on a Saturday afternoon. I worked today from 9 AM until 2 PM. I will work again later this evening. Tomorrow is Sunday. With the exception of a few hours in the afternoon I will work from 7 AM until 9 PM. That is the typical pastor's weekend and many have extended hours beyond this. If the pastor is then expected to be in the office from 9 AM to 5 PM Monday through Friday and to conduct a midweek service we have a bit of a problem, don't we? Let him choose his own day off according to what works for him but encourage him to take one. And if, because of ministry pressure, he goes four weeks without one do not quarrel with him if he takes two the next week. Let him breathe.

                   -continuing education: A pastor who is not constantly learning is a pastor who will eventually bore his people to tears. A church that is wise enough to invest in their pastor's continuing education will find itself richly rewarded. Authorize him to use a sum of money each year at his own discretion for books, classes, conferences, etc. that will sharpen his skill. It is money well spent.

                   -retirement: Here is how it often goes – the pastor nears retirement age and starts to inwardly panic. He long ago chose to exempt himself from Social Security and now he does not know what to do. His options are all unpleasant. He can ask the church to deed the parsonage to him and his wife, or to allow them to live in it post-retirement and hope he can supplement as a greeter at Walmart. That hamstrings the next pastor, though, by taking away the parsonage so the church and the pastor usually resist that. The other unpleasant option is for the pastor to hang on well past his used by date as the church declines around him. Finally, he shuffles off this mortal coil and his wife goes to live with her daughter in California. That is not a plan. It is a reaction, and a relatively poor one at that. What can be done about this? The church should ensure that the pastor sets up a 403b account and then funds it. At the very least, the church should pay in the same percentage it would if it was paying into Social Security. Often, it can do more, and if the pastor is paid generously he can match it. Do this for forty years, pair it with a home he owns outright like everyone else in America and the situation is much more feasible, isn't it? Let me be crystal clear – if an American church is not paying at least the Social Security percentage to either Social Security or a 403b for every member of its staff it is defrauding them. And that is a corporate sin.

          Third, the pastor should occasionally receive expressions of honor and appreciation. There must needs be a balance here for it is unwise to praise a man overmuch. It is also unwise to praise him not at all. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation. (Philippians 2.29) Gather a committee of thoughtful people, let them research how to appropriately honor a pastor, double it, and then put into action. For instance, a church could set aside one Sunday a year as Pastor Appreciation Sunday. Some testimonies could be given by people whom he has helped. A dinner or reception could be held in his honor. A love offering beyond his salary could be gathered by the people or simply have the deacons hand him a check with a generous bonus. Notes or cards of gratitude can be gathered. Service anniversaries, such as ten or twenty five years should be marked in additional ways. Too much of this is a bad thing, beloved, but the solution to that is not to refuse to corporately honor the pastor; the solution is to honor him appropriately from time to time.

          Next week I will conclude this series with three methods or helps to determine the specifics of your pastors pay. Each church is different, each pastor is different, and each geographical area is different. These need to be taken into account and next week I will offer some suggestions for how to do that. Until then, as always, your thoughts and comments are welcome, either here or on facebook.   

Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? – Part Four, Three Causes of the Underpaid Pastor

          Without a doubt, the number one reason pastors are paid poorly is the small size of their church. I have already discussed this aspect and offered my suggestions for that situation in my last post (The Bi-vocational Pastor). Let us then for the purposes of this post assume we are discussing a church that is healthy both numerically and financially. Why do such churches underpay pastors? It is undeniable that many of them do so if we can answer why we can begin to solve the problem.

          The first cause, not just on my list but in order of importance, is a pastor who is unwilling to teach his people what the Bible has to say on the subject. God's people are likened to sheep in the Scripture. The pastor is the shepherd. Generally speaking, sheep want to follow. If they are led carefully they will usually respond. Thus, if the sheep are not corporately in a certain place then a large part of the blame must lie with the shepherd. Certainly there are exceptions to this principle. There are also other factors. But all things being equal the primary reason churches fail to pay their pastors appropriately is because their pastors fail to teach them to do so.

          I do not meant to fault good men here unnecessarily. For the average pastor discussing the whole subject makes him uncomfortable. A pastor by definition has chosen to live a life that is not about money. He long ago purposely decided that the point of his life would not be making a large salary. Thus there is in every right-hearted pastor a natural reluctance to emphasize something in his ministry which he has already chosen not to prioritize with his life. He is also uncomfortable discussing his own pay because he thinks it makes him look selfish or at the least self-serving. His heart tells him he should be content with what he has. He does not want to come across as greedy nor does he want to be greedy in his heart. It is hard to lead people spiritually when they think you are in it for the money. No matter how little money he makes he thinks of someone in his church who makes even less. He does not think he is more important or better than these dear people. Besides all of this there is the matter of faith. Is he not supposed to trust God? If he decides to start preaching and teaching about his own personal financial needs surely that must evidence a lack of faith.

          I could go on and on with the excuses – for such they are – that pastors tell themselves in order to avoid discussing the whole subject. In our line of work they are legion. But they are wrong. They are wrong for several reasons. First, because Scripture discusses the subject. A preacher has no right to skip a section of Scripture because discussing it makes him uncomfortable. Second, because his family and his church both need him to educate his church on the subject. I will speak more to this in another post. Third, because if he shrinks from his responsibility in this area the problem will simply be perpetuated. The next pastor will suffer because his predecessor was cowardly. Fourth, because the pastor must approach this subject as he would any other subject. He would not dream of taking the approach justified in the previous paragraph if the subject was prayer or witnessing or holiness. If he would not use such excuses to justify his fear of discussing those subjects then he cannot use them to justify his timidity about money.

Man of God, speak up! It is your job. It is your duty. It is your responsibility. If you think of yourself you will fail in any number of your scriptural responsibilities. Think of your family. Think of your church. Think of the next pastor. Think of the Lord. And speak up.

Having dealt with the pastor let us now turn to the church. In my view, the second cause for underpaid pastors is churches that are ignorant of their responsibility. These churches do not know that they are underpaying the pastor. In fact, it never even occurs to them. They do not think about it. The whole idea of whether the pastor has sufficient to meet his needs never crosses their mind.

Two posts earlier in this series I wrote a bit about my own past (My Story). I am sure that the average person in the church I grew up in had no idea of the manner in which we lived. It is the nature of people to assume that unless someone or some area is screaming bloody murder that everything is fine. They are not generally observant in areas beyond those that immediately impact them. It is the nature of people to take things for granted, to assume someone has it handled.

This is greatly aggravated by the pastor's silence on the matter. This aggravation is compounded by the pastor's family's silence. Trust me, those kids know better than to say they have been eating nothing but potatoes all week. They know they are not supposed hint let alone complain that everything is not up to snuff. After all, complaining is a terrible sin. The pastor's wife has a long and weary acquaintance with plastering a smile across her face when dealing with any number of aspects of church life. This is just another one. She swallows her frustration at her husband, chastises herself for her lack of followship and faith, and valiantly tries to ignore the fact that she has no idea where to get shoes for her teenage boy. In her weaker moments she speaks to her husband late at night about the injustice of it all. She tells him the church people would not put up with the same situation if they were in it. But when she shows up at church on Sunday morning and someone makes a remark about how nice it must be to live in a house without paying rent she bites her tongue and soldiers on.

Please do not misunderstand me. I do not believe the pastor's wife and family should vocalize their resentment. In fact, I do not believe they should harbor resentment. But the pastor simply must educate the people on what their responsibility is for they will not educate themselves.

I am an independent Baptist by conviction. I strongly believe that a decentralized local church system is God's divine plan. Having said that, every strength comes with a corresponding liability. One of the liabilities of being an independent Baptist lies in just this very area of pastoral salary. There is no overarching organization to instruct the church in the specifics of its responsibility. In a denominational church requirements are handed down. There must be so much salary. There must be such and such provision made for retirement. Here is a formula. Plug in the various numbers and it spits a salary package out the other side. This must be done before we will furnish you with a pastor. In stronger denominations the local church does not even pay the pastor. He is an employee of the much larger organization. The church bears no responsibility, well, other than turning over its entire offerings of course.

          If we cannot – and we must not – adjust our ecclesiology to better our pay package then how do we solve it? Again, the answer is in the pastor. He must teach the people they are responsible and how they can properly carry out their responsibility. I taught school for a year. If my students were ignorant in a subject I could not hope they would figure it out. Neither could I ignore it. Neither could I wish that some other teacher would solve the problem for me. It was my duty to teach them. So it is with the pastor. If my church, the Maplewood Bible Baptist Church in Chicago, is going to do a good job in this area then I have to teach them how to do so. Such is not greedy, self-centered, or discontented. I am not showing a lack of faith. I am helping them to become obedient to the Lord in yet another area.     

  

The third main factor or cause for underpaid pastors is an overly controlling board. I do not believe pastors should be dictators lording it over their people. Neither do I believe they should be puppets dancing on the strings pulled by the deacons. Scriptural truth and practice are balanced, beloved. But just like it is sadly true that there are tyrannical pastors so it is sadly true that there are oppressive deacon or elder boards. Such groups are almost always led by some pillar in the church. This guy was there before the pastor came and will be there after the pastor leaves and he never lets the pastor forget it. He is often wealthy in comparison with the rest of the church. They look up to him and trust him to handle the church's money as a result. Often in the process of making that money he became very assertive and authoritative. The Sermon on the Mount makes no impact on him, and he uses the meekness and gentleness of those around him as building blocks for his own control. Churches like this tend to have money piled up in the bank.

Again, I do not want to be misunderstood here. Wealthy, take charge type of men can serve the Lord very well in a leadership capacity in the church as long as they keep their focus on that word serve. The same spiritual principles apply to them as apply to the pastor. But weeds will sprout in the cleanest of gardens and good men will be swallowed up by their own prideful inclinations far more often than we want to admit.

On the other hand, sometimes this board induced poverty does not arise from a man or men who seek control but from a man or men who genuinely believe that they are being wise stewards of God's money. They see the need of the mission field, of the bus ministry, of the mortgage, etc. as being somehow more deserving than their own pastor or staff. Such men love souls. They love the Lord. They love the cause of Christ. But they do not understand that the financial principles of generosity and double honor are just as biblical as the financial principles of prudence and sacrifice.

The prevailing philosophy is that there is some magical spirituality in poverty. After all, even Jesus didn't have a place to lay his head and you aren't better than him, are you pastor? You don't want to make merchandise of God's people, do you pastor? If the church knew what you were asking, pastor, people would talk. God will take care of you, never you fear, and this pile of money we're sitting on might be needed for some rainy day in the future.

There are several different ways a wise pastor can attack such an unwise practice. First, he can use the power of the bully pulpit. He can preach sermons about the church's responsibility to pay the pastor. He can preach sermons about being generous. He can preach sermons about the greediness of a miserly, stingy attitude. He can preach about faith and double honor. There are texts and examples aplenty in Scripture for all of these. Will some people misunderstand? Of course, but a pastor who loves his people well will generally find they return the sentiment.

Second, he can seek to lessen the main obstructive influence. He can add additional members to the board and so dilute a primary influence. He can lead the church to see the wisdom of term limits for positions. He can ease an older man out into an honorary position. 

Third, he can widen the group he works with. If the deacons are not being teachable then he can hold his meetings with a wider body of men. In other words, he can move past or above or around the obstacle.

Finally, in very rare cases he can even seek to move directly through the obstacle. A wise pastor avoids this as long as possible. He does not pick fights unless he has tried everything else first and then waited and prayed for a long while. He leads gradually. He takes the long view. He respects position and honors past service. But in some cases there is no other choice. There is something about a biting dog that is hard to cure. Sometimes said dog just has to be muzzled or even sent to the pound. In such a case, for the sake of the church itself, a fight must be made. If the pastor does not he will inevitably find himself playing second fiddle forever, or packing his bags and leaving the awful problem to the next poor chap who accepts the call. Neither of those are right. This last alternative is like the atomic bomb. You keep it in the closet. You wheel it out every once in a while to let people know it is there but you only set it off for very compelling reasons.

Whichever one of these causes or combination of causes exists you can see the common thread of solution. It is the pastor. I do not mean to imply that God is not the answer. He is to everything. In confidence the pastor ought to apply the remedy. He ought to teach what the Bible says on the subject. He ought to lean upon the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit for confidence. He ought to avail himself of the wisdom found in a book like Proverbs. He ought to bathe it all in love and prayer. He ought to always keep in back of this the foundational necessity of sacrifice. And then he ought to get up and tackle the problem.

          As he does this the church will begin to see its responsibility. They will gradually adjust course. They will incorporate the necessary attitudes which will result in a shift of priorities. They will do this, not as the result of compulsion or spiritual intimidation, but out of a genuine desire to please the Lord.

          There are, perhaps, other contributory factors and other solutions. As always, I welcome your input either with additional ideas or in response to my own. The vast majority of pastors are not in it for the money. The vast majority of churches do not purposely intend to keep them in poverty. Thus, these underlying causes and any others are eminently fixable. May God give us all, churches and pastors alike, His grace to do so.

Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? – Part Three, The Bi-vocational Pastor

          I don’t think there is a single class of men in the world that have my respect more than bi-vocational pastors. Perhaps our soldiers fighting in combat overseas, but other than that I cannot think of a group whom I esteem more highly. They work incredibly hard. They carry the weight of great burdens with little to no rest. They sacrifice themselves selflessly to minister to the needs of people and advance the cause of Christ. Because of the size of their churches they often serve unnoticed by the brethren who operate larger ministries. They struggle to make ends meet both at home and at church. Their very lack of ministerial 'success' breeds in them a constant struggle with discouragement. Yet they just keep on going.

          Such men are rarely bi-vocational out of choice. They do so out of necessity. Most of the time their church is too small to afford to pay a complete salary package. Sometimes the pastor inherits a financial mess and the only way to get the church past it intact is for him to throw all the money available at some debt or other. Other times the church is financially lazy, used to living off the sacrifice of such men, and in thus taking advantage of their pastor they ignore their scriptural responsibilities. It is here that I wish to begin.

          I have zero patience with the position which states pastors should serve without pay. Scripture is repeatedly and emphatically clear upon the point. The plainest passage in the Word of God in this regard has to be I Corinthians 9.

7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?

8 Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also?

9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?

10 Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.

11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?

12 If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ.

13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?

14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.

          From this passage I pull several applications:

-The pastor should not have to run church ministries or bear church expenses out of his own pocket. At the very least, they should be promptly reimbursed. (v7)

-As the church grows numerically the pastor ought to reap the financial fruits of this growth. (v7)

-This was not just Paul's self-serving opinion. The principle was established in the Torah. (v8)

-It is normal that a pastor who gives his life to feed the flock spiritually should, in turn, find his physical/financial needs met by that flock. Indeed, the church should take as conscientious an approach to their responsibility in this as they expect the pastor to take in his sermon preparation, his counseling, his discipleship, and his spiritual oversight of their souls. …and I dearly think some of you reading this need to stop a moment and ponder the implications of that last sentence. (v11)

-In turn, the pastor must never forget his responsibility to be willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary financially in order to help the church. (v12)

-God's design does not include a pastor permanently being bi-vocational. He is

supposed to live of the things of the temple. God has ordained this. It is often temporarily necessary to be bi-vocational for a variety of reasons – starting a new church from scratch, ministering in a rural area with little population where growth is slower, accepting the pastorate of a declining work, picking up the pieces after a split, etc. – but the operative word here is temporary. A pastor that does not understand this threatens the spiritual and emotional health of his family as well as the spiritual health of his church. At some point his willingness to sacrifice produces a welfare type of mentality in the church. Such churches never develop the internal strength to stand on their own two feet because they are always walking on crutches. Not only that, but he will be a better pastor when his mind and time and energy are freed up and devoted entirely to the church. The goal must be eventually to wean him from the necessity of working other jobs. He needs to know that. His family needs to know that. His church needs to know that. (v13-14)

          From these applications then I would offer the following practical suggestions:

1) The pastor should always be paid something. When I realized the financial mess my little church was in a few weeks after I became the pastor I cut my salary by 75% but I kept something. The principle of this was more helpful to the church in the long run than the extra $200 they could have applied to some current need.

2) The pastor should teach the people that he needs to be completely supported when the church is healthy enough to afford it. I will speak more to this later, but entirely too many pastors are loathe to frankly discuss their own pay package with their church. For the sake of the church, for the sake of his family, and for the sake of his own long term ministry the pastor must get beyond this. I have known more than a few men who greatly desired to become full time in the ministry but they shrank from telling their church. Consequently, the church got used to not paying the pastor much. As the church grew they found, as churches always will, some other good use for that money. When the church got big enough to support the pastor these men faced great resistance because they had not gradually and carefully laid the groundwork for their request to be paid.

3) The church should be ruthless about starting ministries that soak up money until the pastor's needs are amply provided. Perhaps ruthless is too strong of a word but it does get my point across. Ministries should not be started simply because there is a need. There is always a need. That need is always greater than what the church can afford. Ministries should be started, maintained, and extended because the church needs to do ministry in order to be like Jesus. The difference between those two approaches is that sometimes one need takes precedence over another. And what a young or small church needs most is a pastor.

          When I accepted the pastorate of those eleven people in the summer of 1997 I inherited a church that supported eight missionaries at a cost of about five hundred dollars a month. The intentions behind such decisions were awesome. In practical terms, it was killing us. We could not pay our rent. The few remaining people were nervous. We were inches away from closing. I realized that while supporting missionaries was a good thing the best thing was a stable, healthy church. It was the best thing for our community while simultaneously being the best thing for our missionaries. I asked our church to rework its missions support. We did not cancel any of our eight missionaries. Instead we decided to stop subsidizing the insultingly low Faith Promise missions giving from the pitifully empty general fund. We decided instead to take whatever came in through Faith Promise, divide it up eight ways, and send it out.

          As a young pastor with great dreams I found this singularly embarrassing. The first year we sent checks of two and three dollars a month to these dear people. But I wrote them all, explained the situation, and told them that the best thing I could do for them was to grow a healthy church. To a man, they wrote back with nothing but kind and understanding words. Over time, as our church got healthier, our missions giving grew accordingly. Before I left we had even grown past the initially disastrous starting point and added some additional missionaries. But I do not think it would have happened that way if we had not made the hard decision to dramatically decrease in the short term a wonderful and wonderfully expensive ministry.

4) The pastor should not permanently stay in a situation in which he is forced to remain bi-vocational. I think, of everything I have said in this post, this will produce the most disagreement but it is honestly what I both believe and feel. I believe it because the Scripture teaches it but I feel it because of life experience.

In my own case I can remember assembling the men of my little Pennsylvania church relatively early on and informing them that I would not stay there forever as a bi-vocational pastor. Let me hasten to add that this was NOT the reason I left but it would have been if things had not improved over time as they did.

I am not alone in my marriage in growing up in a poverty stricken preacher's home. My wife did as well. Her father was an assistant pastor when she was born and then started a church in the same area when she was just a little girl. It never got big enough to support their family and this forced her father to work a variety of side jobs constantly. Ministry drains a person, beloved. When there is not sufficient time or mental space for recuperation that drain eventually sucks the life out of a man. It breaks my heart to say it, but after years of this my wife's father walked away from his own pulpit and his own family all in the same day. Twenty five years later he has not been back to either. Certainly there were other contributing factors but only an idiot would insist that the strain of being bi-vocational for years without an end in sight played no part in this.

Additionally, having been bi-vocational for five years myself and now for thirteen years being full time in the ministry I know the difference between the two. By this I mean the difference in my own life and mind. It is so incredibly freeing, mentally, to have your ministry be your sole focus. My preaching immediately got better. My study, over time, got exponentially better. This in turn only continued the improvement in my preaching. I do not mean that arrogantly; I mean that I know I am a better preacher when I am free to be just the pastor. There is a direct correlation between the two. And since this is my main task (I Peter 5.2) it is a great blessing to the church itself when the pastor is free to just be the pastor.

5) A struggling church should be creative in supporting their pastor. If they do not have the sheer dollars with which to do so they should look for some other way to provide. Perhaps they could team up with another struggling church and together share a pastor. One could have a service Sunday morning and the other Sunday night. One could have a mid-week service on Wednesday and the other on Thursday. In pioneer days this worked for the Methodist circuit riders and I am not quite sure why we do not do much of it now. Perhaps the families in the church could take turns being responsible for hosting the pastor and his family for dinner three nights a week. This fellowship would grow the pastor-people relationship as well as decrease a grocery bill. If there is a mechanic in the church he might offer to work on the pastor's car at no charge. If there is a stylist in the church perhaps she might offer to care for her pastor's wife's hair. If there is an accountant in the church perhaps he might offer to do the taxes at no charge. Each person might give a little of what they are and do. In the long term a pastor ought to be able to afford to buy his own groceries and pay for his own car repairs but in the short to medium term this would be a blessing to both sides.

In conclusion, let me say that I do not believe that I alone have the only valid opinion in this area. I do believe my experience gives me an understanding of such a situation but I do not claim to be the only person worth hearing on the matter. If you are a bi-vocational pastor or a member of a church with a bi-vocational pastor I am perfectly glad to hear your own thoughts even if they disagree with mine.

And let me say again, for I cannot say it too forcefully or too often, such men have my greatest respect. Many an earthly story of Christ likeness displayed to us only in Heaven will involve the story of a dedicated, selfless, diligent, persevering, patient bi-vocational pastor and his sacrificial family. May God bless them. May He bless them richly.   

Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? - Part Two, My Story

          We, each of us, have a story. This story combines the facets of our past into a crystalline structure that lends our now form and substance. Perhaps I should write more simply – our history informs our present. Much of the way we look at the world, our individual perspective, is colored by the emotions, circumstances, events, and places of our past. This is true in a myriad of aspects including the one under discussion at the moment. What I believe about how a church and her pastor relate to one another, financially speaking, is rooted in my own past. This is my story.

          I was born in the early 1970's. Two months before my birth my father accepted the pastorate of an average size IFB church in a small Midwestern town. He was in his early thirties and fresh out of Bible college. The church was healthy numerically and financially. We lived in a parsonage about a block from the church for the following eighteen years.

   

The old black and white generics filled our pantry

       Every child thinks their own childhood is normal. Later, at some point, they come to grasp the uniqueness of their situation, and to examine its strengths and weaknesses. My situation had some absolutely tremendous strengths – stability, a quiet town, godly parents, etc. But unfortunately my situation also had some weaknesses and one of those was that my Dad pastored a stingy church. Twenty years later, in a rare moment of expressed frustration, he showed me a chart. It listed his pay from his first year at that church until his last year at that church. In inflation adjusted dollars he actually was paid less at the end than he was at the beginning, and the beginning was not much at all either. The church did experience one bad split to toward the end of my father's time as pastor but the penury of our existence was not a result or consequence of that split. The church had no debt. It had money in the bank. It was in a prosperous if small community. It was relatively full of hard working union members who worked the local steel mills. They just believed in paying the pastor next to nothing. Their philosophy might as well have been the notorious statement 'we will let God keep him humble while we keep him poor.'

          That stingy attitude had a direct negative consequence on our family of eight. For instance, my mother went fifteen years without a new dress. At the age of nine I took a paper route and kept it for the next eight years. One of the reasons I kept it was that I needed it. For many years I bought my own clothes and shoes and paid my own way to camps and youth activities. Dental care was paid for out of my own pocket. I remember at the age of fourteen needing a root canal and crown and paying it off slowly with my paper route money over the next year. I hated my smile all of my life until finally fixing it at the age of forty. But I could not afford to fix it as a young man and I never told my parents about how I felt for I knew they could not afford to do anything about it. We ate together as a family at a sit down restaurant where you order from an actual menu one time in my entire childhood that I recall, and that was because my grandmother took us. The church charged my father for the long distance calls he made in his own office on church grounds while on church business. I could furnish many such similar examples.

          But beyond those small illustrations I vividly remember something worse. Every time a large expense came up my father would have to go, hat in hand, to the deacons and in some manner hint that something must be done. Our car fell apart gradually. It became a running (sometimes) joke in our church until the deacon chairman looked down from his throne in pity and deigned to patronize our family with a used station wagon of his own choice. Appliances broke beyond the ability to repair and we had to hope someone in the church would take pity on us and purchase us a new one. Often they did and their individual generosity and care for us warms my heart to this day. The bags of groceries, the tuition payments, the cars lent all spoke of the genuine Christian affection of good people. But on the whole we lived a life of almost penury filled with a long series of petty financial insults and aggravations. It was embarrassing. It was humbling. It was insulting. It was emasculating. It was limiting in a thousand ways I do not have the space to detail.

          Reading back over what I have just written it almost smacks of bitterness. I was not bitter then and I am not now. In fact, just six years after I left home as a high school senior I became the pastor of a tiny IFB church in western Pennsylvania. My first Sunday eleven people greeted me. I did such a bang-up job that a year later, on my anniversary, seven people greeted me. It took five years of blood, toil, sweat, and tears to get that church to the place where it could support a pastor full time and even that was tenuous.

My first budget plan hand
scrawled two weeks after becoming a pastor

          I took over from a good man who had given his life for ten years and had little to show for it. The building where we met was not purchased but rented and, unbeknownst to me at the time, we were behind on the rent. The church had no membership list, no Sunday School classes, no telephone, no address, and no money. When I accepted the call to be their pastor they offered me $800 a month in salary. Within two weeks I figured out they could not afford it. I reworked the budget and decreased my salary down to $200 per month. I personally moved into the church building we rented. It did not have an apartment but it did have an office. I put a cot and a heater and a chair in that office and lived there for a year. I took a special offering from the people for two months in order to scrape up a few hundred dollars to have a flimsy shower installed on wooden blocks in the furnace room. My bathroom was 120 steps away. I stashed my clothes in a third-hand dresser hidden behind the baptistery.

          Within a year and a half we had purchased an inexpensive unfinished church building in a neighboring town. I repeated the same scenario except this time the office was bigger, the furnace room with the rickety shower was closer, and the bathroom actually had heat. For another two years I lived in that office including about six months with a very gracious and patient young wife. I routinely had a nightmare that I had slept in on Sunday morning and people were knocking at the front door of the church while I stumbled out in my bathrobe to see what was going on.

          During the five years it took to get that tiny church off the ground I distinctly remember rejoicing in a good offering. And I always knew when the offering was going to be good. It was going to be good when I tithed. I taught school. I sold cars. I rented cars. I sold insurance. I sold cemetery property. I sold credit cards over the phone. I fought and clawed and scratched with very little outside support to firmly establish that church. And it worked. The month after we burned our mortgage the congregation voted to transition us to full time support. Two years later, through tears, we left those people we loved so much and came to Chicago where for these eleven years we have labored in a more established situation.

          Here in Chicago I followed an older pastor whose financial model was low pay with occasional extravagant gifts from the church. I sought to transition it to a higher base of pay and benefits with fewer and less extravagant gifts. Presently our church pays me a healthy salary, furnishes me a retirement package through vested interest in the parsonage, provides me a place to live, pays my utilities, purchases health and life insurance for our family, reimburses me for medical expenses, helps me with continuing education, makes a mission trip or conference available to me each year, and gives me several weeks of vacation. Once a year, as well, they set a Sunday aside for pastor appreciation and give me a small gift on that occasion. Depending on our church's financial health I may or may not use all of these in a given year.

          Paul, from a jail cell, said But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. (Philippians 4.10-12) I grew up broke in the ministry. I began broke in the ministry. I continued broke in the ministry. Now for the past few years I have enjoyed a period of relative comfort. Before it is all said and done the Lord may want me broke again. It is His choice. I am a worker in His vineyard.

          This is my story. It colors who I am and how I approach the personal financial aspect of pastoring. And I thought if I was going to write about what I think churches and pastors ought to do that I should tell you where I am coming from.
          I would love to hear your story if you care to tell it. Comment publicly or message me privately. And may the Lord use it in some small way to produce pastors that are wise, contented, and sacrificial and churches that are financially educated and generous. And together, no matter what our state, let us serve the Lord with joy.

              

Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? – Part One, The Pastor's Mindset

         One of my favorite explanatory phrases is the elephant in the living room. It conveys such a wonderful visual image and thus a clear point. Amongst all of the pretty decorations, Queen Anne chairs, picture frames, and dainty teacups sits an enormous elephant. But no one discusses the elephant. They just all pretend it is not there. Someone, though, must needs take the first step to bring up the elephant in the living room. It is both too important and too big to continue to ignore. So here we go…

          In absolutely practical terms I do not know of a subject that is thought about more and talked about less in public by the typical pastor and his family then the pastor's salary. Perhaps there are some saintly men of God whose minds dwell only upon faith, hope, charity, and the lost souls of the Nigerian people but I do not know any men like that. The men I know – and I know rather well more than a hundred IFB pastors – live in the same real world that everyone else does.

          Some may say in response that such subjects are private and that very few people openly discuss their own needs and salary. While this is true there is one tremendous difference: the pastor's salary is not private. It is public knowledge arrived at in the most public of ways. I do not know of a single layman (and please do not hang me for that term; I do not mean it in any way disrespectfully but simply as a differentiation) who would be comfortable with an entire church full of people knowing the intimate details of his salary. Nor would he be comfortable with that salary and benefits package being determined in a public manner by a large number of his closest friends and acquaintances. But the pastor accepts this situation. He must make the best of it and one of the ways he makes the best of it is simply not to discuss it nor to allow his wife and children to discuss it. So the elephant just sits there while everyone politely pretends it doesn't exist.

          For the next few weeks on this blog I am going to discuss this elephant. I will do so primarily from an independent, fundamental Baptist (IFB) perspective. Not only is this my only real area of expertise but it is also where the biggest need for an educational increase lies. I will try to be balanced though that probably just means I will offend all kinds of people from every angle of the spectrum. I plan to discuss such topics as the pastor's necessary mindset (today's post), the bivocational pastor, the causes for an unacceptable salary, the victims of that situation, what an appropriate pay package ought to include, and how to arrive at those specific numbers. Along the way I will be fairly transparent telling much of my own personal history and situation. I wholeheartedly invite you to enter into this discussion with me either via the comments on this blog or on my own facebook page. I am very interested in hearing the perspective of God's people - pastors, staff, and lay people. If nothing else gets accomplished perhaps we can at least agree to stop ignoring the elephant in the living room.

          Let me say unequivocally at the outset that I am not aiming at my own church. In fact, I am not aiming at any particular church let alone my own. For the past eleven years God has allowed me to pastor the Maplewood Bible Baptist Church of Chicago. At first they were weak in this area but over a number of years their understanding deepened as I sought to gradually and gently teach them their responsibility. I can honestly write that I do not personally know of a similar size IFB church that takes better care of their pastor than Maplewood does of me. I have no ax to grind. They count my position worthy of double honor.

          In fact, I do not want to begin with the church at all. I want to begin with the pastor. There are two absolutely essential monetary mindsets that a pastor must constantly cultivate in the Lord's work. The first is contentment and the second is a willingness to sacrifice. Without these, whether the church fulfills her responsibility well or not, he will inevitably fail.

          Contentment is stressed from one end of the Bible to the other. The Ten Commandments includes Thou shalt not covet. (Exodus 20.17) Covetousness is, at its root, a lack of contentment in the circumstance into which God has placed you. I am not content with my house; I want my neighbor's house. I am not content with my wife; I want my neighbor's wife. Paul, in an epistle aimed directly at pastors, would later mention contentment more specifically in a financial context. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. (I Timothy 6.6-8)

          Practically speaking, this means I am satisfied with my salary regardless of how measly it is. It means that I am happy in my parsonage regardless of the crumbling state of its maintenance. It means I am comfortable with my retirement package even if it doesn't exist. Contentment does not rule out a desire or effort to better my financial situation but it does rule in a heart peace with the material circumstances of my life. I do not cast my eye across town to the senior pastor of the more established church who enjoys a veritable plethora of benefits. Nor do I roam further afield and behold with envy my Southern Baptist brethren and the amazing health plan they enjoy. Instead, as often as necessary, I take my concern, fear, and unease to the Lord. I ask Him to settle my heart and to let me be at peace with what He has seen fit to provide.

          This is such a necessary element for a pastor especially because discontentment will not remain isolated to the financial arena. Soon I will want a larger ministry. Soon I will covet some other church building. Soon I will find that ambition, pride, and a striving for mastery rule in a heart that once wanted nothing more than to be spent in God's work however He might choose. I realize the ditch of fatalism and cynicism exist on this side of the road. But I cannot, however, justify an envious, unhappy, discontented spirit with the excuse that I am simply maintaining a passionate desire to advance the cause of Christ.

          I will speak more of this later but I began the ministry by living in a room that was five feet wide and seven feet long in a building that had neither shower nor bathtub. In His grace He has allowed me to enjoy a four bedroom, three bath house for the last eleven years but if He wanted me to remain in those cramped conditions that is His right. I am a servant in His vineyard. If he wants to pay me a penny a day for eleven hours of work or a penny a day for one hour of work it is completely His prerogative.

          Contentment is not just resignation either. It is an active faith that says I believe the Lord will meet my needs. My father was a pastor for thirty-eight years. Upon entering the ministry he opted out of Social Security. Along the way he never developed a plan to replace it. We could and should discuss the merits of the wisdom of that approach but I know him exceedingly well. His heart was simply to serve the Lord. When the time came a few years ago for him to retire he expressed a child-like trust in the Lord's provision. Guess what? The Lord has and is providing. Whether your church grasps the necessity of its financial responsibility in the area of you and your family or not you can and should cultivate contentment.

        The second vital attitude that a pastor must cultivate in ministry is a willingness to sacrifice. Twenty-six years ago at a youth meeting I attended Jack Hyles asked us to sign our name to a card indicating our willingness to enter full time Christian service. We could debate the merits of that but we cannot debate the merits of what he said next. He asked us to flip it over and write one word on the back – sacrifice. I still have that card. A pastor – a word literally meaning shepherd – must be willing to give up anything to help the flock. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. (John 10.11) This attitude of sacrifice is to continue for the entirety of our lives. We are to be a living sacrifice. (Romans 12.1) This sacrifice is not to be undertaken with pessimism or endured as torture but to be combined with a spirit of joy. Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all. (Philippians 2.17)

          It is not unusual to find such a spirit of sacrifice in young men freshly entered upon ministry. It is more unusual to find it in the mature pastor, in the seasoned servant of the Lord. Often, with that transition from young to old comes the accompanying idea that our time of sacrifice is over. There is only one problem with that – God never implied such, let alone stated it, and we have no right to infer it. Certainly a church should strive to make such financial sacrifice unnecessary in the life of a pastor but just as certainly he must be always willing to undertake it.

          An applied corollary of sacrifice is the foundational principle that I must not damage the church. Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God. (I Corinthians 10.32) The church has a responsibility to provide generously for my financial needs but that does not mean I have the right to demand that generous compensation. Especially if in so demanding I hurt the church.

          I am thinking at the moment of two specific gospel preaching churches that used to be located within a mile of our church here in Chicago. They no longer exist. In the first case the pastor inherited a large, crumbling building with a congregation of only thirty. He led them to sell the building and the parsonage. I saw the wisdom in that. But what he did next was not wise; it was predatory. He pushed them to buy him a condo, a "summer parsonage" in Michigan, and jack his pay up to over $100,000 a year. Meanwhile his church drifted down from thirty to less than ten. For about five years he milked the situation until the money ran out and then he rode off into the sunset. I full well understand the high cost of living in the inner city and while I do not make $100,000 a year it does not bother me if a pastor does. Unless in so doing he hurts the church. Which is precisely what he did. In the second case a man of great experience (which means he was getting old) refused to relinquish the pastorate even as he entered his declining years. He had been there for thirty years and, like my father, had made no provision for retirement. Unlike my father, however, he hung on like grim death. As his health, energy, and mental faculties declined he presided over a corresponding decline in his church. An IFB church that once ran 150 in Sunday School could muster only a dozen or so at the end. Finally, unable to pay the bills, the congregation voted to sell the building, close the church, and give the proceeds to the pastor to live off of in retirement. I applaud that aspect of the church's approach but the hard truth is the church should never have been placed in that position. The pastor's selfishness and fear – hard words, I know, but true – murdered a church in order to ensure his own financial security.

          Sacrifice says, 'If the damage must come to either the church or myself let me be the one to suffer loss.' A pastor who is unwilling or unable to believe that in his heart and practice it with his life is unworthy of the position.

          In this series I will make no bones about what a church ought to do financially in relation to a pastor but if that pastor allows discontentment to breed in his heart a sufficient paycheck will not solve the problem. And though a pastor should not have to undergo serious financial damage in order to ensure the stability and future of his church he must always be willing to do so. Always.