What Should We Pay a Pastor?

                It's money season at church.  Our Sunday School class entertained the question, "How do we come up with a pastor’s salary?"  Here are a couple of ideas.  Anybody know a high school teacher who is in it for the money?  Same is true for pastors.  A high school teacher has at least a college degree and gets considerable vacation time over the course of a year.  If your pastor’s salary is less than your local high school teacher’s, hmmmm. 

                A church can start by getting ten families together, having each family unit tithe, and putting that total amount of tithe dollars to a pastor’s salary.  We know that the pastor’s salary will then be the average of the ten families.  He or she won’t be an underling at the bottom of the scale nor an “overling” at the top.  (And take the pastor's tithe and make that the program money.)

                Sometimes we talk about pastors and call and if they have a call, if the Lord wants them there, then they go there without regard for salary.  The Lord will provide.  To this I say, “Amen.”  But I also say that everyone is in the priesthood of believers and this call thing is for every Christian, yes?  I usually hear it talked about with pastors however.  Usually I hear it associated with low salaries rather than high.  (“You’re paying really well but I feel called to be there anyway.”??) 

                Some of our calling is basic revelation.  We’re all called to work and glorify God in it.  It’s part of the Adam Covenant if you will.  Name the animals.  Manage creation.  Subdue chaos.  Be a blessing.  We really do not need to go on a prayer retreat to find out if we are to do this.  If anything, we’ll need a special revelation to exempt us from doing this.  Along with this comes a calling on a pastor’s part to manage both his or her own family and the flock of God.  In the community’s economy, if a pastor can’t operate the way the community does, can’t then provide for his family, or is stressed dollar-wise and is distracted from managing the flock, something is wrong.  He or she has a call also to basic maintenance of their families. 

                Congregation’s have budgets and can only do what they can do.  In the scenario above, with the ten families, the personnel costs were 100% of the budget.  As a church gets bigger the percentage changes.  It’s like parenting, once you go from two kids to three, the parents have to trade from man-to-man defense to zone.  A family of five lives more cheaply than five individuals because of shared costs.  And when a church gets bigger they can go to zone and shared costs and all that and the personnel part of the budget will take less of the whole pie.