Overheard recently in church:
“I would like to take that call (to serve a small church) but I have two teenagers and just can’t afford it.”
“My daughter-in-law is a AME pastor but she’s switching to United Methodist because they have better benefits.”
“I would leave the PCUSA and start a non-affiliated church but I need the pension and health insurance.”
“I’ll need to earn at least $100,000 a year in my next call.”
Professional ministry is supposed to be about a call from God. I personally and theologically believe that all work is ministry and all ministry is about a spiritual calling, but for the purposes of this post, I’m only talking about professional pastors here.
Part of my work includes working with seminarians hoping to be called to serve the church as a vocation. They have visions and dreams for the kind of congregations God is calling them to lead. They are increasingly being told that there are more clergy looking for parish positions than there are positions. In my denomination – as of last Friday at 10:53 am Central Time – there were 382 candidates looking for their first call and there were 134 church positions open for people seeking a first call.
Seminarians are being told that bi-vocational or tent making ministry will likely be in their future. In other words, they may be called by churches that can’t afford to pay them a full-time salary, so they would be wise to hone their barrista skills or get their teaching certification. Several pastors I know serve congregations part-time and then supplement their incomes by serving also as hospital chaplains or pastoral counselors, nurses or retail salespeople, graphic designers or bank tellers.
We might fully and faithfully embody Matthew 6:34. We might channel our inner Scarlett O’Hara – an “I’ll think about that tomorrow” theology. We might romanticize poverty only to find that when our kids need braces, our hearts break because it’s not going to happen.
We might have a spouse who earns a substantial income which frees us up to earn $20,000 a year and still own a car and live in a comfortable home.
So, here’s my question: Is a Call to Ministry Ever About Money? Does God only call us to serve in ministry positions we can “afford”? Does God use our financial struggles to teach us or break us or make us more faithful? What do you think? What do you believe?
Post-Publish Note: I just got this from Louisville this morning (12-19-11.)
A Church for Starving Artists 
One question that’s never addressed is whether we’re off the track by treating every pastor and congregation the same. Presbytery minimums don’t allow for pastors who might feel a true call to serve small congregations–or for first-call pastors who have to start small, but don’t need a living wage for their own reasons (fully-employed spouse, second career where first career generated wealth to spare, etc.). Meanwhile we prepare CLPs and let certified MDivs sit around. Don’t small, poor congregations deserve the best, or are our best pastors reserved for the wealthy? We need to change the system to take into account individual situations. We are wasting resources–human as well as economic–by our rigid adherence to presbytery minimums. As it stands right now, we’re in lock-step with the country’s current inequitable system. No, the pastor’s family shouldn’t be the poorest in the congregation. But sometimes they wouldn’t be anyway. We must find a way to be both fair and flexible.
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I remember a recent presbytery discussion setting the minimum salary for pastors; a pastor stood up and asked whether we could have a discussion about a presbytery maximum.
Crickets.
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MA – The new doc from Louisville makes this suggestion as well: to have a maximum salary as well as a minimum and then – whatever was paid over the maximum – would supplement small church’s pastor packages. I can well imagine that crickets would be the only sound. But it seems fair – if complicated.
We call ourselves a Connectional System but we tend to be connected only by rules rather than relationships.
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The episcopal church is struggling with how to attain parity in health care between clergy and lay staff. An admirable goal has been staked out by the house of bishops. But how to attain it practically?
The questions of parity raised by OWS seem to come up everywhere: church salaries, corporate salary structure, health care, education and access to financial aid. I wonder what the role of the church is in the church and in the world.
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