So, so good. You touch on all the needed points in this conversation (big fan of Mary H. and Louise P. ...as well as a bit of a fertility demographic and family policy nerd.)
I've often thought about this topic, based on the pastors and their families I've encountered — but have never seen anyone write point-blank about it. As someone who's concerned about the all around strain on family formation and family health in this two-incomes-often-necessary economy (here in the US, too, in major cities), I really appreciated this.
I am able to stay home with our 3 small children, and honestly it would be a bit devastating if I had to be away from them 40+ hours a week. Women certainly have options to do that! (The Industrial Revolution obviously changed the nature of work... but raising young children nearer to home with one parent—or two in a more creatively flexible way—is the best we can do sometimes, in the absence of familial home economies!) So allowing mothers that natural option to be with their kids is definitely worth fighting for. No less for our own pastor's family.
Thanks. From the point of view of the Pastor's salary, this was most opportune as we were discussing our budget after church on Sunday. For a small, relatively new church, his salary, a working one, takes up 1/3rd of the budget plus we have a considerable shortfall but enough savings to last another year.
I agree that we should be paying a working wage, from scripture plus I think there is enough in people's pockets to meet all this. The worker is worth his due and the work is there.
Thank you for this. As a pastor, can I offer some anecdotal thoughts. I have pastored a small church in a rural community (in the US) for over a decade. They have been wonderfully generous, but never able to pay me what they would like. We have been willing—mostly joyfully—to sacrifice and live quite simply in order to make it work. (Our little church is heavily engaged in the community, and I believe is making a huge difference in the lives of people—thus the mostly joyful sacrifice). All that to say: a pastor should be willing to sacrifice for the sake of ministry. But on the other hand, those sacrifices have effects. Despite living simply, I have been semi-bi-vocational (usually about 10 hours a week). While that has not been ideal, it has also provided some opportunities for ministry, so we've made the best of it. But over the last couple of years, the cost of living has skyrocketed to the point that my wife, who has always stayed home, has gone back to work. And that has necessarily affected our hospitality. So as a pastor, I can confidently say that pastors should seek to live simply for the sake of the gospel and also confidently say that churches should seek to provide a family wage.
No, our youngest (of three) is in her last year of college. What has surprised us is that we spend more on groceries now than when they were all at home. We had all girls. I can't imagine the food budget for a family with a bunch of boys right now!
You inspired two thoughts in me... first, how close to the home did women work *in the age of the early church as opposed to the 13th or 14th century? I have no idea or even if it matters, but it's a thought.
My second thought was this: certainly church goers have *direct* influence over how much they pay their pastors, but it's not the only influence they have on wages. Supporting **substantially** higher minimum wages as a political issue would seem to me like something implied by your piece. One of the conservative criticisms of high minimum wages is that they drive up wages across the economy... that's bad if your goal is to have lower business costs, but it's actually good if your goal is to push all wages back into the range where they support a family and not just one person.
When we look at economic policies and which we support, surely our goals in regards to families should matter.
Good Q RE: women’s work in the early church. I don’t know, is the short answer, but my guess would be that it was still substantially higher than today. The answer is probably also vexed by the fact that 10-20% of Romans were slaves.
The minimum wage Q is a good one. No easy answer. But I guess issue at hand is not the lowering of wages as such, but things like the exponentially rising costs of housing as a percentage of income.
"And so pastors are certainly free to deny themselves their rights for the sake of the Gospel."
Here's a possible solution. Pay your pastor a generous family wage, and also explain that if he so wishes, he can give some of it back to the church - entirely voluntarily - if his conscience prompts him to do so. This covers the situation of him having a young family when his wife needs to give lots of time and attention to the children, and gives her the option not to work. It also deals with the problem of the pastor ending up with a better lifestyle than the rest of the congregation, in that one would hope that the pastor would recognise this and give back enough of his wages to make his lifestyle comparable to the rest of the church. (The diametrical opposite of the Prosperity Gospel preachers who fleece their flock for all they are worth.)
You could even see this as putting the pastor in the same position as all of the wage-earners in the church, in that it is up to the conscience under God of the wage-earner to decide how much of their wages to give to the church - a nice sense of equality between the pastor and the congregation.
One thing that I would add to your argument about “staff teams”, is that it can undercut the voluntary service of God’s people. Working with volunteers is hard, at times unforgiving work, but it is one means of building and equipping God’s people. We don’t want to punt on that and just throw money at every need for help.
Agree entirely. The church that I go to has a large staff team, and it seems to me that voluntary service is actively discouraged because the standard of work will not be good enough to match the 'professional' standard of the staff team.
So, so good. You touch on all the needed points in this conversation (big fan of Mary H. and Louise P. ...as well as a bit of a fertility demographic and family policy nerd.)
I've often thought about this topic, based on the pastors and their families I've encountered — but have never seen anyone write point-blank about it. As someone who's concerned about the all around strain on family formation and family health in this two-incomes-often-necessary economy (here in the US, too, in major cities), I really appreciated this.
I am able to stay home with our 3 small children, and honestly it would be a bit devastating if I had to be away from them 40+ hours a week. Women certainly have options to do that! (The Industrial Revolution obviously changed the nature of work... but raising young children nearer to home with one parent—or two in a more creatively flexible way—is the best we can do sometimes, in the absence of familial home economies!) So allowing mothers that natural option to be with their kids is definitely worth fighting for. No less for our own pastor's family.
Thanks for writing this.
Thanks Haley, glad that the piece resonated!
Thanks. From the point of view of the Pastor's salary, this was most opportune as we were discussing our budget after church on Sunday. For a small, relatively new church, his salary, a working one, takes up 1/3rd of the budget plus we have a considerable shortfall but enough savings to last another year.
I agree that we should be paying a working wage, from scripture plus I think there is enough in people's pockets to meet all this. The worker is worth his due and the work is there.
Thank you for this. As a pastor, can I offer some anecdotal thoughts. I have pastored a small church in a rural community (in the US) for over a decade. They have been wonderfully generous, but never able to pay me what they would like. We have been willing—mostly joyfully—to sacrifice and live quite simply in order to make it work. (Our little church is heavily engaged in the community, and I believe is making a huge difference in the lives of people—thus the mostly joyful sacrifice). All that to say: a pastor should be willing to sacrifice for the sake of ministry. But on the other hand, those sacrifices have effects. Despite living simply, I have been semi-bi-vocational (usually about 10 hours a week). While that has not been ideal, it has also provided some opportunities for ministry, so we've made the best of it. But over the last couple of years, the cost of living has skyrocketed to the point that my wife, who has always stayed home, has gone back to work. And that has necessarily affected our hospitality. So as a pastor, I can confidently say that pastors should seek to live simply for the sake of the gospel and also confidently say that churches should seek to provide a family wage.
Thanks for this Michael. Out of curiosity, do you still have kids at home/school age with your wife back at work?
No, our youngest (of three) is in her last year of college. What has surprised us is that we spend more on groceries now than when they were all at home. We had all girls. I can't imagine the food budget for a family with a bunch of boys right now!
We can almost all dig a bit deeper, to support our Pastors, IMO.
Kudos on a thoughtful treatment of this topic.
You inspired two thoughts in me... first, how close to the home did women work *in the age of the early church as opposed to the 13th or 14th century? I have no idea or even if it matters, but it's a thought.
My second thought was this: certainly church goers have *direct* influence over how much they pay their pastors, but it's not the only influence they have on wages. Supporting **substantially** higher minimum wages as a political issue would seem to me like something implied by your piece. One of the conservative criticisms of high minimum wages is that they drive up wages across the economy... that's bad if your goal is to have lower business costs, but it's actually good if your goal is to push all wages back into the range where they support a family and not just one person.
When we look at economic policies and which we support, surely our goals in regards to families should matter.
Good Q RE: women’s work in the early church. I don’t know, is the short answer, but my guess would be that it was still substantially higher than today. The answer is probably also vexed by the fact that 10-20% of Romans were slaves.
The minimum wage Q is a good one. No easy answer. But I guess issue at hand is not the lowering of wages as such, but things like the exponentially rising costs of housing as a percentage of income.
"2.1 women per child". Don't you mean 2.1 children per woman?
D'oh! Good catch.
"And so pastors are certainly free to deny themselves their rights for the sake of the Gospel."
Here's a possible solution. Pay your pastor a generous family wage, and also explain that if he so wishes, he can give some of it back to the church - entirely voluntarily - if his conscience prompts him to do so. This covers the situation of him having a young family when his wife needs to give lots of time and attention to the children, and gives her the option not to work. It also deals with the problem of the pastor ending up with a better lifestyle than the rest of the congregation, in that one would hope that the pastor would recognise this and give back enough of his wages to make his lifestyle comparable to the rest of the church. (The diametrical opposite of the Prosperity Gospel preachers who fleece their flock for all they are worth.)
You could even see this as putting the pastor in the same position as all of the wage-earners in the church, in that it is up to the conscience under God of the wage-earner to decide how much of their wages to give to the church - a nice sense of equality between the pastor and the congregation.
One thing that I would add to your argument about “staff teams”, is that it can undercut the voluntary service of God’s people. Working with volunteers is hard, at times unforgiving work, but it is one means of building and equipping God’s people. We don’t want to punt on that and just throw money at every need for help.
Agree entirely. The church that I go to has a large staff team, and it seems to me that voluntary service is actively discouraged because the standard of work will not be good enough to match the 'professional' standard of the staff team.
of possible interest
https://www.pensions.org/file/our-role-and-purpose/the-connectional-church/living-by-the-gospel/Documents/pln-619.pdf/