According to a recent article by Keith Schwanz, sixteen percent of Nazarene pastors in USA/Canada received no compensation for their services in 2013. 42 percent reported an annual income from their congregation of less than $25,000.
While the question of appropriate compensation for pastors, especially in struggling congregations, is an important one, I want to consider a bigger question: what is the church teaching her young people about wealth? Furthermore, how is this affecting the willingness of young people to accept ministerial positions in the many small churches throughout the United States?
In a viral blogpost, Dave Ramsey quoted Tim Corley's list of 20 Things the Rich Do Everyday. While the post received both positive and negative feedback, Dave Ramsey remains one of the most influential voices in the realm of evangelical economics. I think it is safe to say that his perspective is shared by a good number of the people sitting in the pews on any given Sunday.
At the risk of oversimplification, I would like to sum up that perspective in one sentence: your income is your choice.Why would someone choose poverty? In my experience, the general answer to that question in evangelical circles is simple: laziness. Ronald Reagan popularized the term "welfare queen," referring to a woman in Chicago whose yearly income from government "handouts" totaled over $150,000. Why work for a living when you can just get free stuff from the government?
In the words of one article on the topic: "The 'welfare queen' became a convenient villain, a woman everyone could hate. She was a lazy black con artist, unashamed of cadging the money that honest folks worked so hard to earn."
I heard from the pulpit of my own church just a few weeks ago about the injustice of the welfare system and those who take advantage of it. In other words, those con artists who unashamedly live off the taxes levied on the money that honest folks work so hard to earn.
So poor people are too lazy to work and also have no qualms about milking the system to get every penny they can out of the hands of honest, hard-working folk.
This topic is weighing heavily on my mind because last week a little five-year-old boy was accidentally shot through the wall of the apartment where he lived with his family just a few blocks from my house. It wasn't intentional violence. A gun was misfired in the apartment next door and suddenly his family found themselves in the emergency room praying for the life of their little boy.
But he deserved it, right? His family deserved it, right? They deserved it for choosing to be poor and living in low-income, unsafe housing. They were probably stealing money from us hardworking folks anyway, so if he doesn't make it, that's one less mouth for the government to feed.
Back to the pastors who receive little to no compensation for their work. Huffington Post published a list of 20 Things the Poor Really Do Every Day. This list includes things like search for affordable housing, subsist on poor quality food, work longer and harder than most of us, and live with chronic pain. These are not easy obstacles to overcome for sure, but in the case of poorly-paid pastors, they also receive the indirect condemnation of their congregation for not being industrious enough to avoid these difficulties.
The message goes something like this: Pastors shouldn't rely on food stamps; they should trust God to provide for their daily needs. Pastors shouldn't need decent housing; they should trust God to protect them in unsafe situations. Pastors shouldn't fight for affordable healthcare; they should trust God to heal their physical ailments.
While many older pastors were raised with a different mindset about poverty that did not equate lack of income with lack of character, what choices will the coming generation make?
Here are some examples of choices they might make:
1. I want to instill good values in my children. I want to take time to read to them and play with them. Therefore, I don't want to work more than one job, and I don't want to work more than 40 hours each week.
2. I want to live in safe housing in a safe neighborhood. Therefore, I cannot accept a position that does not pay me enough that I can afford a mortgage payment on a good house.
3. I will never accept "government handouts." I also want my family to eat a nutritionally-sound diet. Therefore, I cannot accept a position that does not pay enough for me to buy higher-priced, high-quality fresh food. I should not have to choose between food that is good for my family and other necessary expenses.4. I want my kids to be involved in sports, the arts, and other extracurricular programs. Therefore, I cannot accept a job that demands unreasonable hours from me and also does not pay enough to afford the programs I want my kids to experience.
Whether you agree with these specific values or not, the bigger message is, "your income is your choice." If a church offers an aspiring pastor less than $25,000 per year, it's easy to say, "No, thank you. That's not the income I choose." And to say, furthermore, "If I accept that income, I will be perceived as lazy and dishonest (whether I am or not) for the lifestyle that income forces on me."
As long as church-goers are among those who equate lack of income with lack of character, I expect to see the list of small churches who can't find pastors increasing more and more every year. I also expect to see young people pursuing higher-paying jobs in other industries where they can afford the lifestyle that Dave Ramsey and so many other evangelical Christians consider not only normal, but ethical.
After all, why can't we store up treasure on earth and in heaven, right?
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4 comments:
Marissa, of course you are right to some extent. The other reason for this that I see is that all this is framed by the way that pastors understand themselves to be acting as professionals with bargaining power and not as vocations for whom poverty might just be (gasp!) a virtue.
The best thing we can do is begin to inculcate the value of service and sacrifice in our seminaries. But we are often unwilling to do that because it would mean less cultural power for our denomination.
We need to retell the story in a way that resources small churches and their pastors to understand such ministry as Christian virtue without embracing a gnosticism leading to body-hatred. I am not sure how this can be possible in our polity that tends to isolate congregations that were once large and financially solvent (i.e. rural churches).
This is a vocation and mission problem as much as it is a class problem. But that will require a new theological vision as well as the guts for some of us pastors to get on food stamps...
Great, great article and I too take big issue with Dave Ramsey.
Another other side of the issue though is student loans. I pay $6000 a year on mine which means I can't take a job for less than that. But the other stuff was spot on.
@Jeff -
As always, you have a great perspective!
I have a few responses. :-) First off, today's pastors are a product of yesterday's churches, so part of the point that I'm trying to make is that the way pastors see themselves is the way churches have taught them to see themselves.
Aside from that, though, I think your last sentence is the most important one. It's easy to tout the virtue of poverty, but what it actually looks like in today's culture is a whole different question.
Would parishioners be embarrassed to see their pastor check out in front of them at the grocery store and pay with food stamps? Or (this will blow your mind!) even see a seminary professor use food stamps?
Would a parishioner be embarrassed to see their pastor stand up to preach wearing the clothes he or she had donated to the local Goodwill last month?
Would parishioners be offended if their pastor showed up to most events dripping sweat because of walking or riding a bike through hot weather?
Would parishioners be annoyed if they could only reach the pastor when he or she was at home because the whole family shared a land line instead of paying for individual cellphones?
I agree that pastors need to really take seriously the call to ministry and not just see it as a call to a certain income bracket. But I'm really wanting to challenge the mentality of many members of evangelical churches whose judgments of those in poverty will cause many potential future pastors to question whether poverty and virtue can ever even be present in the same person.
I believe that there are cultures where all of the above things are totally acceptable. I've really enjoyed getting to know more about the Catholic Worker movement over the past few years, and my experience of that culture in Kansas City has been very enlightening. Nobody would blink an eye at a pastor within the Catholic Worker movement who lived a life of poverty in solidarity with the people they were serving.
However, it seems that most evangelical churches have different expectations of their pastors. And not to let pastors off the hook...lots of evangelical pastors are the source of those expectations.
I really just want to call out those who are so quick to condemn anyone living below the poverty line and yet expect their children to somehow want to grow up and serve the church, which may very well put them in the exact same income bracket as those they have heard condemned their whole lives.
@Kevin - Thanks!
Student loans are another reality that in effect lowers the income of pastors immediately before any other expenses come out. This further decreases the ability for pastors to meet what I would consider the unreasonable demands of their congregation that are largely based on a lifestyle that comes with a certain level of income.
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