Fourth in a series on ministerial compensation . . .
One of the things we have done for men who have completed their studies at Greyfriars Hall, and who have been called by a church, is have some men negotiate a salary on their behalf. This is because certain things need to be said which a godly candidate won’t say on his own behalf. And if he can readily negotiate on his own behalf, if it comes easily to him, then the church should probably not want him. But someone has to say something, and it shouldn’t be him. There is usually a spot in those old WWII movies, where a junior officer says, “Permission to speak freely, sir?” We are at that point in the movie.
Now it is most essential that ministers not think of themselves as professionals.[1] It is equally important that those responsible for honoring them note their attainments that are comparable to those who are professionals. We tend to think that if we honor them that way, then they will come to expect it. But it doesn’t work that way. There is a flattery that causes a man to start thinking of himself more highly than he ought to (Rom. 12:3). But there is a biblical honor and praise which does not have that effect. A good man discovers he doesn’t have to watch his back because someone else is doing that for him.
There is a fleshly tendency that all of us have to be more attuned to what we have given to others and less attuned to what we have received from others. But we are Christians, and the flesh must die. This means, among other things, if we are called to honor somebody else, that we have to go beyond superficial analysis, and we have to sit down, get out the ecclesiastical equivalent of the green eye shades, and actually count the shekels.
I am talking about how you should calculate a ministerial base line. The first thing you must not do is take too broad an average. You can get into serious trouble if you try to wade across a river that is, on average, two feet deep. The average income in the United States is about 35K. So should the average minister in the average church receive that amount? No. The first reason is that New Testament does not tell us to make sure that ministerial compensation “fits in.” It says to honor.
But there are other reasons, having to do with where your thinking starts. What should the base line be? You should take into account things like levels of responsibility, age and experience, educational attainments, cultural expectations, and giftedness. The first four of these are more quantifiable than the last, and they are the sorts of things that can contribute to your base line understanding.
The average income of the average 50-year-old male in the United States is going to be significantly more than that of the average 25-year-old. If you are looking at hiring a 50-year-old, that has to be factored in. If you have someone on staff in his fifties, it is true that you could replace him with someone younger and cheaper, but it is also true that a successful businessman can replace his wife on similar principles. It is still not done in the better circles.
Education gives us the best handles. In the year 2005, fully half of all those with graduate degrees were among the nation’s top wage earners (the top 15%). In other words, if you rounded up all the grad degrees, half of those rounded up would be in this top income bracket. As mentioned earlier, the national average income is around 35K. But the median income for a man over 25 with a Masters is around 67K. A professional degree gathers around 100K, and a doctorate usually earns 78K. If we remember the biblical principles listed earlier, a godly man with a Ph.D. is not going to be slapping his palm in front of the elders, asking where his money is. But if he is dealing with a church that understands honor, they will already know that, and will take it into account.
Now in Reformed circles, we have generally insisted upon a learned ministry, which means a grad degree or its equivalent. In evangelical circles, that degree is usually an M.Div. Would it be reasonable to start the thinking in the 60K range?
But what about cultural expectations? We live in an economy dominated by two-income earners per household, with an average of a couple of kids, and those kids are usually educated in the public school system. Our subculture is a genuine counter-culture, and this counter culture has direct and quantifiable economic consequences. We generally expect a man to provide for his wife to stay at home, and the number of kids per family is more likely to be 4 or 5. Private school tuition for 4 kids annually will be about 16K. Now you will, over time, get what you pay for. If you pay at levels that will tempt a man’s wife to work outside the home, and/or entice a family to forego a private Christian education, then over time that is precisely what you will get. And when you get it, you can no longer pretend that you value what you only pay lip service to.
Say that you are looking to call a minister with an M.Div. He is 30-years-old, and has 4 kids. That’s not an unusual set-up. His level of responsibility is that he being called to be an assistant pastor. His wife is a homemaker. Suppose you are not in a place like California, where housing prices are ridiculous. Within just a couple years, all his kids will be in school. If he were given a base line salary of 65K, just the private school tuition alone will have his family living on 49K. His wife is not working outside the home, and they are living in a community where husbands and wives making an average of 35K each create a household bringing in 70K. Those are the households which shape the cost of living in that community.
One of the criteria listed above was “giftedness.” Now it is not possible to do any kind of statistical analysis of the ministerial population of the United States in order to find out what the gifted preachers are paid. This is admittedly a subjective sort of thing, but the fact that it is subjective does not mean it can be safely ignored.
There are three other issues. First beware of false comparisons in calculating a base line. For example, an easy mistake to make is that of comparing ministers to teachers in private Christian schools. While experience and educational backgrounds are often similar, it remains a fact that because of the ethos of “free” public education, because a private educational culture in our nation is still in its infancy, and because of the resultant realities of tuition-driven salaries, private school teachers have been historically (and often grievously) underpaid. In other words, if a minister is receiving twice the salary that a school teacher is, a natural question concerns whose problem that is. Is it the school’s problem or the church’s? You cannot find out who is overpaid by looking at those who are underpaid. Also remember that many private schools offer free tuition to their staff, which, if that is the case, has to be factored in as part of any salary comparisons.
Second, beware of driving a particular culture in the church by how you pay the minister. If a minister’s family resorts to practices like home birth, alternative medicine, homeschooling, etc. out of economic necessity, after a short time such choices will shape and define the culture of the church. I am not saying anything one way or the other about this, other than to say that the elder board ought not to create such a situation by accident. Whatever you do here, do it with your eyes open.
And last, Chesterton observed that the devil fell by the force of gravity. It is easier to ride a bicycle downhill than up. It is easier to question why these salaries are so high than to ask why they are so low. Honor has to walk uphill. It is not natural to us. Envy is hard to answer. Who can stand against it (Prov. 27:4)? We discussed the problem of ministerial charlatans earlier, and the flamboyant nature of their sin has, since the first century, skewed our perspective. While some ministers do quite well, thank you, and have done considerable reputational damage—anti-clericalism in many cases is frequently well-earned—as a general rule, it has to be said that ministers have not been honored by their people as the Bible requires.
[1] Please see John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.