Pastor Salary (Baptist Edition)

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Grant:

Great questions. My answer to Q.s 1, 3, and 4 is "yes." Furthermore, I have done something along these lines with a variety of men who've manifested ministerial gifts. My answer to Q. 2 is "the sort of things that you suggest here and other things like it."

Peace,
Alan
Maybe you can PM me as not to derail, but what is a practical route for a sole income family man with an established secular career, who wishes to serve the Church in preaching? I hold the three office view myself.
 
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Thank you to those who replied thoughtfully instead of in anger

My dear brother:

Good pastors (Christopher and Andrew, immediately above) have already assured you that you are not correct in alleging "anger." I wholeheartedly agree with them. My answer came from wanting to set forth what I believe to be the proper understanding of the ministry, who should be preaching regularly, and the support that such deserve.

My commitment here long antedated any comments that you've made here. I've given my life, in no small measure, to this commitment. I am published in several places arguing for the importance of ministerial gifting, calling, and training.

This might have been a wiser question to ask the seminary rather than the pastorate.

I was answering in both capacities: as a pastor of thirty years and a seminary professor of twenty. You've thus, proverbially, killed two birds with one stone! :D

Peace,
Alan
 
p.s I'd like to ask the Mods to please force Grant to remove his Cheeto-Chicken Sandwich avator. It is making me stumble in a serious way.
 
p.s I'd like to ask the Mods to please force Grant to remove his Cheeto-Chicken Sandwich avator. It is making me stumble in a serious way.
It will be changed after I eat it, it’s currently riding in my passenger seat as I type this on the way home.
 
ministers should earn what the top professional in the parish earns

I disagree. No preacher should be paid $5 or $10 million a year. Something along the lines of 'the average of those with like education' would be closer to the mark. A pastor should be able to expect to live consistently with the bulk of the congregation. If you want a preacher that's going to be one of the two most highly paid folks in the room, you might be more comfortable at a church that embraces a prosperity 'gospel'.

And be sure to factor in the tax favored perks.
 
Sir Fred Catherwood held that ministers should be paid double the average income of the congregation. I think that reflects a very strong sense that the ministry needs to be respectable, and that respectability comes with a certain price tag.
 
Sir Fred Catherwood held that ministers should be paid double the average income of the congregation. I think that reflects a very strong sense that the ministry needs to be respectable, and that respectability comes with a certain price tag.

Not a hard position to hold when your father-in-law happens to be Martin Lloyd-Jones! Lol.

All joking aside, what do you mean by the ministry needing to be respectable and that respectability comes with a certain price tag? Can you expound on that thought some more?
 
I think Sir Fred really means able to be respected, but understands that in terms of a hierarchical social system. He wants ministers to be able to avoid the problems of genteel poverty. In a society with fairly formal markers of class stratification, cheap boots, for instance, might mean you are living beneath the position you ought to occupy -- and that is disgraceful. If rank had its privileges, it had also its obligations that were very inconvenient for those with straitened incomes. That kind of thinking is all over Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope.
 
I disagree. No preacher should be paid $5 or $10 million a year. Something along the lines of 'the average of those with like education' would be closer to the mark. A pastor should be able to expect to live consistently with the bulk of the congregation. If you want a preacher that's going to be one of the two most highly paid folks in the room, you might be more comfortable at a church that embraces a prosperity 'gospel'.

And be sure to factor in the tax favored perks.
Good point.
 
I disagree. No preacher should be paid $5 or $10 million a year. Something along the lines of 'the average of those with like education' would be closer to the mark. A pastor should be able to expect to live consistently with the bulk of the congregation. If you want a preacher that's going to be one of the two most highly paid folks in the room, you might be more comfortable at a church that embraces a prosperity 'gospel'.

And be sure to factor in the tax favored perks.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I certainly overstated my position. I hope my point wasn’t lost.
 
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I certainly overstated my position. I hope my point wasn’t lost.

Rats! I was rushing to be the pastor of Ron's church, and on session with him, looking forward to the first congregational meeting where they set my salary! ;)

Peace,
Alan
 
Why don't we see more churches that have the elders on a preaching rotation and expect them to work a normal job like the rest of the congregation? Surely given the number of men who pastors have endorsed as qualified to attend and graduate seminary, we can spread the ministry load (not just preaching).

Although I'm certainly no expert on them, I think this view of elders is most commonly found in the Plymouth Brethren tradition, and perhaps the Open Brethren tradition in general. (Some who are in this tradition eschew the Brethren label and might also deny that their practices are part of a "tradition.") The early brethren like Darby, Newton, Tregelles and others were often former Anglicans who were educated at places like Oxford and Cambridge. The movement seems to have devolved into anti-intellectualism as well as anti-Calvinism a generation or two later, with elders tending to have little formal theological education, if any. I'll leave it to someone else to examine in detail whether or not this understanding of the teaching ministry has anything to do with that, or if it was simply the fact that they thought that the rapture was imminent and that such education was unnecessary under those circumstances.

Others may have different experiences, but the bivo pastors I've known generally don't have any formal education beyond a Bachelors degree or Bible College. That is probably changing though with bivo becoming more prevalent. (That's not to denigrate such men. I've known some who have no more than a high school education who are quite well read and who read widely, while I've known some seminary educated men who have practically never read anything more than what they read in seminary and practically never read anything outside of their own tradition.)

Regardless, the OP's suggestions are contrary to both historic Baptist and Presbyterian understanding, as has been shown here. And I'll "pile on" and say that I didn't see anyone who was angry. Sharp disagreement should not necessarily be equated with anger.

Also keep in mind that the 2nd London Baptist Confession was written in 1677, a time when Baptists were largely underground due to the persecution of nonconformity in the Restoration era. Yet the wording indicates that they expected ministers to basically be "full time." (The confession is called the 1689 because after the "Glorious Revolution," which resulted in greater religious freedom, the Baptists gathered together to affix their names to the confession.)

Most Baptists reject the distinction between teaching and ruling elders that three office Presbyterians make. And with that, they think that all elders should be "apt" or "able" to teach. (If not, in my opinion such a man may be eminently gifted to be a deacon but not an elder. I've seen too many elders who are really unable to teach in any context, even one on one. I've seen some who are really not capable of teaching Sunday School beyond reading something straight out of a book, and who lacked the knowledge and discernment to see what is wrong with various heresies.) With that in mind, I saw a FB post by a SBC professor who stated that all of the elders in his church generally have to preach once a year or so and that they are really not "apt to teach" if they cannot do that.
 
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I’ve understand bivocational ministers to be a unfortunate necessity at various times and places. Hats off to men who labor that way. To overstate that calling has no biblical warrant.
 
This is a good thread.

I was bi-vocational at my former church and as I'm sure most bi-vocational ministers will tell you there is no such thing as "part-time" labors in the congregation to which you are called. You often end up working two full-time jobs.

It is a difficult proposition, especially for a man with a young family. However, one way to ensure the success of the arrangement is having elders in the church who are willing to step-up to the plate and do a little more, most importantly, with visitation.
 
Can you point to anywhere in America where a church isn't within driving distance? The gospel has been preached here. Why are we spending so much to re-preach it when there are many parts of the world that haven't been reached?

This is an interesting thread. I just wanted to chime in on this note:

I grew up in a suburb of Tucson, Arizona, where it already took 30-35 minutes to get to the nearest grocery store. The closest churches were iffy (and in fact my family settled for a fundamentalist Pentecostal church with ~10 people mostly above the age of 60 excepting me and my siblings). In my adulthood when I visited home from school, I would go to a Reformed church 45-50 minutes away. That area is sparse in churches in general because it's sprawled so much land-wise, but it's even harder to find more conservative, and especially Reformed congregations. There are some, not knocking them at all, but it's not like there's a church on every street corner--and even if there is, you might have to do a double take first.

It's hard to be serviced by the shepherding care of a church when you are so far removed from its congregants or leadership. I know we don't bat an eye today at people driving even an hour to church, but I think that's a trend that may point to other issues in how we perceive and understand the duties involved in church life. It's hard to function as a body when the body is so disconnected. And I can definitely say that not living in the Bible belt and then living in the Bible belt now...there is an inequity of concentrations of good churches. There are still places in the US that just do not have as good an access to solid, biblical churches.

Visit the Southwest, or somewhere like Appalachia, and you see how great the distance is between areas, or how poor socioeconomic areas are most often plagued by "church deserts" or not having a "meat" church diet and instead only serve "milk," and many people do not, in fact, have transportation to church. Even in cities--there are church "deserts", especially in the wake of the trend of people for a time moving out of the city toward suburbs and leaving defunct or poorly tended churches in their wake. I love seeing the work of the RPCNA congregation thriving in the midst of Atlanta. You would think, "It's a city, they should be fine" but in fact many do not have good or reliable transportation and couldn't just "go to church." How many fun stories I've heard of Pastor Frank Smith in his train conductor's hat picking up members to bus them to worship. :) I am always encouraged hearing of the fruit of that labor, that these areas have not been forgotten and assumed to "be fine" when they are not, and they are lacking.

America is very much still a mission field.
 
I think we should write another post about whether America is really a mission field. It is not. We have a church in every town, some sort of Christian church. Christian radio. Free access to bibles in our language. To say America is a mission field is to divert focus from true mission fields such as India and and the Middle East.
 
I think we should write another post about whether America is really a mission field. It is not. We have a church in every town, some sort of Christian church. Christian radio. Free access to bibles in our language. To say America is a mission field is to divert focus from true mission fields such as India and and the Middle East.

It is a mission field in the sense that there are millions of lost people. Just because there are lots of churches and ministries doesn’t mean much because most of them don’t actually preach the gospel. I don’t think it helpful to create this false dichotomy between so-called true and false mission fields. We would do well to remember that our Lord began his ministry at home.
 
It is a mission field in the sense that there are millions of lost people. Just because there are lots of churches and ministries doesn’t mean much because most of them don’t actually preach the gospel. I don’t think it helpful to create this false dichotomy between so-called true and false mission fields. We would do well to remember that our Lord began his ministry at home.

Indeed. There are certainly many African churches and Asian churches right now who are sending missionaries to us who think we are very much a field of mission.

Also, I brought up Appalachia and and the Southwest, particularly in thinking about rural areas where there really are not churches present, or if there are, they are vestiges from pioneering days. Visiting a Native American reserve or parts of Appalachia feel just as disconnected from society as being in some developing or underdeveloped countries. Access to normal teaching and education and communications is not necessarily available, much less of the Christian variety.

But perhaps this is topic for another thread.
 
Visiting a Native American reserve or parts of Appalachia feel just as disconnected from society as being in some developing or underdeveloped countries.

Isn’t that a thing though? Many of these communities take pride in such disconnectivity and maintain high distrust of outsiders. Sure they make take some provisions, but unless one is prepared to join the community it’s very difficult to get anywhere ministry wise.
 
Isn’t that a thing though? Many of these communities take pride in such disconnectivity and maintain high distrust of outsiders. Sure they make take some provisions, but unless one is prepared to join the community it’s very difficult to get anywhere ministry wise.
In Canada at least, I've heard of Korean missionaries being more welcomed on the reserves than whites. Not a not of bad blood between Natives and Koreans.
 
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