It’s always a minefield and something of an awkward one to make public comments on pastor’s pay as a pastor. It’s can read a bit like feathering one’s own nest. So, before I say anything else, let me be clear: none of these thoughts are borne out of frustration with my own church or situation. My church have been exceptionally good to me, far beyond what their size and makeup suggest is possible, and I am in no way discontent. I am not angling for a pay rise or shakeup of allowances. Nothing here is specifically about my own church.
Nevertheless, the question of pastor’s pay and what to pay other workers is always a live one. At least, if you’re an Independent. We don’t have set pay scales and structures like the Church of England or the non-conformist denominations. There are, inevitably, advantages and disadvantages to that. One of the evident and ongoing issues is always the question of what, exactly, do you pay anyone and on what basis do you make the decision? So, in no particular order, here are some thoughts on pay.
Low pay is an odd application of ‘double honour’
Paul writes this to Timothy:
17 The elders who are good leaders are to be considered worthy of double honor,[c] especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. 18 For the Scripture says: Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,[d] and, “The worker is worthy of his wages.”
The CSB put in a footnote that double honour can legitimately be rendered ‘respect and remuneration’. That this must be in view to some degree is the only thing that makes sense of Paul’s reference in v18 to ‘the worker is worthy of his wages’. Given the reference to workers and their wages, we can’t insist ‘double honour’ is about respect alone. Even if we do make that argument, it is an odd form of respect to offer substandard wages. If elders who labour in preaching and teaching really are worthy of double honour, we really ought to reflect that in how we remunerate them for their work on our behalf.
Whatever ‘double honour’ means, it must also reflect in ordinary members’ salaries
There are two possible ways to think of double honour so far as remuneration goes. One way is to argue, if the average person earns X, the elder labouring in teaching and preaching should be on double that amount. That is double honour so far as remuneration goes. Another way to take double honour is to consider it to be talking about two forms of honour. For example, per the CSB footnote, respect and remuneration. That is to say, the elder labouring in preaching and teaching isn’t necessarily worthy of a double salary, but of the dual honour of respect and a reasonable salary. But then some discussion still needs to take place concerning what a reasonable salary looks like in practice.
However we cut it, the remuneration of an elder ought to be reflected in the salaries of the church. If we are saying double honour means double salary, then we need to reflect that meaningfully. If it really is properly honourable, we might want to look at the highest earners in our church and double their salary. If we’re saying double honour means respect and remuneration (which is what I actually think this means), we need to make sure we aren’t disrespecting our pastor by remunerating them poorly.
A good test of our salary level is this: if it is honourable and reasonable for the pastor and his family to live on whatever amount you set, that presumably means it is okay for the rest of the church to live on that amount too. That necessarily means, if you earn more, you should be willing to give the excess entirely over to the church (being as you don’t need it either – it is over and above what you expect your pastor, whom you are particularly honouring, to live on). If it is unconscionable for you to live on that amount, it is not any sort of honour to expect it of your pastor. If it is credible for your pastor, it is credible for you and anything you earn over the amount you think the pastor is worth should be given to the church. How your pastor’s salary reflects your own giving and salary level is very telling concerning your view of honour.
‘What do you need to live on?’ is a bad question
If a church begins by asking the question, ‘how much do you need to live on?’ a couple of things bear saying.
First, it is not the kind of question that suggests the church is wanting to really honour their pastor by remunerating him properly. It is the kind of question that smacks of how little we can get away with having to pay him. It is not really an honourable question, but a miserly one.
Second, it is not the kind of question that suggests you are overly concerned about what an elder is worth not what the teaching of the Word is worth. That is really the question to be asking: how much do we value this role? How much do we value what this elder is doing for us? On those terms, the remuneration we give our pastors might be quite telling!
If you’re going to benchmark, benchmark credibly
It’s not unreasonable to look at other similar jobs and benchmark the salary to it. A lot of people use the teachers scale as a similar sort of role. Having been a teacher, I am sceptical that the expectations on an M1-U3 teacher is anything like that of a pastor. The M1-U3 scale is usually the one we put our pastors on without considering that M1-U3 is the scale for ‘a teacher without extra responsibilities’. The oversight, leadership and planning involved with pastoral ministry (in my opinion) far outstrips what is asked of those on these scales. If you are going to benchmark it by teacher scales, the responsibilities involved are much closer to Lead Practitioners or the lower levels of the Leadership Group.
Of course, it needn’t be benchmarked to the teacher’s scale at all. Other scales or benchmarks are available. But if we are going to benchmark the role, we need to benchmark it credibly and honestly. Do we really think that the responsibilities on a person taking up their first pastorate are really equivalent to what is expected of an NQT or even a teacher with no other responsibilities with a few years experience? If we are going to benchmark to something equivalent, we need to actually benchmark to something equivalent.
If you peg to a scale, make it an actual scale
One of the other issues concerning scales is that they go up. My wife is on a scale at her work – largely pegged to the teachers scale – and she moves up the scale each year as scales are designed to do. Pastors salaries that are often pegged to the teachers scale when they start rarely seem to do this. They are set at a point on the scale and there they stay, meaning they aren’t pegged to the scale at all. They are benchmarked to a teacher of certain experience that they inevitably outstrip after two or three years. In the worst cases, pastors are pegged at a point in the scale which never moves and the church fails to apply the rises applied to the scale itself so that they end up taking real-terms pay cuts every year.
If we are going to put someone on a scale, we have to actually put them on a scale. Scales by their nature go up if not just to account for experience accrued. We also have to ask the question, how much honour we are really showing pastors by benchmarking them – as men with usually decades of experiences both in work and in the ministry, often with multiple qualifications – to a never-to-be-moved level of a twenty-something-year-old with a year or two of classroom experience behind them? When we put it like that, are we really showing the honour that scripture suggests we should?
If you’re going to benchmark or scale, don’t be out of date
Another issue that rears its head frequently is that those tasked with setting salaries – particularly if a significant chunk relates to housing allowance – is that levels are often set by people who neither know market values nor current scales. Raw figures are often deemed high when, in truth, the people setting them are many years out of date. They have either been out of the workplace themselves for some time and may not have rented in the current market. People on mortgages often fail to understand the current market for rentals and do not always understand why their detached, four-bedroom house mortgage is considerably cheaper than the three-bed terrace somebody is trying to rent. Nor do those who have been out of the workplace for quite some time always understand how and why salaries have risen and raw figures that would have sounded a lot 10 years ago are now no such thing. Levels need to be set by those who are in date and understand the times.
Inability is not the same as unwillingness
Some churches, by their make-up and for a host of other reasons, may not be in a position to pay a pastor as much as they might like or as much as they think he is worth. They might want to honour him that way and be unable. It is worth recognising this is different to unwillingness.
I do think some questions should be asked about inability first. For example, as per the above, are people saying a pastor can live on a salary that they couldn’t possibly live on? If they really do consider this an acceptable wage, have they put their money where their mouth is and given all the money they earn above that threshold to the church and determined to live on the same amount? If not, they aren’t really saying this is a credible salary and it is not an honourable position. If the church really are saying this is all we can afford, but none of us could afford to live on that amount, we probably have to admit that we cannot afford to employ a pastor.
Nevertheless, let’s say the church really have given as much as they can reasonably be expected to give and still the salary is low. Have they made effort – in a bid to honour whoever they would employ – to fill up what they lack from elsewhere? Have they sought to build partnerships and raise external funds so they can remunerate their pastor properly? This at least shows a level of willingness and desire to honour their pastor.
If that is the situation, a pastor can recognise there is a difference between genuine unwillingness to honour him with appropriate remuneration and a right desire to do so but genuine inability. Another sign of genuine will to do this is the church affirming that, when they have the ability to do so, they will remunerate the pastor properly even though they can’t right now. A potential minister might well accept such a call on that basis. Inability to honour someone as we might like is not the same as unwillingness to do so.
The wider church has a responsibility if it wants churches in unreached places
If the wider church wants to see churches where there are currently none, and particularly in deprived communities where remuneration is going to be considerably harder to come by given the makeup of our churches, wealthier churches have a responsibility to ensure funds are available to poorer churches so that they can employ pastors and remunerate them properly. Likewise, poorer local churches have something of a personal responsibility first to ensure they are actually giving what they can (perhaps giving anything over what they set their pastor’s salary at, for example) and, if they still fall short, to build partnerships with other churches so that pastors can be adequately supported in their ministry and freed from concerns about money so that they can reach the lost with the gospel and build up those under their care through the Word.
It can’t have escaped anybody’s notice that we’ve got fewer and fewer people going into pastoral ministry at the moment. There are lots of possible reasons, some I suspect more pressing and telling that others. But among them, a lack of reasonable remuneration – knowing that if we just stay even in relatively basic-level secular work – we’ll be better able to financially support our families with a lot less hassle surely plays its part. We seem to take it as read in other areas that if you want the best people you tend to have to pay for them. Whilst we don’t want to attract people into ministry only (or even mainly) because of large salaries, the opposite is nevertheless true and seems to be entirely in line with what Paul has to say on the matter: people will not come, work hard or ultimately be very good if we don’t remunerate them properly (don’t muzzle the ox while he treads the grain). If you want good, godly men who will serve the church to the best of their ability and spend their time doing exactly that, we need to free them truly and properly from financial concerns and remunerate them properly. That, it seems to me, is all part of double honour.