Against Hessian Pastors.....Repost: Home Cookin'

Hessian mercenaries,
American Revolution Era

There are some posts I have written over the years that I keep being reminded of again and again. That doesn't mean they are particularly well written but rather that the issues that led to me writing them keep cropping up over and over. My post from 2009, Home Cookin', is one such post. My main beef in that post that still troubles me today has to do with the ubiquity of mercenary pastors, men who are largely unknown to their hiring church, often lured away from their current church with the promise of more prestige and more money.

Of all of the negatives that come from a professionalized clergy, few are more damaging than the practice of hiring mercenary pastors who come to a church based on a few interviews and some sermon samples, a pre-packaged, ready to plug in guy who usually doesn't know the city he is moving to or the people he is supposed to be serving as an elder and on the other hand has no real attachments to those people apart from getting a check every week. Sure they often come to love the people they are hired to pastor but it is amazing how often those same pastors feel "called" to go to yet another church that coincidentally offers them more money and prestige. 

During the American Revolution, the British hired mercenaries from Germany to fill out their ranks. These mercenaries, called Hessians, had no stake in the war. It didn't really matter to them if the British prevailed or if the colonials won their independence. They were being paid to fight for one side and that is what they did. I think most of the guys who are these mercenary pastors have a good heart and think they are doing the right thing but our model of professional clergy makes many guys think that is the only way, and ironically the Biblical way, of doing "ministry". 

What we see in the Bible are not mercenary pastors who are hired from outside because training men up from within the church is too time consuming and difficult. The church in the early days appointed men from within the body to serve as elders and leaders. These were men who presumably knew the rest of the church and that the rest of the church knew. They weren't called as elders based on a few interviews and a website, they were men who had been observed by their peers over time. This takes time and it doesn't lend itself to men being professional, paid clergy because presumably they have had jobs already. It does lend itself to men sharing the burden rather than hiring someone to take it all on. 

The fellowship we attend somewhat irregularly has a few men who share the leadership of the church. Each of them has a job outside of the church to provide for their family. Each of them has been in this fellowship for a substantial time. Certainly there are issues with having little exposure to the church outside of that one fellowship but I think the advantages of having men raised up from with rather than hired from without outweigh those concerns.

---------

I was looking over Dave Black’s page and I read through an interesting post called Returning Biblical Education to the Local Church. He brings up something I have mulled over for some time: the inherent problem with hiring men from outside of the local body to lead that local body. That is not the primary thrust of his post but it really got me thinking afresh and asking the question: Why do we seek men who are strangers to come to our local body and lead us? Would we not be better served with men who led us because they came from us? Is a professional, prepackaged minister a better and more importantly a more Biblical man to be an elder? Dave obviously doesn’t think so and neither do I…

“Clergy” becomes a whole way of living, an ecclesiastical subculture. The church, however, predates the seminary and will outlast it. The book of Acts reminds us that the earliest church leaders were homegrown nobodies. They were not parachuted in from the outside with all of the proper credentials. They were already full participants in their congregations – they had homes, they had jobs, and they had solid reputations. If at all possible, I think we too would do well to train people for leadership in our local churches, equipping them for evangelism and other ministries, thus complementing the work of our seminaries and Bible colleges. The early church knew that leadership is best learned by on-the-job training, not by sending our most promising leaders off to sit behind a desk.

I think this phenomena of professional ministers is a product in large part of two factors. First, we are a country that by and large draws its identity from Europe and with her state sponsored churches, professional clergy is part of the fabric of the society. Second, and more importantly, we are Americans. We live in a prepackaged, processed, microwave age. Sure home cooked meals from scratch taste better and are better for you, but it is such a hassle! I can spend an hour or two cooking up a nice meal for my family (and even that requires pre-cut meat, canned veggies, boxed side dishes) or I can get some pizzas. In my family we get pizzas or something similar pretty often and in families where both spouses work it is even more common. We want it quick, easy and disposable.

The church seems to think the same way. Training and raising a man up within the local body who can grow in knowledge and maturity until he is ready to lead as an elder takes a long time and is hard work. It may not always work out, he may move, he may lack the aptitude for it, he may turn out to not be a very good elder. It is a whole lot easier and faster to find someone who already is “qualified”, i.e. has a seminary degree, who we can interview and “call” to ministry. Of course he will probably have to move and so to entice him we need to pay him. If he were already a part of the congregation, he would have a job and a home and ties to the community. He would know and be known by the local body because he is a part of that body. They would know him and his wife and his kids, and that would make it possible to know if he meets the qualifications for an elder listed in the Bible instead of meeting the resume credentials that are often the entry level for being considered to be a pastor. It makes more sense and it is more faithful to the Bible to raise leaders up internally but that just takes too long. So instead, church after church hires strangers to come in to lead and love people they have likely never met. It only adds to the separation between the clergy and the laity to have a paid professional come on the scene. Hard to believe with that great set-up that so many men leave the ministry, that churches have such high turnover in pastors and the men who stay are often frustrated and burned-out. When you view the pastor as a paid professional, someone hired and brought in from the outside, why not get rid of them? Paid, professional clergy are employees and as such they are disposable. A church can always find someone else to pay to lead them. On the flip side, when ministry is your job you can understand why men leave church A with 100 members for church B with 250 members. If you are from within the congregation and not getting paid, why would you leave? It is not a job, it is truly a calling.

Just because we live in a quick, easy and disposable society doesn’t mean that is how the church should operate. It is certainly harder, more time consuming and more sacrificial to raise up leaders in the church but I believe (and I think the Bible supports) the idea that a primary responsibility of the local body is in the training and support of men from within that body to lead that body. Seminary may be a part of that training, but it is only one part of an integrated development of leaders, not an end in and of itself. Hiring pastors like an old western gunslinger to come in and clean up the town before moving on is an injustice to the local body, to those men and their families. We need to take the time to look around the cupboards, find the ingredients and whip up some home grown elders.

The Donald Trump Model Of Church

I got some great discussion on Facebook surrounding my prior post, Pastoring is who you are, not a job you can be fired from. One that got me thinking was this idea of firing men from a calling, especially the calling that the institutional church and our religious culture sees as the "highest calling" possible in the church. Again, I am not talking about men who disualify themselves based on their own behavior, I am talking about men who are dismissed over petty power struggles or failing to be as awesome as that famous preacher from the pulpit.

When a local church tosses an elder aside because the numbers aren't there or his sermons are boring or in a petty power struggle, what is that telling the guy who was fired?

- Looks like you aren't good enough.

- I guess you weren't called after all.

- Sorry about spending all of that time and money in seminary, maybe you can turn those homiletic and Greek language skills into a job in the secular private sector.

- Sure being a professional pastor is the "highest calling" in the church and you want to serve God but you don't have what it takes. Maybe you can be a deacon or perhaps an usher? God's highest calling is just not in the cards for you. In the immortal words of the prophet Judge Smails, "Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.".

Who needs the Good Shepherd when you can model your organization after The Donald?

How incredibly cruel is this system, to raise up to unattainable lofty heights the coveted position of "pastor" making it the gold standard for Christian ministry and then to fire men from this supposed calling for failing to meet standards that have no basis in Scripture? Many men are endlessly auditioning to either keep their job or prepare to move on to a new "calling" that coincidentally happens to pay more and provide a bigger office. How are they supposed to have time to be godly husbands and fathers (which is an actual qualification for elders), to get out and evangelize the lost or to serve the people of the church when they are constantly battling to keep their job?

What a weird, twisted, dysfunctional hamster wheel we have created. We lavish adoration on these men to almost cultic levels one day and then kick them (and their family) to the curb on a whim the next.

God's Kingdom is made for servants who are talent-less, feeble and weak. Why would we reject those from leading who exhibit the very qualities that the Kingdom is designed for?

Save Your W(h)ine for Communion

Several people in my social media circles linked to a post by Thom Rainier, One Sentence That Pastors and Church Staff Hate to Hear. Here is the opening.

The moment they hear it, they feel the “cringe factor” throughout their body. Even as the first few words are spoken, the recipient feels his or her emotions plummeting. It is the one sentence that is uniformly dreaded by pastors and church staff. It typically begins with these words:

“People are saying that . . . “

The full sentence could say; “People are saying that you don’t visit enough.” Another example is: “People are saying that our student ministry is not doing well.” Or one more example is: “People are saying that you don’t have good office hours.”

The sentence might specify a group while maintaining anonymity for the individuals: “Some elders are not happy with you” or “A lot of the staff are unhappy.”

You get the point. It could be phrased a number of ways, but the meaning is still similar. “People” is never defined. The true complainer is never identified. It is one of the most frustrating and demoralizing sentences pastors and staff will hear. 

OK I get what he is saying but I don't think the problem is quite as cut and dried as it is being presented. In fact when I read it, the post sounds whiny and vindictive and the message being presented is more "don't critique your pastor at all" rather than "don't do it anonymously".

You can't have it both ways. You can't expect/demand the benefits of the employer-employee relationship (i.e. wages and other compensation) without getting the responsibility of being accountable to your employers. The rest of the church works for a living and pays you to perform certain tasks, tasks you signed up for when you applied for the job. As your employer,  the local church has the right and probably the responsibility to treat you fairly as an employee because that is what you asked to be, no matter what pious language you associated with it ("I feel called...."). In any employment relationship that is going to include performance reviews and critique of your work.

If I am doing substandard work or make a serious error at my job, I expect my employer to promptly and openly provide me feedback and corrective action, even if it is hard to hear sometimes. You can't do that in the religious employment setting though because it is impolite and perhaps even blasphemous. The employer-employee relationship is muddled in religious circles because people are not supposed to be critical of their employees, i.e. clergy and staff. This leads to a situation where an employee is not addressed by his employer with critical feedback because he is a "man of God" and above reproach. Instead of an open system of feedback on job performance (and make no mistake, it is a job), you get the behind the scenes whispering that often leads to sudden turmoil and firing because the very system itself serves to force employment feedback into the background.

But isn't it, to use Rainer's term that he repeats over and over, cowardly to hide behind innuendo when expressing dissatisfaction? Perhaps but again the skewed relationship between employer and employee makes direct feedback problematic. Who wants to be labelled the guy who is always being critical of the pastor in a group of people where many hold their pastor in an almost sacred reverence? Would anyone thank a mere laymen who tells a pastor that his sermon was poorly prepared, poorly delivered and substandard work right after the sermon and then suggests a corrective action plan to avoid more awful sermons in the future? I doubt it but that is what happens in the real world workforce. Why should religious employees be any different?

If you want open feedback from your employer rather than veiled critique, you should solicit it. Even better, stop demanding remuneration for serving in the local church and you go from being an employee back to being a brother. That would be better for everyone.

Animal Farm and the Doctrine of Vocation

Two seemingly unrelated events crossed my mind the last week. One had to do with a discussion of the doctrine of vocation in the church. If you are unfamiliar with this idea it actually goes back quite a ways and is probably best championed by Gene Veith.  He writes:

The word "calling," or in its Latinate form "vocation," had long been used in reference to the sacred ministry and the religious orders. Martin Luther was the first to use "vocation" to refer also to secular offices and occupations. Today, the term has become common-place, another synonym for a profession or job, as in "vocational training." But behind the term is the notion that every legitimate kind of work or social function is a distinct "calling" from God, requiring unique God-given gifts, skills, and talents. Moreover, the Reformation doctrine of vocation teaches that God himself is active in everyday human labor, family responsibilities, and social interactions.

That seems to make sense, right? Stay with me. The other event was that I sat down and read Animal Farm, a book I have been meaning to read for some time, having never been required to read it in school. As an aside, the list of classics I haven't read in spite of a college prep background in high school and a liberal arts B.A. is amazing. I am kind of glad because now I can read them and probably get more out of them but still it is little wonder we have such ignorance in this country. Anyway. The point being that all vocations have value in the eyes of God.

So what does Animal Farm have to do with the doctrine of vocation? Animal Farm is a biting satirical tale of a farm taken over by animals with the Soviet era promise of equality and shared prosperity. As the years go by it becomes apparent that in spite of the empty rhetoric some of the animals are working really hard and others (the pigs mainly) are living off their labor as the intellectual leaders of the farm. They are kept in line by slogans that seem to indicate that they are invaluable to the farm but it is obvious that they are being used by the pigs. The original commandments of Animal Farm are abandoned and replaced with one commandment.

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

Orwell, George (2009-07-01). Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (p. 118). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

This is where the connection clicked for me. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. All vocations are equal but one is more equal than others.

In spite of  the claims of the doctrine of vocation that all vocations are equally valuable in the Kingdom, the uncomfortable reality is that one vocation expects all of the rest of the vocations to work to earn a paycheck to in turn support them. It is pretty hard to say that God values the work of plumbers and cashiers as much as the vocational pastor when the pastor pays his bills with the wages earned by the rest of the church. In fact it sounds rather like a self-serving doctrine when you get down to it. The church needs members to be content to show up day after day at their job to earn a check that they can give part of to the church so that the church can keep paying her bills, most especially the salary of the pastor. While Joe is swinging a hammer all day and Steve is answering the phone in an office, Mike is sitting in his office preparing a sermon, relying on the others to bring home a paycheck so that he can get a paycheck. Little wonder sermons on giving are so awkward. I think more and more Christians are questioning this whole system and wondering why they are busting their humps all week to pay someone else who is perfectly capable of getting a job.

All vocations are equal but some are more equal than others.

Is It The Church Or A Non-profit Incorporation?

On sort of the same theme as my post yesterday I ran across this blog post last night by Jason Savage Why I'm Leaving The "Ministry". It is written by a vocational pastor who is leaving that behind. I really appreciated this paragraph and want to focus especially on something he said (emphasis mine)

The reality is, I can no longer handle the “professionalism” of the church. I’m tired of running a non-profit incorporation that calls itself a church. I’m tired of feeling limited in the scope of relationships because of some strange “loyalty” to a particular name on a church that pays my salary. Truthfully, I don’t particularly like what God showed me about myself in these last seven years. I realize now he was first calling me to preach repentance to myself.

That is so incredibly true, especially that third sentence. When you depend on a paycheck from one religious organization it twists your relationship to other Christians and especially other local churches. Whether you admit it or not, or even are aware of it or not, our religious system turns what should be co-operative entities into competitors, all looking to create their own market niche in the form of distinctives. Come to our church, we are Reformed! Come to our church, we have a great youth program! Come to our church, we offer both contemporary and traditional worship! Come to our church, we have a sweet latte bar! Come to our church, we are an independent, fundamental, King James Only church! When you look at the church ads in publications you start wondering if you are gathering with the church or shopping for a used car. Making disciples is hard work but poaching church attenders from other churches is pretty easy. Of course the same existing church attenders are being marketed to by other churches and they are also aiming for your people so not only do you have to be constantly refining your marketing plan to get new attenders in the front door, you also have top be careful of losing check writers members out the back door. Any successful business knows this, a great sales strategy is worthless if you don't pay attention to retention.

I think there are a lot of vocational pastors who feel the same way as Jason but as he notes: .

I know many paid leaders in churches would be liberated by not being paid by the church. The problem is they haven’t been trained to do anything else. So out of fear, they stay. I wish more would actually leave the “Ministry”.

Eric Carpenter can tell you first hand how difficult the transition can be. It was a great post to read, I would encourage you to give it a read and leave a note. It can be a lonely road when you do something that doesn't make sense to most people in the church so kind words of encouragement would certainly be welcome!

Not a Pastor? Shut yer pie hole!

I come across stuff like this all the time and often via well respected ministries but they never fail to make my heart ache. Bobby Jamieson writing for the 9 Marks blog Church Matters addresses the question of how "laity" can make changes in the church. His answer? They can't and they shouldn't.

Read Why You Can’t Change Your Church (Part 1 of 4) and weep.

Seems like at least once a month I get an email from a church member—not a pastor—asking how they can change their church. Not “change” as in printing the bulletins on different paper, but as in reworking the church’s leadership structure and membership practices. Should they give the pastor some books? Call a meeting? Start a study group?

If you’re in this situation, what can you do? How can you change your church when you’re not the pastor?

The short answer is, you can’t. If you’re not the pastor, you can’t change your church. Really. I mean it. No surprise retraction waiting in the wings.

Now, I’m a congregationalist, so of course I believe that a church can—and must—fire their pastor if he starts going where the Bible doesn’t go. The pastor doesn’t have final authority; the congregation as a whole does.

But apart from those exceptional times, if you aren’t the person who is formally charged to preach the Word and lead the church, then you can’t change your church in any fundamental ways. This applies almost equally to a pastor who is not a church’s primary preacher. (I’m referring primarily to “the pastor” since most churches only have one.)

I am not saying that Bobby is inaccurate but what he says is terribly wrong.  Basically it boils down to this. If you aren't a "pastor" as our religious culture defines it, you don't get a voice other than when it comes down to hiring or firing the guy that does (assuming you are in a church that has a congregational form of government, many people don't even have a voice in hiring/firing). Not only are you not permitted to have a voice, you are not even able to because the system isn't designed that way. If you disagree with something he says you have three choices:

1. Shut up, grit your teeth and take it

2. Leave

3. Work to get him replaced

The system is designed to be this way and we wonder why we have pastors that are burned out and laity that are tuned out. We have changed a relationship where elders are more mature believers who we are to emulate and turned it into a relationship based in conflict. In many churches men are disengaged or absent and we bemoan it but what do we expect?

Don't misunderstand or perhaps misrepresent me. The point here is not that we should always demand to get our own way. The point is that there needs to be a better way, a way that reflects "one another" rather than "one and all the others". When the system is designed in such a way that the "laity" is silenced we should expect the sort of conflict we so often see in the church. When we stop seeing elders as more mature members of the family and instead see them as employees to be hired, constantly evaluated and often fired, we have lost any semblance of what Biblical leadership is about. When some sheep start to see themselves as something more than what they are because of education or "ordination" or titles, they find themselves stepping on the robes of the Good Shepherd.

I can take some solace in knowing that this system is dying out but as it does many people are going to get hurt by the death throes. Pastors who find themselves under fire from fellow believers who become their employers and demand the impossible from them. Their wives and children who dwell under unimaginable pressure. The regular pew sitters who slow atrophy and die week after week wondering why the guy they are paying to be their pastor is so flawed.  I think we have just assumed this to be "just the way it is" for so long we can't imagine anything else but we must. The church cannot and has not thrived under this system and never will.

A couple of good posts on elders

I liked what Dave Black posted this morning (7:55 AM), replicated below in its entirety:

This Sunday our church will be "ordaining" our elders. Just what is ordination? It is not the conferring of special grace (as in Catholicism). It is simply the setting apart, the commissioning, the consecrating to a particular ministry in the church. As such, ordination is not in contradiction with the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. In the Body of Christ there is a principle of equality with functional differences without being hierarchical. From a scriptural perspective, a better word might be "dedication" or "consecration." Since all ministers in the Body have the same purpose -- to serve Christ in the ministry of reconciliation -- all believers are to be dedicated or consecrated to their tasks. The danger we must avoid this Sunday, I believe, is to give the false impression that only these 3 men are somehow "in ministry." In Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4 we find lists of the spiritual gifts that the risen Christ has given to the church "for the work of ministry." The basic idea of ordination in early Christianity was not transference of authority but conferring a blessing and petitioning for divine favor. Because the church is a priesthood of ALL believers, the recognized ministry is a representative ministry. To belong to this representative ministry, it is the call that is important and not any rite of ordination. 

Elders are overseers, but as members of the Body of Christ they no doubt also have individual gifts that vary -- teaching, administration, etc. They are shepherds but, like the rest of us, they are also sheep. They are, as Phil. 1:2 reminds, not over the church but extensions of the church. Thus, from the beginning of church history, ordination has never been a cardinal doctrine of the church. Service is what the church is all about -- and all of us are to be servants of Christ. The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers would suggest that our elders should view themselves first and foremost as co-members of the Body, under the authority of Christ. Together, leaders and led alike are unified in a Christ-centered and Spirit-filled ministry. In such a setting, ministry does not create a hierarchical organization. The total ministry is the Body of Christ, and He alone remains the Head of the church. In this light, I fully expect that after this Sunday Ed, Jason, and Jason will continue to be called Ed, Jason, and Jason by the congregation, and that without any disrespect. For in the Body of Christ, there can be no higher title than that of brother (Heb. 2:11).

That is one of the best explanations of the calling and appointing of elders I have ever read. It is so seductive to let that call turn into a place of pride and demanded privilege marked with titles and demands of deference rather than humility and servant-hood marked by the towel and the basin. It is good and proper and Biblical to recognize men as elders among the church but never to place those men on a pedestal over the church. We should call the church to repent where we have exalted men over others but we must also be careful to not go so far in the other direction that we don't see the need for elders. I certainly need them in my life although I will also say that I rarely find them among those who insist on titles of honor beyond "brother".

The second comes from Eric Carpenter and looks at a familiar passage that comes up when discussing elders: should they be paid? Eric argues in Keeping I Corinthians 9 in Context that the oft quoted passages in 1 Corinthians 9 cannot be used to support paying elders/pastors since they are not talking about elders/passages in the first place! That is very true but often ignored. I also commented that when read in its entirety rather than plucking a couple of verses out that Paul is arguing against being paid for ministry because preaching the Gospel is its own reward and being paid creates a stumbling block to the Gospel. Anyway, read Eric's post but don't take our word for it. Read all of 1 Corinthians 9 and see if you find that it supports  full-time paid professional pastors.

The true church doesn't need to be defended

I watched this promo video for the latest book defending the traditional church last night.



Notice the scenes the video flips to: people walking into a "church", the front of a church building, a pastor sitting in a pew, a pastor standing on a raised platform behind a lectern "preaching". All imagery of a notion of church centered on buildings, clergy and Sunday morning meetings. Notice also the endorsements. Professional pastors and a seminary president. Finally look again at the people chosen in the beginning. Goofy looking, non-churchy appearing people with queer notions of church compared to the proper pastor setting them straight if they would just become "members" of a local church and sit quietly in their pews.

Why do we see so many Christian leaders, typically vocational ministers, writing books on the importance of what they do for a living and the crucial nature of "church membership" that binds believers to their local church to the exclusion of all other Christians? Is it perhaps because more and more voices are asking disquieting questions? Is the curtain truly being drawn back? I think fear is what drives books like this, and DeYoung's Why We Love The Church and "ministries" like 9 Marks, the fear of losing the system that is so comfortable and familiar.

If you want to be part of a traditional church and sign your name to a membership list, that is your business. I think it is unhealthy and you rob yourself and your family of the full richness of the Kingdom community but that is your choice. I just would ask that you don't presume to wag your finger at those who are seeking to imitate the early church rather than conforming to the institutional church. Many Christians are seeking something different, not to be rebellious but to be faithful, seeking expressions of the church that focus on relationships between believers instead of performances, an expression that encourages all of the brothers to participate in a meaningful way rather than simply sitting and watching. These questions threaten some but they liberate and equip many. So these guys can keep writing their books to defend tradition, I will keep calling the church to seek a better way.

Repost: Tithing, Levites and the New Covenant High Priesthood of Christ

So I looked back to see what I was writing about a year ago today and come across this post, Tithing, Levites and the New Covenant High Priesthood of Christ. Others have examined this topic far better than I have but it is something that keeps coming up, probably because the divisive influence of money on the church is something that likewise keeps coming up. The question I ponder was this: could we use the tithing system under the Old Covenant used to support the Levitcal priests to perpetuate a system of using offerings in the church to pay elders to minister? My answer is below...

----

This is going to be kind of a long post because I wanted to provide lengthy Scriptural references so please bear with me.

I was thinking more about the idea of tithing and how that principle has been carried forward and linked into the local church and clergy system. I think a lot of the confusion and misapplication of the tithe to the New Covenant people of God is a result of Christians not really taking the time to examine the whole tithing system, why it existed, what purpose it served and why it has been annulled. Combine that with the general difficulty many Christians have in differentiating between shadow and fulfillment, between the Old and the New, and it becomes apparent why this question of the tithe is so often misapplied in the church.

It sometimes seems that the idea of tithing in the Old Testament is seen as essentially the same thing as offerings on Sunday morning at your local church.

In the Old Testament, God’s people brought their tithes and offerings to the temple and the priests lived off part of that while ministering.

In the New Testament church, God’s people bring their tithes and offerings to the local church and pastors live off part of that while ministering.

Simple, right? That sounds dandy but here is the problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. God commanded tithing very purposefully. It was not done in a vacuum but rather had a substantive purpose for a particular time that was intertwined with the entirety of His commands to His people. The tithe was both a sacrificial act of obedience and served a practical purpose in supporting the Levitical priests.

“The Levitical priests, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the LORD's food offerings as their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them. And this shall be the priests' due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. The firstfruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. For the LORD your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the name of the LORD, him and his sons for all time. (Deuteronomy 18:1-5 ESV)

The Levites of the Old Covenant were a particular subset of God’s people, set apart out of all of the people of Israel for a specific purpose. They were not counted in the census God ordered but instead they were called to serve in the tabernacle:

But the Levites were not listed along with them by their ancestral tribe. For the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Only the tribe of Levi you shall not list, and you shall not take a census of them among the people of Israel. But appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all its furnishings, and over all that belongs to it. They are to carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings, and they shall take care of it and shall camp around the tabernacle. When the tabernacle is to set out, the Levites shall take it down, and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up. And if any outsider comes near, he shall be put to death. (Numbers 1:47-51)

The Levites were not given an inheritance like the other tribes of Israel because the offerings were to be their inheritance…

To the tribe of Levi alone Moses gave no inheritance. The offerings by fire to the LORD God of Israel are their inheritance, as he said to him. (Joshua 13:14)

God did not give the tribe of Levi an inheritance. Because of this, the tithe was given to the Levites and they were largely dependent on the offerings…

“To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service that they do, their service in the tent of meeting, so that the people of Israel do not come near the tent of meeting, lest they bear sin and die. But the Levites shall do the service of the tent of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, and among the people of Israel they shall have no inheritance. For the tithe of the people of Israel, which they present as a contribution to the LORD, I have given to the Levites for an inheritance. Therefore I have said of them that they shall have no inheritance among the people of Israel.” (Numbers 18:21-24 ESV)

The tithe served sort of a dual purpose. It was a commandment, a sacrifice to God and it also served as material support for the tribe of Levi who was commanded to serve God in the tent of meeting. It is a brilliant system.

So all well and good. What is the problem?

Just this minor little point. The Levitical priesthood is gone, done away with, obsolete, kaput! The tithing system where the first-fruits were brought into the storehouse and given to the Levites served the purpose of providing them sustenance as the priests who ministered in the house of the Lord and served as intercessors for the people is over. It was not intended as a permanent system and the old priesthood of the Levites has been replaced by a new, infinitely better High Priest…

Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second… In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 8:1-7, 13)

Under the New Covenant, Christ Himself is our great High Priest and He has made propitiation for sins, once for all time. He is our intercessor and believers have access to the throne of grace through Him directly without the need for a human intercessor. Because of that the Levitical priesthood has expired and is shown to be a type and shadow of Christ as High Priest. We don’t have a separate, set apart subgroup of Christians who should live off the offerings of the rest. We are all a royal priesthood and the example we have from Scripture is of even the apostle Paul working for a living so he could support his own needs as well as give to the poor.

The tithe and the subsequent bequeathing of the tithe to the Levitical priests was specific to them and it did not transfer to Protestant ministers. How can I make that assertion? Quite confidently as it turns out. There simply is no linkage unless you assume the professional Protestant ministry and then read that back into the text. The New Testament certainly doesn’t make the connection. Even the Apostle Paul in his oft misquoted treatise in 1 Corinthians 9 was more interested in why he did not seek the financial support of the church rather than a defense of why he deserved it and he was an apostle, not a local church pastor!

The world of offerings being brought to a central place and used to financially support that place and those who were “employed” there is from a time and situation that changed forever with the cross, as did so many other practices from the world of the Old Covenant. We force these practices onto the church to our peril and the history of the church has proven this over and over again. Merely teaching Christians that they should tithe because the Old Testament references it, without also studying and explaining the what, how and why of tithing, does a disservice to God’s people.

Tithing is a word that is thrown about and misapplied all the time in the church. Many men in ministry, men who have studied the Scriptures and should know better, frequently use “tithing” to describe giving to the local church, creating an equivalence in the minds of many Christians that is unwarranted. Giving to the needs of others and proper stewardship of money are such vital topics in the church. This doctrine of money deserves to stand on its own and not be blurred by a misapplication of an Old Covenant practice. Honesty and faithfulness to the Scriptures demands nothing less.

An interesting new series

Alan Knox is starting a new series on a somewhat familiar topic, Elders and Financial Benefits. His intro post is up, Elders/Pastors and Financial Benefits: Introduction and this promises to be a fascinating series. This does sound a little like an older series Alan did on whether or not elders should be paid salaries but this seems to be a broader look that goes beyond just salaries. From his first post:

In this series, I do not plan to rehash my argument concerning elders/pastors and salaries. (By the way, I will primarily use the term “elders” in this series. However, if your traditions uses “pastor” or “bishop” or “minister” or anything else, you can assume that I’m referring to those people also.)

Instead, I’m going to look through several passages of Scripture that connect elders and financial benefit. Interestingly, there are only a few passages of Scripture that mention elders at all. And, among those, only three discuss elders and finances together. I’m going to discuss those three passages in canonical order in four posts:

Acts 20:33-35
1 Timothy 5:17
1 Timothy 5:18
1 Peter 5:2

I am looking forward to the rest of the series. The topic of money and the incredible influence it has on the church is one that should be of interest to any Christian, whether you are a Christian living in the West where the hold that money has on the church is a daily reality or whether you are a Christian outside of the West who would benefit from seeing the mistakes we have made in the West in order to avoid them. Regardless, I would encourage you to check out his series and interact with it whether you agree or disagree.

Pastor Principal Professional Pay

I ran across something a few weeks ago and needless to say it grabbed my attention. The title alone drew me and I found the short blog post fascinating because of what it said and what it implied. The post appeared over at the Gospel Coalition and is titled You Asked: What Are Guidelines for Setting a Pastor’s Salary? That is a highly charged question, especially in the current economy. After the normal obligatory "of course the Bible says we are to generously pay pastors" paragraph came the real meat of the question. Since we of course must pay pastors, how much should we pay them? That is where we find this paragraph (emphasis added)

Third, what cultural dynamics are in play? An urban church context is vastly different from a suburban one. With this cultural diversity comes a variety of economic levels, educational opportunities, historical perspectives, and perceptions about the pastorate. For example, the kind of automobile an urban pastor drives may have very different connotations to his parishioners than the automobile a suburban pastor owns. Each local church is ensconced in a community and a cultural context that speaks into a pastor’s salary formulation. In many suburban contexts, a common baseline rule of thumb is placing the senior pastor’s salary in the same range as the local public high school principal. Another rule of thumb is matching the pastor’s salary with the median household income of the community where the church is located.

Those last two sentences are what caught my eye (that and the idea that the kind of car an "urban", i.e. black, pastor drives matters more than the car a "suburban", i.e. white pastor drives. What?!).

The second sentence highlighted talks about the median household income. That is interesting because the median "household" income is often a combination of both spouses working at least part-time. So you should pay your pastor the same as the median of all households, which includes dual income families. It isn't said here but the implication is that a pastor should be paid enough for him to live comfortably and for his wife to be able to stay home. I am all for women staying home and caring for the house and the children but that doesn't mean that the members of the church should give more in offerings so that she can. That wasn't the really fascinating sentence. I found the comparison between pastors and high school to be especially interesting.

Principals in suburban high schools get paid pretty well. Actually very, very well. I found a bunch of salary surveys and they all showed something somewhat similar in terms of median income for a suburban school district high school principal. Keep in mind that a high school principal is not an entry level position, it is a professional and highly compensated position. Many principals oversee a school with dozens of highly paid, highly educated teachers and their pay and benefit package is reflective of that. If we approach pastoral leadership as being just another professional career in our community, which we culturally do, then this makes sense. We have decided in our own wisdom that clergy must have a bachelors degree and often a masters degree. Many of our clergy have some sort of doctorate. We expect our clergy to have the proper professional credentials and of course they expect to be compensated as such. So what does that mean in terms of dollars and cents?

In Illinois, according to a survey by the Illinois Association of School Boards, the median salary for a high school principal is $89,463. I like Illinois as an example because it is a midwestern state, has very rural and remote areas, a high population city in Chicago and affluent suburbs. Illinois gives us a pretty decent sample. In the northeast part of Illinois, which of course includes Chicago and all of its vast suburbs, the median salary goes up to $117,611. That is not chicken scratch which might be why they answered the question kind of vaguely. I am not sure how it would go in most churches I have been in if the topic of pastoral pay started with a baseline of $80,000 plus benefits and housing.

At $80,000 you are in the top 25% of all household incomes as of 2005. As an individual wage earner, that puts you in the top 10% of all wage earners, a pretty lofty and exclusive perch.The top ten percent of wage earners starts to get you into the same company as corporate managers, doctors, lawyers, etc. These are the elite, at least in terms of wages and prestige, in our society. These are not the sort of people who perform servants work, the modern day equivalent of washing feet. They are the cream of the crop and the sort of professionals that most parents dream of their own children becoming. They are respected and respectable.

There are two reactions here. The traditional reaction is that the work clergy perform is worth at least as much as professionals in a community. We hear this a lot and it resonates in the church. With the perception that counseling, preaching, hospital visitations, marrying/burying, etc. are essential functions that can only be done by professionals, of course we would seek to pay them like other highly specialized professionals with advanced education in our community. Plus they do the stuff that I have been told I am unqualified to do and if we are being honest I would rather pay someone else to do. It is a win-win, I throw a check in the offering plate in a show of piety and I get out of the messy work of ministry.

The other reaction is "wow, that is a lot of money" and it is. It is not a coincidence that the guidelines are kind of vague. No one is going to write "In an average middle-class suburban area a senior pastor should be paid a salary of around $80,000 per year" because that is going to cause howls of protest. It should. A forty year old guy with 7 years of college certainly is smart enough and normally able bodied enough to work a regular job for a living. The notion that the poorest families in the church, old ladies and widows, families with both parents working, etc. should put money in the plate to pay someone a salary in the top 10% of wage earners to do the work of s servant ought to cause people concern.

Elders are called to be servants, men who live lives we should emulate. They are part of the Body, not a separate class that rules from on high. They are our brothers, not our employees. The church is not a corporation but we seem to think that it should be run like one. There is nothing wrong with corporations but Jesus didn't die for one. He died for a people and none of us has the right to demand a salary, especially a salary much higher than the average church goer, to do the work of ministry. If you want to get paid like a professional, pick a professional career. Be a doctor or a lawyer, start a business, be an executive. There is nothing wrong with that. Just don't expect the church to pay you like a professional to be a servant. Likewise it is high time we stop eliminating men without the "proper" credentials like a seminary degree from being recognized as elders. A ditch digger who cares for his family, shares the Gospel and lives a life other men should emulate is far more Biblically reflective of being an elder that a man with no practical experience in the world outside of a church building.

Employees of the church

Alan Knox wrote an interesting post today on how elders not being an employee of the church changes the relationship between believers, When elders/pastors don’t have to act like employees. Alan is an elder but he might need to take employment somewhere else…

Similarly, everyone who is part of our church knows that I’m looking for a teaching position. They know that if God answers this request, it will probably mean that we move out of the area. (Of course, we’re open to other possibilities also.) The church is actually praying that God would answer my request (one way or the other).

Could you imagine a salaried pastor telling a church that he is looking for another job? Or could you imagine him asking the church to pray that God would provide another job? (Yes, I know it happens occasionally. But, generally, the employee/employer relationship hinders this.)

I’m glad that my relationship with others in the church is not hindered or distracted by the employment issue.

So Alan is open with his local church family and they are able to pray for him to get a teaching position even though that likely means he would need to leave that church family and move somewhere else. Compare that with how most pastors/vocational elders look for new churches. It is often done in secrecy (not always of course) and without the knowledge, support or prayer of their current church family. Just as I didn’t tell my last employer I was looking for a new job because it would hurt my employee/employer relationship, many pastors feel unable to talk with their church family because they are not just his church family, they are also his employer.

When we add the dynamic of money and employment into the church family relationship, it necessarily has a negative impact. It is impossible to relate to one another as “brother” and “sister” when some of the “brothers” are employees of other “brothers and sisters”. When we take that away, we are able to care for and pray for one another as family. Isn’t that how it should be?

Just wondering

Can someone point me to an example of a church in the New Testament hiring a pastor from outside of that local body, firing a pastor for a reason other than sin or a pastor leaving one congregation to move to a different one? The prevailing employer-employee relationship between a local church and the pastor ought to have some sort of example, command or precedent.

Shouldn't it?

Who has this right?

In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel are ordained as ministers and hired as a pastor should get their living by the gospel. (1 Cor 9:14 re-mix)

Another thought on the idea of ministerial compensation. Again this is a case of what does the Bible actually say rather than what we are conditioned to assume it says. I am thinking specifically here about 1 Corinthians 9. When Paul talks about the right to earn a living from the Gospel proclamation, who is he talking about? Certainly not a professional clerical class since that didn’t exist in this time and he never calls for the formation of anything like it. Paul speaks in more general terms:

This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? (1 Cor 9: 3-6)

So Paul here is speaking of himself and of Barnabas as well as the other apostles and the brothers of Jesus. That is a pretty select group. I don't see that Peter, James, John or any of the other apostles would have functioned like a local church pastor is traditionally understood to function because there were no functioning local churches for them to draw a salary from. Not only that but Paul gives us another insight to this right that he saw the excercise of as an obstacle to the Gospel:

Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. (1 Cor 9: 13-14)

This is important. Paul starts off by speaking about the apostles and certain other disciples but when he makes his boldest declaration, he says “those who proclaim the gospel”. That is pretty generic and certainly not specific to a clergy. He certainly could have said "elders" but he didn't.

You might argue that Paul means a special group since he is appealing to his own right as well as the rights of the other apostles and disciples engaged in full-time ministry work. Of course we don’t know that the other apostles didn’t work “regular” jobs. We do know that Paul worked and supported himself by the labor of his own hands so the only exemple we have one way or the other is Paul and he had a regular, secular job. We also can’t really assume that if the apostles and other disciples had this right ( a right that at least one of them didn’t use because it was an obstacle to the Gospel) that we can automatically transfer that right to local church elders. No matter how great your pastor is, I don’t think the mantle of apostleship falls on him and he probably isn't a brother of Jesus.

If the standard is actually what Scripture lists, i.e. that this right to be paid is for those who “proclaim the Gospel”, doesn’t that cover a lot of people? I have and do share the Gospel with unbelievers and I also have been known to teach from time to time (see Gal 6:6 which is also used as a defense of paid ministry). I don’t get paid and don’t want to. What about brothers who do street evangelism? Some of them are fully supported because they spend the bulk of their time actually out open air preaching to unbelievers instead of delivering sermons to a largely believing audience, many of them however work a regular job and preach on the streets with no expectation of being paid. Should they expect to get paid? Doesn’t someone who leads a Bible study at work or in the home which includes unbelievers also “proclaim the Gospel”? Should they send an invoice to their local church? It is a pretty hard argument to make that 1 Corinthians 9 is envisioning a paid, professional clerical class that expects to get paid in perpetuity but that non-ministerial Christians are expected to work a job to not only support themselves and their families but also a select group of by and large able-bodied men employed by the local church while also being involved in proclaiming the Gospel.

Again, what does our tradition say about this topic and then more importantly what does Scripture actually say? Scripture is speaking on the one hand about a select (and very small) group of apostles and a few other disciples and makes no mention of elders in a local church. On the other hand, what Paul actually says in his capstone statement that often appears without the surrounding context is simply that those who proclaim the gospel have the right to make their living by that proclamation. No mention of special education being required, or ordination, or that it applies to one or a few men in each local church. Just simply "those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living by the Gospel".

I try hard not to impugn brothers or assign motivations to them (thanks to Eric Carpenter for that timely reminder). Most men who are pastors are simply doing what they are culturally and traditionally expected to do and the vast majority of those men that I have met are wonderful people with a sincere desire to serve God. These men who feel called to vocational ministry head off to a seminary that isn’t likely to tell them they should consider working at a secular job after they graduate with an M.Div. and a bunch of debt. They find themselves employed at a local church where the people are going to expect them to lead, shoulder the bulk of teaching, preach at least once and likely several times a week and be on call 24-7 in return for a paycheck. The whole system is not one that is designed to foster the raising hard questions that challenge the very system they find themselves in. It is assumed with pretty sketchy Scriptural support that this is the way it was intended to work and few people are inclined to question it. We just keep plugging along with the system as it exists and has existed for more than four hundred years.

All Christians are called to proclaim the Gospel. Not all Christians are expected to get paid to do so. How then can 1 Corinthians 9: 1-18 be used to defend a traditional system of ministerial compensation?

Back to double honor

A reader pointed me toward a four part series on “Ministerial Compensation” by Doug Wilson. Doug Wilson gets a lot of attention with his blogging so I wanted to see what he had to say. It is a well written series as most of Doug’s stuff is. I read the four articles eagerly looking to engage Doug’s arguments on why we should pay pastors, expecting the typical arguments but in a more reasoned and forcefully portrayed manner. Here is what I found in the lead article, Double Honor.

That said, the Bible says that we are to pay ministers, and pay them well. The text does not expressly say what it is that is to be doubled, but it is likely in the extreme that it will at least be double what some people think appropriate.

Wilson then quotes 1 Timothy 5: 17-18, an old standby for those who support paying clergy:

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.” (1 Tim 5: 17-18)

That is pretty much it. That is the whole argument in favor of paying ministers. Doug states that the Bible says we are to pay “ministers” and that is that. I guess that notion is so entrenched as to be above question in spite of the very real problem that the Bible says nothing of the sort, at least not in the sense we assume. I was hoping for a cogent argument but you just don’t get one, leaving us with the brief assumption in the above paragraph to deal with.

The “worthy of double honor” idea is a tricky one. It certainly seems to imply that elders should be compensated. What is problematic is what it actually says and likewise what it does not say. This passage is not nearly as clear as those who throw it out as a defense of paying ministers might think. These are issues I have addressed before but just briefly….

First and foremost, “worthy of double honor” is not synonymous with “permanent salary and benefits including a retirement plan”. The misuse of 1 Tim 5: 17-18 in this respect is a case of taking our cultural understanding of the clerical system and forcing it onto the text. We culturally expect that ministers will have a certain minimum level of education, have a certain skill set and will work full-time for a local church and be compensated for it. Because that tradition is so entrenched, with over 1500 years of history, it is easy to read that expectation into 1 Timothy 5: 17-18.

It is interesting that Wilson points out that Paul is referencing Luke 10:7 and he presumes that in doing so he is supporting his assumption that we of course should pay ministers. As Lee Corso might say: Not so fast my friend. What is the context of Paul’s quote of Luke 10:7? Well, what does the passage say? Let me show ya something:

And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. (Luke 10:7)

What are the wages these laborers expect? To stay in a home and eat and drink what is provided. Um. Where is the salary and benefits package here? This is something that any Christian traveling about and preaching the Gospel should expect, the hospitality of the home of fellow believers. Our assembly in East Lansing typically welcomed visiting teachers with a meal at the chapel or in someone’s home, something perfectly understandable and acceptable. I assume we also gave them a financial gift to help defray the cost of traveling. Also perfectly understandable and Biblical. The men who live and gather with this assembly week after week? They don’t get paid because they don’t need to be, we all have jobs. We serve and teach out of love for our Savior, not an expectation of pay.

Second, Paul is the author here and in many places takes great pains to point out that he did not typically receive financial support from the church and certainly he never received support in the form of a permanent salary. It seems odd to turn to Paul to support the paying of clergy when Paul himself eschewed that support and wrote multiple times and in multiple places to point out that he worked a “real” job for a living.

Third, being an elder in a first century church when this was written is not equivalent to the professional clergy we traditionally understand. Paul was not a pastor of a local church, he was an apostle and an itinerant minister. Timothy was the same, an assistant to Paul and someone who traveled all over the place. It is disingenuous to use Paul and Timothy as support for our traditional clerical system.

So the first article doesn’t even try to defend the system beyond a perfunctory assumed statement and the rest of the series assumes that you bought into this assumption. In the second and third articles, Shepherds Who Feed Only Themselves and Shortchanging for Jesus, Wilson deals with the problem of men who are looking for an easy way out, becoming a pastor so they can spend most of their week hiding in their offices and reading books & blogs. I didn’t actually think this is as big a problem as Wilson makes it seem although he does make a strong point that the Bible warns about there being many men who are merely hirelings (referencing 2 Cor 2:17):

Paul says here that many are gospel-mongers, and we have no reason to believe that the number has diminished since Paul’s day.

That is a valid point. Why should I assume that something that was problematic in Paul’s day, i.e. Gospel peddlers, wouldn’t be actually worse today when Gospel peddling hirelings who are in it for the money can actually get a nice salary and be culturally respected, a world of difference from the difficult days of the first century. If there were many gospel-mongers back then, there are certainly many today. I have only met a few but they are clearly out there.

In the fourth article, Actually Count the Shekels,Wilson tackles the question of how much is enough and the numbers he bandies about are stunning. Here is one example:

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.

Wow. Apparently $70,000 for a thirty year old minister is what he is hinting at. Really? To make that sort of money in the private sector requires either a superstar worker or a professional advanced degree, something like accounting or law or actuarial science. I wasn’t making $70,000 when I was thirty and I work in the exciting world of finance. I don’t know of many 30 year olds who do make that sort of money. Keep in mind a couple of assumptions here. The first is that he is an assistant pastor. If the 30 year old assistant pastor is being discussed with a salary of $70,000, what is the 55 year old “senior” pastor making? $100,000? $150,000? Second, Wilson assumes that this young man should make the equivalent of two individual salaries at $35,000 each. Well, I work outside of the home and my wife cares for my kids. We have to live on my salary but a 30 year old assistant minister should be paid the average salary of two wage earners because it is unseemly for his wife to work? Apparently it is countr-cultural to pay an assistant minister enough so that his wife is not tempted to work outside of the hone and so that they can send their kids to private school. The poor working slob in the pew? Well if your wife has to work and you have to either homeschool your kids or send them to public school, sucks to be you. You shoulda gone to seminary dude!

This is what you are supposed to take to your church, that somehow they are being unfaithful if they don’t pay a minister a hefty salary while the people in the church struggle along at the prevailing wage. It is great that the assistant pastor is compensated so that he can send his four kids to private school but what about the families who have a plate shoved in front of them every week who cannot afford it? Hey Mr. Thirty Year Old Assistant Pastor. If you want to send your kids to private school, get a job and pay for it yourself. Don’t demand that the struggling families and widows and single moms in the pew pay for it. What Wilson is describing is not "double honor" for elders, it is an elitist mentality of an exalted professional clergy that is perfectly within their rights to expect the church to fund their lifestyle.

So here is the “BIG PROBLEM”. Doug Wilson does a four part, very well thought out, series on ministerial compensation without ever seriously addressing the first question you need to ask before any discussion of this sort: should elders/pastors/ministers be paid to serve in the church? If you skip that question by assuming the answer, you really are wasting your time because you are answering questions without having established your underlying position, i.e. that pastors indeed should be paid. That leads you to the absolutely staggering discussion of how much is enough that paints a picture of ministers getting paid well above the prevailing wage. For all of the talk about ministers not being professionals, it seems that we should look to professionals with graduate degrees to determine just how we should “honor” our elders.

I am all for honoring elders, I just reject the traditional notion that is unsupported from Scripture that honoring elders requires paying them a salary so they don’t have to work a “real” job. I had hoped for a better argument from Doug Wilson but what I got was a series of articles based on a flawed and unsupported tradition.

Out of work pastors

I am not sure how I missed the original article since I read the Wall Street Journal everyday but last week there was an interesting story on the increasing number of pastors who are laid off: Joblessness Hits the Pulpit (HT: Dan Edelen). As giving goes down in the midst of the recession, church budgets are hurt and that means that many local churches with large paid staffs are finding themselves in the unenviable position of laying off pastors. Losing your job is jarring for anyone but it is especially emotional when your job is as a pastor. I would imagine there is a great deal of bitterness and emotion on the part of the pastor who loses his job and the congregation that is left behind.

This situation is causing a great deal of consternation among church administrators.

Some church leaders fear donations won't reach prerecession levels as long as unemployment stays elevated. Church surveys report that giving dropped off sharply beginning in November 2008, when the overall unemployment rate was at 6.7%. Since then, contributions have slipped in tandem with rising unemployment.

I think that captures the mindset, tragically so. The recession is bad and joblessness is not getting better but it is seen as a problem because giving at the local church is down. Huh?! The real problem we face is that people are unemployed and hurting, and the church is not able to help because it has its own budget woes to worry about. When times are good and giving is up, churches spend and spend on buildings and staff and then are shocked when giving goes down and they can’t afford their huge expenditures. The cost of supporting a local church is crippling and leaves the local body of believers in a pickle when giving is down.

I wonder how many of these men who have lost their jobs are still ministering in that local body of believers? I would imagine a lot of them are looking for new jobs at new churches. We hear all the time that being a pastor is not a job, it is a calling. When the local church can’t support that pastor financially, it sure starts to look like a job though.

The local church should support the community of believers when times are tough, not ask for even more sacrifice from that community to support itself. All the more reason we should follow Paul’s example:

He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. (Acts 28: 30-31)

I am not trying to bash pastors who are on staff and get paid by the local church. I am merely trying to be a voice of warning and caution. The days ahead are not rosy for the church model we are used to. We only need to look across the pond at Europe to see what the future holds. It might not be next year, or the next decade but it is coming. It is high time that the church gets out of the budget and fund collection business and gets ready for a future where the local church is not warmly welcomed in the community. We better start to figure out how to minister to people, how to reach the lost with the Gospel, how to be a community without the benefit of million dollar budgets and plentiful church buildings and we better start to figure it out right now. The days ahead for the church look a lot more like 1st century Rome than 20th century America.

An obstacle to the Gospel

For it is written in the Law of Moses, "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain." Is it for oxen that God is concerned? (1Co 9:9)

So I am back on this topic again. My wife and I were talking about this topic this weekend based on a conversation she had and an email I received. I think it is a testament to the power of tradition that this topic, i.e. paying clergy, seems so hard for people to think about objectively. So let me walk through it again. I am simply rehashing my earlier positions, so there is nothing new here. I also know that this topic gets people riled up like almost no others. It seems sometimes that if I came out in favor of a semi-Pelagian view of soteriology I would get less grief. Nonetheless, here we go, once more into the breach as it were.

When it comes to this topic, there are two places where people who are advocates of the traditional view of paying pastors instinctively turn. One is 1 Timothy 5:17-18 and the other is found in 1 Corinthians 9. I want to look at 1 Timothy 5 first.

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.” (1 Timothy 5:17-18)

Of course there are several major problems as it pertains to applying these passages to paying vocational pastors. The first of course is that it doesn’t actually say anything about paying pastors. That is a pretty big problem. I found that the study notes on this passage in the ESV Study Bible interesting. The notes for this section read:

The role of elder (pastor) involves authority, particularly in preaching and teaching. Labor (Gk. kopiaō), translated “toil” in 4:10, implies hard work that makes a person tired. Such exertion in “preaching and teaching” calls for double honor, which could include financial remuneration.

Notice that the comment is that it “could” include financial remuneration, which is a pretty weak statement and is not at all clear from the verse. But then it makes this bold claim:

“Double” could imply ample provision, or financial provision in addition to proper respect. worthy. Paul does not actually require that pastors be paid a double amount, but Paul clearly indicates that pastors should receive generous remuneration

Clearly? Really? So it “could” include financial remuneration in addition to respect but then the comment assumes that it does and demands a generous remuneration (what does “generous” mean?). I also found it interesting that the ESV Study Bible uses the word “remuneration” which is a perfectly good word but one that many people have never seen or used, and certainly is not a word that people outside of human resources or the legal profession would use commonly. I wonder why they chose remuneration instead of commonly used and understood words like “pay”, “salary” or perhaps the most applicable word: “compensation”?

Then there is the problem of paying some elders and not others. Those who “rule well” are to get double honor, especially those who preach and teach. I would say that in most plural elder churches, not all of the elders are paid a salary. If elders who preach well are due double-honor and we assume that honor=salary, doesn’t that imply that those who are mediocre teachers deserve at least single-honor? I don’t know of a plural elder led church where every elder is paid. So at best we are traditionally pretty selective in how we apply this passage.

Another problem is this idea of “honor” because earlier in the same chapter we are told to honor widows who are truly widows (1 Tim 5:3). Should widows get a salary? We know that widows got a daily distribution (Acts 6:1). Should we provide for elders, honor them in other words, in the same way as widows? Conversely, shouldn’t the church honor widows the same way it traditionally does pastors, i.e. by paying them regularly?

I just don’t see the natural reading of 1 Tim 5: 17-18 leading us to a permanent, regular salary and benefits for one or a couple of men in a local gathering of the church. The only way to get there it seems is to assume that honor=salary and that Paul has in mind here men who have a vocation of exclusively serving in the local church. I don’t think the text here supports that.

The next place people turn is 1 Corinthians 9. Let me clarify that, 1 Corinthians 9 selectively read. 1 Cor 9 seems to be read by skipping from one verse to another while ignoring the verses in between. How we traditionally read 1 Corinthians 9 is to read verses 1-halfway through 12 and then skip to verses 13-14 and finally on to verse 16. Verse 14 is the biggie.

In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. (1Co 9:14)

Well that seems pretty clear and straightforward, right? Sure, prooftexting always does. When we ask the question, what is the bigger argument, what is Paul saying from beginning to end, we get a far different answer.

Twice we see Paul making a clarifying comment regarding his financial support.

If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. (1Co 9:12)

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. (1Co 9:15)

Paul would rather endure anything, even death, rather than give up his boasting in the Gospel and his boasting was not his sweet compensation package. It is odd that people skip verses 12 and 15 in order to race to verse 14 especially because verses 12 and 15 are pivotal to the argument Paul is making. Why did Paul refuse to make use of his right to get paid? Was he independently wealthy and didn't need the money? Not hardly. Paul made himself an enemy of the culture and the state by being a vocal evangelist for Jesus Christ. His job prospects were dramatically hampered by his public stand for Christ. As a spokesperson and a frequent target and also as an apostle, Paul had more right than anyone to demand remuneration for preaching but he didn’t.

Why?

Paul refused to take pay to preach the Gospel and instead worked and supported himself by the work of his hands because he contends that being paid to preach the Gospel is an obstacle to the very Gospel we are called to preach. Did you catch that? Exercising the right to get paid is an obstacle to the preaching of the Gospel. If someone claims to be in the “Gospel ministry”, shouldn’t that be a sobering statement?

For Paul, the reward of preaching is not getting paid a salary or even intermittent financial support. It is the pure joy of the Gospel and indeed he found his reward in preaching the Gospel free of charge which he summarizes in verse 18:

What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. (1 Cor 9:18)

That is the capstone to Paul’s entire argument in 1 Corinthians 9. Paul is echoing something in this topic that we see elsewhere in the New Testament, that for the sake of the Gospel our rights are set aside. The right to get paid. The right to defend self and property against evildoers and lawsuits. These rights and others are placed aside because compared to the Gospel they are counted as nothing. For the pastor who says “I have the right to get paid!”, my reply would be that perhaps you do but does that mean you should exercise it, especially if Paul is correct and that being paid to preach is an obstacle to the Gospel? I can understand why this is problematic. After living the dream of going to seminary, spending a bunch of time and money to get a M.Div. and then going to work as a pastor in a church, the prospect of abandoning that to work a secular job while still serving the church can be daunting. Being a pastor doesn’t translate to the secular job market very smoothly.

Conversely, the example of Paul working for a living elsewhere in Scripture provides a more explicit example of what Paul is advocating. I think it is instructive to turn to the example of the man who wrote the very verses used to support the paying of pastors. Besides 1 Cor 9 where Paul is boldly stating that he makes no use of the right to be compensated (keeping in mind that Paul was not a pastor of a local church but was instead an apostle, a traveling evangelist/missionary, an itinerant preacher), Paul also is recorded in Acts 20 as working a "secular" job for a living...

I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20: 33-35)

Paul is preparing to leave and he calls the elders of Ephesus to him in Miletus, conscious that he is never going to see them again. What does he spend his time, after summoning the elders of Ephesus to come see him, talking with them about? He warns them about wolves coming into the flock with false teaching. Then he boldly declares that he took money from no one, preferring instead to work with his own hands to provide for his necessities and also to help the weak. If this issue was so crucial to Paul that he took the time amidst the tearful farewell to bring it up, it apparently was very important to him. This concept is reinforced in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians.

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12)

What is Paul saying here? Those who can work, should work and not be a burden on the church. If a church is facing financial hardship, lots of line items in the budget will be on the chopping block but likely not the pastors salary. Pastors are indispensable because if you don’t have a pastor, the church can’t function or at least that is the logic we employ. It is hard to see pastors as a burden on the church but when the pastor and his family depend on the giving of the church to survive, their financial well-being takes on a whole new meaning. (Dave Black has an excellent treatment of this passage that does it far more justice).

Nowhere do we see Paul advocating paying elders/pastors a permanent salary, nor does Paul himself accept compensation from the church. Quite the contrary, Paul works for a living and commends that lifestyle to others. If that was true in the 1st century amidst an incredibly hostile world, is that not equally true in America where the clergy is generally well-respected? I can’t think of a workplace where being an elder of a church would hurt your job prospects.

The Biblical pattern that emerges from Acts and from Paul’s letters is that Paul and his companions traveled about the world preaching the Gospel, often staying in one place for a while and working a “job” while there, establishing churches and then moving on after appointing elders. We don’t see anyone ordaining clergy, sending men to seminary or hiring believers to be pastors. That may be the pattern that developed early on after the time of the apostles but that doesn’t make it Biblical.

Is it sinful to pay pastors? I wouldn’t go that far. Is it unhealthy for the church and is it unhealthy to put a disproportionate amount of the burden of a local gathering on one man because he is getting paid? Without question. My intent here is not to wag my finger at those who are pastors and get paid for their efforts. I have a number of friends who are paid clergy and I don’t hold that against them. With this topic like so many others, my intent is to raise the hard questions and to challenge prevailing traditions. For me, the topic of paying pastors is one of those loose threads in the fabric of the traditional church model. When I yanked on it a little, it started to unravel the whole thing. Far from a bad thing, it has been a positive move. It is far easier and more profitable to study the church when you are able to set aside the traditions that infuse the topic. I am not so naïve as to assume that I am above traditions or presuppositions but I am confident that I am seeing more clearly what Scripture has to say about the church than I have been in the past.

Paying the clergy

Dave Black linked to a great study on the question of paying pastors a salary. The article is by Darryl M. Erkel and is a very thorough treatment of the topic. There are two key principles we can draw from this study:

First, in the New Testament it is clear that elders, while receiving gifts (perhaps including money), were not paid a regular, permanent salary. This is evidenced by the writings of Paul in several places and the stark reality of the poverty of the church in the earliest days.

Second, that truth negates the ability to use the commonly referenced Scriptures to support pastors being paid a salary. A full-time, salaried position was not the norm for the NT church and as such it should not be used as justification for the system we traditionally have in place. Since the reality is that elders were not “fully supported” in the New Testament and indeed Paul speaks approvingly of supporting oneself by means of work, how can those passages be used to assert that we should pay a regular, permanent salary to clergy?

Elders should be givers, not receivers.

Another key point, one that is overlooked in these discussions, is that a functioning New Testament assembly would have no need of paid clergy.

D. If our churches truly implemented New Testament patterns of ministry, one wonders whether there would be any real need to support one, full-time pastor? If the local church had a functioning priesthood (as opposed to the passive, spectator event that is the mark of most churches) and an equally shared eldership, there simply would not be the urgency or necessity to hire someone on a full-time basis. This is because (1) leadership responsibilities would be shared; (2) one man and his gifts would not become the focal-point of the meeting; (3) corporate teaching would be shared and not left to one sole pastor; and (4) each member would actively participate and contribute to the meeting.

I think that is great. The mark of a faithful, Biblical assembly is not a bunch of pastors on staff. It is a real, functioning priesthood of believers! I hope you take the time to give this article a read.