Editor's Note: This interview was featured in the Spring 1981 issue of Leadership Journal. Lyle Schaller was arguably the most influencial church consultant of the 20th century, and passed away earlier this week at the age of 91.
Too many expenses and too little money. It's a subject that rivals the weather as a topic of conversation nowadays. And the local church is not immune to economic fluctuations. Pastors have to feed their families. Churches have to heat their buildings, pay the rent, maintain programsand pay the pastor. Money problems go hand in hand with almost any ministry.
Lyle Schaller probes some of these problems in his writing and in his work as a church consultant for Yokefellow Institute. His research indicates that in many ways churches could improve the way they handle their budgets and make everyday financial decisions. In LEADERSHIP's interview, Lyle identifies financial problems most churches face, and he offers some suggestions that merit close scrutiny.
In talking to pastors in your conferences with Yokefellow Institute, how often is the question of pastors' salaries raised?
Quite often. Salaries are a serious question today. If you go back to the middle fifties, the typical beginning salary for a pastor was roughly the same as an elementary school teacher's around $3,600. But pastors haven't kept up over the years, and the discrepancy lies in the areas of experience and tenure. An elementary school teacher today gets more for experience than most pastors. Typically, churches pay about $300 a year, or less, for experience. In other words, twenty years of pastoral experience is worth somewhere between $2,000 and $6,000 in the pastorate. It's very difficult to find anywhere else in our society where experience is given a lower premium.
What do you feel that does for the pastoral profession?
It has three major effects. First, it's a significant factor in promoting the exodus of experienced ministers from pastoral ministry. Fewer and fewer pastors are staying from entry level to retirement. They may go into other forms of ministry or they may leave the ministry completely.
A second factor, which is a little more concealed, is that a smaller proportion of ministers' children are going to church-related colleges. Traditionally, denominations with colleges provided some kind of discount to ministers' children, and it was fairly easy, economically, for a minister's child to go to a denominational college. Today, that's very difficult.
The third effect is that a larger proportion of ministers' wives are working outside the home on a full-time basis than in any other profession This includes doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, and others. It is a must situation in many cases; the minister's wife has to supplement her husband's inadequate income.
To give you some basis of comparison, salary increases in recent years for dentists went from $11,533 in 1955 to $49,800 in 1979; so in twenty-four years they more than quadrupled. Salaries of federal employees quadrupled; manufacturing production employees increased about threeand-a-quarter times; elementary teachers quadrupled; college teachers almost quadrupled; even the minimum wage just about quadrupled. In contrast, salaries for ministers went up only a little more than two-and-a-half times.
If you compare ministers' salaries with other vocations, they've gone down. Muncie, Indiana, is one of the most studied communities in the United States. It's been the object of case studies since the 1920s. The cash salary of a senior minister in the 1920s in Muncie was comparable to the superintendent of schools; in the 1930s, to the high school principal; in the late 1970s, to the classroom teacher. So, a minister's time has lost dollar value. We have put a lower value on it, which might be the reason that pastors' pay is a smaller proportion of the total church budget.
That raises many questions. Is the money not there? Or is it the attitude that pastors are servants of God and shouldn't be paid as much as secular professionals?
There are two responses to your question. First, churches have decided to allocate their financial resources to other items, and the amount of money that goes to ministers' compensation has decreased as a proportion of the total church budget. Obviously, some congregations are exceptions; but in general, this is the case. Second, in most cases, the money's there. Statistics show that people in America and, therefore, American churches, are economically better off. However, I believe a lot of folks are now giving only a slice of their tithe to the local church. I think what was happening back in the thirties was that most people gave their whole tithe to their church. Today, there is very sharp competition for people's money; if you opened your mail this morning, you found some of it. And it's prettv sophisticated competition. Most denominations have contributed to that by running fund-raising drives for colleges, seminaries, pensions, missions, and children's homes. In all of this there's more competition, and the pastor as the center of religious life is probably valued less.
What does this do to the pastors? Do they feel this devaluation of their role with people?
That's an excellent way to put it-the devaluation of the pastor. We've been dealing for twentvfive years with the devaluation of pastors. One of the ways this comes through is that pastors' anniversaries aren't given the same attention they were even fifteen years ago. I asked a group of thirtv-four pastors last week, "How many of you had your tenth ordination anniversary celebrated?" Three said they had. "How many of you expect to have the twenty-fifth anniversary of your ordination celebrated?" One said his had been, and three or four said theirs probably would be. I can remember when those things were celebrated by most congregations.
The psychological impact of this hasn't really been studied, but my impression is that it makes pastors feel their role is less important. For example, I know of a number of pastors who were not invited to wedding receptions after performing the ceremony. That used to be automatic. Also, it leads to self-effacement; pastors themselves think less of their role than they used to. l spend a fair amount of time in workshops and one-on-one encounters with pastors, and I often find they need to reinforce their own self-image. Then, of course, there's the competitive game. The pastor used to be the local expert on a great many subjects; now there is usually someone in the congregation who is much more competent in a specific subject. The mystique that went with the pastoral role has diminished.
What are the factors that contribute to the self-image problem?
Many more demands, for one thing. Thirty years ago, most lay people did not go near the minister with personal problems. They do it automatically now. Our whole openness on the matter of mental health and counseling has increased the quantity of that load and the expectation of great things from the minister. The complications of so many responsibilities have made a pastor's life more difficult.
The entry of women into church leadership positions also has led to a self-image problem for male leaders. Two things indicate this. In congregations with a long tradition of women being eligible for all lay-leadership offices, the male leadership has not only dropped out of leadership roles, but dropped out of active participation in the congregation. I have no quarrel with women in lay positions. My anxiety is that we haven't created places for men in churches where women have equal rights. My hunch is that women outshine men in the performance of those duties and that affects the male ego.
That hunch comes from my survey work, which indicates women ministers as a group are outperforming men as a group. For example, women win a disproportionately large share of the academic prizes in our seminaries even though they make up only one-third of the student population.
I expect to see the day when the majority of United Methodist congregations (I'm a United Methodist minister) have women pastors. I expect the same of the United Church of Christ; and I expect to see the day when there'll be women priests in the Catholic church.
When you speak to pastors suffering from these pressures we've been talking about, what do you tell them?
I tell them to identify what they do best in the ministry, and to concentrate their time and energy on that part of their jobs. We suffer from a widely-parroted concept that says, "You should specialize in what you don't do very well." Many denominations and education systems are designed to encourage ministers to attend continuing education events in those areas of ministry where they don't do very well. Many lay people say amicably, "Reverend, you know, you ought to improve your competence in . . ." and then they fill in the blank. I think the American League is right. It's unreasonable to expect baseball pitchers to be good hitters. Similarly, I think it's unreasonable to expect ministers to excel in all aspects of the pastoral ministry. Therefore, pick out what you do best and do it.
Lay men and women can help their ministers by affirming the job they're doing. I recently spoke with the pastor of a small church. His board had just completed the once-a-year evaluation required by the denomination, and a member of the committee came over and knocked on the door of the parsonage when the meeting was over. Holding out a half sheet of yellow paper he said, "I just thought I'd show you what we decided." He had penciled on the paper, "Our minister loves us and we love our minister." The small church is basically looking for a lover.
There are two other elements to this self-esteem question. One is the context. If the congregation has low self-esteem, that will tend to undercut the self-esteem of the minister. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say 99 percent of the smaller congregations I work with have low self-esteem, and they pass it on to the pastor. They see themselves as small, weak, limited in resources, and lacking in potential. On the other hand, large congregations tend to have pretty strong self-images, which actually reinforce the pastor's self-image. All congregations should realize they have a direct effect on their pastor's self-esteem.
Another element of this question involves "dual role" pastoring; that is, being a pastor to a small congregation for part of the week, and having an outside job to supplement the income. Judson Press published a book, Our Pastor Has an Outside Job, in which this concept is amplified. In many cases, the authors discovered that when a minister moved from being under-employed as the full-time pastor of a small church, to a forty-hour secular job, with a twenty-hour-a-week assignment to serve that church as pastor, you turned an unhappy congregation into a happy congregation and an unhappy minister into a happy minister.
Even though he's working sixty hours a week?
Yes. It's the satisfaction in being productive. If you have only twenty hours a week to do the job as pastor, you're going to be more productive. Plus you'll have the satisfaction of the secular job. The Southern Baptist Convention has developed what they call the bi-vocational pastorate, and something like 27 or 28 percent of their ministers are bivocational. They expect that before 1990 the figure will be 50 percent.
How do you advise churches in determining a pastor's salary?
I recommend they use several different yardsticks. One is to double a minister's salary of ten years ago. For 1982, it's probably best to go back to 1974 and double that figure; that offsets the consumer price index. Second, look at merit and competence. Third, experience. What's the experience of your current pastor? If it's substantial, it should be compensated adequately. Fourth, decide what the job is worth. In some churches the current minister is overpaid; there just isn't that much to the job. Thousands of churches have a full-time pastor for a part-time job. Fifth, are you offering a competitive salary? If your minister were to receive a call to go to a similar-sized church, what compensation would he receive? I've been with literally scores of churches that don't offer a competitive salary because the members are afraid to pay a new minister more than what their previous minister, who might have had much more experience, was paid. I've heard this many times: "How can we pay forty-year old Pastor Smith $8,000 or $9,000 more than we paid good old Dr. Harrison before he retired at sixty-five? It's an insult to him." Meanwhile, they have lost a good candidate who needed a competitive salary to get by.
How about basing the pastor's salary on the median income of the church?
I was once in a Mennonite congregation that had twelve families. They gave the minister the second through the eleventh families' tithes. They used the first tithe for benevolences and the twelfth tithe for taking care of the building.
That meant the minister was given the average of the twelve families. How do you feel about that kind of system?
It's extraordinarily complicated to give the pastor the average of the congregational income. What does income mean? Does it mean family income? The greater of two bread-winners? Only full-time salaries? Your salary plus overtime? I think the pastor is entitled to more than an average income. The pastor has a higher than average educational background and higher than average length of workweek. If you keep pastors' pay simpler and go back to what it was-some proportion of the budget- you have something tangible In some churches, the pastor's salary is put in the administration category in the budgeting, which is a bad thing to do. You hear the comment, 75 percent of our budget is going for overhead. Well, in the public school system, 85 percent is going for overhead. The pastor's salary, the secretary's salary, any program staff should be seen as program, not as overhead.
How much of a church's budget should go to the minister's salary?
Some denominations say that when cash salaries get above 60 percent, the red light goes on. I'm more comfortable with 40 percent.
Can you put this into dollar signs?
If you have, say, a $50,000 budget, and if more than $20,000 goes for cash salary to the minister, then I get nervous that something else isn't getting paid.
What do you say to the small church that gives this speech? "Look, we have $20,000 to spend. We have to buy Sunday school materials; we have to have heat and light; so, Pastor, we have $8,000 for your salary."
I would say, "We have a part-time job for you and we'll pay you a part-time salary."
But isn't it true that the majority of small churches think that way?
Not quite true. In my denomination (United Methodist) less than a third of our churches have a fulltime minister. And it's becoming more common in other denominations. The Episcopal church, for instance, has legitimatized this with non-stipendiary clergy. They have a large number of clergy who are attorneys and physicians, and they serve small churches for little more than expenses.
What about the person just coming out of seminary whose only offers come from small, rural parishes?
I think there are four alternatives. One is to go with the strategy that this is a church of potential growth, and we're going to turn it into a full-time workload with full-time salary. Second, some small churches just plain overpay-look for one of those. l know of an eighteen-family church in Texas that pays $30,000. The third alternative is bi-vocational. The fourth, which I don't particularly encourage, is to go out and negotiate with two different churches saying, "I'll accept a call to be your pastor if I can get a call from another church in the area."
Don't two-church pastorates create problems? We received a letter last week from a pastor of two churches, one with fifty-eight members and one with thirty-four members. He listed the problems he was experiencing: jealousy between the congregations, the fact that they had separate needs yet he had time to prepare only one basic message. He felt as if he was missing both congregations.
This arrangement works best when the churches are quite different in size. The best arrangement I've seen with ministers serving two churches is when one is two or three times the size of the other.
Why is that better?
First of all, they can put together a workload package to keep the minister busy. They can put together an adequate compensation package where everyone knows the rules. The larger church pays most of the money and gets most of the attention. Any time you have a pastor halftime here and halftime there, the pastor has two dissatisfied churches.
He's right in the middle.
Yes. But if one is clearly dominant and one is clearly subordinate in terms of expectations and workload, everyone knows the rules. I think this option to a one-church pastorate should be encouraged.
So you're not saying let's get all the little churches to merge?
No, mergers are usually losers. We had a rash of congregational mergers in the sixties, and the churches or denominations that pushed those have pretty well backed off; the merger system didn't work. The feelings of historical identity generally prove to be too strong.
Yet it's the small churches that feel today's financial squeeze most acutely.
Yes, but churches in general are feeling the squeeze. I'm convinced our churches have developed some budgeting systems that are counterproductive in this extended inflationary era. Let me say a few words about canvassing. Once a year we go out and ask people to make a financial commitment for the next year. Now, we know people understate their income. The Census Bureau runs a study once a year on a sample basis of 50,000 households, and they have found that people report a higher family income to the Internal Revenue Service than they do to the Census Bureau. It's not because they enjoy paying taxes or because they're all honest; it's because for the IRS they sit down and figure it all out. The federal government encourages them to do this in the spring. Most denominations, however, encourage their churches to operate by the calendar year. So in October or November we ask people to make a financial commitment for the coming year, and people do it based on the recollection of what their income was last year. Thus, you build in a twoyear lag this way, and you have a 25-percent inflation lag. In 1958, when you were dealing with one percent inflation, your lag didn't make much difference; but in 1981 when you have a 25percent lag, you have a problem.
So people think they have less to give.
Yes, and there's a more serious problem. We present an expenditure budget to people in most churches, and an expenditure budget causes people to think small. They look at that list of expenses and think, "Wow! That much for that?" It doesn't matter what it's for-Sunday school materials, fuel oil, telephone-they'll want to cut something out. And when people look at the dollar figure in an inflationary period, their response is "Too much."
Now, if you switch from an expenditure budget to a program budget, you change the dynamics. Instead of listing goods and dollars, you list ministries and percentages. For example, one way of listing ministries would be, "Ministry to our members, ministry beyond our membership here in this community, ministry beyond our community," with each followed by the percentage of the total budget they will cost. Most people will respond, "That's too much on ourselves and not enough on others. How do we increase what we do for others? Do those categories reflect our purposes as a church?" Moreover, you get people talking about ministry and outreach rather than dollars and cents.
When do you give them the cost of the ministries?
After you've discussed the programs. Page one is just categories: worship, education, nurture, pastoral care, outreach, evangelism-however you want to divide it. Put the dollars on page two, well after you've discussed the programs.
What about the pastor's salary?
The pastor's time is devoted to worship and other ministries. You divide his salary into the various areas where he devotes his time. It's a mistake to list his salary as administration. In a program budget you don't have a separate administrative category. All those costs are divided up and put in the programs the work applies to. What you're doing in a program budget is putting a price tag on services rendered by the church (or ministries) rather than on goods that tend to be seen as abstractions, removed from ministries, at budget time.
Now, in selecting people to work on your budget, it's essential to have the right ones. For instance, you get a hog farmer in Iowa, a person who runs a service shop in Fort Wayne, a barber in Idaho Falls, and they know what it's like to charge directly for time rendered.
People who do it everyday?
Right. If you get a schoolteacher or someone from city hall, you'll have all kinds of problems. The easiest time I ever had with this was in a rural church in Iowa made up largely of farmers. We went through the whole concept of the program budget in two hours. They were used to thinking that way before we even started.
Another item is what I call "second chance." One of the reasons we have prayers of confession in the worship service is we believe God will give us another chance if we confess, repent, and ask for forgiveness. When you ask people to make a financial commitment, all you know for sure is that you're going to catch some people on a good day, some on a bad day, some on a day when they're optimistic about the future, some on a day when they're hostile toward the congregation, and so forth. So along about spring, after they've figured their incomes for the past year, give them a second chance. Ask for more funds for the evangelism program, ask for more money for the worship program, and collect it in two weeks. Give people a second chance. Remember to draw pictures. Anything you can visually depict as to what you're doing in ministry will draw support. Slides, posters, and film strips mean so much more than black-and-white numbers. If you want to raise money for choir robes, hang a very attractive poster of a choir robe in an obvious place.
You're saying that because of inflation and other factors, budget and financial procedures should change with the times?
We need to make some radical adjustments because the systems that worked for us in the fifties aren't working as well now. I don't think those systems are sacred.
How do you respond to this familiar problem? "When we built our church ten years ago, we didn't build enough Sunday school space, so now we're faced with the huge expense of adding a Christian education wing. For one hour of Sunday school we have to put out all these dollars. It seems like such a misuse of funds. What should we do?"
You could start by rescheduling Sunday school to another time, either on the same day or on a weekday, although that does have some negative aspects. Some people will say, "I'll have to use more gas and oil," especially if they're going to be in an adult class themselves and not just taking their kids.
But rescheduling to another day can work. YCI (Youth Club Incorporated) in Pittsburgh has had a very successful experience in running an after school program for kids several hours a week. In effect, it takes Sunday school out of Sunday morning, which has many advantages. One is that it's easier to get quality teachers on a weekday than it is on Sunday morning. Another is that it takes some of the drain off the Sunday peak-hour confusion. The kids have more time. You can build in a lot of other things like confirmation class or youth choir.
Another response to your dilemma is to build rooms that are not classrooms; they are meeting rooms that can be used for a variety of adult and youth programs during the week. The drawback there is that the larger the church, the more important it is that the teachers can have a room they can call their own. Another approach to the dilemma is to have a Christian day school with rooms that are available during the week as well as on Sunday.
Let me add a strong caution. The most important thing about Sunday school is what children see adults doing. I lobby pretty hard to make sure we don't cheat on the adult classes and space in order to provide room for children. I want children seeing adults, particularly adult males, going to Sunday school. We have some impressive evidence that says if you want a child to grow up smoking tobacco, he should grow up in a home where one or both parents smoke. If you want him to learn to read, he should grow up in a home where one or both parents read. I think one of the major values of Sunday school is what the kids see the adults do. Buildings should be designed so kids see adults going in to study. I'm as much concerned about the design of the building as I am about the dollar cost.
And building costs are out of sight.
Yes, but even so, all the evidence shows it'll never be cheaper to build than right now. And believe it or not, there might be some advantages to building now instead of ten years ago. We had a tremendous number of facilities built for Christian education and Sunday school in the fifties and early sixties. But building code changes in the middle sixties made a lot of that good space legally obsolete. Much of it can be used only for Sunday school because it doesn't meet state requirements for day-care centers and other potential week-long uses. There are some buildings we didn't build back then that we should rejoice we didn't build, because we now know better how to build and design for week-long use. Any rooms that are going to be built for children's use should be designed to meet state requirements for a private-school facility. I don't think we're going to have any major changes in those requirements, so to some extent you can build today with a greater assurance of forty years of use than you could have in 1960.
Let's talk for a moment about pastors' needs for professional supplies and books. Books are so expensive now it seems as if many pastors are put in the position of having to choose between bringing home the groceries or bringing home a twelve-dollar book. What can churches do to help the pastor?
Denominations have different ways of handling this problem. For example, some Lutheran and Presbyterian congregations give their ministers a book allowance, but that's fairly rare. In some churches, there's a budget item where books are ordered under the name of the church and are church property. The books go into the church library, and the minister has first call on them. Those are the two things I see happening. I think there's been some increase in book allowances for ministers, but it has a long way to go. Four out of five of your readers probably don't have them.
What I wish would happen is that churches would operate more professionally. Law offices subscribe to what they need by using a law office expense. Churches should have a "church office expense." It's important too that expenses like these be kept out of the pastor's salary. Otherwise, it looks like he's getting an awesome salary, but really he's not.
Let's talk about the pastor's role in budget preparation.
The role of pastors should be determined, first of all, by their competence, interest, and talent. They should do what they're good at. My hunch would be that less than 20 percent of pastors are competent to have a major leadership role in church finances. They don't know how much money is out there. Many think it's incompatible with their other duties. For example, I hear many ministers say, "I don't want to know what individuals give because that would influence how I feel toward them." I think the minister has some responsibilities in the broader area of stewardship and stewardship education. He must be sensitive, though, in whatever questions he might ask or advice he might lend. I've heard many negative comments by pastors about competition for the stewardship dollar. The most common denounces the electronic church: "If it weren't for all the money going out of this community to religious programs on television, the churches here would be all right." I think the evidence is pretty good that the electronic church is not taking money out of churches. I have some other concerns about the electronic church, but I don't think they're stealing from Christian congregations.
There are more positive ways a pastor can serve a congregation financially. For instance, if you're planning for a $200,000 building program to add Sunday school space, the pastor shouldn't say, "If every member would give $200. … " because you don't have a thousand equal members. His positive contribution would be to recognize some dynamics of how a voluntary association is financed.
In the long run the most influential thing a pastor can do is to tithe to the church he is serving as pastor, and not keep that a secret.
How can the pastor do this without being too obvious?
There are several ways. You can simply mention that you tithe as a matter of testimony. Or the financial secretary can mention it. The pastor needs to be the example. Now, if the pastor gives $100 a year to his church, and that also is known, that's influential in a negative sense. Leadership style is crucial. For example, here are two ways of making the same announcement regarding more Sunday school teachers: "We still need six more Sunday school teachers to start our fall program. If we don't get them in two weeks, we won't have Sunday school." Or, "We still have two weeks before we resume the regular Sunday school in September and we already have twenty-six of thirty-two teachers." See the difference? This is especially true in finances. The same thing can be said with a note of hope or with a note of despair, and how you say it may determine the response. I'm not saying everything needs to be presented as a rosy picture. Sometimes good financial leadership means doing the opposite. For example, almost everyone I know still operates as if a yard is thirty-six inches long and a dollar is a hundred pennies. A yard has been a yard for many years now, but a dollar isn't a dollar. Pastors always want to say that giving is up over last year because, unfortunately, that's one of the measures of a "successful" church. But we have to be careful with that. Even if the dollar amount of giving is up, say, 5 percent over last year, in an age of 10 to 15 percent inflation, that means real giving is down. The church needs to be told that.
Who should serve on the church's financial board?
Not the strongest people in the church. The strongest should serve on ministry committees where they'll have a greater influence on the giving level of the congregation. Also, if you put your strong leadership on the finance committee, you're often going to build in an unnecessary cutback. They'll think streamlining the budget is their main responsibility, and because they're strong, they'll often be tight-fisted about giving money out for any reason. If money is requested for something the church really needs but the finance committee doesn't agree, it will be very difficult to get that money.
Where would you put the strength?
I would put the strongest, most influential lay leadership on the ministry committees and have housekeeping people on the finance committee.
By housekeeping, do you mean people who are dominated by the pastor?
No, I'm thinking of people whose main interests are in just keeping the church doors open. But I would be careful in that, because some of those people have a potential to grow and see the church in larger terms.
Why don't more churches in financial straits opt to rent existing structures for their worship and activities?
Let me answer that indirectly. Before we took a break, I was sitting here, and you were sitting in the same places you're at now. I think we all feel comfortable that we're back sitting where we were before. The same dynamic applies to church members. We have a tremendous attachment to place. The Old Testament is a story of people searching for a place. I've done quite a bit of work with store-front churches. Every store-front church I've ever worked with wanted to get into their own place. All of the tent evangelists in the forties and early fifties built their own buildings. Oral Roberts was a tent evangelist. Rex Humbard was a tent evangelist. Look where they are now-in permanent buildings.
What about the house-church movement?
If you want to pursue that, check out the United Church of Christ. This denomination went heavily into house churches in the sixties and seventies. After all their efforts, I believe only one still exists. The house church in general has turned out to be a very romantic, but impermanent, venture. It tends to be anti-clergy too.
What is your evaluation of the church growth movement?
I don't see myself as part of the church growth movement, but I have no difficulty with 97 percent of what they say. One of the areas where I would differ would be on the role of the minister. I think the church growth movement overstates the importance of the minister in terms of church growth. I don't think the minister is quite that influential. Also, I would qualify the homogeneous unit principle by saying that it's basically right, but you can have a pluralistic congregation if you have a few people who are willing to work at it and develop a system of managed pluralism. Unmanaged pluralism will produce a shrinking congregation and will inhibit growth.
How much of a leader does the pastor need to be? Should he be a servant/enabler?
I don't see it that way. For one thing, the larger the congregation, the more demands that congregation places on the minister to be a strong, initiating leader. And this requires some organizational perspective. The enabler role, I believe, is for ministers in congregations of less than 200 members who do not expect to grow.
What determines how a pastor will develop his pastoral role?
His parents! To a substantial degree, a pastor is a product of his formative years and of his genes. Therefore, be honest, be true to yourself. Do not allow yourself to get into a role that's incompatible with your personality.
So he should pick a church that likes what he is?
Absolutely. To paraphrase Lincoln, "The Lord must have loved the common man, he made so many of them." I'll add, "The Lord must have loved the small church, he made so many of them." I think there are some things about the small church that we need to take a little more seriously in evaluating church growth on a larger scale. The ministry of the laity dominates at least a third of our churches, and they're almost all small. Many of these churches have no set-apart clergy. The old Mennonite churches are good examples of this. My point is that the small church, which is not growing numerically, can operate more as strictly an organism. The numerically growing church, however, has to adopt some forms of organization to continue to be healthy.
When it comes down to the bottom line, the pastor of the,growing church has to give conceptual, spiritual, front-line leadership?
Yes. And vision for the congregation's growth potential.
Now, we've talked about pastors' pay, budgets, and church leadership. What thoughts, Lyle, would you like to conclude with?
I'd like to share some thoughts on tithing. The difference between giving a tithe and returning a tithe, I think is of tremendous significance. When Seventh Day Adventists tithe, they talk about returning to the Lord his tithe. What you give is over and above what you return. We talk over and over about giving our tithes without emphasizing that this is first an act of returning to God what is rightfully his. If people realized this. and then discovered the joy of giving to God over and above the tithe, the church would have a lot fewer money problems.
Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
