You were young then.
While your friends applied to law, medical, or business school, you applied to theological school.
Now, years later, your friends drive Eddie Bauer edition Ford Explorers; you drive used, four-door sedans. Your friends take winter vacations in Colorado; you take road trips to your in-laws. Your friends sock away money for their children’s college tuition and for retirement; you can do neither adequately.
Just to confirm the obvious, here are several average or median salaries of professionals in 1996:
—director of engineering: $100,000
—school superintendent: $96,229
—manufacturing vice-president: $97,000
—top executive officer (nonprofit administration): $160,000
Some pastors, but only a few, command such salaries. An associate pastor of a suburban congregation in the South earns $100,000.
Meanwhile, an acquaintance pastors a rural, western congregation of 200. He, his wife, and his four children live in a double-wide trailer on the church parking lot. He calls the pressure his family feels “financial suffering.”
Most pastors are somewhere in the lower middle. While 3 percent of pastors in the survey indicated their salary equaled $75,000 or more, the majority of pastors-60 percent-make between $25,000 and $49,999 a year.
Most American pastors are not the penurious parsons of the Puritan era and of Hollywood sitcoms. According to the Leadership survey, the median salary of pastors is about $33,000. That figure includes money pastors are given to spend: base salary, housing and utilities allowances, and an allowance for social security/self-employment tax. It does not include the cost to a church to provide health insurance or other benefits.
Though pastors are still weakly paid compared to other professionals, according to Leadership’s national survey (conducted by Scanland Research, Inc.), they tend to be generous with their money. They’re also in debt. How they feel about and handle their money yielded at least four surprises.
1. Pastors don’t resent their pay.
When I recently told a middle-aged, ex-pastor I was writing a story on the compensation of pastors and how they feel about it, he snapped, “That’s easy: ‘Not enough.’ And ‘badly.’ Right?”
Half right. While almost half of pastors say they do not feel financially content, 70 percent of pastors indicated they rarely or never feel resentful. That’s remarkable, since pastors naturally tend to make friends with those of similar educational levels but who typically have higher incomes. Tim Loyola, pastor of New Hope Evangelical Free Church in Toledo, Ohio, says the hardest part “is trying to get over the feeling of inferiority when people come to your house.”
Another pinch-point is entertainment. Loyola told me that recently he and his wife turned down the chance to attend a Christian concert with several couples. At $18 a ticket plus dinner before the concert, the evening was simply not in the numbers. Loyola says, “[Y]ou kind of have that feeling all the time of being left out.”
For some pastors, their salary level generates not only inadequate feelings, but also another, part-time job. According to the study, 13 percent of full-time pastors are moonlighting to handle their bills. Terry Aske, who pastors a Baptist church in North Carolina and works an additional fifteen hours a week outside the church, recently got a general contractor’s license. “It is very common for pastors here to have a second job,” he says.
For other pastors, their circumstances conscript their spouses into the workforce. Of pastors whose spouse works full-time, 29 percent say their median household income is almost $60,000. Pastors’ spouses may be their financial trump card.
2. Pastors struggle with debt-but not as much as most Americans.
Many pastors, according to our study, are in debt. While 55 percent of pastors pay off their credit card balance each month, the median balance of those who carry one is about $3,000. The good news: That’s about half of the average American’s, which Money magazine recently listed as $5,800.
But for some pastors, “plastic” may be threatening their future.
After ten years of accumulation, Lowell Qualls, a pastor in Virginia, ended up with fifteen credit cards and thousands of dollars in credit card bills. “I would use credit cards to buy groceries,” he says. “We didn’t have to, but my wife and I were very young.” The minimum payments were a snap. I can pay $10 a month, he thought.
In time, he began lying to his wife about the amount of debt they had and whether bills had been paid. Unable to still his noisy conscience, Qualls finally went to his wife and admitted there was a problem. She knew that. She asked him to get financial counseling, which, Qualls says, “I fought for years.
“Of course, people were coming to me for counseling,” he says, “so I was living a double standard.”
As the crisis deepened, Qualls began losing his credit, unable to juggle his debt. Desperate, he went to his father-in-law, a retired financial officer for a Fortune 100 company, and said, “I don’t know what to do. I’m in trouble. Can you help me?” Qualls came clean; he showed his father-in-law everything. “I had never done this with anybody before,” he says. “I was crying in front of him. It was embarrassing.”
His father-in-law put a positive spin on it: “This is not as bad as you think. There’s a solution to this.” His father-in-law walked him through some biblical material on finances, helped him and his wife create a workable budget, and advised him as he contacted creditors.
Today, Qualls does not carry a credit card on his person. “I’m living a completely different life than I was three years ago,” he says. “My self-esteem has gone up; before, I was ashamed of where I was financially.”
But in order to pay back thousands in unsecured debt, Qualls has not squirreled away any money for retirement. He says, “I did not engage in any kind of deliberate savings program until recently. I feel guilty about that.” Worse, he opted out of paying social security tax as a young pastor. While most financial advisers tell boomers not to count on social security for their retirement, that’s a foregone conclusion for Qualls.
For many in credit card debt, their balances balloon over time because of unanticipated expenses. It’s $150 to put brake shoes on the old Buick, then $400 for struts. Soon, the credit card balance is hovering around $1,000. Then comes Christmas, $100 for Tommy’s soccer gear, and another $200 to replace the clutch in the other car. Then the fridge goes out.
There’s enough to cover basic living expenses, but not enough for extras and unexpecteds. Call it the quandary of the middle class.
Charles Eldredge, who pastors Maitland Church of the Brethren in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, says, “In our early years we weren’t able to pay cash because my wife wasn’t working. It [credit card debt] is easy to let get away from you when you just need to keep the vehicles running.”
But not easy to rein in.
3. Pastors who ask for raises usually get them (but most don’t ask).
One solution to cutting debt and building savings, of course, is to ask for a raise. Most pastors in our survey-90 percent-believe it is appropriate for a pastor to do so.
But of those who felt discontented financially, 63 percent have never asked for a raise. That’s too bad, for those who ask, receive: Only 13 percent of those who asked for a raise said they didn’t get one.
Why don’t pastors ask for salary increases?
Besides the sheer awkwardness of it, one reason may be that more than anyone in the church, pastors tend to know the church’s financial realities. Pacific Community Church in Bandon, Oregon, split not too long ago and ended up with 90 people, down from 180. Pastor Tom Hutton says, “We’re adjusting from the budget of a larger church down to [one with] now fewer people. We’re paying for some of the things from before, so I suggested the elder board leave my salary alone for now and see next year if the church finances are in better condition.”
Another reason may be that there is no structure for asking. Whom do you see first about a raise? The chairman of the finance committee? What if he or she has a beef with you? In the survey, 38 percent of pastors said their churches do not have a policy for raises-not even for a cost-of-living raise. It’s a lot easier to ask for a raise if there’s a structure in place to ask for one.
[For help in asking for a raise, see “Salary Negotiation for the Hesitant” by Larry Osborne in Leadership’s area on America Online- keyword LeadershipJournal.net. Or go to www.ChristianityToday.com/leadership. Or see “Negotiating a Fair Salary” in Leadership, Winter, 1987 (not currently available online).]
Which may be why pastors who make more money also tend to get the raises they request. Donald Njaa, executive director of the ministry for the Evangelical Covenant denomination, says, “Probably, the ministers who are paid better are in larger churches where the system of politics isn’t as personal as it is in a small church.”
In many smaller congregations, the unspoken compensation philosophy is still to pay the pastor as little as possible. Njaa says, “I watch this on our [denominational] board of pension. [The] people who get elected to that pension board are very wealthy, yet they fuss about ministers’ salaries.”
Charles Eldredge used his denomination’s recommended base cash salary scale to his advantage. The index ranges from 1 to 20, factoring in years of experience, education, and cost of living. Eldredge first had to explain the scale to the finance committee. Doing so clearly established he was significantly underpaid. The pastor before him had not been paid to scale; consequently, when Eldredge was hired, he was offered a lower salary.
The money was not there (it never is) to increase his salary, so Eldredge recommended the church not bump him to the higher level all in one year. “I suggested our church set a goal to get me to scale in three or four years,” Eldredge says. It took two years, but the finance committee recently voted to get Eldredge to scale by 2000.
4. Pastors tithe—but they don’t ask others to.
For pastors, the gap between what they preach and what they practice is always a nagging concern. Sometimes the job requires one to speak beyond experience and pronounce what should be. Which is not true about the topic of giving. Pastors are givers.
According to our survey, almost two-thirds of pastors-63 percent-say their family practices a 10 percent, pre-tax tithe. If you add those who say they give away 10 percent after taxes, the total practicing some form of the tithe jumps to 76 percent.
That’s remarkable, especially in light of pastors’ wages and credit card debt.
One reason pastors give well is to model biblical values. “[My family’s] modeling is primarily . . . to the leadership team,” says Tim Loyola, “and more specifically to the directors, the people who operate our finances.”
Oddly, while pastors tithe, they don’t tell their congregations to. The study revealed that 35 percent of pastors don’t preach what they practice. In general, pastors seem reluctant to speak about money (contrary to public perception); 37 percent said they should preach about tithing and stewardship more.
“I preach expositionally through books of the Bible most of the time” was a common explanation pastors gave for not preaching more on money. Another was “I don’t want to offend seekers.” Art Hunt, who pastors Christ Presbyterian Church in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, says, “I try to avoid the charge that all I’m ever doing is preaching on money.”
Yet in light of their generous giving habits, pastors could be more confident about calling people to give sacrificially. If the majority of pastors are giving 10 percent of their salary, they have the credibility to be more bold.
Tim Loyola recently began preaching more about money. “This year it was need-oriented,” he says. “I shifted my preaching calendar because we had an influx of people who created financial demands and had been around long enough . . . to be spoken to about their responsibility to get on board financially.”
When I asked Loyola, “Did offerings increase?” he said they did. “I rarely do a message on finances based on need. [We] don’t want to be crisis-oriented. But we felt part of the reason was people were uninformed.”
Ultimate matter
Of all people, pastors know that more money doesn’t mean more happiness. Most would just like to get out of debt, help pay for their children’s education, and set a little aside for retirement (see “Digging Out and Saving Up,” p. 89). Yet in one sense, money is at least a distant cousin to happiness. In our research, pastors in the top quartile of salary tended to:
—own their home
—feel less resentful about their salary
—be more likely to have a spouse employed because she/he wants to be
—get raises when they ask for them
—have more money socked away for retirement.
But the Leadership study revealed that to pastors, money isn’t the ultimate matter. Don Fraker, who pastors St. Paul Lutheran Church in Union, Missouri, says, “It’s not really an issue. If it became one, then it would be time for me to refocus on why it is I’m doing what I’m doing. [My calling] is to strengthen people’s relationship with Christ.
“I feel that if I am doing that and I’m proclaiming God’s Word, then he will take care of my financial need. [H]e has done that manifoldly over the thirteen years I’ve been in the ministry.”
The professions will never be able to compete with that.
David L. Goetz is senior associate editor of Leadership.
1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
