Pastors hate being told that don’t have a real job—the old joke being that you only have to work one day a week. The thing is, it’s more true than you think.
I’ve been an elder in a couple of churches for around ten years now. Which makes me pretty green in the pastoral stakes, but not completely new to the game. I’ve not been a salaried elder in that time, though my ecclesiology makes me just as much a ‘Pastor’ or ‘ordained’ as those that have been. For ease in this post though I’ve used ‘pastor’ to distinguish those elders that are paid by their churches.
Churches have to follow all the same employment law as anyone else. Your trustees, or however that works in your setting, will have to ensure they are following the law. Someone has to sort payroll, make sure employment rights aren’t breached and all those things. That’s important, because it’s the law. I also think churches should be the very best employers around, following kingdom employment values rather the World’s. Your encouragement to your people to start businesses and employ people well will fall very flat if the church is a terrible employer.
But, in the midst of all that, I think it’s important that whatever the technical legal situation might be, no one thinks the Pastor or Pastors have jobs. Or salaries for that matter.
It is, I would contend, better to think in terms of stipends to cover the costs of living—which means whatever it costs to live in the area your church needs your pastor to live. It may be more than the median income if you expect him to have a slightly larger house so he can host large groups and meetings there, which is something you’d often expect him to be doing.
There’s not a legal difference here, by the way, not least in the UK anyway. You pay the same tax on a stipend to a salary, but I’m talking about the way that changing terms can (slowly) change thinking.
As a small detour, there is an argument in here for paying all of your staff the same amount. Becoming a Pastor from some other church role isn’t career advancement, it’s a release to follow the call of God on your life. Pay them all what’s needed to live, perhaps plus a housing allowance or similar for those who you require certain things of, and let them get on with releasing the people into ministry.
Not doing ministry, but that’s another story.
Why is this helpful? Because if you think you have a job you tend to think about contracted hours and about productivity.
Hours
The nature of church work is that it can’t be contained in the working day. So much of what you’re doing is about either pastoring, or working with, the people in your church. Most of them have jobs. This means that a lot of your time with them will be in evenings and weekends. Some of them might be willing to take some time off or rearrange their day to see you in the daytime, which is brilliant, but I’ve been in churches where the ‘Senior Pastor’ (scare quotes for ideas I don’t think are biblical) expects everyone else to move to their very busy diary. That isn’t OK.
Pastors are less busy than other people. That’s the whole point! You’re being paid so that you don’t have to work, so you’re able to work around your people’s lives.
I know you look at the state of the diary and find my highfalutin’ ideas to be pompous and idealistic. I get it. It’s not that your time isn’t filled, it’s that it’s your own to use for the church. If your day is entirely filled with meetings with other staff members then I start to wonder if our priorities, or even our idea of what church is, is out of whack.
Of course, there are important boundaries and compromises for a Pastor to make with his family—one of the reasons that more single Pastors wouldn’t be the end of the world (1 Corinthians 7)—and having a day in the week when you turn your phone off, but other people employed by the church are available, is probably wise. Just don’t make that a Saturday if you can avoid it. You’ve massively cut down the time you can see people in if you do. And don’t call it a Sabbath, you do that on Sunday with the church the same as everyone else. You’re not holier or more special, but you are privileged and you do have a unique set of challenges to face.
Productivity
If being a Pastor is a job then you will end up thinking you need to be productive: meet people and make decisions and turn the church upside down every five minutes.
Again, I’m overstating a little for effect. You do need to make decisions (the alternative is awful: I’ve been in that church too), you do need to do things, but you are paid to stare out of the window.
You don’t have a job, instead this church has decided to set aside a group of men for prayer, shepherding, and the teaching of the word: we call them elders. Among the elders they have decided to set you aside so that you don’t have to work, for prayer and the teaching of the word. Your ‘job description’ should read something like ‘prayer and the ministry of word and sacrament.’ (There’s a discussion to be had about how this does and doesn’t apply to the elders who aren’t paid, but that’s another post).
This is an immense privilege, and a wonderful joy. It positions you for brutal attack by the Enemy, it can be hellishly lonely, its thankless, but you do it for the Lord. The one who has the words of life (John 6), where else would you go?
If you spend your days in prayer, in the Bible, walking the hills, visiting the sick, dreaming about the future, and gazing on Jesus’ face? That is ministry. If you then spend the occasional day and your evenings and weekends weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, enjoying life around the table with friends, and releasing others to do what Jesus did? That too is ministry.
Of course I’ve drawn a false dichotomy about what time of the day you do stuff, that’s not really that important. Of course I’ve elided the reality that someone does need to manage and encourage your other staff, if you have them, and someone does need to write this rota and that policy and make that agonisingly difficult decision and be that non-anxious presence. Someone does have to lead, but that isn’t your primary calling. You’re a pastor long before you’re a church leader.
As best you can, in the grace of God, live like that’s true.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
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