Lots of churches in the worlds I’m familiar with don’t have good succession plans for their current employed elders. There are a number of churches I’m familiar with where the paid pastors are nearing retirement and they haven’t been able to develop someone within the church to replace them.
Many would not even be familiar with the problem I’m raising, because they don’t expect those who would be paid elders to come from within their church; rather, they expect them to go to some form of seminary and then be recruited from there or from another church. I might think that’s a mad approach, but it’s a lot more common than the ‘develop your own’ approach I’m familiar with.
All that is to say that churches that don’t typically do so will have to recruit from outside in the near future. Hopefully in lots of cases that can be arranged within networks or denominations rather than just having to post adverts, but some form of recruitment will have to happen.
My concern is this: that needs significant finance. I don’t mean the cost of advertising or recruiting, but the cost of housing and moving. Housing costs as a factor of income are at a 150 year high in the UK. They’ve risen significantly in the last 50 years, with average prices currently 9 times average earnings. Having just bought a house that cost more like 12 times our household income, the chance would be a fine thing. UK housing stock is small and we don’t have enough of it.
What does that have to do with recruiting Pastors? If we don’t provide financial assistance to move and buy then we’ll not be able to recruit from anyone except the already wealthy. Especially if this involves moving southwards or towards London, the price increases are steep.
The Lord will provide, of course, but it’s easier for everyone when the church does that structurally. I know a young man who would make a great Pastor one day who has aspirations in that direction. I’ve shown him an available position in a church before, and he had to dismiss it out of hand because there’s no way he could afford to move from the very cheap place he lives to that very expensive place. The salary was reasonable, but he doesn’t have access to the sort of money required to move there. He isn’t making it up, there is no world in which it could be affordable.
Well, not no world. Not all that long ago it would have been affordable, and not just because houses were cheaper. Not that long ago each church would have owned a house that potentially a paid pastor could live in. Churches that did and sold them off as house prices rocketed to fund another building project made, in my opinion, very short-sighted decisions. It’s common to bemoan the grip that the upper middle class has on pastoral positions around the UK, and there are lots of reasons for that; I’ve not seen people addressing the structural one: no one else can afford to move around the country.
Of course, not all paid pastoral positions require moving, and it’s not true that there are no opportunities for those who aren’t already independently wealthy. What I fear might be true is that lots of churches that might need to recruit from outside in the next decade won’t have the expectation that they will need to provide significant financial assistance to that move, or that the assistance required will depend on the person’s current circumstances.
There are lots of reason that churches can’t give very large amounts of money direct to individuals, most of them are very sensible safeguards! I suspect the simplest solution is to buy property and have the church own it. That also makes it easier to have property large enough for sizeable hospitality and that doesn’t restrict anyone’s family size.
There are loads of downsides to this too. There are reasons churches haven’t done this, even if they can afford to, and I suspect most couldn’t afford such a move. There’s the burden this places on the church, there’s the challenge of what happens when that person retires if they don’t already own a home—this is a common challenge in the Church of England—and there’s the increased barrier it makes for failing. It is harder to admit your sin and step down if you don’t only lose your job but also your home. Though, on the other hand, having sunk huge amounts of money into a ‘risky’ move across the country to a place you don’t know anyone isn’t really less of a barrier to failing.
Should these moves be financially risky? I don’t think so. Some will suggest that it’s good to put your faith into action with something stretching, but taking on a church in a place you don’t know is already hugely stretching and requiring of great faith. More risk isn’t required.
The solution isn’t straightforward, but we need to talk more about the problem. Churches can be naïve about what housing costs, especially housing that will let their paid pastors use their homes for the church in ways that the church inevitably (and reasonably!) expects. There isn’t a lot of money in the British church world, or at least not in any circle of it I’ve been in. This isn’t the first time I’ve written a post that amounts to ‘churches should put money into x!’ It’s reasonable to ask ‘what money?’ Yet, we have to find better solutions for people we are calling to do precarious things. Why should they bear all the burden and all the risk? They aren’t super Christians, we’re all called to sacrifice for Jesus.
Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash
To subscribe and receive email notifications for future posts, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.
Would you like to support my work? The best thing you can do is share this post with your friends. Why not consider also joining my Patreon to keep my writing free for everyone. You can see other ways to support me here.
nuakh 