In many churches, the pastor’s salary is a quiet issue. There is a sense of discomfort from both the pastor and the members when the topic is broached. Such discomfort is unfortunate, however, because a number of churches will not seek every year to make certain the pastor is paid fairly.
A couple of prefatory comments are in order. First, we all know of the extreme examples of pastors living lavishly or mismanaging money. Those stories, though true, represent a small minority. Most pastors are not overpaid. And most pastors manage their limited finances well. Second, I am aware that many people are unemployed and that anyone who has a job should be grateful. That is still not a good reason to pay a pastor unfairly. As a final note, this brief article is relevant to all paid church staff, though my focus is here on the pastor.
In my 25 years of consulting and working with churches, I have discovered five common issues that are not always known by most church members. And lack of awareness of any one of these issues can have a detrimental impact on fair compensation for the pastor.
- A pay or compensation package is not the same as a salary. I cringe when I hear churches state a package to be the pay for the pastor. The package includes benefits such as health insurance and expense reimbursements such as business use of the automobile. No worker in a secular company adds their benefits and expenses and calls it their pay. Anything other than the cash payment (before taxes) the pastor receives should be reported in a totally separate category.
- There are many resources to find out what the fair compensation for a pastor should be. Many denominations provide their own compensation studies. But you can do an Internet search for “pastor pay” and see a plethora of resources that are available. And as a rule of thumb, you could seek to estimate what the mean income is for families in the church, and use that as a basis for compensation for the pastor. Churches that do not do their homework on pastoral compensation tend to underpay their pastors.
- Many pastors request no raises but would still appreciate one. Some pastors simply don’t want to deal with a critic who might question any raise given to a pastor. Others feel extremely uncomfortable talking about money in general, and use the “no raise” request to deflect further conversation. Some think it’s just the noble thing to do. But most pastors, in reality, would appreciate a fair raise to keep up with growing expenses. Don’t accept their requests as the last word.
- Many pastors are under extreme stress because they do not have adequate income to meet their financial obligations. Like anyone else who is under heavy financial burdens, a pastor can find his thoughts consumed with worry. Because he is so distracted, he naturally is less effective in his ministry. Both he and his family feel the pressure.
- Some pastors leave their churches because of pay issues. You will not likely hear a pastor announce in his resignation that he is leaving because of financial pressures. The reality is that, for a number of pastors, the issue of compensation is a major push from one church to another, or from the church to a secular vocation. It’s not that the pastor is in his job for the money; it’s that the compensation for his vocation is insufficient to meet his family’s needs.
Paul wrote these words to his young protégé, Timothy, in 1 Timothy 5:17-18: “The elders who are good leaders should be considered worthy of an ample honorarium, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain and, the worker is worthy of his wages’” (HCSB).
It is unfortunate that the few indulgent pastors who live lavish lifestyles get most of the attention. The reality is that most of the some 400,000 pastors in America are not overpaid; indeed many are underpaid. Those are the pastors who need our attention.
Posted on December 17, 2012
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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522 Comments
If you want to see how much a Church Pastor is making you may find out at CitizenAudit.com . I see that John Macarthur of “grace to you” made over $400,000 a few years ago. How does he justify that when the tax return says he worked 20hrs a week?
I see Hal Lindsey made 2.5 million in 2015 and his wife is listed as the “treasurer” and she was paid over 1 million. It says they both work 20hrs a week. How is that justified?
How do you justify making such a hefty amount of money that is more than enough for 10 people to live on in a year? You can say that the Pastors are giving a lot of it away for charitable causes now that someone found out how much they make. That way it you can justify it and kind of keep it hidden since no one here can dig into how much they have in their personal bank account. Either way it leaves the impression that someone may be hoarding riches.
Hi Mr Rainer i go to a small church here in Windsor Canada and we want to pay our pastor a salery and housing expenses and we are not sure if it is taxable in Canada or not where can i find out the rate and anything esle we can do to bless our pastor he works hard is there at 6am and well into the night we have about 250 attenders most are collage age from another country. But we know the value of what he does for us all. So 1 is the amount we pay him taxable, 2 is the housing or car allowance taxable? and what else is normal for us to provide for him
Haha that last comment was supoose to be funny. I am with you all on this issue of pastors and their financial burdens, really. In all seriousness..I read a lot of these comments with bible verses in them. Here is mine. God provides for those who love him. How hard is it really? If a person believes in God, they believe his word. His word is Him! That is God take a look in the big book! Don’t worry brothers! Sisters! Just believe. ##belief
Hey I’m Adam Burge, a church member here in central mo @ christ mission. I just wanted to throw my two cents in.
Of course you all know that you are all wrong. In the body of Christ we have ALL been given an order: Do not work for bread! John 6:27 do not even look for these things Mathew 6:32 You cannot serve two masters Luke 16:13. If you cant handle these simple instructions, don’t expect your pastor to follow them either. But he still should.
This entire thread relies on a false premise and everything said based on that false premise is inherently false.
The king of lies is Satan. The false premise that every liar here speaks from is this:
That a pastor is a necessary, and to be one deserves financial compensation.
You dirty liars talk about devoting your life to God as if being a pastor embodied that. Talking about scripture, reading scripture, and making a show out of it for a group is dirty work and dirty money. That’s not acting like a Christian. You just talk talk talk.
A real “pastor” has a real job. He works hard contributing to God by accepting opportunities to act in service to Him.
For example, get a real job like a grocery store stocker. Or learn how to program computer code. You serve and devote your life to God when you show up to work with love and to serve His demands.
Devote your life to God by listening to your coworkers with full attenion. If they ask for advice, ask God to speak through you as His vessel.
Put a ladder away. Pick up a piece of garbage. Say thank you to your coworkers for their hard work.
The planet is the church, not your cross ornamented, walled off liar patches.
Get a real job and serve God for once in your life and quit serving Satan’s call that is false saying these lies: a pastor is a necessary thing, that their life is “devoted to doing God’s work”, and that it is and a job that deserves payment.
Get a job, save your money, and then when you’ve saved enough to build infrastructure, serve God properly by doing as Jesus did.
But to presume that you are “working” as a pastor and deserve money or tithes is an abomination.
Jesus would storm into your churches just like he stormed into the temples, throw your tables up, and rebuke all of you for counting money, especially in a religious place.
He would rebuke all of you just as he did in the bible when he called out the hypocrisy of “religious leaders”. You are all liars and hypocrites.
I thought this was a great post with many great insights.
Everyone seems to have their own philosophies as to how a pastor should get paid and even whether or not the pastor should get paid, but I think it is really all situational though. I think there are times when it is probably best that the pastor is not paid at all and other times it may be best that he is paid a decent salary.
For example, say a pastor does have another job and wants to pastor a church outside his time at his other job, and chooses, like Paul, to not accept pay for it. He may provide counseling to people outside of work hours. He may prepare sermons and preach every weekend. He has enough money to support himself and he just wants to be involved with the church regardless of whether or not he receives compensation. His heart is in the right place I think, and if he never desired to get paid from tithes I think that would be fine by everyone. But let’s say he was investing so much time in the church and his family was in financial need. I think if the church offered him a salary for the time he invested in the church I think that would be great as well. I think it would be fine even if they paid him a fair amount even if he didn’t need it.
But you could also have another pastor that has no other job. He is a full-time minister. He is available everyday 40+ hours a week with his doors always open for free counseling for any member of the church. He is reaching out every day making phone calls and visits to members of his flock to check on how they’re doing and to see if they need any counseling or help in any way. On top of his counseling, he spends a great deal of time preparing his sermons for his services. A normal day could look like him spending 2 hours on sermon preparations in the morning followed by 6 hours of providing free counseling to troubled members of the congregation (outside of the church these members would have to pay $100 + an hour for counseling). On top of that he’s on call like a doctor where at a moment’s notice he may need to the hospital, prepare and deliver a funeral message, go visit a member of the church at their home for counseling. This pastor really has a full-time job as the pastor of his church and the church would be at a real loss if he could not continue to provide the service is offering. I think for a pastor like that he would need to make a sizeable salary between $36K-60K depending on what area the pastor lives in, just to be able support himself and his family. The number’s may be off. My main point is that he needs to be getting paid the same amount that he would be making at another full-time job in order to support himself and his family as he is unable to do both.
You also have the situation where a pastor is getting paid more than the own members of his congregation and or way more than he needs to be paid. I think in many of those situations it may not be ideal.
Anyhow, my main point is that I don’t really think there is a clear cut way to go about paying a leader in the church. It’s all situational. Sometimes churches are run on an all volunteer basis and God works through that and other times churches have paid salaries for many positions in the church and God works in those churches as well and does great things through those churches. God works and moves through all different types of ministry.
HI Thom, I’m currently a leader at a church plant. We are on our 3rd year and are growing.
I was curious if you could recommend a method or way to determine our Pastor’s salary.
Please, let me know if you can, thank you.
My Pastor talks about money all the time. My Pastor runs campaign and boiler rooms to call on people to give is this right? I was always told giving is a personal thing. My Pastor Never visit the sick in hospitals or their homes. Pastors send members of the congregation to visit sick in homes or hospitals. Pastor sermon is only 15 minutes long and mostly read by Pastor. My Pastor tries to run church like a dictator never taking No for an answer. Is this person following the word of God? Your comments will be appreciated.
Dear Thom,
I was raised a roman catholic all my life and live here in the Bay Area. I have a specific comment in regards to your article: ” 5 observation of priests Salaries. Today when I went to my local church for mass , the new pastor of our parish mentioned the general idea on how we as Catholics should think about the idea of giving up basically all materialistic goods such as money, car, high paying jobs, survival needs and careers for example as a way of showing Gods trust. As I consider myself to be a branch or member of the Christian order in general as a Catholic, I believe and agree in sharing extra resources and helping others when you are giving so many blessings by GOD is right thing to do and is part of Gods plan.. But my specific point in regards to your article in my opinion is that, if any official priest/ pastor with all the graces, benefits and duties that come with that particular position ( like most other jobs in an economic based system using materialistic goods) yet require a person to achieve a higher level or standard of” spirituality” in reality to reach that specific level which is suppose to be above the level of most members and common people in the first place (being an official member or branch of the Christian order), Then how can you think about or demand the idea of excepting some level of materialistic goods like “Salary which involves money” when the priest puts so much energy, effort and focus on how we as humans have to suffer and deprive ourselves of the basic survival needs which involves some degree of excepting some level of “materialistic good” by society standards ?????