Paid Clergy?

1 Corinthians 9:3-14 (ESV)
³  This is my defense to those who would examine me.
⁴  Do we not have the right to eat and drink?
⁵  Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?
⁶  Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?
⁷  Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?
⁸  Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same?
⁹  For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned?
¹⁰  Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop.
¹¹  If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?
¹²  If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.
¹³  Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings?
¹⁴  In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

I’m afraid this might seem a little “soap boxy” but I’m going to post it anyway.  I’ve been on enough church boards, panels, and in enough church leadership roles to see what the life of a typical pastor is like.  I have enough pastor friends to somewhat understand their job.  One of my friends, Lloyd, pastors a church of emotionally, physically, and intellectually disabled adults.  He does it because he loves it and wouldn’t do anything else.  He has to work away from the church to make ends meet.  Lloyd is getting older, and his health is failing, but he’s there every Sunday.

Another friend, Fred, has been a pastor of a little southern church for decades.  He has a PhD and could do greater things, but he still pastors the little church he loves.  These men aren’t in it for any kind of financial reward.  They are God’s instruments and should be honored as such.

Really, the main point of the passage is that clergy may, and usually should, be paid.  Paul argues that it is only right that the church in Corinth should provide for his living expenses.  As with pastors and missionaries today, much of Paul’s time was not doubt spent in study.  A pastor friend of mine once told me he needs to study an hour for every minute of sermon time.  Think about that.  Think about Easter week when a pastor may have a Wednesday night service, a Good Friday service, then there’s the Easter service.  How much time do you suppose is spent in study that week?  And that’s above his time counseling, visiting the sick and shut-ins, endless committee meetings, administrative stuff.  The list goes on.

Sometimes pastors have jobs outside the church because the church can’t afford to completely support them.  These are bi-vocational pastors.  It’s a fancy word but not a fancy lifestyle.  When I was a young man, I worked at a paint factory.  There was a forklift driver I worked with who would gobble down a quick sandwich and immediately spend the rest of his lunch break working on the next Sunday’s sermon.  The fellow worked hard all week in order to both feed his family and to afford to pastor a church too small to pay him.  I’m sure his evenings were spent in studying as well.

Years later, our family car broke down, and I hitched a ride with a passing motorist who was driving from his Orange County church to speak at a small church 60 miles away that couldn’t afford a pastor.  He did this every week because the need was there.  The pastorate is definitely not a job but a calling for these men.  Mega churches are far from the norm.  The average American church has 89 adults.  The last church I attended has about 1,000.  The one I’m at now has more like 400.  There are a lot of churches like ours.  That means there are even more churches with fewer than 50 people.  The typical pastor isn’t getting rich by any means.

A friend now gone, Pastor Dan Vasquez, at one time carried his paychecks in his wallet sometimes for weeks on end because he felt the church needed the money more than he did at the time or there simply wasn’t the money in the bank to pay him.  This is the type of men standing every Sunday in our church pulpits.

Paid clergy should be expected if you expect your clergy to be fulltime.  Like anything else, a church that will not or cannot pay their pastor will get what they pay for.  A pastor cannot spend 40 hours at work every week supporting his family then work another 40 hours (usually much more) in church ministry, and keep a family together.  Something has to suffer, and more often than not, it’s the family.  Enough said?

We must honor our leaders.  As I recently told one of my pastor friends, “I’ve seen your job, and I don’t want it.”  He smiled because it’s a calling for him.  The long hours, the lives touched, the hearts changed, the addictions left behind.  That’s his reward: God using him to reach others.  So, let’s think twice before we grumble about the pastor’s pay.  He probably works a lot harder than most of us and still shows us that Sunday morning smile.