Why pay clergy?
Alban Institute discusses the issue of clergy salaries and what clergy do to earn their keep.
"Pastor, I've always wondered: how long does it take you to prepare a sermon? As a board member, people ask me, and I’d like to be able to explain why we pay you so much. Could you keep track of how you spend your time and put a summary in your monthly board report?"Such a request, coming from a member of the session, vestry, deacons, or trustees, can raise the blood pressure even of experienced clergy. It is a natural request in a society that considers "the days of a man's life" as a type of property to be exchanged for salaries and wages.
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...As a denominational executive, I used to monitor church newsletters for signs of trouble, including clues that ministers had overreacted to such questions. Some clergy counterattacked, lecturing their congregants about how mysterious, intangible, and immeasurable our work is, and how wrong it is for lay leaders to oversee us as if our work were somehow comparable to that of common...well, to their work. Few congregations respond well to condescension or to scolding nowadays.The other troublesome response I often saw was to over-comply by keeping the requested time log and publishing it not only to the board but to the congregation in the newsletter. Such a response buys into the time-clock way of thinking. It also telegraphs anxiety, making it more likely that a harmless—perhaps even innocent—question may lead to real difficulty.
An embarrassing truth about the work of clergy is that a lot of it looks like loafing. Who else gets paid to drink iced tea with a wise great-grandmother or toast the giddy joy of newlyweds? And little that we do looks more like goofing off than preaching. I don't mean, of course, the feverish final preparatory rush or the climactic 20 minutes on the podium, but the hours of hunt and peck, preceded, in my experience, by as many hours of what might appear, to the naïve observer, to be procrastination.
At my first parish in Chicago when the subject came up I would remind folks that the Rector of their parish was paid the same as the driver of the city garbage truck that came by weekly and that I was paid the same as the can handlers on the trucks.
I have done time studies just to show how my time gets split among various categories of ministry. But the reality is that those who choose to be antagonistic about it are not mollified by time studies anyway. Likewise people who appreciate ministry trust that you are out there on behalf of the parish.
We are perhaps more akin to fire fighters and EMT's in that we are highly trained, competent in a diverse number of skills, and on call for emergencies. That is probably why clergy, like firefighters and EMT's often suffer from Cumulative Stress Disorder arising from persistent involvement in life traumas. In short we are paid to be available for crises, and solo clergy carry a larger strain than firefighters and EMT's because we are on call 24/7.
Other things that we do, preaching, worship preparation, teaching etc are all more manageable in a normal idea of a work week.
We do, however, now live in a time when professionals are often expected to take work everywhere with them and put far more than 40 hours in. Americans work on average 6 weeks more a year than in 1980 and the notion of a 32 hour work week as a way of getting to full employment is a vanished dream. So we share with everyone an inhumane social expectation that to be successful or significant you are working all the time.
Posted by Michael Russell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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December 15, 2009 2:40 PM
Since the first Sunday I started at my parish, I started publishing the schedule for the upcoming week in the bulletin. I did this mostly so that people would know when I was available if they needed to get in touch with me. The side effect has been that it reminds everybody how much I actually do.
I can't help but wonder, though, when someone believes a clergyperson to be slothful, how much the said clergyperson contributes to that her/himself, and how much it is the questioner is dealing with his/her own issues. These matters are rather complicated, and creating a bad perception is a two-way street.
I also might add, that if someone said to me "some parishioners want to know...", I would respond that "those parishioners need to talk to me, then." This sounds mostly like a case of triangulation or deflection of guilt. Either way, it needs to be cleared up quickly.
Posted by Matthew Buterbaugh+![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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December 15, 2009 5:06 PM