Category: Simplicity & Generosity

“How much do Methodist pastors make?”

pastor salaryI get regular search hits from people looking for statistics on how much money United Methodist pastors make. Since a lot of this is publicly available, and I just saw the most recent information, I thought I’d share it clearly…

The average compensation package for ordained elders in Kentucky:

Base salary: $61,055
Parsonage or housing allowance: $12,000**
**(this is minimum allowed — the average wasn’t listed)
Utilities and other allowances: $4,000 (also minimum allowed)
Retirement and life insurance contributions: $11,981
Health insurance provided: $12,744
Total package: $101,780 (assuming minimum-level housing and utilities allowance)

If you found this post by a search looking for Methodist pastor salaries, be sure to also check out the “Related Articles” listed at bottom. I hope you’ll especially go to “Church Staffing and Justice.”

To decipher pastors’ salary reporting, you may need to see “The Pastor Salary Fallacy.” Unlike everyone else, pastors don’t use any of their base salary to pay for mortgage, rent, utilities, or any other household expenses. The best apples-to-apples comparison with other occupations would probably need to add up salary, housing, and utilities, and compare that to others’ base salaries. In the above, that number would be $76,055. The benefits are another $25,000 — automatic contributions to a retirement plan (13% of salary + housing), life and disability insurance, and a really nice health insurance plan.

Our conference reports also set a new minimum compensation package for 2014, and provided a budget requesting raises for our 15 director-level conference positions. I’ll share those two to show you a bit of the range, though I should make it clear that the director-level positions are, by no means, the highest paid in the conference. Actually, someone in one of those positions recently told me that they’re viewed as middle-tier positions, in terms of pay.

The minimum compensation package for ordained elders in Kentucky:

Base salary: $34,195
Parsonage or housing allowance: $12,000
Utilities allowance: $4,000
Retirement and life insurance: $7,576
Health insurance: $13,260
Total package: $71,031

The compensation package for our director-level positions (assuming they receive proposed raises):

Base salary: $80,108
Parsonage or housing allowance: $14,000
Utilities allowance: $4,000
Retirement and life insurance: $12,807
Health insurance: $13,260
Total package: $124,175

I’m not including these directors’ travel and expense allowance, which averages $13,750 per person. That would increase the total package to $137,925.

For what it’s worth, the highest-paid position in Kentucky had a $166,000 package as of three years ago. I expect that has gone up since then, but don’t have more recent data.

All of this only represents ordained elders in Kentucky. I’ve heard that Kentucky has the second-lowest pay in the UMC in the southeast (a fact accompanied by no small amount of hand-wringing and pressure on churches to raise elders’ salaries), so if you’re looking in the southeast, assume these numbers are on the low side.

This also does not include deacons. Since deacons aren’t moved from church to church, there isn’t the same pressure on churches to raise their salaries or risk having them moved to another church. Many of our full-time deacons have packages much lower than the minimum listed above.

There it is. You asked; I answered. Questions? Thoughts?

If you found this helpful, you might enjoy several of my other UMC Posts or the related articles below.

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A world that wants Easter but needs to see Maundy Thursday

crossWhy have so many people given up on Christ, the Church, Christianity?

Whatever their reason, I don’t believe it’s because they don’t want the promise of Easter.

The celebration of Easter is that we find life where we expected only death. Even those closest to Jesus expected to find nothing but a corpse when they went to the tomb that first Easter morning.

The promise of Easter is that we continue to find life where we expected only death.

Our world craves the promise of Easter. I believe God has created us with that craving. This is why we cry and mourn at funerals. We love life and hate death. This is why broken relationships rock our lives the way they do. We crave reconciliation. This is why so many are plagued with guilt. We crave forgiveness.

In a world that craves the promise of Easter, why have so many given up on the Christ, and the Church, that offer that promise?

Could it be because they need to see Maundy Thursday and too rarely see it?

At the Last Supper, on what we now call Maundy Thursday, we read that Jesus knew the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God. He had all things under his power. There is no higher place than the place given to Christ. And so what will he do in all his power? The “so” is startling: “so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.” And then he proceeded to wash his disciples’ feet.

The One who at the beginning took dust from the ground and formed a man is now the one who gets up from the meal, kneels on the ground, and cleans the dust off the feet of the ones he created!

And then, shortly after Jesus gets up from washing his disciples’ feet, he says this: “A new command I give you: Love one another.” This isn’t much of a new command. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” has been around quite a while. But the next part makes it new: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

That’s the mandate that Maundy Thursday is named for.

To believe that Easter’s promise is true, a world that craves that promise needs to see the Church live the mandate of Maundy Thursday.

Is the problem that the world needs more “evidence that demands a verdict,” proving Christ’s death and resurrection? Or is it that they need to understand Christ? To understand Jesus in all his divinity and all his humanity? To understand a God who humbles himself so low that he becomes obedient to death, even death on a cross?

Are his disciples today making that humility evident by loving, even as Christ loved us? Are his disciples found kneeling, a towel wrapped around their waists, or found jockeying for power and fighting for what they’re “due”?

This is why it seems so right to us that Pope Francis left the comfortable confines of a Roman Catholic cathedral to wash the feet of a young incarcerated Muslim woman. Why it seems so right to us that Pope Francis refuses to live in the palatial residences offered him and prefers public transit to a limo. How will this Pope handle the riches of Rome?

To our world: if your impression of us, the purported disciples of Christ, is that we spend more time arguing over who will be greatest than seeking to serve the least of these — I’m sorry. I know we often haven’t represented our Savior well. Where you have seen us seeking greatness and riches, you have seen a Church that has not understood – or has not chosen to actually follow – its Savior.

But let me be clear about this, too… Christ’s disciples have been falling short since the beginning. At the Last Supper – almost immediately after Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and predicts his betrayal and death – what do they do? They begin to fight over who is the greatest! We come from a long line of disciples who have misunderstood or ignored Christ’s call to be found among those who serve. But that ignorance and misbehavior has never negated the promise of Easter. If you are refusing the promise of Easter because you aren’t seeing the Church take Jesus’ new command seriously, can I plead with you to reconsider? Christ’s promises are true, whether or not you see them lived out in those who claim him. Don’t miss the perfect goodness of Christ because of his Church’s flaws and failings.

And I should be clear about this, too… We, the Church, are flawed and often fail. But we are also, many of us, seeking Christ. We’re seeking to live according to his humility, his self-giving love, his grace and truth. I hope you’ve seen at least a bit of that. Where we fall short, bear with us in our attempts to get it right, as we trust Christ bears with us.

If you have been hurt by the Church, I apologize. I’ve been hurt before, too. Admittedly, some of the times I have been hurt were because of my own pride. At its best, the Church is full of grace and truth, just as her Savior is. And there are times that truth, even presented with grace, has a bite. At her best, the Church must continue to be full of truth, and we cannot apologize for that, but where you have heard truth with no grace – or purported truth that was no truth at all – I apologize. Where you have heard a presentation of “truth” that was seeking power or status, rather than hoping for reconciliation – I apologize.

And so I plead with you again – if the promises of Easter are true, if they even may be true, don’t miss them because you haven’t seen the Church living out Christ’s new command.

To the Church: may we follow the command of our Savior. How can we be found on our knees rather than exalted? Serving our world rather than expecting to be served by it? Found among the least of these in our world rather than the greatest? How can Pope Francis’s example encourage all of us toward greater simplicity and generosity?

May our leaders be known for commonly rejecting privilege and power, wealth and prosperity, not for climbing ladders toward more power and more money. May we, as congregations, ask more questions about how we can serve the world than questions about whether we are being served properly.

May we be an Easter people – celebrating life where before there was only death – and celebrating that life best by joining our Savior on his knees and at the cross.

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Trust, Money, and the Guaranteed Appointment

guaranteed

guaranteedThe United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council just nullified a decision at GC2012 to do away with guaranteed appointment. I’m not going to get into all of the legislative technicalities here. Let’s look at the bigger picture.

The guaranteed appointment issue is about trust – on all sides. Those worried that a Bishop won’t continue a worthy person’s appointment are ultimately saying they don’t trust our Bishops. They believe they need protection from Bishops who might make an ill-informed, prejudiced, or punitive decision.

Some will say this is about a check and balance. The Board of Ordained Ministry determines who will serve; the Bishop determines where they will serve.

Either way, United Methodists commonly hold up the importance of submission in our system. Elders submit to the Bishop’s authority and submit to go where they are sent. Are we saying elders are willing to submit to the Bishop regarding where they go, but not whether they go anywhere or not? This seems backward from the New Testament appointment of elders, which appears to be a submission regarding whether one served as an elder, not where.

If people are willing to submit to where, but not whether they are appointed, I wonder if this is really about a guaranteed income (with benefits), not a guaranteed appointment. We don’t just guarantee appointments to elders. We guarantee them appointments to full-time jobs, where they must be provided a minimum salary, housing, health insurance, and a pension. And as more and more churches face budget crunches in the coming years, there will be concern about whether we can provide all of those guaranteed incomes.

[Major edit: Wesley Sanders notes in the comments that GC2012 passed a petition to allow appointment of elders for less than full-time, and the Judicial Council didn’t nullify that petition. See it here. This is a big deal. It moves everything I’ve said below from hypothetical to realistic. We have effectively done away with guaranteed full-time appointment. In my mind, this is more important than doing away with guaranteed appointment.]

Some will say, “No, I’m concerned about having a place to serve as a pastor, not the income.” That’s a great attitude. I hope it’s true. And what if that’s how we approached guaranteed appointment? What if we stopped guaranteeing a full-time income and benefits to our elders? Guarantee that they’ll have a place to serve, but it might be a part-time position.

Why have we mandated that ordained elders receive a full-time income from the church? Some will claim that ministry requires full-time attention, and that needs to be protected. But then they’ll need to explain all of the part-time local pastor appointments throughout our connection.

Get rid of the guaranteed full-time paid position, and I think many of our other problems go away. I hear concerns over whether to ordain people who don’t speak English fluently. “They can be great in a Hispanic (or Korean, or French-speaking Congolese…) congregation, but we only have four of those in our Conference. What if we have more ordained Spanish-speakers than positions?” That’s only an issue if it’s about a guaranteed full-time income.

But if you thought there was a lot of consternation over removing guaranteed appointments, just wait until you see what happens when guaranteed full-time incomes are threatened. Due to our current financial situation and the further budgetary strains coming, it’s an issue we’ll have to broach sooner or later.

See more United Methodist posts on my UMC posts page.

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