Recognition is an intersubjective state of mind by which one human being acknowledges the worth or status of another human being.
—Francis Fukuyama
What would you say if you learned that your minister was making the majority of his personal income not from the church but from ownership of a payday loan establishments next to the church? Or what if you found out she makes a good living writing erotica under a pen name?
Most of you would probably be appalled. That’s not what ministers do.
Let’s soften the example though. What if your minister made the majority of his income not from his church salary from selling life insurance to church members?
You probably have a negative reaction to that too. But it’s probably not to selling life insurance. If there are any people in insurance in your congregation, they probably do a good bit of their business selling products to church members and their friends and family, and I doubt you have a problem with that.
And it’s not that the majority of his income comes from life insurance. You’d probably have the same reaction if he only supplemented his income by selling insurance to fellow congregants. In fact, you might have an even stronger reaction to that, because how is he picking who he sells to and who he isn’t? Is he playing favorites? Taking advantage of people he knows to be vulnerable? Does he try and sell it when people come to him in a crisis? And what are you supposed to say if he asks and you don’t want to buy?
You’ll probably be with me now when I say that there is a deal struck between ministers and congregations, and that a minister selling life insurance inside his church is breaking the deal. There are other cases too that break the deal, like sleeping around in the congregation. And we could argue about how far the deal goes, whether it includings not dating inside the congregation, or not hanging out socially with friends made inside the congregation.
But however you want to draw out the deal, there is one. The minister-congregation deal isn’t one sided though. Ministers get something out of the deal too.
What do ministers get? Status, recognition, authority. Again, we can argue out the details as to how far this end of the deal should go. And we might add other things to this side of the deal too, like a comfortable middle class existence, something mainline churches are writing out the deal, however. But the deal at least includes the minister giving up the economic game the rest of us play in return for ministerial recognition and authority.
The deal includes more than that, of course. It also includes the expectation that the minister will serve the congregation, that she will somehow live for the congregation and use her ministerial authority to call the congregation into its most deeply held values. In return, the congregation will financially support its minister so that the minister can do all of those important things.
In other words, the deal is that ministers—and, yes, this applies to non-ministerial church staff too—will quit building a regular resume, thereby making themselves themselves economically vulnerable. The only right response to this voluntary economic vulnerability is for the congregation to guarantee that they won’t let the minister fall through the cracks should their ministry end.
Let’s take a moment to give that the attention it deserves. Your minister, today, is making himself economically vulnerable for you. He’s actively paying a high opportunity cost in order to be your minister. Even though you pay him.
I’ll bet you don’t pay him enough to make up for that high opportunity cost.
If you think the job market for ex-church staff is hopping, in any economy, I invite you to make yourself as economically vulnerable as your minister as an expression of your solidarity. I’ll wait here while you and your family go do that. Ready, set, go.
The fact is that even though there is give and take in the minister-congregation relationship, the minister always gives more. This is the dirty little secret of ministry.
Many ministers don’t mind paying the cost, or at least don’t mind it more days than they do. But minding it or not is beside the point.
They’re making themselves economically vulnerable for you. What are you doing for them? Merely paying them for services rendered doesn’t quite cover it, does it?
(Image by Quinn Dombrowski. Used under Creative Commons license.)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
well said, and add in the gender issues around pay ( anecdotal evidence within UU and mainline congregations and proven recently within rabbinical circled) that pegs us at @ 65 cents on the dollar, and the longevity gap- women frequently leave around six years in, with the economic vulnerabilty factor kicking in earlier.
I’m afraid an economy is kicking in where churches rely on the gender income disparity.
Most Friends do not have a called minister. However, I am F/friends with a called minister who serves a church in Kansas. She knows she risks burnout on a regular basis and recognizes her own vulnerabilities. We’ve never talked extensively about the subject but I know her to be aware of the disparities.
Two Friends I know are a married couple. They’re both the children of Quaker ministers. Her parents are divorced. His parents, who jointly served a Friends church, are now divorced. Her minister father has been married more than once.
I wonder what sort of boundaries are best for those who serve on committees. Committees, in unprogrammed Meetings, complete the tasks ordinarily performed by a minister. Though Friends dislike hierarchy, the de factor leader of a committee is called a clerk. As you might expect, there are good clerks and bad clerks. I wonder if some of these requested expectations of ministers apply to clerks and clerking.
Good food for thought.