Because of finances, I am exploring going back to work for the federal government.
My salary at the Christian school just is too small to get caught up on all of the bills from when I lost me engineering position in September 2001 and was out of a steady job for 8 months, work as a temp for 20 weeks, then out of work for another 9 months.
The other thing is that our area (about an hour from both NYC & Philly) is getting too expensive to live in. This area is becoming a bedroom suburb of both cities. The only remaining industry seems to be distribution centers since we are at the junction on several interstate routes that service the northeast corridor.
I could certainly use your prayers regarding this matter.
You are in my prayers. Being one who would like to teach at a church college or university, I can appreciate the problem with thhe Christian school. They want good teachers, but are unable or unwilling to pay a liveable salary at times, saying that it is our ministry. Well, it is our ministry, but we do have to pay bills and live. Perhaps if you were walked into the school in the nude and told them, "I can't afford clothes on this salary."
Seriously, you'll be in my thoughts as you make this difficult decision.
Thank you. You're one of the few people besides me that will admit that a church is a business and has to pay professional salaries to receive professional services. I alway get very indignant when the church I work for is always crying no money for wages when they can fund other projects that are created on the whim of a minster or even hire more people for someone's supposed "cause."
I'm just weary of hearing the line, "We're doing God's work here," to justify burning out volunteers and using them up with no pay or gratitude. Try going into the grocery store and telling them that you shouldn't have to pay because you're doing, "God's work." I've had to be rather cruel to people who want my help in my chosen profession and I have to tell them I'll help in something other than what I work in, otherwise, I'll have to charge you a freelance fee because that's what I do. Its how I make a living.
We have conferences at the church I work for and every year ministers come up to me and ask how they can do something or other and add the line, "But we have no money." I just look at them, shrug and tell them, "Well, then you can't do that." They look at me like I'm just going to pull a solution out of my rear and solve all their problems. Stop expecting good people to stay with you and teach when you don't respect them enough to pay them what they're worth. You don't see ministers working for free. They have good contracts, nice vacation and study time, housing and car allowances and great tax breaks because they're ordaned. Now...this of course, doesn't always apply to storefront churches and extremely small congregations who can barely afford the rent. Yes, there are exceptions, but, please don't try t spin a positive angle on low pay when you just aren't willing to fork out the dough.
Sorry for the diatribe, but I think I'm done now (LOL).
Terry,
I wholeheartedly agree with you and go on the same diatribe often. Growing up in the Lutheran church I used to hear things about paying musicians such as, "Well, it's there ministry and they should be happy we're giving them an outlet to play; you know, like Bach did/" My reply these days is that J.S. Bach was one of the richest people around in the Baroque period. The money he made at the time would equate to making him a member of the upper middle class at least, and possibly in the upper class. So my line has always been, "You get what you pay for." There are times that I will do things within my field for nothing, but it's my choice. My father wanted me to give the money back the first time I got paid for an Easter gig. My reply, "ARE YOU KIDDING!" I had played three church services and rehearsed twice for $100.00. Sounds good, but it certainly didn't average out well. I've also been vice president of a Lutheran congregation. I was 23 years old, a member of a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod church and the first thing I had to do was rewrite the constitution so that if anything happened to the 30 year old president, the congregation would elect a new president because a woman couldn't be president. That aside, I heard enough financial woes during those three years to last me a lifetime. And you're right, they can't pay salaries to others, but we can support some projects that don't need supporting at the time. My parent's church, which is the church I grew up in and was vice president of, now runs on a deficit budget. It's insane! That's not good stewardship. And then there's the fact that once you're in church work, either teaching or as a minister, you become like a physician -- on call 24/7. It makes sense in some ways, and emergencies happen, but we have to "re-create" ourselves every now and then too.
So I understand what you are going through. They want the best, and pay the worst. There are other reasons i'd like to teach at a church college or university, or I'd probably look elsewhere. Thankfully, I will always be able to supplement a salary with gigs, consulting, writing, and private teaching. By the way, speaking of consulting, I've been asked by the powers that be at Coda Music and MakeMusic, to become a clinician in FINALE (a music writing program) and other compatible programs. I've taught FINALE to college students and faculty for a number of years, and so now I'll bascially be llke an endorser of the company, much like musicians might endorse a brand of instrument. The nice thing is I get paid to provide these clnics; and quite well. I'm looking forward to that because it's something I can "put in my hip pocket" so to speak and use anywhere I am.
Let me know what happens. I still think you should walk in nude and tell them that they don't pay you enough to buy clothes. Extreme, yes, but sometimes we need extremes to get attention, eh?
In the meantime you are in my prayers. And I thank you for your prayers and support. Our little "family" here on the forum have some pretty special people, and I appreciate you all.
You're one of the first people to even listen what I've said about organized religion. Just for the record, we pay musicians about $150 for a Sunday morning service and that's for a 7am to 12:30pm day. Morning rehearsal and two videotaped services. Twice that on Christmas and Easter. Unfortunately, in the technical field I'm in they pay $8.00/hour to start and can't figure out why we're always griping that we can't hire good help.
After reading an article in a Reform church magazine about volunteering, I make a very distinct separation between my profession and my volunteering. They don't overlap. And that include volunteering for individuals like you. If I want to help a person move, its my choice and that person is not, "using me." Pass that along to your mother. Plus, I try to treat the volunteering professionally. I ask about definite start and ending times, so there's no hard feelings when things are open-ended.
Back to minister's salaries...my wife used to receive a Reform church magazine that updated ministers and their calls in the back with what their contracts called for. A minister with a congregation of several hundred (weekly attendance) could negotiate about $60,000/year with 2 weeks vacation, 2 weeks study time off and 2 weeks of conference travel a year. Plus, being ordaned, I think, you can get 40 percent of your "pre" tax income deducted for housing and car allowance (that's why they're separated from the regulay pay). A decent size church can pay market rates the same as any professional. All this doesn't apply, of course, if you're a woman who are pretty much locked out of many organized religions and relegated to, "get me some coffee would you honey?"
You're right in that operating on a deficit budget is insane and not good stewardship. People do not want to treat churches as a business, but that's what they are. I guess they're afraid they will "taint" the purity of the church. Well, if your church fails because of bad stewardship, its going to be pretty tainted right there. It won't exist.
Anyway, ministers who read this board may not agree, but there needs to be some major changes or they will just whither and die. We're too worried about spilling a little coffe on the fellowship hall carpet rather than paying people to provide professional services that will amke thei church stand out and evangelize the people rather than preaching to the choir.
Our current pastor did his service for around 5 years or more before our congregation was in a position to give him "half pay", which is around $15k a year. Our congregation is a very small one. All the people here are volunteers. He would like to be able to hire some professionals, but it's obvious we are not able.
He is what you call a "bi-vocational" pastor.
Of course, our church always had paid pastors, but most of the local work was done by volunteers. Music, setup, cleanup, etc. all was on a volunteer basis. Of course, we did it because we wanted to, and still do. Our pastor was more than glad to do it those years, but fair is fair and he needed the extra money.
About 10 years ago, our church went through a major....MAJOR...doctrinal change and lost well over half of our congregation and pastors. That is why he stepped in to be a pastor for us. He has been one of the best we had.
And still is. Fortunately, our church is now getting back up again, but it took a long time to get rid of some heavy assets, like a college campus in Pasadena Ca. That was a long time expense!
So that is out, and we now can move forward.
I think one of the dangers of people not understanding pastors and their roles, is that they think pastors are paid to "be a christian for them" rather than teaching and preparing the people for a ministry. "We pay you to visit the sick, the prisoners, etc." NOT!
Volunteers should be just that, and not treated as employees. But they also have to do their part if they say they are going to do it. I hate sign up lists because half the time, the people who sign up are not the ones doing it. The ones doing it are the ones who were so busy, they didn't have time to sign up on the list!
They only had about 5 or 6 paid positions in the whole church, with a membership of over 600 and regular attendance over 250 each week.
The music director was one of the paid positions, but none of the rest of us on the SALT (Sound And Light Team- neat, huh?) were paid.
I ran a 32 channel sound board, a 12 channel light board, with seperate CD, tape, and wireless mikes for about 3 to 4 months straight. Two practices plus Sunday morning and Wednsday night. And usually after teaching my own Sunday School class, too.
What you said is true Boyd- they always seemed to have the same group of people volunteering for everything. Less than 20 percent of the membership was (and still is) doing over 80 percent of the work.
Just built a near-million dollar "Community Center"... talk about bad stewardship of their finances. Oh, and they just raised their budget to 150 percent of the one they had last year- that they were never able to make. Wierd, huh?
I loved teaching my kids in Sunday School, and enjoyed running the boards for the services, and never expected or wanted to be payed for either, but it still strikes me how poorly they treated volunteers, and how badly they tend to mismanage the money.
I began to wonder about these distribution industries, like Walmart and Costco and Sams. The sell stuff......lots and lots of.....stuff.
To who? Nobody's got a job, they are getting it from some manufacturer, but not here! Another furniture factory closed in Thomasville, a man who worked there since 18, now in his mid fifties, got to find another job! He was breaking down in tears!
Yet, these distribution centers are growing like crazy! Of course, they aren't paying anyone!
Let's boycott clothing distributors. Of course, thats easy, we ain't got no money to buy the stuff!!
The distribution centers I was mentioning are basically warehouses. The planes or trains bring supplies into the distribution center and are unloaded, catalogued and assigned to trucks to take to the "local" stores with in 8-12 hours driving time of the center.
And I've delevered to and pick-up from those places back when I drove OTR, way too many to count. really it was a big pain in the............. I chucked about your "wear-out" title, after dealing with the shipping/recieving managers (that probably had no business in that position) a driver was WORE-OUT!
We lived in Morris Twp for 20 years. We also still have friends up that way. One friend just told us that the real estate taxes on their condo had gone up to $15,000/yr. I can understand about the cost of living in NJ. Am also aware of the low salaries we pay preachers and ministers. We lost outside support for our college campus minister here. He got the drift that his salary was being lost; so he left us. Now, we can't afford to hire another one and aren't even going through the process. We pay our preacher reasonable well, but it isn't a huge amount of money. Fortunately, he is a very handy guy. Most of us hire him to do jobs at our houses, which we pay him for and are glad to get him because such talent is hard to get around here. He does a lot of work around the congregation, a lot that our elders ought to be doing. They're both retired now and could do more.
Going to work for a big company used to be like a family affair. Once they adopted you into their family, they more or less kept you for life. There used to be no such things are "performance appraisals" either. Somewhere back in the 1980s or even the late 1970s, this changed to a pure numbers game, with the numbers being dictated by managers and business men far removed from the actual hiring and firing process, with the numbers being obtained from those "performance appraisals". It was misery to those of us who were directly involved. Some of had to sweat it out ourselves, too. You really have to learn to blow your own horn to keep from being forgotten in the shuffle.
I made it to retirement, but not before they eliminated my job 2 years before I did retire. I had the option then of moving to an office in Baytown, Texas (that my wife and I hated back in 1967/68) or staying put with a demotion (but same pay: these offered by my manager in the refinery where I was working; he really didn't need to do it). I went over and looked around at housing but couldn't get anything with a nice house with more than 0.9 acre and with neighbor's eyes visible from almost all around, plus real estate taxes of $12,000/yr for the same value house that I paying $2,300 in Baton Rouge. So, I just stayed in Baton Rouge for those last 2 years. Actually, I worked for a year longer, awaiting the discount rate to go to a record low amount (for a higher payout on the retirement).
