“He’s not preaching the series after all.”
Mark looked up from the church budget on his desk. “What series?”
“The one on divorce and remarriage.”
Mark stopped turning the pages. “I thought he was starting that next week.”
“He was.”
“What happened?”
David pulled the door to the church office closed behind him and took the chair across from Mark. “He changed his mind.”
Mark stared at him. “Why?”
“He said he thinks the subject is too divisive right now.”
Mark frowned. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
“I know.”
For several seconds, neither man said anything. Mark finally set the budget aside. “Did he tell you that himself?”
“He told me this morning.”
“And you think there’s another reason?”
“I don’t know.” David paused. “But I know who has been talking to him.”
Mark raised an eyebrow.
“You know the Hendersons and the Carters.”
“Of course.”
“Their children have both divorced and remarried. Both families have been talking to him about the series.”
Mark leaned back in his chair. “And you think that’s why he canceled it?”
“I think it has something to do with it.”
Mark glanced at the budget on his desk. “You’re talking about money.”
“I’m talking about influence.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
David leaned forward. “But you know as well as I do that the two often go together.”
Mark looked at him for a moment. “Are you saying he backed away because he’s afraid they’ll stop giving?”
“I’m saying I don’t know what was going through his mind. Maybe he really does think this isn’t the right time. Maybe he genuinely wants to avoid a church fight. I’m not accusing him of anything. But as treasurer, you know what happens to the church’s finances when families like that become unhappy. If they leave, or stop giving, it doesn’t just hurt the church’s income. It puts the pastor’s paycheck at risk too.”
Mark looked at him for a moment. “You think he’s worried about his job?”
“I think he has to be aware of the possibility. If the church loses enough income, somebody eventually has to ask whether it can still afford his salary.”
“That doesn’t mean that’s why he changed his mind.”
“No, it doesn’t. And I’m not saying it is. But it makes me wonder about the arrangement itself.”
“What do you mean?”
David leaned back in his chair. “I mean, how wise is it to make a man’s livelihood dependent upon the very people he is supposed to teach, rebuke, and sometimes confront and discipline? I’ve watched the prospect of losing a paycheck influence more pastors than I care to remember.”
Mark was quiet for a moment. “You’re saying the salary itself can become a problem.”
“I think it can. There are probably a few pastors who can resist the pressure, but most can’t and are impacted by it. The pressure is real, and I’ve seen what it can do.”
“Give me an example.”
David thought for a moment. “Remember Tom Reynolds?”
Mark smiled faintly. “The pastor before Steve?”
“Yes. He was preparing a series on church discipline. One of the most influential families in the church got upset because their son was about to be confronted. Tom never finished the series. He changed the subject.”
“I remember that.”
“He told me years later that the family’s reaction had influenced him. He believed the church’s unity and finances would be severely impacted if he pursued it. That’s not the only time I’ve seen it. I’ve watched pastors soften teaching, avoid subjects, and decide that some truths were too controversial to be taught from the pulpit.”
Mark rubbed his chin. “So you think paying a pastor creates a conflict of interest.”
“It does. It’s undeniable.”
“But what are we supposed to do about that? You can’t just stop paying the man.”
“I know.”
“And what about Paul? He says the laborer is worthy of his wages. He says not to muzzle the ox. He even says those who preach the gospel have the right to make their living from the gospel.”
David nodded. “I know. That’s what makes this so difficult.”
“So how can we say it’s unwise for a church to pay a man who devotes himself to ministry?”
David was quiet for a moment. “Because I also believe my eyes and ears. I’ve seen too many pastors soft-pedal things the church needed to hear plainly and directly. I’ve watched them avoid difficult subjects, water down clear teaching, or simply decide that some truths weren’t worth the trouble. And in more than a few cases, I knew the reason. They were afraid of what would happen to their income if they said what needed to be said. Money influences us in subtle ways we sometimes don’t fully recognize.”
Mark nodded slowly.
David continued, “I can’t pretend the problem isn’t real just because those passages seem difficult to reconcile with what I’ve seen. But I also believe there has to be an answer that makes sense of both. The problem has to be with my understanding, not with Scripture.”
Mark looked down at his Bible. “And Paul supported himself.”
“That’s true.”
“So maybe we’re missing something.”
“Maybe.”
Neither man spoke for several seconds.
Finally, Mark closed his Bible. “I don’t know how to reconcile those two things.”
“Neither do I.”
David stood and just before leaving said, “Maybe that’s the question we need to answer.”
“What question?”
David looked back at him.
“Not whether gospel workers deserve to be supported. Scripture seems clear enough about that. Maybe the question is how Scripture expects that support to work.”
Fictional conversation, real problem
Mark and David are invented. Their conversation isn’t.
I’ve had that conversation with myself, in one form or another, on many occasions. For a long time I told myself the tension wasn’t really a tension at all. The Bible plainly says a laborer is worthy of his wages. It says not to muzzle the ox. Paul himself says those who preach the gospel have a right to make their living from it. Case closed, I figured, and any discomfort I felt was just due to imperfect humans making church messy.
But the discomfort never fully went away. So I finally did what I should have done years earlier. I asked a question that had never really occurred to me before: does the Bible actually authorize what we’ve built, or have we just assumed it does because that’s all we’ve ever known?
Think about it:
We expect pastors to preach the truth regardless of the consequences. We expect them not to fear men, not to show partiality, and not to shrink back from declaring what God’s people need to hear. Yet our system makes their livelihood dependent upon the very people who will sometimes be on the receiving end of that preaching.
We expect them to confront sin. Yet our system makes them employees of the people they may have to confront.
We expect them to preach without fear. Yet our system creates circumstances in which faithfulness can have very practical consequences for their families.
The local church employs the pastor. Some traditions may object to calling him an employee. Call it what you want, but the church pays him, and the one who pays controls the paycheck. That gives the very people he may need to confront real power over his income.
It would be easy to conclude that these men simply need more resolve. Perhaps the problem isn’t that pastors are weak. Perhaps we’ve created an institution that puts a faithful pastor in an extraordinarily difficult position; one that guarantees he will be tempted to compromise.
This is going to take more than one article to work through carefully, so consider this the first installment in a short series. Next time, we’ll examine the relevant passages and start where the apostle Paul did: with his own example in front of the very elders this whole question is about.