Any series that challenges a practice as old as a pastor’s salary will draw objections, and this one could draw dozens. It is my conclusion that none of them stands up to careful scrutiny. Still, people will have honest objections, so this final article takes up some of the more common ones and answers each from Scripture.
One clarification first: this series has never argued that salaries are wrong because the Bible doesn’t mention them. The case rests on what the Bible does say, and on what one key word means in the one passage that addresses resident elder support.
Objections
“Paul uses the word ‘wages’ in 1 Timothy 5:18”
Article 4 argued that the “honor” in 1 Timothy 5:17 is an honorarium. Then verse 18 says, “For the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and, ‘The worker is worthy of his wages.’” Wages sounds like a salary. Doesn’t that undo the argument?
Not when we read carefully. Paul uses v. 18 to explain why elders deserve honor. He does not use them to explain how a church delivers it. The ox illustrates a principle, and so does the wages saying. Neither names an amount, a schedule, or a contract.
This series has never denied that pastors deserve support. The text says they do. The question is whether the text describes a fixed, contractual wage, and it does not. Paul chose “honor” for what the church gives the elder. He chose “wages” to explain why the elder deserves it. Paul said elders deserve support, and the word he chose for what the church gives them is the word Article 4 showed never describes a regular salary. The principle that a worker deserves support tells us the church should care for him. It does not tell us the church should put him on a payroll.
“Paul compares gospel workers to temple servants”
In 1 Corinthians 9:13, Paul reminds the Corinthians that those who serve in the temple eat from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered there. Under the Law, God gave the Levites a fixed portion of Israel’s tithes (Numbers 18). That system was commanded, regular, and owed. Doesn’t this show that God wants His servants supported by a fixed arrangement?
Look at what Paul does with it. The temple is one more comparison in a list that includes the soldier, the vineyard, the flock, and the ox. Then he draws his conclusion: “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). Paul says the Lord commanded a principle. He does not say the Lord commanded the Levitical mechanism. The comparison also serves Paul’s defense of his own right, as Article 3 showed. And, don’t forget that the context of 1 Corinthians 9 is itinerant ministry, not local pastors. This series has demonstrated that the New Testament makes a distinction between these two kinds of ministries that calls for different methods of support.
The Law also tells us why the Levites received the tithe. They had no land inheritance, so the tithe was their living (Numbers 18:20-24). Paul tells the Ephesian elders to do the opposite of depending on such an arrangement: to support themselves with their own hands (Acts 20:34-35). And we find no New Testament passage commanding a tithe or a fixed share for local pastors. Where the New Testament speaks directly about elders, it uses the word “honor.”
“Paul claimed the right to support from the Corinthians”
Paul spent a year and a half in Corinth (Acts 18:11). In 1 Corinthians 9:11 he asks, “If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much for us to reap a material harvest from you?” Paul claims a right to support from a church he served. Doesn’t that blur the line between the man who goes and the man who stays?
It doesn’t, because the line was never about how long a man stays. It is about what he is. Paul argues as an apostle (1 Cor 9:1-2, 5). The church at Antioch sent him out (Acts 13:2-3). The New Testament never calls him an elder or a pastor. And he left Corinth (Acts 18:18). A sent man who spends a season among a church is still a sent man.
Now notice when Paul wrote. By the time of 1 Corinthians, he was in Ephesus and planned to stay there until Pentecost (1 Cor 16:8). He had already left Corinth. And he says plainly, “I am not writing this to suggest that something be done for me” (1 Cor 9:15). He worked as a tentmaker while in Corinth (Acts 18:3), and other churches met his needs there (2 Cor 11:8-9).
The one thing he does ask is that the Corinthians send him on his way when he travels on (1 Cor 16:5-6; 2 Cor 1:16). The Greek verb there includes providing food and money for the journey. That support was for his work in other places. Paul’s example establishes a right for the sent man. It says nothing about the resident elder.
“Galatians 6:6 says to share ‘all good things’ with the teacher”
“Let the one who is taught the word share all good things” with his instructor (Gal 6:6). This sounds local and ongoing, and it may well be. Nothing in this series denies that students support their teachers.
But notice what the verse leaves out. It names no amount, no schedule, and no contract. The word means to share, to partner. And “all good things” can include meals, hospitality, gifts, and money. Sharing can recur without becoming a salary. A family that feeds the same visiting teacher every week has not put him on a payroll. The verse commands generosity. It does not prescribe a pay structure.
“The widows were supported, so why not elders?”
In 1 Timothy 5:3, Paul tells Timothy to honor widows who are truly in need, using the same word family as the elder’s “double honor” in verse 17. Widows received ongoing help. Why not elders?
They did support pastors in the sense this series has affirmed all along: honor includes real material help. The widow parallel shows that this honor was need-based, given in response to circumstances. Whether it consisted of food, clothing, and shelter, or of money, the passage does not say. That food-and-shelter reading is a reasonable inference, not a stated fact, and the argument does not depend on it. What the parallel does show is that “honor” in this chapter meant care for real needs. It did not mean a fixed wage set in advance.
“The church has paid pastors for centuries”
Nearly every tradition pays its pastor a salary, and many readers will think that settles it. But salaried pastors is a post-apostolic practice. The New Testament never describes it. Even The Catholic Encyclopedia says as much:
“In the early ages of the Church no special provision was made for the maintenance of the clergy. St. Paul, the tent-maker, set the example (1 Corinthians 4:12) of earning his own livelihood. In imitation of him many clerics worked at some craft or followed some profession, living by the labour of their own hands. Even in the fifth and sixth centuries there were bishops, priests, and deacons, who in keeping with the advice of the Fourth Council of Carthage (a. 398, cann. 52, 53) supported themselves by their own labour. Early legislation (Canon. Apost., can. 6), which forbade the clergy to take up certain occupations and professions, is an indication that clerics sought to maintain themselves.”1
The earliest explicit mention of a salary in the sources I’ve seen belongs to a third-century heretical bishop, Natalius, and a contemporary of his condemned it as greed.2 Regular clerical support through tithes and fixed portions grew in the centuries that followed, and it appears to have become widespread only after Constantine.
Even an old practice has to be measured against the text. Jesus warned that tradition can push aside the commands of God (Mark 7:8-13). This is a reminder to keep testing our practices against Scripture. Longevity of a practice is not necessarily an indicator of correct biblical interpretation.
“Only wealthy people or people with flexible jobs could serve”
If elders must support themselves, doesn’t that limit service to the well off?
Not when we follow the biblical pattern. Scripture never gives the work of a congregation to one man. It speaks of elders in every church (Acts 14:23, Titus 1:5). Several men share the load, and an ordinary tradesman can carry his portion. The first elders were ordinary men with ordinary jobs. When one of them gives unusual time to the church, a grateful congregation can honor him.
Questions to consider
Back in the church office, Mark and David would probably still be talking. David had asked how Scripture expects ministerial support to work. Perhaps Mark would now answer, “Differently for the man who goes than for the man who stays.”
And perhaps he would add something more. Jesus described the hireling, who runs when the wolf comes because the sheep are not his (John 10:12-13). Peter tells elders to serve willingly and not for dishonest gain (1 Pet 5:2), and Paul requires the same (Titus 1:7). Greed is a danger for any man, and it can hide even from the man who has been tainted by it.
So here are a few questions I’ll leave you with:
- What kind of men would desire to be elders if the role came with no paycheck?
- Would we see the same celebrity pastors, and the same scandals that follow them?
- Would we see the same climbing of the career ladder, from a small church to a larger one with a bigger salary?
- Would we see the same hesitancy to teach boldly what God’s Word says?
Men who shepherd with no salary to protect have one fewer reason to guard anything but the flock.
References
- Andrew Meehan, “Stipend,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912), New Advent, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14296a.htm.
- Bercot, David W. A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs: A Reference Guide to More Than 700 Topics Discussed by the Early Chuch Fathers. Peabody (Mass.): Hendrickson publ, 1998. 160.