Over the last three articles, this series made a case that runs against nearly universal church practice. Part 2 named the problem directly: when a congregation controls a pastor’s paycheck, it puts him in a compromised position, since he may need to teach truths some don’t want to hear. Money brings its own temptations and pressures, regardless of anyone’s intentions. That’s a common situation, not an accusation against any particular congregation or minister.
This is not a suggestion that gospel workers go unsupported. Part 3 and part 4 showed Scripture affirms the opposite, plainly and repeatedly. Jesus said the worker is worthy of his provisions (Mt 10:10). Paul built a sustained argument toward the same point in 1 Corinthians 9, concluding that “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). Nowhere in this series is the right to material support in question.
How biblical ministerial support worked
What is in question is how that support actually worked, and the New Testament doesn’t hand us just one answer. Part 3 looked at itinerant ministers, men sent out from place to place, and found their support came from hospitality along the way or from churches they weren’t currently standing in front of. That support actually comes closer to what we’d recognize as a salary. Even so, take care with that comparison. The itinerant’s support still looks irregular in the text, dependent on whichever household took him in or whatever a distant church chose to send, not a fixed amount arriving on a fixed schedule. Nothing in the text rules out an itinerant minister receiving regular, recurring support either.
Part 4 turned to the elder who lives among his own congregation, addressed in 1 Timothy 5:17-18, and found something different again: honor, not wages owed. The text of that passage reveals an honorarium given out of gratitude rather than a salary owed by contract. Two kinds of ministers, and two different patterns of support, neither one matching the fixed, contractual salary most churches pay their pastor today.
All of this will sound strange to modern church goers and no doubt raises several questions. This article will attempt to provide answers to the most common questions. There are too many questions to answer in a blog post. The ones that follow are the most common.
Q&A
Are you saying that elder and pastor are the same roles? If so, what exactly do you mean by “resident pastor”?
Yes. Elder, pastor, and overseer name one role, not three. Scripture alternates between these words for the same men in the same breath, which only makes sense if they describe one role from three angles.
Watch it happen in Acts 20. Paul summons “the elders of the church” from Ephesus (v17), then tells those very men to guard themselves and “all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers,” adding, “Be shepherds of the church of God” (v28). Elder, overseer, shepherd (the word behind “pastor”), applied to the same men in three verses. Titus 1 does the same thing. Paul tells Titus to “ordain elders in every city” (v5), then immediately explains the qualifications required because “an overseer must be blameless” (v7), treating elder and overseer as one role under two names. Peter closes the loop in 1 Peter 5:1-2, calling himself “a fellow elder” while telling “the elders among you” to “shepherd God’s flock that is among you.”
Three descriptions, one role, seen from three vantage points: elder describes the man’s maturity and standing, overseer describes his oversight, and pastor (shepherd) describes his care. “Resident pastor” is simply my way of naming that role plainly, distinguishing the man who lives among the congregation he shepherds from the itinerant ministers, apostles, and evangelists.
What is an honorarium and how is that different from a regular salary?
An honorarium is a gift given out of gratitude for service rendered. A salary is a wage owed as a matter of contract. That difference sounds small until you trace out what it actually changes.
Part 4 walked through the evidence for this. Paul tells Timothy that elders who lead well deserve “double honor” (1 Tim 5:17). The Greek word our Bibles translate as “honor” here is timē. BDAG, the standard Greek lexicon scholars use for the New Testament, defines this specific use of timē as “honor conferred through compensation, honorarium, compensation,” not a fixed wage. J. Andrew Kirk went further, surveying timē across classical Greek and the papyri (everyday letters, receipts, and business records from the ancient world) and found the word never once describes a regular salary. It always describes a reward given for particular service.
A salary is fixed, scheduled, and owed regardless of how the giver feels about the work. Nobody has to feel grateful to pay it. An honorarium works differently. Nobody owes it as a legal obligation. People give it freely, out of genuine appreciation, the same way a family gives a pastor a gift for officiating a funeral, or a congregation gives a guest speaker something for his message. No contract exists to enforce it either way.
Are you saying churches should never pay a pastor a regular salary?
That does appear to be the guidance Scripture gives us. Nowhere does the New Testament describe a resident elder receiving a fixed, contractual wage. The only support model found for him in the New Testament is honor, an honorarium given out of gratitude, not a salary owed by contract (1 Tim 5:17-18). Scripture never models a fixed salary as a method for resident elder support, and honorarium is the only method it does model. If a church wants to follow the design Scripture actually shows us, a regular salary isn’t that pattern. An honorarium is.
Are you suggesting it is sinful to pay a pastor a regular salary?
Not necessarily. Scripture doesn’t label a fixed salary sin in so many words. But that’s not the same as saying the practice carries no risk. Here’s the honest way to frame it. Scripture shows us one design for supporting resident elders: honor, freely given, not wages owed by contract. When a church departs from that design, it isn’t necessarily sinning outright, but it is choosing its own tradition over what the text actually says. That choice carries consequences worth taking seriously. This series has already named one of them: a fixed paycheck can compromise a pastor’s freedom to say what a congregation needs to hear, regardless of anyone’s intentions.
So the better question isn’t “is this a sin?” It’s “when is it ever safe to set aside biblical counsel replacing it with our own judgment?” Scripture doesn’t forbid every departure from its own patterns in explicit terms. It doesn’t need to. The wisdom of following what God’s Word actually models should be reason enough.
How can a church’s pastoral work be done if its pastor must also earn his own living?
This question makes two assumptions.
Assumption One: One man carries the load
The first assumption is that one man does all the pastoral work in a congregation. Scripture never designs it that way. Every New Testament reference to congregational leadership speaks in the plural. Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders for them in each church” (Acts 14:23). The apostle Paul tells Titus to “ordain elders in every city” (Titus 1:5), not one elder. Paul summons “the elders of the church” from Ephesus, plural, to meet him at Miletus (Acts 20:17). Peter addresses “the elders among you” (1 Pet 5:1). James tells the sick to “call the elders of the church” (Jam 5:14). Not one of these texts designs a congregation around a single man carrying sole responsibility. The solitary, salaried senior pastor model most churches run today isn’t a biblical design.
Once several men share the labor of shepherding, the question changes shape entirely. Paul even distinguishes between elders in the same church, some who “lead effectively” and others who “work hard at preaching and teaching” (1 Tim 5:17), language that only makes sense if the labor wasn’t distributed evenly across every elder to begin with. A plurality of elders can share teaching, counseling, and visitation according to each man’s gifts and availability, rather than concentrating the church’s entire pastoral load onto one man.
Assumption Two: Pastors today only perform spiritual duties
The second hidden assumption is that today’s typical pastoral job description matches what Scripture actually assigns to an elder. Much of what fills a modern pastor’s week (event planning, facility oversight, administrative management) isn’t the elder’s biblical task description at all. Shrink the job to what Scripture actually designs for pastors, and share even that across several men, and the objection loses most of its force.
Beyond both assumptions, the question also assumes a pastor’s living has to come from the congregation in the first place. Scripture points elsewhere, and directly to these very men. Paul stood before the Ephesian elders themselves and told them, “these hands of mine have ministered to my own needs and those of my companions…I have shown you in every way that by hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, who said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'” (Acts 20:34-35).
This isn’t Paul describing his own itinerant exception. He’s standing in front of resident pastors, holding up his own labor as their example to follow. An elder’s living was meant to come from his own hands, his own means, or a secular trade, the same way any other man in the congregation supported his household. Honor from the church supplemented that, especially for elders who labored hard at preaching and teaching (1 Tim 5:17), but it was never designed to replace it. It might be said that the elders give far more to the church than the church gives them!
What would this actually look like in a typical church today?
A congregation moves from one salaried clergyman to a plurality of biblically qualified men who share the shepherding work between them. No single man bears the entire weight of teaching, counseling, and visitation alone. Each elder contributes according to his gifts, his availability, and his season of life, the way 1 Timothy 5:17 already assumes some elders “work hard at preaching and teaching” more than others do.
These men would continue supporting their households through their own vocation, following the example Paul modeled and commanded of the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:34-35. At times, an elder may take on an unusually heavy season of labor for the church, one that costs him real time or income he’d otherwise earn elsewhere. That kind of sacrifice shouldn’t become the permanent norm for any one man, but when it happens, a grateful congregation, or grateful individuals within it, may recognize that sacrifice and respond with material honor. That’s the honorarium the New Testament describes: a gift given freely out of gratitude for a real, specific need, not a salary owed as a matter of course.
Looking Ahead
These questions cover the ground most people ask first, but they don’t cover everything. Some will still object that the text itself doesn’t say what this series claims it says. The next article turns to exactly that. We’ll take on the strongest pushback this series is likely to receive and ask whether those objections hold up under the same careful reading we’ve applied everywhere else.