How much do you make a year?
What is your salary?
Now, let me ask you this: When you thought of that answer, did you include your health insurance benefits? Your accident-life insurance? Your car allowance? Your Social Security? Your pension fund contributions?
How much do you make a year?
What is your salary?
Now, let me ask you this: When you thought of that answer, did you include
your health insurance benefits? Your accident-life insurance? Your car allowance?
Your Social Security? Your pension fund contributions?
Unless you are highly unusual, you did not include any of these benefits when
you think in terms of how much you make each year.
So why are many churches insistent upon including these benefits when they
say how much their ministers make?
A totally deceptive answer to how much a minister “makes” is what
many churches call “total package.” To come up with a “total
package,” a church lumps together basic salary, housing allowance or parsonage,
car allowance, utilities (if they are furnished), health insurance, convention
expenses, life insurance, accident insurance and any other item that can possibly
be tied to the minister’s benefit.
Or, a church will say to its minister, “We pay you $50,000 a year and
how you divide up the money for various benefits is up to you.”So, the
minister must decide, “Do I have a retirement program, or do I have more
money to support my family now? Do I have health insurance or enough money to
help my kids with their college educations?” And all this time, church
members wonder why the minister and his family do not live better on his $50,000.
But think for a minute Is this fair, or even honest?
Suppose the church says the minister’s total package is $50,000 a year.
What most churches do not figure is that a minister is self-employed and he
must pay not 7.5 percent of his salary to Social Security, but 15 percent to
self-employment. On the “total package,” that would be $7,500. This
means that $50,000 immediately becomes $42,500.
A significant part of a “total package” is car expenses the minister
incurs doing his job. (A farmer does not expect a hired person driving a tractor
to provide the tractor and gasoline for the $6 an hour he is making, and the
church should not expect the minister to provide his car to work for them.)
A car and expenses to do his job can easily be $12,000 a year. That means the
minister actually has a $30,500 salary. Then, if the minister’s and his
family’s health insurance is deducted from that amount, that can easily
be another $6,000, ($6,000 is on the very low side) leaving him with a $24,500
salary.
If an amount equal to 10 percent ($5,000) of his “total package”
is placed in an annuity, as it should be, that leaves him with $19,500. If the
minister scrapes and travels and rooms with another minister going to conventions,
that costs at least $1,000. If he buys books to stay current in his ministries,
he will spend at least another $1,000. He now has $17,500 expendable income.
(Housing allowances and parsonages are more complicated issues and purposefully
are not included in this editorial.)
So, that $50,000 package actually means the minister has $17,500 base salary
plus benefits. No other occupation this editor knows counts benefits as salary
and there certainly is no such thing as a “total package.”
Every secular business knows the employee does not “get” what he
or she costs the company.
But, some churches know the idea of “a total package of $50,000 a year”
sounds much better than “an annual salary of $17,500 plus benefits.”
Praise God, churches are increasingly aware of the importance of benefits for
their ministers. For decades, many were not. But, the minister should not be
expected to have “benefits” deducted from his salary.
Budget time in many churches is fast approaching. Hopefully, there will be
members of the church’s budget committee and congregation who will “tell
it like it is” when it comes to the salary and benefits ministers receive.
The Bible says clearly that “a workman is worthy his hire” and this
would certainly include straightforward figures and openness when dealing with
them. Let salary be salary and benefits be benefits.