National median clergy income is $43,800

I believe that training for some type of trade or skill must be an essential part of training men for the ministry today.

The article looks at 20 professional careers and the median salaries for these 20 professions. For the clergy … a representative high salary is $ 73,210 in Newton CT … a representative low salary is $ 19,250 in Lansing MI. There is no breakdown by denomination.

I suspect the average pastor of an independent fundamentalist church would be delighted to make this every year, especially if he had health and retirement benefits.

no need for a paywall… the info comes from bureau of labor statistics

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes212011.htm

the $43.8k figure was published may 2013.

Ron Bean wrote:

I suspect the average pastor of an independent fundamentalist church would be delighted to make this every year, especially if he had health and retirement benefits.

My wife has a friend who is a Lutheran pastor’s wife. They were thinking of moving to a different parish, but the pay cut they would have had to take was about the same as my salary as a Baptist pastor in a neighboring town. Although I believe the Lutherans do tend to pay their pastors better, there was also another factor. This Lutheran pastor was actually leading 2 or 3 different congregations in a rural area. That allowed them to pool resources in order to pay him a bit better.

Imagine if we did something similar. This would free up a lot of financial resources as well as pastors who could then be utilized to plant more churches. What if we even had 3 churches sharing 2 pastors- of course it would have to be structured like multiple staff in a larger church, but I think this sort of approach has some real potential.

The idea has merit, Jerry, but I have a very difficult time imagining something like that working in independent Baptist congregations… Lutheran churches are organized very differently. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a good thing that it probably wouldn’t work, but just trying to be realistic… I mean, really- truth be told, those 2-3 rural congregations got their start because one split off of another one, anyway… :|

Is the pastor’s salary being limited to the financial resources of their congregation. Independent churches also necessitate ‘mission organisations’ to collectively herd enough ‘supporting’ churches to sustain a single family. These are the pragmatic consequences of churches dividing on principles.