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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Money and the Church
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Getting back to the specifics of the OP, In what sort of profession could you take on a half-time role in addition to the supposedly full-time role you already have and are receiving a a full-time salary for?
Um... in what sort of profession can you NOT do that??? Seriously, these days all sorts of people working full time in all sorts of jobs-- from minimum wage unskilled laborers to highly educated professionals-- are taking on 2nd and even 3rd jobs. I'm hard pressed to think of ANY profession where this is disallowed. Sure, if the parish priest decides to take up pole dancing in her off hours, that might raise some eyebrows (among other things...) but other than that, it seems pretty much the norm. I have a 1/2 time position teaching at a local university, something my church was well aware of when they hired me in my current pastoral role. Other members of our pastoral staff have part time jobs in a bookstore and another as a barista at a local coffee shop.
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
I can't help but wonder if it's not the Episcopalian Parish Council who are pulling a swifty here, maybe they are getting out of paying $40k cash salary and just providing the housing etc-which they're committed 'cos the church owns it anyway-it may be a pretty sweet deal for them.
I suspect that is precisely what is happening and don't see anything at all wrong with it. The priest appears to be splitting her time more or less equally between the two churches, with each providing about half her compensation (remember that the TEC is also picking up the tab for health care and pension, which would itself be close to $30K in the US).
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
If the Priest is pocketing a full-time salary from the Episcopalians and a half-time one from the Lutherans then I'd say she's unethical in the extreme, but surely she wouldn't have the gall and why would the governing bodies of the respective churches agree to it?
What in the world is unethical about taking a 2nd job-- especially when it's all completely out in the open like this? If you find that your doctor who gave you your flu shot this afternoon has taken a job teaching a course one night a week at the local med school, would you find him/her unethical? If your child's teacher picks up a few bucks over the weekend tutoring high schoolers, is s/he now ethically bankrupt? You have a strange sense of ethics IMHO.
Now, if the priest manages somehow to be "on the clock" for both churches at the same time-- pretends to be putting in hours in one place when actually working for the other-- yeah, that's unethical. But there has been no suggestion that is the case. In fact, it seems like the two churches have arranged there services at different times, working out a very upfront agreement about how she will divvy up her time.
[ 12. September 2014, 22:34: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
There is no way 90% of the budget goes to the priests salary. The diocesan assessment alone is more than 10% and that's before you factor in the cost of keeping the building open and in good enough repair. My total compensation package is around 40% of the budget. What I take home in salary plus utilities totals about 22%.
Yes. The numbers just don't add up. There seems to be a lot of jumping to conclusions here.
Which again is why I said there appears to be some bitterness (although I never said "twisted"). That never ends well.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
What in the world is unethical about taking a 2nd job-- especially when it's all completely out in the open like this? If you find that your doctor who gave you your flu shot this afternoon has taken a job teaching a course one night a week at the local med school, would you find him/her unethical? If your child's teacher picks up a few bucks over the weekend tutoring high schoolers, is s/he now ethically bankrupt? You have a strange sense of ethics IMHO.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard pastors say that they work 80 hour weeks, are on call 24/7 (with an implication that they're called to the bedsides of dying parishioners three nights a week) and we lay people just have no idea how overworked they are. Now all of a sudden they're just like the guy who clocks in at the Burger King for a few hours and there's plenty of time for second jobs, without shirking the first one.
P.S. I didn't say 90% of the budget I said 90% of the collection plate. I've already said there are endowments in both churches.
[ 12. September 2014, 23:30: Message edited by: Twilight ]
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I can't tell you how many times I've heard pastors say that they work 80 hour weeks, are on call 24/7 (with an implication that they're called to the bedsides of dying parishioners three nights a week) and we lay people just have no idea how overworked they are. Now all of a sudden they're just like the guy who clocks in at the Burger King for a few hours and there's plenty of time for second jobs, without shirking the first one.
Maybe the TEC has learned that it's not ethical to ask people to work 80 hour weeks, so she's more like other professionals working demanding professional jobs but also able to take on another part-time job. Or maybe (as I suspect) it's not FT $80K + PT $40K, but rather the TEC has agreed (no doubt for their own financial reasons) to split the position so it's two PT $40K jobs. Either way, I see nothing unethical about the taking of a 2nd job. But then since I'm a bivocational clergyperson I guess I would say that.
But hey, so glad to hear you're not at all bitter. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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[ 13. September 2014, 06:32: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
Cliffdweller, is your half-time role at the university in addition to a full-time role in ministry?
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by cliffdweller:
Or maybe (as I suspect) it's not FT $80K + PT $40K, but rather the TEC has agreed (no doubt for their own financial reasons) to split the position so it's two PT $40K jobs.
My money is on that as well. I'd be shocked if she was making $80,000 for the two parishes. Clergy sharing among Episcopal and Lutheran parishes isn't uncommon. In every instance known to me, the two parishes share the cost of one part time priest or pastor. Admittedly, this may be the exception. A woman making $80,000 and provided housing to pastor a church of 30 people might have not realized she had the coziest job in the church, gotten greedy, and convinced the vestry to go along with her taking a second position which meant they got less of her time and no help with paying her benefits not included in the $80,000+ they were paying her.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Cliffdweller, is your half-time role at the university in addition to a full-time role in ministry?
My current ministry position is 3/4 time; others on our staff are full time and still have some part time side jobs-- again, one in a bookstore, one also teaching in a univ., and one as a barista. This is really not unusual for ministers-- or for really all sorts of people in various professions.
[ 13. September 2014, 02:15: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
Well it is extremely unusual in an Australian context for someone to have a full-time and a half-time job, I can't imagine how you could do justice to either role let alone allowing time for family and rest, if you were doing the jobs properly. Perhaps standards, as well as wages are lower elsewhere.
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Well it is extremely unusual in an Australian context for someone to have a full-time and a half-time job, I can't imagine how you could do justice to either role let alone allowing time for family and rest, if you were doing the jobs properly. Perhaps standards, as well as wages are lower elsewhere.
It's not easy, to be sure. But it's very very common here in the US, especially since the recession. Not sure if it's really "standards are lower"-- studies I've read suggest Americans work longer hours than most others. But yes, families and rest definitely pay the price for our long work hours.
Myself, I struggle with it. I'm not a multi-tasker. I love both my jobs, but I don't love having two jobs. But it's a financial necessity-- and, before Obamacare, the only way I could get health care (due to pre-existing conditions). My situation is not at all unusual here. I receive good reviews, so I'm assuming my two employers are not unhappy with how I'm managing.
[ 13. September 2014, 02:33: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
My original "bitterness" comment was aimed at myself (because I know damn well that this is something I struggle with, given the total lack of salary Mr. Lamb gets). But yes, Twilight, I'm hearing it from you as well. Takes one to know one, right?
On the fulltime plus job situation, Cliffdweller is right, plenty of people work extra jobs just to make ends meet in this country. [And parttime university jobs pay crap.]
It isn't unethical provided a) that you are putting in your full time and effort in each place, and b) that you aren't doublecharging stuff--counting the same thing towards both jobs. Unless, of course, both employers know about it and have agreed to it--in which case what you're doing is more like job merging.
As for what fulltime means--
No parish is entitled to pay their pastor any amount no matter how high and demand as a right that he put in seven twenty-four-hour days, 365 days a year. Full time in this country means 40 hours a week with occasional excursions into overtime when really needed. The fact that so many pastors work 60 to 80 hour workweeks (yes, Mr. Lamb is spending the night down at the hospital, how did you know?) is simple proof that some people are willing to work the equivalent of a second job for free. Or for love. However you want to put it.
Those extra 20 to 40 hours are not an entitlement of the congregation. They are a gift of love. If the pastor chooses to dispose of his free time (har har) in a different fashion (say, being a barrista), the congregation has no cause to bitch provided they're getting their 40 hours' worth of top quality ministry, plus emergencies as needed (e.g. deaths in the middle of the night).
Really, we don't own our pastors. No matter how much or how little we pay them.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I have always worked two, sometimes three jobs. This is because my real job, writing novels, doesn't pay enough to live on. So I eke it out with other work.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
This thread seems to be disintegrating into a clergy vs. laity cage match over how much ordained people should be paid. (You can put me down as bitter and resentful about the fact that the clergy where I work get pensions and the lay employees don't). But the question that Twilight posed goes beyond that.
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
This church contributes a paltry $100 per month to the local food and clothing pantry. My husband's church can't even come up with that much but a few years ago they spent $60,000 so they could ruin the sanctuary with large screen TVs and a new sound system.
Is it just me, or are these priorities screwed up?
The lion's share of most churches' budgets goes toward personnel and infrastructure, which means that church money mainly just perpetuates the institution. And maybe that's fine -- maybe it's enough for a church to nurture and fortify the faith of the congregants, and they can then turn around and do good things in the community on their own or with other agencies. But I wouldn't want to be the church finance committee chair who goes to meet her maker and is asked to account for why she didn't object to a budget with $1200 in the line item for the local food pantry and $60,000 in the audio-visual line item.
Employing professionals and owning property locks most churches into a budget structure that doesn't leave much for anything beyond personnel and building expenses. It would take a major re-thinking of what the gospel means to us to change this.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
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No parish is entitled to pay their pastor any amount no matter how high and demand as a right that he put in seven twenty-four-hour days, 365 days a year. Full time in this country means 40 hours a week with occasional excursions into overtime when really needed. The fact that so many pastors work 60 to 80 hour workweeks (yes, Mr. Lamb is spending the night down at the hospital, how did you know?) is simple proof that some people are willing to work the equivalent of a second job for free. Or for love. However you want to put it.
Those extra 20 to 40 hours are not an entitlement of the congregation. They are a gift of love. If the pastor chooses to dispose of his free time (har har) in a different fashion (say, being a barrista), the congregation has no cause to bitch provided they're getting their 40 hours' worth of top quality ministry, plus emergencies as needed (e.g. deaths in the middle of the night).
Really, we don't own our pastors. No matter how much or how little we pay them.
AFAIK, the diocese here (and I can't speak of the others) recognises this. When clergy take leave, the diocese pays a sum for the clergy to live in other accommodation, away from the rectory, so that they are actually on leave and don't have to deal with people knocking on the door. I can't recall if this applies to ordinary annual leave or only long service leave, but it is a very decent approach.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
This thread seems to be disintegrating into a clergy vs. laity cage match over how much ordained people should be paid. (You can put me down as bitter and resentful about the fact that the clergy where I work get pensions and the lay employees don't). But the question that Twilight posed goes beyond that.
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
This church contributes a paltry $100 per month to the local food and clothing pantry. My husband's church can't even come up with that much but a few years ago they spent $60,000 so they could ruin the sanctuary with large screen TVs and a new sound system.
Is it just me, or are these priorities screwed up?
The lion's share of most churches' budgets goes toward personnel and infrastructure, which means that church money mainly just perpetuates the institution. And maybe that's fine -- maybe it's enough for a church to nurture and fortify the faith of the congregants, and they can then turn around and do good things in the community on their own or with other agencies. But I wouldn't want to be the church finance committee chair who goes to meet her maker and is asked to account for why she didn't object to a budget with $1200 in the line item for the local food pantry and $60,000 in the audio-visual line item.
Employing professionals and owning property locks most churches into a budget structure that doesn't leave much for anything beyond personnel and building expenses. It would take a major re-thinking of what the gospel means to us to change this.
Yes. And those two differing paths, two differing priorities, are always going to be in tension (even if you decide to forgo paid staff and rent a bldg, there will still be tensions). Which is why I have urged Twilight to focus on the overall process, rather than the specific complaint. Not because the complaint is wrong-- (as I mentioned early on, I currently find myself in a similar conflict for similar reasons)-- but because that's where real change will happen.
As Jim Wallis says, "budgets are moral documents." A budget reveals our priorities, and our identity as a community. It reveals our heart. And it reveals where we are putting our faith, where we are laying our trust for the future. It's imperative for that reason that our churches have a process that it is most of all prayerful-- and not the sort of prayerful where the prayer is just an opening ritual to begin the usual business-like negotiation. But rather the kind of prayer that transforms and changes us. The kind of prayer that helps us lean in, to hear the heart of God, and to make courageous decisions based on that.
[ 13. September 2014, 13:30: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
A few things...
Church budgets reflect the priorities of the local congregation. Most individuals choose a local church based on their experience on Sunday morning. The opinions about Sunday morning are based on worship, preaching, worship space, accessibility (both of the building and people), and to a lesser extent Christian formation. This is what Christians want from the local congregation they attend. Church budgets reflect that.
After Sunday worship, people want somebody to perform the sacraments for them even if they call the sacraments ordinances or nothing at all. They want somebody to do weddings and funerals. Some want a person to visit them when they are sick. Others want a person to talk to when they have problems. Still, others want the local church to offer opportunities to learn and discuss their faith. One of the reasons that people attend church in the first place is so that their children can learn morals.
A nice chunk of a parishes budget goes to clergy salary because the clergy are responsible for providing or overseeing the provision of the provision of things they value in their local congregation. The more educated and better trained you want that person to be the more money will have to be devoted to that person's salary. The more time you expect the person to work the more money you'll have to spend. One Episcopal church in the diocese hired a rector to work 10 hours a week. Obviously, she couldn't afford to live on the salary from working 10 hours a week. Her primary job was as a hospital chaplain at a hospital an hour and a half away. Everything was fine until a longtime and beloved member of the congregation died. Family wanted to have the funeral on a Thursday morning. Priest couldn't do the funeral on a Thursday morning because she had a job. The church felt entitled to a full time priest for a fraction of the money.
What about giving money to the local food pantry? Well, the local food pantry is probably not a major priority for the average person sitting in the pews. You don't need to give your money to your local church if you want to give money to the food pantry. The food pantry takes money from individuals just fine. So do all the other charities.
Personally, I'm ambivalent about supporting charities from the operations budget. I'd prefer to do fundraisers and collections to support specific needs. Ideally, the local congregation should be involved in hands on outreach running their own food pantry, clothes closet, free meal, or whatever else depending on the size of the church and the needs of the community. My spent several hundred thousand dollars remodeling our building. However, parishioners and volunteers feed about a 100 people a week in the renovated parish hall. They also installed showers which we allow people who attend the free meal to use if needed. In the next couple of weeks, the church will also be hosting a free clinic at the same time as the weekly free meal. The parish also provides office space and some money for an organization that runs a women's sober house a few blocks from the church. Some women who graduate from the sober house can live rent free in an apartment on church grounds owned and maintained by the church. The church also hosts an AA, Al Anon, or NA group every day of the week.
Yes, my parish prioritizes Sunday morning worship. We are Anglo-Catholics. However, the community that worships together on a Sunday morning engages in significant outreach together as a result of the worship they prioritize. They also write checks to charities without running it through the operations budget of the local parish.
As to RuthW's specific situation...
My diocese is talking about setting compensation standards for lay employees. My guess is most diocese will continue to do that. Churches already have to offer health insurance to full time employees. Pension might be next. That's fine. However, let's be clear about what that means. Most churches will just hire part time lay employees if they hire them at all. Priests will have to do more of the every day administrative tasks and some won't get done. A priest will not always be there to answer the phone and answer trivial questions. The priest won't have time to send reminders to every single person for every single thing. Some will see this as a breakdown in communication and blame the priest. The fact they come once a month and don't read the bulletin, web site, facebook page, or newsletter will have nothing to do with it because that would make it their fault and not the fault of the priest. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
As to RuthW's specific situation...
My diocese is talking about setting compensation standards for lay employees. My guess is most diocese will continue to do that. Churches already have to offer health insurance to full time employees. Pension might be next. That's fine. However, let's be clear about what that means. Most churches will just hire part time lay employees if they hire them at all. Priests will have to do more of the every day administrative tasks and some won't get done.
What you say doesn't apply at all to my specific situation. I work for a big church which is hardly poor, and paying for pensions for the three lay employees who are eligible for health insurance would not cause them to have to reduce their staff.
Churches that pay pensions for clergy do so because they are required to, and they don't pay pensions for lay employees because they aren't required to. If so-called progressive churches really believed what they preach, they would fund pensions for lay employees before funding them for clergy, as clergy members make more money and are therefore more able to save for old age and retirement. Instead, most churches simply adopt the unfair practices of the rest of our society in which full-time professionals have well-paid positions and a secure retirement while the people who do the cleaning are barely getting by and are planning to work till they drop dead.
Your argument against paying pensions for lay workers is the same one people use against raising the minimum wage, and it's just as inaccurate and immoral in this context.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
As Jim Wallis says, "budgets are moral documents." A budget reveals our priorities, and our identity as a community. It reveals our heart. And it reveals where we are putting our faith, where we are laying our trust for the future. It's imperative for that reason that our churches have a process that it is most of all prayerful-- and not the sort of prayerful where the prayer is just an opening ritual to begin the usual business-like negotiation. But rather the kind of prayer that transforms and changes us. The kind of prayer that helps us lean in, to hear the heart of God, and to make courageous decisions based on that.
I've heard this sermon more times than I can count in various churches, and yet the Episcopal, Baptist and United Church of Christ churches whose finances I know the most about all end up doing basically the same thing, year after year, with most of the money going to personnel and building, and I don't see evidence that any other church in town that owns its own building is different.
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
My spent several hundred thousand dollars remodeling our building. However, parishioners and volunteers feed about a 100 people a week in the renovated parish hall.
And what happens in it the other six days a week? The programs in your church sound wonderful, truly, and I hope the space is all well used on a regular basis. But the amount of square footage owned by churches that sits empty six days a week is appalling. Church members where I work who come by during the week frequently remark on how quiet it is, and I always have to restrain myself from pointing out that most of the time there is comparatively little going on given the size of the facility, even when the calendar makes it look like the church is busy.
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by RuthW:
Your argument against paying pensions for lay workers is the same one people use against raising the minimum wage, and it's just as inaccurate and immoral in this context.
I'm not arguing against pensions just stating a fact. Large Episcopal churches with multiple clergy and lay professionals aren't the norm. I know enough about the average church budget to know how the vast majority of Episcopal churches would handle such a requirement. Again, it is a question of priorities. The church may decide that making a statement that if you can't afford to pay a pension then you can't afford to hire somebody. I don't have a problem with that. I'm just telling you what the consequences will be.
Raising the minimum wage has both costs and benefits. If you think the benefits outweigh the costs, then you support raising the minimum wage and if you don't you don't. Same thing goes with every policy decision you make. If the diocese or national church mandated local churches provide pension benefits to lay employees, I'm not sure what my parish would ultimately do. Pension would be cheaper than health insurance. Neither are full time. I confess I don't know how the pension fund works.
quote:
originally posted by RuthW:
What you say doesn't apply at all to my specific situation. I work for a big church which is hardly poor, and paying for pensions for the three lay employees who are eligible for health insurance would not cause them to have to reduce their staff.
I meant to make that point generally and figured it applied to you. As often when posting on Ship of Fools, I got in a hurry and failed to say everything I was thinking. For that, I apologize.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
But I wouldn't want to be the church finance committee chair who goes to meet her maker and is asked to account for why she didn't object to a budget with $1200 in the line item for the local food pantry and $60,000 in the audio-visual line item.
I'm planning to say that I did object, but was told I was very bitter and needed to go away and pray about the process.
I do agree with Beeswax Altar about the point that churches can't be expected to fund every charity that comes along, but feeding and clothing the poor seems to me like a particular duty of Christians, above things like annual Cancer drives.
Any church that has regular meals (and showers!) for the poor sounds very admirable to me. The two churches I've talked about do not have anything like that at all. The hot meals and food and clothing pantry in this town is a joint venture of several of the local churches, including these two churches, so IMO they are letting down an unwritten pledge when they don't contribute or contribute very little.
Ruth is a church treasurer. I have been one and my husband is currently volunteer treasurer at one church and at that food pantry. It's interesting that the closer observation that comes with those jobs starts to raise questions and the questions are sometimes met with very vague answers. I'm not saying all clergy! I've known some who are conscientious and scrupulous to an extreme.
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
But I wouldn't want to be the church finance committee chair who goes to meet her maker and is asked to account for why she didn't object to a budget with $1200 in the line item for the local food pantry and $60,000 in the audio-visual line item.
I'm planning to say that I did object, but was told I was very bitter and needed to go away and pray about the process.
You're getting closer: NOT go away. Stay. Stay and pray. Stay and talk about process. Stay and talk about a process that really, prayerfully lives out your values-- values like the ones Ruth is talking about, which can be embodied in the way we treat ALL our staff. Value like the ones you mention, that can be embodied in the way we prioritize caring for the poor over caring for our own comfort. Do so, not out of bitterness or anger, but out of a love for Christ and for Christ' church-- and a deep conviction that we can be better than this. That means setting aside your assumptions (cuz honestly, it really does seem like you have habit of jumping to cynical conclusions) and listening, but also speaking out-- in the right places, out of the heart of compassion and love and community.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by RuthW:
And what happens in it the other six days a week?
The church has one large room set aside for use by AA, NA, and Al ANON. There is at least one meeting every day of the week and multiple meetings on most days. Our organist gives music lessons at church. Other community groups use the parish hall regularly. Like every other church, we have choir practice, bible studies, and committee meetings. Sure, the place isn't busy every hour of the day. However, I live in a small town. Other than the grocery stores, no place in town is busy every hour of the day.
Point is the building is available when people need it.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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monkeylizard
Ship's scurvy
# 952
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Posted
When I was last on a church board (about 4 years ago) we had an annual budget of about 110K coming from about 25-30 parishoners (actually, from about 8 of those...but I digress). The following are rough numbers from my now 4-year old memory. We paid about 20K to the district (aka diocese) and about 45K in straight salary to the pastor. Another 10K or so in social security (we paid both halves) and another 5-10K in utilities for the church and parsonage. I think healthcare was about another 10K or so.
That left around 15-20K for everything else....building insurance for the church and parsonage, miscellaneous office/custodial supplies, bulletin printing, etc. Once we put some aside for major repairs (roof, HVAC, repave the parking lot, etc.), there wasn't much left.
Those numbers are pretty rough, but the point is that if we had 2-5K a year to spend on actual ministries, it was a good year.
Ironically, the church property is worth about 3 to 4 million USD. If someone told the district to build a 4 million dollar church to serve 30 people they'd be laughed out of town. But that's effectively what they have now. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
[ 15. September 2014, 20:31: Message edited by: monkeylizard ]
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The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. ~ Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903)
Posts: 2201 | From: Music City, USA | Registered: Jul 2001
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the ghofian
Apprentice
# 18223
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Posted
Interesting. I get the angst but you should come to churches over here in Nigeria for some real anger. Private jets, cars that bend and accounts that overflow but not in the holy way.
there is something really out of whack with values within the bastion of all true value: the church.
Posts: 1 | From: Nigeria | Registered: Sep 2014
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Crap spouted by RuthW:
The amount of square footage owned by churches that sits empty six days a week is appalling.
True in our case: our halls are well-used, but the main church building is not. Trouble is, it is inflexible, "churchy" and costs a lot to heat - there's not much you can use it for except worship and concerts.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Crap spouted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Crap spouted by RuthW:
The amount of square footage owned by churches that sits empty six days a week is appalling.
True in our case: our halls are well-used, but the main church building is not. Trouble is, it is inflexible, "churchy" and costs a lot to heat - there's not much you can use it for except worship and concerts.
it'd be useful to re-cultivate a tradition where the nave is public space. I guess that requires a presupposition of respect, which may be more of an issue than it was 400 years ago when the nave was a public space.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
WHen church naves were treated as public spaces...they had earth or stone floors, at ground level (certainly no more than one or two steps up or down from ground level) and were unheated. And no permanent seating. And the naves were usually effectively shut off from the chancels by screens.
However much I'd like to have the nave of my parish church used by the public, none of the above apply. As they mostly don't in most churches built after 1660 or remodeled since the reformation.
John
Posts: 5929 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: May 2001
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