Counting the cost of pastors

To the editor:

  I am grateful the June 2014 issue of New Horizons opened a discussion on the cost of a pastor's education in the OPC. Reading the two articles dealing specifically with that cost, I thought a reader could easily come away with the impression it is the responsibility of two parties: the pastor and, perhaps, his home congregation when pursuing the ministry. It seems to me there's at least one other party: the congregation(s) the man is eventually called to serve. Implicitly, every congregation in the OPC has asked their pastor to acquire a rather expensive education so he may serve them.

  Even amongst those who graduate university and seminary without education debt, it's exceedingly rare to find a man who has anything like the savings or retirement funds he might have had he been working during those years. As with any man who invests heavily in an education, the pastor needs to recoup his investment through the labors which that education makes possible. The more presbyteries, sessions and congregations realize this simple fact, the less we as a denomination will have to be concerned about pastors who reach retirement without the means to support themselves into old age.

  Not all our Churches will be able to pay their pastors salaries commensurate with their educational investment. Nonetheless, just as every congregation recognizes it must eventually pay down the mortgage on its building, it should also make paying its pastor a proper wage an eventual goal. After all, "the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel" (1Corinthians 9:14).

grace & peace,

 The Presbyterian Curmudgeon