Expert: Dr. Billy Kryger - 1/31/2010

Question
I am in the Philippines and an active christian members in our community, I just want to ask about the 10% or tithes and pledges and offerings in our church. According to our secretary, treasurer, our pastor in residence is taking 50% weekly as his pastors share (workers fee) from the members tithes, sunday school offerings and worship service offerings,meaning to say; if we have accounted 10,000 the pastor share for the week would be 5,000. Is it okay that this will be his share for the week. Would this be fair enough to other members as we are now starting to get fund for our church. In fact we are in a small congregation, located in one communities in our town, and mostly our members are disabled, and we do not receive any fund from other churches, just as we have offered during our prayer meeting. Please kindly advise us what to do, because we will be having a general meeting with our churchs officers and pastors on sunday, and this is our primary concern:
Just tell us how much would our pastors should receive as his monthly part-time income? Consider: that our church offerings averaging only a very small income. Thank you very much, I am looking forward to hearing from you and receiving your reply in my email. this is Bro.Cayabyab from the Philippines.

Answer
Bro. Cayabyab:

    Thank you for your question.

    If your church is part of a denomination or association the salary of a pastor or other church workers may be set by the denomination.

    If it is an autonomous church (meaning it is self-governing) then there is normally no set salary for a pastor.  That is decided by the individual congregation and usually depends on a number of factors including the size of the congregation, the offerings that are received, other expenses, etc.  I must say I have never heard of taking a flat percentage of the income as a salary.  If this has been the policy and practice of the church, however, and the church is able to pay its other bills I would see no reason to discontinue doing that unless it is causing concern among the congregation.

    Hope this is helpful to you.