Faith, Family, and Finances
Faith, Family, and Finances
By James E. Carter, Director Church Minister Relations, LA (ret.)
Nachitoches, LA
Note: This address was delivered on February 13, 2006, at the conference on "Ethics In Ministry" at Truett Seminary, Baylor University, Waco, TX, sponsored by the CET Foundation and funded by a grant from the CIOS/Piper Foundation of Waco, TX.
The pastor proposed an ambitious and far-reaching outreach plan. He presented it first to the deacon body, or the church board, and then to the congregation. Each group, especially the congregation, had some reservations about the plan, but it was adopted.
Why was the plan adopted with these reservations? The plan was adopted because both the board and the church body trusted the pastor. The adoption of the plan was not due to the merits of the plan necessarily, nor the overcoming of the reservations that some members had about the plan, or even because all the questions were satisfactorily answered. The plan was adopted because the people trusted the pastor. They trusted the pastor because they believed that he was a person of integrity.
The personal integrity of the minister is at the heart of both the minister`s personal life and his professional life. When a minister faces ethical issues in his or her life, they directly relate to that minister`s personal integrity.
The word integrity derives from the mathematical term integer which has to do with wholeness, one. The person of integrity is the person who has it together, who has a unity or wholeness about life. This type of integrity is built on the minister`s relationship with Jesus Christ as personal Savior and an on-going faith relationship with Christ. Integrity does not just happen; it is intentional. With good reason, people expect a minister to be a person of integrity. An effective, ethical Christian minister is a person of integrity.
But this integrity is often tested on several fronts. Consider at least three areas in which the minister`s personal integrity is often tested, three vital and essential areas in the minister`s life: faith, family, and finances.[7]
Faith
Frankly, your faith relationship with God is not just a spiritual matter, or even a religious matter; for a minister it is also an ethical matter. How real is your own faith? How sincere is your faith? How authentic is your faith in God?
The minister is a pilgrim of faith as well as a ministering person. Continual spiritual growth is as important for the minister as it is for the parishioner. The Apostle Paul advised, "Run in such a way as to get the prize. . . . I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize" (1 Cor. 9:24, 27, NIV).
For one thing, this means that a minister`s lifestyle should be consistent with, not contradictory to, the gospel. Preaching restraint and personal discipline while practicing conspicuous consumerism is not consistent. Asking for sacrificial giving and personal commitment from church people while refusing to give sacrificially or to alter personal plans to meet another`s needs is not a convincing testimony of Christlikeness.
In one of my pastorates I would often park next to a white Cadillac with a red leather interior in the minister`s parking area of a denominational hospital in a major Texas city. That luxury car sported a personalized license plate with the Greek word doulos, meaning "servant" or "slave." In a metropolitan area with many pressing human needs, doulos may not be an appropriate insignia for a white Cadillac with a red leather interior.
But this also means that a minister`s faith must be a growing faith. Learning about God, the Bible, and the relationship between God and humankind is a lifelong activity. As life unfolds and you encounter new life experiences your understanding of God and of spiritual matters should grow. Spiritual matters always have a challenge to them and an element of mystery about them. Your faith must always be a growing, developing, deepening faith.
In handling the holy, ministers can become too familiar with spiritual things. The proverb reminds us that "familiarity breeds contempt." Few ministers will treat the Bible or spiritual disciplines with contempt, but some ministers may treat both the Bible and spiritual disciplines with such familiarity that they lose some of their mystery and wonder.
When David consolidated his kingship over Israel and established the capital at Jerusalem, he moved the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. The narrative in 2 Samuel 6:6-7 records, "When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God because the oxen stumbled. The Lord`s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died beside the ark of God." One obvious element in Uzzah`s death was that he showed too much familiarity with the holy.
Ministers can become too familiar with the holy. The spiritual disciplines and exercises they teach others can become perfunctory to them. A serious ethical issue arises when ministers require of others what they do not practice themselves or what they practice so routinely that the act loses all meaning. No matter how often a minister performs a wedding or baptism, conducts a funeral, preaches a sermon, or offers a prayer, the event must never become a repetitious act with no heart in it.
Your faith impacts how you handle the Bible. For the preacher, the Bible should never become simply the source of sermons and the text for preaching. The minister should read the Bible devotionally. As ministers we should approach the Bible "formationally," that the Bible speaks to my life and forms or reforms my life, rather than just "informationally," so that the Bible simply contains information to be explored and taught or preached. We must allow the Bible to continue to speak to our lives.[viii]
Other reading such as classic Christian devotionals, sermons by pulpit masters, or contemporary devotional materials should also be used, of course. The growing minister needs to read theological, biblical, historical, and ethical materials as well as more general works. But the Bible and its message for the minister is foundational to faith.
The common spiritual disciplines that ministers recommend to others must become their practice if their faith lives are to ring true. You do not have to look for esoteric methods or hidden keys to spiritual growth. For ministers, and all Christians, spiritual growth comes from the regular practice of prayer, Bible study, worship, and witness.
Your faith helps to form your character. God commanded Moses to say to the people of Israel, "Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy" (Lev 19:2, NIV). Jesus commanded his disciples to "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48, NIV). The word translated "perfect" can mean "whole" or "complete" or "perfect for its purpose." Whatever meaning is assigned to the word, the basis of comparison is God, made known in Jesus Christ. The apostle Peter admonished us to "grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Pet 3:18, NIV). To follow the directive of Moses, the command of Christ, and the admonition of Peter, a minister must continue to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, a student of the Word of God, and a practitioner of the disciplines of the Christian life.
Your faith is essential to your ministry as well as your personal life.
Family
Family is another area in which the minister`s integrity is often a matter of concern. For many years a billboard on Louisiana Highway 1 just north of the city of Natchitoches, Louisiana, exhibited a message from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The message proclaimed, "No other success compensates for failure in the home." This quotation should be prominently displayed on every minister`s desk and written indelibly in his heart.
In American non-Catholic churches, the general assumption is that the minister will be a married person with a family. That assumption is reinforced by the ministerial qualifications for both pastors and deacons given in the pastoral epistles (1 Tim 3:1-11; Titus 1:6-9). Some church groups even require that ministers be married and have children before they are eligible for ministerial leadership positions. With the median age of seminary students increasingly rising, many ministers have families before they enter the ministry. And, many of their spouses did not intend to marry a minister.
The stress of ministry can create stress on a marriage. How satisfying is the marriage? What is the quality of the relationship between the minister and spouse?
A Mississippi Southern Baptist pastor conducted research on marital satisfaction among pastor`s wives for his doctoral dissertation. He discovered four factors that caused a lack of satisfaction in their marriage. The four factors were: the disruption of time together, the state of anxiety brought on by church expectations, loneliness, and fewer days of dual devotions.[ix]
The primary relationship in a clergy family is the relationship between the minister and spouse. That husband-wife bond must be stable and strong before the family can be stable and strong.
Minister`s marriages are often considered as models for marriage in the church and the community. Healthy marriages can model to others how a couple can remain in love, stay married, and function as a Christian couple even when dealing with stress, long work hours, inadequate income, and the demands of children. Ministerial marriages can be a positive model of the Christian home.
But what if the model is negative? In a study of ministerial marriages David and Vera Mace wrote: "A Christian minister`s task is to proclaim the message of divine love and to help those who respond to it to grow in love for one another. A married minister can therefore be reasonably expected to provide in his own marriage relationship an image and example of how other people, through their united love for God, can grow in the quality of their love for each other. When a minister`s marriage does not demonstrate the warmth and tenderness of human love at its best, an observer could justifiably say, `If his religion doesn`t work in this closest of all human relationships, how can we be sure that it is really true?`"[x]
For many years, divorce in a minister`s family was unthinkable. Troubled clergy marriages continued in quiet desperation or armed truce. Today some of those marriages are being terminated. The incidence of divorce among clergy couples is higher now, but it is still not well accepted. The failure of a clergy marriage is considered a tragedy, in many cases a fatal tragedy, as far as continuation of ministry is concerned.
The problems ministers may have with their children also adds to the significance of family. Minister`s children are not really a great deal different from other children. They face the same stresses and temptations as others. And they experience the same achievements and accomplishments as others. The incidence of ministerial problem children is not likely any higher than other groups, but may be more apparent due to the high visibility of minister`s families, as well as some unreal expectations for these children. Some high achievers whose names are recognizable to all were minister`s children. J. Clark Hensley suggested, "Look at Who`s Who and you will discover more sons and daughters of clergymen than any other profession."[xi]
With these things in mind, consider two keys to a successful family life for ministers:
Time together is a key for successful ministerial family life. Obviously, time together is a difficult feat for a ministering family. Time together can be reserved for the family by scheduling it and protecting it. Those times are just as important as other appointments a minister may make, and, actually, more important than a lot of the other appointments.
A seminary chapel speaker once said that if a minister were away from home every evening, it would not make any difference to his children whether he was at church or at a bar. He was not home with them. Perhaps this is an overstatement, but it makes a valid point. Time spent with family is necessary for a strong and fulfilling family life. Every preacher has probably sermonized about affluent parents who gave their children everything they needed but themselves–that same principle applies to the minister.
I preached a sermon one Sunday morning on the Christian home in which I said something like "you may not catch as many fish or get as low a score in golf when you include your children, but the time with the children is important." That night the eight year old son of a university professor asked me if I would preach that sermon again. That afternoon his father had taken him to a park to swing him and to play with him. The time they spent together meant a lot to that child.
Commitment is another key for a successful and satisfying family life for the minister. For each partner, no question should exist about the personal commitment in love that each has made to the other.
Commitment is also a way of building family solidarity. Children who see by their parents` actions and attitudes that they love and trust one another grow up with a model of commitment in Christian marriage. However marital love is defined, exclusive commitment to one another must be at the center.
Commitment to one another is both undergirded and strengthened by commitment to Christ. In the Maces` study, 63 percent of the husbands and 65 percent of the wives cited "shared Christian commitment and spiritual resources" as the leading advantage of ministerial marriages.[xii]
By the very nature of ministry, ministers are often placed with persons of the opposite sex other than their mates. This calls for a high degree of trust on the part of the spouse. It also calls on the minister to be a person of absolute integrity and one whom a spouse can trust because of his or her commitment.
But what if the minister is not married? Ideally, no difference should exist between a single minister and a married minister. Since we live with the actual rather than the ideal, we know that in many cases a church may hesitate to call a single minister. People may question why that minister is single. Married persons may be suspicious of an unmarried minister spending time with their spouse in the course of church work. Parents may be hesitant to trust their children with a single minister.
Of course, the church should give consideration to whether the single minister is widowed, divorced, or a young minister still in school or just out of school.
A church should never expect a single minister to spend more time in ministry just because he or she does not have a spouse and a family. And if the minister is widowed or divorced and has children at home, the family responsibilities become even greater. A church should call a person to ministry on the basis of that person`s dedication to Christ and the ability to perform the tasks required. Neither should a church attempt to pay an individual less money for the same or similar ministry just because that minister does not have a family to support. And the single minister should be very careful about dating persons in the church family–generally, it is not a good idea.
The same principles of ethical behavior and personal integrity apply to the single minister as to the married minister. In some cases, the single minister will have to be even more certain that he or she has lived ethically and above suspicion for the ministry to be effective.
The effectiveness of ministry is something to be considered in the minister`s family life. When the minister has a wholesome and satisfying relationship with spouse and children then that person can be more effective in ministry and more fulfilled as a person. Ministers find it difficult to fight the devil in the world, the deacons at the church, and the darling at home all at the same time. Marital satisfaction adds to the personal peace and satisfaction of the minister.
Finances
A third stress point in ministerial life is finances. My college religion professor, R. H. Whittington, often told his students, "Boys, pay your bills and keep your zippers up." He thus identified finances as a major problem for ministers and therefore an important issue in ministerial ethics.
The warning was well-deserved. Many ministers have not perfected the ability to manage money. Clergy have become so notorious in financial mismanagement that in some circles people are warned against lending money to the professions that begin with "p": plumbers, painters, prostitutes, and preachers. The low salary level of most ministers could well be a contributing factor.
Although ministerial salaries have risen in recent years, the executive director of the Minister`s Financial Services Association in Lubbock, Texas, observed that when a minister`s salary is compared to the median income of people across the nation with graduate education, many ministers "could possibly be significantly underpaid."[xiii]
According to a Church Compensation Report compiled by Christianity Today, Christian clergy salaries rose an average of only 7.4 percent during the four-year period under study, which was less than half the inflation rate for that same four-year span. Even when total compensation, which rose 12.6 percent in the same period, was considered, pastor`s salaries still lagged behind inflation, which was 16 percent for that period.[xiv]
In the Christianity Today survey only 1 percent of the pastors felt they were overpaid. Sixty-six percent of the senior pastors and 59 percent of the solo pastors thought that they were fairly paid. That means, then, that 34 percent of the senior pastors and 41 percent of the solo pastors felt that they were underpaid. Three follow-up studies by Christianity Today International in the decade of the 1990s were consistent with the original survey.[xv]
Churches often offer their ministers a pay package in which they designate a lump sum for pastoral compensation in the church budget. The minister is then given the responsibility of dividing total compensation into personal pay, housing and utility allowances, automobile and other ministry related expenses, and retirement benefits. The danger in this approach is that many ministers, especially younger ones with young families, may opt for the immediate money needed for expenses and neglect to put money aside for retirement, the education of children, or other future needs. A better approach is for the church to divide the compensation into personal income, ministry-related expenses reimbursed to the minister, and expenses for retirement and insurance.
Given the fact that the minister`s salary is below average and that his or her family has the same needs as similar families in the community, many ministers have performed nothing short of the financially miraculous in adequately feeding, clothing, and educating their families. However, there are enough examples of ministers who have owed money to many merchants in town, who have been late in paying their bills, or who have expected discounts, gifts, or special favors that the belief persists that ministers cannot manage money.
Church leaders do not appreciate being embarrassed by their minister`s financial irresponsibility. The discipline to plan a budget, the ability to live within that budget, and the art of balancing a checkbook are all essential skills for a Christian minister. Handling finances responsibly may even be seen as a spiritual discipline. The failure to handle finances properly has diminished the witness of many ministers.
Richard Foster referred to the "dark side of money" and the "light side of money." The "dark side of money" relates to the way money can be a threat to a relationship with God. The "light side of money" refers to the way in money can be used to enhance a relationship with God and bless humankind.[xvi]
The misuse of credit is an expression of the dark side of money. Many ministerial families are drowning in an ocean of debt. Well-meaning, good-intentioned people have often encouraged ministers into more credit than they can service on their ministerial salaries. Businesses may think they are helping by extending easy credit to their minister. But before the church leader knows it, the total amount of money owed may be more than he can handle. The result many not be positive either for the ministry in general or for this minister in particular.
Related to that, the responsible handling of debt is another essential in Christian money management. Taking their cue from Romans 13:8, some think that a Christian should have little or no debt. Some debt, such as the purchase of a home, may be unavoidable. But the overwhelming burden of more debt than can be safely serviced should be avoided.
Ministers are often given professional discounts by health professionals and personal discounts by businesses. While that practice may not be as widespread as it once was, it is still prevalent in many locales. It probably began as an attempt to help the minister. The merchant was favorable to the church and friendly toward the parson. Knowing that the minister`s salary was low, he tried to help the preacher by giving a discount. The health professional also recognized the minister as a fellow professional in a caring profession and responded by giving a professional discount. Also, as a non-profit organization that functioned for the general well-being of the community, a church discount to the minister was considered a form of donation.
The minister`s insistence on a discount, however, or inquiry about a discount before a purchase, only adds to the perception of the minister as a money-grubber. Some ministers have perfected the art of begging or of making subtle suggestions to the extent that people feel an obligation to do them special favors.
If a person knows that an individual is a minister and voluntarily offers a discount, that is a different situation. Then the minister may feel free to accept it as a gift and respond accordingly, including a "thank you" note for the kindness. That is different from placing the clergy sign next to the gas tank of the car or of making an issue out of being a minister when the introductions are made. Some people will give gifts to their minister as acts of love, not in response to hints or requests or in an attempt to curry favor. These gifts are graciously accepted for what they are.
The minister should certainly practice the basic principles of Christian money management, beginning with Christian stewardship. By definition, a steward is one who manages the affairs of another. Christian stewardship speaks to a Christian`s management of what God has entrusted to that person. Christian stewardship is the total response of an individual to the grace of God. While stewardship is often narrowly defined only in terms of money, it involves more than money. All that a minister is, as well as all that a minister owns, is a trust from God. How that trust is managed is Christian stewardship.
When it comes to money, the personal practice of Christian stewardship is essential. For many ministers, the tithe is considered a biblical standard and a minimum starting point for Christian stewardship. A minister`s message on stewardship will hardly ring true if the minister has not practiced as well as taught generous giving. We must practice what we preach.
Faith, family, and finances. These are three areas of major concern for ministers. These three obviously are not the only issues involved in ministerial ethics. But they are each important areas in the minister`s personal life, which can hardly be separated from the minister`s professional life. In these areas, the person and the profession are closely intertwined. How they are managed will go a long way toward determining the minister`s effectiveness. Indeed, they determine the minister`s integrity. Handling faith, family, and finances well will allow him or her to be a good minister.
Footnotes
[1] The basis for this article is found in Joe E. Trull and James E. Carter, Ministerial Ethics: Moral Formation for Church Leaders. Second Edition. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004.
[2] Charles B. Bugg, "Professional Ethics Among Ministers," Review and Expositor (Fall 1989), 562-653.
[3] Glenn R. Putnam, An Investigation of the Relationship of Marital Pressures to the Marital Satisfaction of the Wives of Southern Baptist Ministers (Ed.D. dissertation, Mississippi State University, 1990), 44-46.
[4] David and Vera Mace, What`s Happening to Clergy Marriages? Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), 24-25.
[5] J. Clark Hensley, Preacher Behave! (Jackson, Miss.: Dallas Printing Co., 1978), 9.
[6] Mace, 33.
[7] Helen Parmley, "Pastor`s Pay in Area Leads U. S.," Dallas(TX) Morning News, October 17, 1987, 15-A.
[8] David Briggs, "Clergy Salaries Lag Rate of Inflation," Alexandria (LA) DailyTown Talk, March 21, 1992, C-8. For the complete report see the 1992 Church Compensation Report, Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, Inc., 1991.
[9] James D. Berkley, "What Pastors Are Paid," Leadership (Spring, 1992), 89; John C. LaRue, Jr., "Seven Findings about Pastor Pay," Christianity Today/Your Church (March/April, 2000), 88.
[10] Richard Foster, Money, Sex, and Power: The Challenge of the Disciplined Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 20-23.
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