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Along with Advent comes salary-negotiating time here in the Merritt house, my least favorite part of the year. Honestly, I hate it. I wish that everyone just got paid from the Local Governing Body (LGB). You
know, a socialized system where everyone is given as they have need. I wish that each pastor had a set amount, based on cost of living, housing, experience, and education. A set salary, where certain things
don’t matter, things like ethnicity, age, or gender, and certain things do matter, like how much you had to go into debt to get your seminary education.
I’m not even sure that the size of the congregation should matter. I mean at this point there ought to be some systemic realization that women are in small parishes and associate positions, not because they
are less wise, intelligent, or capable, but because there’s that thick stained glass ceiling that we’re slowly, surely trying to crack through.
I long for a compensation package that does not consider how many children you have or don’t have, whether your spouse has a good job or not, or whether the ladies in the church think you eat out too much, a salary structure where associate pastors do not make less than half of the head of staff (I mean, really. Are they doing half the work? We all know the answer to that one).
I long for a system that realizes that the Baby Boomers who bought their houses twenty years ago for 20K, and have been receiving 2% increases every year, may be comfortable sitting on their increased housing equity. They are in a much different position than the members of a new generation, who enter into the pastorate with education loans and possible mortgages that make our debt to income ratio way out of whack. The reality is a new generation who looks into the future and realizes how much college will cost for their children and that the social security system will not be there in the same way that it is now.
For me, at this time of year, the major struggle is to stay above the minimum salary requirements that are required by the LGB. After ten years of being on church staffs, I’m still dog paddling, trying to keep my head above that line (obviously, I’m not the best negotiator…but I do have a good shared equity housing deal). Read more
The God of the Wilderness calls to me during the summer. She is a beckoning God. She wants me to abandon all responsibility to praise her radiant glory. She is determined to spoil me with a golden glow and abundant warmth. Alas, she can only distract me from my office window. She is still calling – but so is the blinking light of the church phone.
A message beckons to me from my voicemail, insisting that I ignore the God of the Wilderness that it seems every church member has rushed to worship. As June approached, the members of this small congregation carefully informed me that they would look forward to seeing me in September. They would miss their church, but their [insert summer retreat] awaited them. And so, I wondered, who could have left me a voicemail? If the whole church family has disappeared to worship the Son of Righteousness, who could be calling?
