God: Paying the Pastorate

John the Methodist asks:

What do you think? What should be the basis of pastoral compensation?

The conversation over there is worth the read, but one aspect that hasn't been brought up much yet is scripture. The bible actually has something to say on this very subject in 1 Corinthians 9:

Don't we have the right to food and drink? Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living?

Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk? Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more?

Paul goes on to discuss how he and Barnabas foreswore compensation from the Corinthian church, instead they worked themselves in order to pay their own way and further serve that church. But it is the minister who can refuse payment, not the ministry which can refuse to pay.

Pastoral compensation is a pretty tricky subject. While the pastoral staff at my church seems to earn their keep, we also seem to be picking up full-time non-pastoral staff right and left. And those folks are often in much more of a gray area of effectiveness. Other churches have pastors who are overburdening the (often shrinking) congregation with their high salaries. But they are very respected ministers in the denomination, I assure you.

So it's a tricky subject and I don't have an easy answer. Since I prefer congregational church government, I'd like to see the individual churches hammer this out for themselves on a case by case basis. I doubt the Methodist church has that option since ministers are almost certainly paid by the denomination and not the individual church.