Magyar Egyház, 1981 (60. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1981-07-01 / 7-8. szám
MAGYAR GGytMZ equitably, pay on the basis of merit and ability to resolve a variety of problems and relate to many people. That way you will pay what you should. Low pay can have serious consequences on the effectiveness of your pastor’s ministry. Consider what can happen when pay is too low. Low pay can interfere with the efficiency and productivity of your pastor’s ministry to you and your congregation. Think about your own income. When you worry about how you can ever make ends meet, your job performance suffers. You fret that there won’t be money to pay the dentist or piano teacher or the next life insurance premium. You worry about the rent or the mortgage payment. Your pastor worries, too, when pay is low. And that worry may be felt in the way sermons come across, or time is spent in fewer hospitals visits, or concern expressed for the special problems of others. Worry about money is bound to impinge on your pastor’s time for creative ministry. Don’t let that happen. Avoid your pastor’s preoccupation with finances by making sure your congregation pays enough and that you pay it right. You can enhance the image of your pastor in the community with pay that is fair. Too often the people out there perceive the pastor as low paid. They may even know he or she is low paid. Of course, if you pay more, you can change that view. But until you do and until people know, most people will assume your pastor is not very well paid. Low paid pastor often end up with low pensions, too. Depending on your denominations’s pension plan, the higher paid pastors may get more pension because more money keeps going into the fund for them than for others. When a percentage of current salary is the basis for pension plan contributions, the better paid are better pensioned. Low pay may make a difference in your pastor’s pension. Better check it out to see the real difference it makes. Could be significant. There is a limit, and some clergy simply drop out of ministry because they can no longer afford it. There’s more pay in something else. And if they believe they need more than you pay and can find it someplace else, many go. They may enjoy the ministry, they will miss it probably, but the reality of what you pay makes the choice. Some other position pays more. Low pay can provoke that change. Perceived low pay will not bring more young people to ministry. It will only turn them away. To attract and keep the brightest and most promising men and women means pay has got to be attractive and stay that way. Not only that, but young adults need to know that pay will be commensurate with responsibility and ability. If it is, the profession attracts the best. If it isn’t, some of the best will go someplace else. What you pay your pastor has a profound affect on how a prospective student will view the nature of the ministry. A recommended approach for going over your pastor’s pay is to consider, first, reimbursement, then supplemental benefits, and finally, housing and salary. That covers all the items and does so in an orderly, systematic way. A policy for reimbursements must be decided, such as full reimbursements for all professional expenses. Then a pattern of supplemental benefits must 15. oldal be understood and agreed to by the committee. Which benefits are appropriate? What is the consequence of each? How should the amount be determined? Are there other benefits? When the reimbursement policy and the benefits items have been determined, housing and salary is reviewed. Housing and salary are the true “compensation” items of the pay plan. Reimbursements are certainly not pay even though they are a cost for having a pastor. Even supplemental benefits are not pay. They are benefits. And just as you probably do not include the value of your pension plan or health plan where you work as part of your salary, you should not add in those costs as part of your pastor’s pay. True, they are a real cost for having a pastor, but they are not salary. They are benefits. Housing and salary are the compensation. 1. Professional costs: Your goal is full reimbursement of those costs incurred by your pastor professionally. These are costs for the benefit of your congregation, such as costs for transportation (car expenses), church supplies, gifts to members, books, subscriptions to professional journals, continuing education, dues, etc. With the Internal Revenue Service insisting now that most clergy are employees for income tax purposes (clergy are still self-employed for social security tax purposes), it has become all the more important now for your congregation to have an adequate reimbursement plan. A good plan is a way to help your pastor save some tax dollars. Those unreimbursed professional expenses which you may have forced your pastor to pay in the past, may no longer be deductible on the pastor’s income tax return if your pastor is an employee and will not itemize deductions. You can do your pastor a big favor and cut his or her income tax by making sure you reimburse in full for all professional expenses. It’s a reasonable personnel policy and it just may be a way to boost your pastor’s net take home pay. (Clergy list car expenses on Form 2106, other unreimbursed expenses on Schedule A.) 2. Car expenses: By far the largest of all of your pastor’s professional expenses is probably the cost for using a personal automobile on church business. If you’ve adopted the policy that you are going to reimburse the pastor for all those costs, then you must decide how that will be done. The ideal arrangement for making sure that you pay full reimbursement for the professional expenses your pastor incurs for driving an automobile on church business is for your congregation to provide the pastor with the exclusive use of a church-owned or leased automobile. That way, the church, not the pastor, really assumes all the costs, as it should. The least desirable way for your congregation to pay for those expenses is to make an annual payment or a monthly fixed payment to cover potential expenses. Usually that lump sum payment has no relationship to the expenses which your pastor actually incurs. More often than not it was set some years ago and now is woefully inadequate. Your pastor probably has to dip down into salary to pay for car costs. That shouldn’t be. Don’t let it happen. (To be continued in the next issue)
