Those who have spent time at the Bill Rice Ranch will likely remember this one. Unfortunately, an audio version seems to be almost nonexistent on the Internet.
Why Do Ministries Pay So Badly?
Over the last few months I’ve had conversations with numerous people who used to work in either fundamentalist or evangelical ministries and just can’t afford to keep doing it. When you’re putting in a full week of work but eating from your own church’s food pantry because you can’t afford groceries that might be a problem.
There is a serious problem in American Christianity with “ministry” employees being underpaid, undervalued, and under-appreciated. Here are a few reasons why:
1. Isolation.
By the nature of being sacred instead of secular, many ministry employees are isolated from the rest of the job market. Being cut off from the rest of their colleagues makes them prone to believing the lies that they didn’t need to get accreditation or certification. As a result they have no relationships with those kinds of bodies and they don’t participate in continuing education with their secular counterparts.
As a result they simply have no idea what their skills might be worth in the rest of the world or how to build a set of credentials that makes them worth more.
2. Delayed Gratification.
“Treasures in heaven” is the cry of those who really don’t want to pay for good dental benefits on earth. Christian workers are told that somehow their efforts are more special and worthy of greater rewards. Lots of people work in school cafeterias but Jesus loves people who work in Christian school cafeterias just a little bit more. The celestial payout is going to be awesome! (So we’ll need you to go ahead and work for peanuts while you’re here.)
After all, it’s all about getting people saved! Who can put a price tag on that?
3. Shrinking Population.
Church attendance is in decline. That means fewer checks in the offering plate and less operating budget. Like any other business the first place any ministry is going to start cutting its expenses is not in buildings or salaries at the top. They’re going to start by seeing how much they can save by reducing the number of paid days off or requiring all employees to contribute some amount of time for free.
This is just suffering for Jesus.
4. Heavy Indoctrination.
Fundamentalist and Evangelicals have done well in playing the education game. Every year there is a crop of idealistic fresh faces that emerge from their high-schools and colleges having spent hundreds of hours in classrooms being taught that there is no higher calling than being grist to the ministry mill. With new cheap labor being manufactured every day there’s no incentive for raises for the people who have been here all along.
Jesus is the greatest coupon ever.
5. Total Prevarication.
If you ever work for a ministry that tells you that if you just serve the Lord with them for 30 years that there will be a pension at the end to take care of you in your old age I advise you to smile politely and then walk away quickly. There is no retirement. There. is. no. retirement. There is, however, a pink slip with your name on it sealed in an envelope that says “to be opened when the employee is 65.”
Unless you’re putting savings in your own IRA or stuffing it in your mattress then there will be no money.
So the formula goes like this:
Isolated employees + A Heavenly Mission + Declining Revenue + Renewable Workforce + Lies = Starvation Wages.
If you give people too much then how will they ever learn to trust God? The food pantry is open from 3-6 on Thursdays.
How to be a Sneaky Racist for Fun and Profit
It seems to be a week for West Coast Baptist College around here. Before I get into the new story, however, it’s necessary to give some background…
Way back in the day, Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status because it refused to change its policy on interracial (whatever that means) dating. A lot of other fundamentalist institutions beheld this debacle from afar off and were severely torn between the love of two different kinds of money: 1) money in tax savings and 2) money from the racist parents of students at their schools who didn’t want their little girl dating one of “those people.”
So somebody came up with a VERY CLEVER compromise called the “parental consent” rule which said that any dating relationship on campus has to have parental permission. This kicked responsibility up the road a bit so that the administration could claim “We’re not racists — we just follow the wishes of racists parents who pay us money!”
This is all rather strange because in no other area does the administration of a fundy college allow the whims of parents to set its policy. In fact, when I was at a very similar Fundy U I was told that my parents calling and complaining about the rules or asking for exceptions to policy would be seen as rebellion by ME and that I was to ask my parents not to call.
With that in mind, here’s a West Coast Baptist College memo from 2001 (PDF) in which Paul Chappell attempts to quash feelings of unease in his staff about a dating policy that is put in place specifically to cater to racism. The page numbers in the pages that follow indicate that the material is from some kind of official handbook.
There is a fully symphony of dog whistles here with references to words like “compatible”, “unequally yoked”, and “exotic relationship.” We’ve seen this kind of thing before and it stinks to high heaven.
VBS Promotions
Nothing say “VBS” like Hitler.
Internet Policies: West Coast Baptist Edition
The following pages come from the handbook for staff members of Lancaster Baptist Church and West Coast Baptist College.
If you ever come across a business that wants editorial approval over the pictures on your blog about your family vacation I advise you to just walk away. In fact, I advise you to run.
