Comment by CptFribble | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CptFribble | Hacker News Reader

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I was raised a Baptist, but from my experience all churches of any size work this way, and this news will not be surprising to any church-goers.

Typically the pastor of even a small church lives mainly or at least mostly on the tithes given each week. It's common for churches to own a house that the pastor or priest lives in at no charge. All Christians I know either Protestant or Catholic know this and accept it as how the church works, you're tithing to God's work whether that's feeding the poor or repairing the church roof or buying the pastor's groceries.

I don't know as many Catholics, but from what I gather many of them see the Vatican and the bureaucracy as just part and parcel of the whole thing.

I've only met one pastor who had a full-time job in addition to pastoring, at a small church I attended in a major city for a few years, and technically he was a missionary sent to the city to plant that church. Now he has two jobs plus pastoring though, so he might just be a workaholic.

Same and same.

The goal in the case of churches (not within the context of an extra-church structure) is that the pastor can focus on the process of pastor-ing, and it's considered a good thing when s/he can do it full-time.

But it goes against the Biblical model of a pastor being a tentmaker (as Paul was, recorded in Acts) and often the pastor has a significantly higher wage than much of the congragation, which opposes the commonality taught in Acts too, IMO. Having a separate paid pastor also moves towards the idea that the pastor has a special place wrt to God, which again opposes New Testament teaching.

My current pastor, until his retirement worked for a pharma company, he was a drug dealer! (Medicinal and legal drugs, of course).

On the other hand Paul explicitly says that he isn’t taking what he could rightfully do. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+9...

> 13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar?

> 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

> 15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast.

So FWIW, I don’t believe having my priest receive a salary from the church goes against New Testament teaching. It just doesn’t conform with Paul’s personal example. There are also priests in the church who receive a salary from doing a more normal job, like being a professor at a college, but they typically don’t do nearly as much pastoral work as a priest who is assigned directly to a church.

Yes, it isn't heterodox, just not inline with Paul's model of eldership.

FWIW the whole notion of priests (but not paid workers), seems flatly contradictory to Christ's "tearing of the veil".

In my personal experience with organized religion in general and the Catholic Church specifically the teachings of the scripture are wholly irrelevant to the actions of the church. Even if we could all agree on the meaning of the scripture.

Tangent: can I ask that we not impose views on what constitutes proper societal patterns from religiously held texts in the Hacker space? For the Christian bible specifically and for religious texts generally there are often an abundance of equally supported interpretations, so much so that there are dedicated categories of academic debate and study (hermeneutics) and colloquial approaches (proof-texting) that are of general interest. I've seen some great discussion places become hot messes quick when social norms are interpreted from religious texts.

The context here is church organizations that ostensibly teach based on the New Testament so the GP comment seems completely appropriate.

If someone suggests devoting 10% of your commit messages to worshiping our (their) lord and savior then your comment would be more relevant.

FWIW, I was careful to state it went against the model of Paul being a tentmaker, and not that this model had primacy, nor that it was exclusive. The Church is a very different beast now.

My apologies, I applied my note to your comment in haste and in error. While I still would love proscription on prescription, I wholly acknowledge that you were not making a religious based normative claim and thus said proscription would not apply. Cheers!

> often the pastor has a significantly higher wage than much of the congragation

The sum total of everyone paid to work for the church I attend (pastors, musicians, cantor; plus the costs associated with some of the services (baptisms, etc); work out to less than a single reasonably well-earning household in the area. I don't think the priests themselves are making a significantly higher wage than much of the congragation.

Perhaps. :)

My goal was to provide context on a “this is how they see it” factual basis versus trying to comment on its cultural or ecclesiastical validity.

My churches (two previous were Baptist) publish their budgets. My current church has only 16% going to admin costs (building, maintenance, and salary I believe) while everything else went to mission work (we run . Everyone here volunteers their time though, which helps bring costs down. I don’t recall previous budgets, but I think they were closer to 50/50. I guess my current one is unusual, but 10% of 50 mil (according to this article) is surprising to me. That’s the lowest bar I’ve seen

It depends heavily on the church.

I'd agree that church volunteers really do bring costs down though -- and congregational volunteering is just really healthy in general. It encourages members to exercise more agency, to think about service in concrete ways, and to spend more time fellowshipping with each other.

I had a pipe dream that I was going to get some of my local churches to collaborate more on developing/sharing OS software and technical support with each other, particularly around admin, member registries, etc... But I've had difficulty getting it off the ground. Most church members I know aren't technical, so there's just a very large education gap that has to be addressed first.

From what I could find, on average from 50 - 80% of the church budget goes to church administration.

https://holysoup.com/the-shocking-truth-of-church-budgets/

My grandma died when I was 12 and my parents were forced to pay the voluntary church taxes my grandma did not pay in her last 20 years, most of their salary went to the pastor that month who didn't even issue an invoice.

The pastor was not required to request such payments from relatives as a condition for burying the deceased, but it's easy to prey on those who are left behind.

Taxing churches and cracking down on the rampant corruption around religious organizations cannot come soon enough.

> my parents were forced to pay the church taxes my grandma did not pay in her last 20 years

Can someone shed some light on how the church is able to "enforce" taxes not bound by legal doctrine?

Through manipulation and coercion. They were told by the local pastor that she wouldn't get a religious funeral unless those taxes were paid.

Can you explain more about paying taxes to the church? I haven't heard of this occurring anywhere, but I know different countries have different rules.

There is a voluntary church tax paid by members of the Reformed Church in Europe. My grandma did not attend church in the last few decades of her life, and she did not pay this tax. My parents were forced by the local pastor to pay those taxes in order for her to get a religious funeral by the Reformed Church.

So you paid a mutually agreed price for a funeral. If you didn’t want their services you could have gone elsewhere.

The funeral was paid separately on top of the money the pastor coerced them to give to the church.

There is no agreement involved when you're told your mother wouldn't be buried with what you perceive as dignity, and you're manipulated while in a state of shock and grief to think that the voluntary payment you're making is mandatory.

What do you think grandma would've wanted? Would she be mad at the church and felt entitled to be buried through their service despite not having been involved with that church for 2 decades?

Would she have felt it was her children's duty to pay more than necessary to be buried a certain way? I'm not asking this rhetorically. I really am curious. We all want a dignified funeral for our loved ones, but did grandma make her wishes known?

I don't think she has made her wishes known. She was religious, just not a churchgoer.

For what it may be worth: In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes/formerly called Mormons), the vast majority of leaders are unpaid. Leaders of congregations aka "wards" (bishops) or groups of congregations aka "stakes" (stake presidents), or area authority seventies (who at least sometimes lead or help lead groups of stakes, if I understand), are all unpaid.

In part this works because there are many others at the local levels who have significant responsibitilities for different things. It is common for at least the bishops and stake presidents to spend 20-30 hours/week serving in those roles. They are "called" (assigned) for usually 5 and 9 years, respectively, then released. (I imagine similarly for the area authority seventies and members of temple presidencies (3-5 years?) Missionaries (or their families or others who help) also pay for their own support. Mission presidents (3 years, full-time in an assigned part of the world) usually support themselves from their savings (I think; I know at least sometimes) though housing is (usually? always?) provided, then they go back to their other employment.

The Church tries to do the same internally that they advise members: avoiding debt and having some savings, living w/in available means, saving for things in advance instead of getting loans. For family finances, it emphasizes things like getting education, avoiding debt, savings for unforeseen events, giving an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, paying tithing which results in noticeable blessings, etc. Tithing supports construction projects, publishing, and other Church expenses, and the monthly fast, giving 2 meals' cost or more to the poor, goes 100% to the poor, as do other donations to humanitarian aid etc (which is used worldwide, including major collaborative work with other churches). No plate is passed during meetings, but there are donation envelopes in a small box in a hallway that anyone can pick up (edit: to mail or hand in); only 3 people in the ward, none in the stake etc., are authorized to accept the returned envelopes (or regular donations can be made online). I am under the impression that taxed business income pays the living stipends of a limited # of top leaders (such as the apostles, with global responsibilities), but it is less than they would usually make or in some cases much less than they did make in their previous employment. That has been written about elsewhere.

(edit: weddings in a temple, and weddings or receptions, funerals, etc etc in a local ward building are free, run also by volunteers. Sometimes family reunions too, I think, and of course local social activities.)

(edit: All this is uniform, world-wide. Also I think I read that it doesn't accept ~"ecclesiastical tax" money, even if/where it would be allowed.)

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