About six months ago I left behind my last church job. I had been a youth minister for nearly ten years. The end wasn't that surprising, I had seen it before and knew others who had been there too. Budget cuts had to be made and the easiest way to make the budget work was to eliminate the youth position. Now I work at WalMart as an overnight associate, 10pm-7am, while I try to finish out my bachelors degree. I have 17 hours to go. A guy that worked with me is on his church's budget committee. He told me that they had to cut about 50,000 from last years budget to make it this year. I told him that sounded familiar. My advice was not to cut a staff member, even though that was the easy way, but if staff cuts were to be made to cut a little off everyones salary. He didn't think that would fly over too well. It got me to thinking, though, and I shared this with him. There are a few things that I have really thought about a lot since I got out of the ministry:
1) Most of the pastors I know are out of touch with the average worker.
I thought about this a lot when I first started working. One of the hardest things for me to adjust to when I started working at WalMart wasn't the overnight hours. It was the fact that I had to be there at a specific time, and I couldn't leave until a specific time. My breaks and my lunch are also scheduled. For the last ten years, there were very few days that I had to be anywhere on that rigid of a schedule. Sundays were about as close as it got, but even then I had flexibility depending on how ready I was for youth group. I had semi-regular office hours, and so did the priests that I worked for, but if we were all honest I think we'd admit that we had a lot of freedom when it came time to the hours that we worked. The holiday season is upon us as I write this and this will be the first Thanksgiving in many many years that I will not have the whole week of Thanksgiving pretty much off. I don't want to even think about Christmas. I will be working the day before and the day after Christmas. I'm used to about two weeks off.
2) Sundays just don't work for everyone.
This one may be way outside the box for many churches, but I think if churches really wanted to reach the most people, they would offer much more than just Sunday morning services. I work every Saturday night until 7am Sunday morning. By 10am Sunday, I'm ready for bed, not to go sit in a dimly lit church. Some churches offer an 8am service and that's almost do-able, but honestly, most 8am services are for the older people who don't want music or a sermon... They want the basics and they want to get out fast enough to beat everyone to the diner for coffee or whatever. It's kind of amazing really that we have so many churches in our area and they all have pretty much the same schedule. If you can't fit into their schedule, you're pretty much out of luck.
3) I can live on less.
This is the big one. Man, when I worked for the church, I used to complain that if I were in it for the money that I never would have picked this job and that I didn't make enough for the job that I had to do and blah blah blah. I'll tell you what, I was an idiot. My last church job, I made much less than my previous church job, but I still made about 35,000 a year in salary. Plus, the church paid half of my insurance. Plus, they paid for my house and utilities. Add in all the "perks" of the job (lunches with students, coffee with parishioners, etc...) and my total package was worth easily 50 grand a year. And I was complaining about it. Not out loud (very much) but privately for sure. Now, I make just a little over $8 an hour. That's $16,640 a year. They don't pay for my house, or my utilities or my cell phone or lunches. It's $16,640 a year, period. And guess what? We can still survive on that. I don't know how, but we do. Credit my wife for being an incredible budgeter. She has it figured out most weeks to the dollar what we can spend or buy. Yeah, we've had to give up a few things, but that's a whole other blog post. The point is, we can live on a lot less than we were making.
A year ago, if someone had offered me a youth ministry job for 20K a year, I'd have laughed at it. Today, I'd take it and be grateful for it everyday when I got to work at whatever time I made it there or every time I took off early to go with Robyn to take our kid to the doctor or to see an awards ceremony or whatever.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
1) Most of the pastors I know are out of touch with the average worker.
I thought about this a lot when I first started working. One of the hardest things for me to adjust to when I started working at WalMart wasn't the overnight hours. It was the fact that I had to be there at a specific time, and I couldn't leave until a specific time. My breaks and my lunch are also scheduled. For the last ten years, there were very few days that I had to be anywhere on that rigid of a schedule. Sundays were about as close as it got, but even then I had flexibility depending on how ready I was for youth group. I had semi-regular office hours, and so did the priests that I worked for, but if we were all honest I think we'd admit that we had a lot of freedom when it came time to the hours that we worked. The holiday season is upon us as I write this and this will be the first Thanksgiving in many many years that I will not have the whole week of Thanksgiving pretty much off. I don't want to even think about Christmas. I will be working the day before and the day after Christmas. I'm used to about two weeks off.
2) Sundays just don't work for everyone.
This one may be way outside the box for many churches, but I think if churches really wanted to reach the most people, they would offer much more than just Sunday morning services. I work every Saturday night until 7am Sunday morning. By 10am Sunday, I'm ready for bed, not to go sit in a dimly lit church. Some churches offer an 8am service and that's almost do-able, but honestly, most 8am services are for the older people who don't want music or a sermon... They want the basics and they want to get out fast enough to beat everyone to the diner for coffee or whatever. It's kind of amazing really that we have so many churches in our area and they all have pretty much the same schedule. If you can't fit into their schedule, you're pretty much out of luck.
3) I can live on less.
This is the big one. Man, when I worked for the church, I used to complain that if I were in it for the money that I never would have picked this job and that I didn't make enough for the job that I had to do and blah blah blah. I'll tell you what, I was an idiot. My last church job, I made much less than my previous church job, but I still made about 35,000 a year in salary. Plus, the church paid half of my insurance. Plus, they paid for my house and utilities. Add in all the "perks" of the job (lunches with students, coffee with parishioners, etc...) and my total package was worth easily 50 grand a year. And I was complaining about it. Not out loud (very much) but privately for sure. Now, I make just a little over $8 an hour. That's $16,640 a year. They don't pay for my house, or my utilities or my cell phone or lunches. It's $16,640 a year, period. And guess what? We can still survive on that. I don't know how, but we do. Credit my wife for being an incredible budgeter. She has it figured out most weeks to the dollar what we can spend or buy. Yeah, we've had to give up a few things, but that's a whole other blog post. The point is, we can live on a lot less than we were making.
A year ago, if someone had offered me a youth ministry job for 20K a year, I'd have laughed at it. Today, I'd take it and be grateful for it everyday when I got to work at whatever time I made it there or every time I took off early to go with Robyn to take our kid to the doctor or to see an awards ceremony or whatever.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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