A Living Wage: Making It on a Pastor’s Salary

Near the end of last year, I received an email from the Social Security Administration advising me to log in to my account to view a new message. The message was about my retirement benefits and Medicare payments for the coming year. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link with my lifetime earning record.

My taxed Social Security earnings began in 1966 when I was 15 in ninth grade and worked part-time at Snow White Laundry and Dry Cleaners in Fort Worth, Texas. My role was customer service, taking in dirty laundry and dry cleaning, bringing out clean clothes, and collecting the payments.

I worked after school and on Saturdays, almost full-time during the summer, and earned $.75 an hour. The federal minimum wage in 1966 was $1.25 an hour.

An amendment that year extended coverage to workers in laundries and dry cleaners, but it didn’t apply to workers under 20. My taxed earnings for that year totaled $598.

I continued to work at the laundry and dry cleaners throughout high school. I saved my money, finally earning enough to buy a new blue Ford Mustang, which cost about $2400. Then I went to Baylor University. 

There were no earnings in my first two years at Baylor. But then I earned $1,615 in 1972 and $1,640 in 1973 from a part-time job as Minister to Youth at Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco. I then attended seminary and had no taxable earnings during my Master of Divinity program. 

After graduating from seminary in December 1976, I was called to serve full-time as an associate pastor at Montgomery Hills Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. I began in April, and my taxed earnings in 1977 totaled $7,792.

Near the end of my first year at Montgomery Hills, I shared with the church leadership that our family was having difficulty meeting expenses on the wages they were giving me. My yearly compensation from the church increased to $11,251 the following year. By my last year at Montgomery Hills, 1984, it had reached $20,123.

In 1985, I began a tenure as pastor of Village Baptist Church in Bowie, Maryland, another suburb of Washington, D.C. My compensation from the church that year was $26,297. 

The church increased my wages every year after that. By 2004, I was earning $53,986 a year. Because of a salary-reduction agreement with the church, my income remained at that level for 10 years. 

I continued to receive yearly increases, which were added to my retirement contributions in my 403(b) account. Montgomery Hills and Village had contributed to my retirement account, but in my later years at Village, the salary reduction agreement allowed me to make additional retirement contributions.

This was possible because, by that time, both our children had graduated from college. Since my wife Linda and I no longer had college expenses, we could manage to live on the income level we had when our kids were in college, and any salary increases could be added to my retirement account. 

That turned out to be a very wise decision. When I retired in 2018, my retirement account and what we received from Social Security were enough for us to live on.

The bottom line is that we never made a lot of money. Still, through a frugal lifestyle and regular retirement investments, we were able to retire and have not struggled financially. Looking back, I see some lessons we’ve learned along the way.

First, most local church ministers don’t make much money. They didn’t teach us that in seminary, but I should have known.

Ministry is not a lucrative profession. The budgets of most churches are primarily supported by the voluntary gifts of the congregants. 

Unless a church has thousands of congregants, the budget will not likely be large. During my 33 years as pastor of Village, the size of our congregation gradually grew, but not dramatically. 

The vote to call me as pastor in 1984 was 64-1. When I retired in 2018, about 150 people attended our church on Sunday mornings. Our church budget included my compensation and salaries for other part-time staff members, building and program expenses, and support for our denominational and mission partners.

Second, we learned to live on a pastor’s salary. My wife worked part-time, first as a preschool teacher, then in the human resources department of a local hospital, but neither she nor I ever made a lot of money. So, we learned to live modestly.

We were able to buy a house in Silver Spring and then a house after we moved to Bowie. The house in Silver Spring had two bedrooms and one bathroom. We could afford it only because Linda sold her house in Louisville before we got married, allowing us to make a sizable down payment on the Silver Spring house.

After I was called to Village, we sold the house in Silver Spring, which had almost doubled in value during our time there, allowing us to buy a larger house in Bowie. Also, because Bowie is further from Washington, D.C. than Silver Spring is, buyers can get more house for the money. Still, we had learned to live a frugal lifestyle.

Third, we learned that it is possible to make donations to the church and other charitable causes even on a modest income. Our tithes and other offerings were built into our monthly expenses. Because our giving to the church was a given, we adjusted our other discretionary spending as necessary.

Fourth, we learned to maximize travel opportunities. The church budget included a line item for the pastor to attend denominational meetings and other church-related functions. Using that, we were able to attend the 2005 Baptist World Congress in Birmingham, England, the 2010 Baptist World Congress in Hawaii, the 2013 annual meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in Jamaica, and the 2015 Baptist World Congress in Durban, South Africa. We even took a group from our church and friends from other churches to South Africa.

Fifth, we learned that the most significant compensation of being a pastor is not financial but relational. While I never made much money as a pastor, I did make many friends—sisters and brothers in Christ. Even though I have been retired for seven years, we still maintain contact with many of them. 

Last Christmas, we received cards from dozens of members of our former churches. I received Christmas and New Year’s texts from six of them. 

Even though we are now members of the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C., we still get together with friends from our former churches for meals and other activities. We’ve even taken vacations with some of them. A friend from Village voluntarily manages my website, “Spelunking the Scriptures.”

We may not be rich in money, but we are rich in relationships.  

We learned that a living wage is possible for persons in the ministry and that it is possible to get by on a pastor’s salary. The profession may not be financially lucrative, but some things in life are more valuable than money.

After 41 years of full-time pastoral service, and now seven years into retirement, we have more than enough to live on and to live for. God continues to bless us with gifts that no amount of money could buy.