Church Compensation 2000 Years Later: How Biblical Are We?

Church compensation has come a long way from the days of the early church, or the days of the Hebrew priests and Levites. Which raises the question: Have we gone so far that we have departed from the Biblical foundations for what we are doing? We give, but for what purpose, beyond obedience and/or love and worship offered to God?

How does God intend us to put our offerings to use? How does God intend us to provide for the work that God wants us to do, specifically, for the workers who are doing it? What would God say about how we are implementing God’s original intentions for church compensation expressed in Scripture? And are there any course corrections we should make?

Beginning in the Hebrew Bible, we find several income streams for compensation and finance in the house of God. First, there were sacrifices. Some were to be consumed by God entirely (by fire). Some were eaten partially by the priests who offered them. If they were free will offerings, part of the meat could be eaten by the worshippers who offered them. Grain and drink offerings followed similar guidelines.

In addition, there were the tithes of animal and vegetable produce, which were stored and then used to provide for the ongoing needs of the priests and Levites, as well as for daily offerings to God. The annual half-shekel tax (Exodus 30:13-15) provided for other needs of the sanctuary, one example of a broad free-will offering category called the terumah (see below). During the time of Solomon’s Temple, there was also a monetary collection on-site for a Temple maintenance and repair fund (2 Kings 12:6-15).

The term terumah is first used in Exodus 25:2 for the free-will building fund collection for the construction of the Hebrew portable sanctuary in the desert. The ḥallah or dough offering in Numbers 15:17-21 is called a terumah. Also, Numbers 18:8-29 describes extra support offerings for the Levites in addition to the tithe. Some churches today have used the terumah as their term for salary support for their pastoral staff (https://gracethrufaith.com/ask-a-bible-teacher/the-terumah-offering/), a discovery I made hastily just before a TV appearance on “Ask the Pastor.” (I’m glad I was warned about that question – “Quick! Fire up your computer and do a word study AQAP!”)

And as the great theologian Catherine Hobson has reminded me, the priests and Levites had no 403b or other retirement account: “YHWH is their inheritance” (Deuteronomy 18:2). True, the Levites were given plots of land scattered within the boundaries of other tribes, but nothing permanent that they could call “mine.”

Nehemiah 13:10 shows us a scenario in post-exilic Judah where the people had neglected their support for the house of God, to where the Levites and temple musicians “had gone back, each to their field.” So Nehemiah has a confrontation with government leaders, asking them, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” Then, as governor, Nehemiah fixes that compensation problem, to restore God’s servants to the work from which they had been driven by the need to provide for their households (13:11-14).

In the New Testament period, tithes were always collected as food (Mishnah, Ma‘aserot 1:1-8.)  The Pharisees had it all catalogued when and how to tithe it. Only wild plants were exempt. Jesus says in Matthew 23:23 that the Pharisees tithe even the herbs they grow in their gardens, but they neglect weightier matters like justice, mercy, and faith. But what does Jesus say? “These things you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” Jesus clearly expects both committed giving and committed living. Unlike his broad call to “Give to whomever begs from you” (Matthew 5:42), I see no reason not to take Jesus literally on tithing for his followers today.

In addition to tithed produce, the Temple was supported by the same sacrifices and free-will offerings provided for in the Hebrew Bible. In Mark 12:41-44, we see a poor widow putting two copper coins into the Temple treasury, while rich people were putting in large sums of cash. In Matthew 17:24-27, Jesus pays the half-shekel Temple tax, an act no doubt cited by Matthew as an example to Jewish followers of Jesus to do the same.

What about local synagogues? They were run entirely by lay leaders, like Jairus (Mark 5:22); the only cost was construction and maintenance (Luke 7:1-5). What about rabbis? As I stated in a previous blog (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tomhobson/2017/08/christ-the-builder/), rabbis in the New Testament period had secular jobs for self-support. Shammai was a carpenter. Hillel was a day laborer. Saul of Tarsus was a tentmaker.

Jesus did not practice his profession once he left Nazareth to proclaim God’s word. He appears to have relied on the hospitality of those who benefited from his ministry. Luke 8:1-3 names some women of wealth who followed him and provided for him. This is in keeping with the practice of the above-named rabbis, who often could not earn enough by part-time labor to keep themselves out of poverty, and who survived only by the additional generosity of others.

But Jesus issues a new directive aside from Temple support, to be applied to the funding of the work of his servants: “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” (Luke 10:7) Paul quotes Jesus’ teaching verbatim in 1 Timothy 5:18, and echoes it again in Galatians 6:6: “Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.” Paul also writes, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor (the word timē also means “price” or “compensation”), especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.” (1 Timothy 5:17)

In Didachē 13:1-7 (95 AD), the early church transfers their tithe to the support of prophets, teachers, and the poor (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html). As Paul shows in 1 Corinthians 16:2 and 2 Corinthians 8-9, Gentiles had to be trained to do the same kind of systematic giving to which their Jewish fellow believers were already accustomed.

So how Biblical are we today in the area of compensation for God’s servants? We’ve come a long way from the days when God’s servants were paid in food. Health and retirement plans are modern innovations. They do qualify as “all good things” (Galatians 6:6), but can churches or calling agencies afford the cost? Is that an expense problem, or a giving problem?

How can we attract and retain the best and the brightest to God’s service? High salaries are no guarantee; they can attract the greedy along with the good. Only God can persuade the best people to serve in situations where they could easily be paid more elsewhere. But we don’t have to make God always perform miracles by making it harder financially to respond to God’s call. The alternative is to give faithfully enough that God’s servants won’t have to go back to their income-producing fields to make ends meet.

One fact is certain: without faithful giving, the work of God suffers (Nehemiah 13:10-11). God can plow around that stumbling block, but God is glorified when we remove that stumbling block instead.