Debates over clergy compensation are no longer relegated to congregational meetings. A series of recent articles brought the conversation into the public sphere with pastors and commentators questioning how asking for a raise squares with serving the Lord.
It's a problem of shrinking church budgets, The Atlantic reported. Fewer pastors are able to find full-time, well-paid positions because fewer churches are able to afford them...
But a blogger for Sojourners worries that talking about compensation packages distracts from a pastor's true purpose: serving God.
"Seminaries are places for the formation of pastors, not employees. I am afraid, however, that we have lost the sense of that," wrote Tripp Hudgins, the director of admissions at American Baptist Seminary of the West. "Have we lost our middle-class status? I wonder why we had it in the first place."