Clergy -- better paid but overworked

SAN DIEGO, June 3 (UPI) -- The average annual compensation of Protestant ministers has risen 25 percent to $40,077 in the past 10 years, according to a recent national survey, but is still a pittance compared with the salaries of many other professionals.

Incomes vary by denomination, location and educational levels, the California-based Barna Research Group reported. Ministers of mainline churches -- Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist, for example -- average $45,510.

Pentecostals pay their pastors 16 percent below the national average. Seminary graduates make 38 percent more than pastors who have not attended divinity school. Currently, 63 percent hold a Master of Divinity degree that in mainline denominations is the prerequisite for ordination.

Least well paid are ministers of small rural congregations whose Sunday services are attended by less than 100 adults. On the other hand, large urban or suburban parishes packing more than 251 people into their sanctuaries an any given Sunday give their senior pastors an average of $58,333 per year.

There are some high-profile congregations that pay more than $100,000. On the other hand, Roman Catholic priests are among the lowest-paid clerics, receiving rarely more than $15,000 plus board and keep, according to a spokesman for the National Bishops Conference in Washington.

Parish ministers are considered self-employed. This is why the compensation they receive from their congregations is not called a salary.

"While we should rejoice that we have finally broken through the $40,000 barrier, this is still peanuts compared with the salaries of other professionals," a Lutheran pastor told United Press International at a clergy meeting in California.

It takes four years after college for a Lutheran divinity student -- and three years for seminarians of most other mainline denominations -- to earn an M.Div.

Yet, according to the guidelines of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, pastors should be paid approximately on the level of elementary school teachers.

Corporate executives earn 38 percent more than ministers, Barna reported. Management consultants receive 46 percent more. The incomes of computer engineers are 63 percent, of public school administrators 88 percent, and of physicians 385 percent above those of mainline ministers.

In 2001, a study of the Christian Century magazine showed that the mean income of a clerical household was $54,000, compared with $155,000 of a lawyer's and $186,630 of a physician's household.

Measured against the length of a working week, the compensations of ministers would be considered woefully inadequate by secular standards.

Pastors work anywhere from 50 hours to 70 hours. In the Lutheran tradition, the rule of the thumb is that the preparation of a sermon alone takes one hour per minute of homily, usually beginning with the customary translation of the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel lessons from the Hebrew and Greek originals.

Thus for an average sermon, preparation takes some 20 hours out of a pastor's week.

Then, committee meetings have to be attended, the sick and aging congregants to be visited, confirmation classes to be taught, clergy conference to be attended, members to be married or buried.

Hence, the average parish pastor spends no more than 10 hours per week with his family, Christian Century reported. And not surprisingly, the divorce rate among the clergy has now reached the level of the national average, Newsweek magazine reported.