bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Remember the Past":
rlschultz is right. Many pastors are out of touch because they don't visit the member's homes, or they only visit the well-off members' homes too much. Not visiting 100% of members once per year (or over two years) is going to skew their salary and benefits expectations one way or the other. Visiting only the homes of the wealthy will make a pastor dissatisfied with his salary and with living in a parsonage.
Our last pastor was like that and his salary was never enough, according to him, and he wanted to double the size of the parsonage. Finally, an addition was built, but nothing like he had hoped.
Meanwhile, the poorer people in the congregation were amazed he wasn't satisfied with what he made, but they could agree the parsonage was small for having grown kids there. (Previous pastors sent them off to prep school, so that never became a concern before.) Later, the vacancy pastor, who had retired, said he never earned anything close to what the former pastor made during his entire career.
Some say the pastor's salary is supposed to be middling based on his congregation member's sslaries. Whatever the median bread earner made would be a guide for the pastor's salary. The WELS guidelines say the base salary ought to be whatever a public school teacher makes with the same amount of years experience, but tack on more based on the size of the congregation, the degree level of the pastor, etc. LCMS guidelines can be found online with some looking.
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GJ - There is no reason for this to change, Bruce. When a pastor is known for visiting the gym and not his own shut-ins, he is put on the Synodical Council as the pastoral delegate. The only thing that matters is - being a buddy of the SP.
