do pastors normally have a day job? if not how do they get paid?

Answer 1

Some pastors have a day job,but some others are paid a salary from the offerings given by church-goers.

Answer 2

Eleazar's Daughter is absolutely correct (and I'm also a preacher's kid), but my father pastored two very small churches and held down a full time factory job. That meant he was working 40 hours a week in a factory and then spending between 20-30 hours per week on church duties.

Each sermon typically takes between 2-10 hours to plan, research, prepare and write, and if a pastor has Sunday School, morning service, evening service, and midweek service, that typically means about 8-40 hours in preparation time alone!! In addition, there are the administrative duties and handling various emergency calls.

His pay came from the offering plate. And was paid by the church treasurer. Most churches, the treasurer is not allowed to be related and is typically an elected member of the church, and volunteers. My dad was given a check each Sunday for $100 for his weekly duties in the 1980s. Back in the 1950s when he preached at his other church, he was paid $40 per week and had a tiny parsonage at the back of the church property.

In most reputable churches, the churches will show the members an annual report which is submitted at year end to, I believe, the IRS to maintain their non-profit status. On this annual report, it will show any salaries paid out or in-kind benefits such as health insurance or housing allowance.

Answer 3

*sigh*

You must be one of those people who think that pastors only preach on sunday.

Here's a pretty good list of pastoral duties

1) Service and worship planning, including prayers, hymns, sermons and liturgical studies.

2) Shut-in visits. Visiting all of the people that through illness, age, or disability, are not able to get to church. And in those visits they do communion, prayer, and some Bible verses.

3) Weddings. This includes pre-marital counseling and rehearsals, besides the actual service on the actual day.

4) Funerals -- This requires meetings with the family and the funeral home beforehand as well.

5) Hospital visits -- These are more frequent than you might think.

6) Emergency calls -- When an emergency happens and someone is in peril or close to death (and for some reason, these seem to happen more often than not between 2:30-5:30 am or on important Holidays like Christmas.

7) Bible studies, women's circles, etc.

8) Council meetings

9) Worship planning meetings

10) Teaching confirmation

11) Youth group meetings

12) Pastoral counseling-- helping when asked in individual issues and sometimes in famlial conflict mediation, not to mention congregational mediation sometimes.

13) Overseeing the sunday school teaching teams.

14) In small congregations (like the ones my parents are at) they must be the church secretaries as well. Making up the bulletins every week, keeping track of the offering, and the CCC (confirmed contributing, communing) member lists. Submitting the yearly reports.

I am probably missing some things and duties that I will probalby be thinking of later. But as I double PK and can darn well assure you that pastors put in a lot more work than most other professions. And they don't even have the assurance of having inviiolable breaks, vacations, days off, or evenings. When somebody has a heart attack, it doesn't matter if it happened to be their "day off" they go to attend to the family. If somebody dies, it doesn't matter if they were sleeping because it was 3:00 ijhn the morning. They get up and go. If they happened to be involved in a chess game with their daughter, it doesn't matter, because if a family needs immediate mediation over a massive fight over whether or not to put their mother in a nursing home, they must do it.

These people put the well-being of everyone else over and above their own well-being, plans, and family ever day because they have to. They deserve to be paid much more than they are. They put in regular work (9 to 5) nearly every day plus hours and hours into the evening. They sacrifice vacations, days off and pretty much everything when they are called to, which is very often.

Answer 4

Many pastors today are well paid, but that is mostly because of the development of the big churches these days. Church historically have always been small. It was not until the invention of the car that people could travel long distances to a hugh church so churches would be small and located in the community. Small church pastors such as country churches often have to hold a second job, or work for very little, or pastor two or three churches. As a pastor of a real small church many years ago a farmer gave me a couple of goats for milk, and another farmer sent me a hugh truck load of hay.

Answer 5

No, most are full time ministers. They don't get paid just for the 1-2 hours they give sermons on Sundays. Their jobs are much more than just the sermons. Even if you focus only on their Sunday service, each one must be written, there's research to be done, etc. Aside from that there is often counseling, confessions (for priests), church administration for many ministers, newsletters, etc. If it's a small congregation, they may only employ a pastor or minister part time, but for most, they hire someone (or like in our congregation at First Unitarian Universalist San Diego a couple of people, plus an intern) full time.

Answer 6

Yes, pastors do have a day job. Most churches require that the pastor be responsible for the day-to-day adminstration of the local church. He/She also chairs (or attends) several committee meetings each week as well as community organization events. The pastor is responsible for hospital visits for his parishioners as well as other supportive activities for the church congregation. He/She will often spend several hours preparing for the Sunday Service and other services that may occur during the week.

The pastor will usually get paid by a salary from the local church. He may also receive fees for weddings, funerals, baptisms, etc.

Answer 7

Most pastors have spent at least 8 years getting his degrees and getting ordained, and he is paid by the church for being the equivalent of the CEO of the church.

The elders and deacons are like his board of directors, although that is not how it was originally designed.

You might remember that in many churches the pastor has to preach the same sermon on Sunday at two or three services.
Then he has to preach one on Sunday evening, and either preach or conduct a Bible study on Wednesday night.

Then in most churches he visits the sick, and those having family problems, and officiate at funerals.

Somewhere in this he has to find time to prepare his sermons for the next week.
Remember he has three of them, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night.

How much would you want to do all that?

Those who take the job of pastor in a very small church, usually has to hold down a job to pay his expenses, so he becomes what we call a bi-vocational pastor.

grace2u

Answer 8

Usually a church is run by a board of Elders who hire a Pastor to serve full time in the church. The Elders are the ones who determine what the Pastor's salary is. In smaller churches there may just be a Pastor with a day job and a small congregation and no Elders at all. It varies from church to church and from denomination to denomination.

Answer 9

The pastor from my Church receives his income from the parishioners. He does not have a typical day job, because he is suppose to take care of matters at the Church, make home visits to the sick or hurting. He attends meetings with other pastors and prepares his sermon. Some pastor's do have jobs.

Answer 10

some do, but if they are a full on God called pastor according to jeremiah 3:15 then they would not have time for a day job. The holy spirit leads us to give and if I were sitting under him learning then he would have my support and the rest of the fellowships. some accept what they call tithes, 10 percent of there income is given to the pastor, or the church