Do As I Say, Not As I Do

What this page is asking

The author of this site describes a situation he has observed, and he puts it like this: “A modern church rails against those who do not pay their employees a proper wage and calls it exploitation. This is fair. When they have an opportunity to hire a praise team leader they barely pay minimum wage even when they can easily afford to pay more. Does the standard not apply to churches?”

The complaint is not that the church preaches about wages. The author calls that fair, and so does this page. The complaint is about what happens when the preacher becomes the paymaster. An old English proverb covers it, and it was first written down as a remark about the clergy. The lawyer John Selden, who died in 1654, is recorded as saying: “Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do” (Table-Talk, 1689, under “Preaching”).

If the standard does apply to the church, then a congregation that pays the least it legally can, while able to pay more, is doing the thing its own pulpit condemns. If the standard does not apply, there must be a reason why work done for the church is owed less than work done for a shop or a factory, and the reason ought to be findable in Scripture or in what the historic churches have taught.

Two positions, labelled, and used consistently throughout

Both positions are held by people who care about the church and about justice. The page states each as a thoughtful person who holds it would state it.

Notice what the two share. Both affirm that exploiting workers is a sin, that a church is right to say so, that money given to a church is held in trust, that volunteers are a gift, and that serving God is a calling. They disagree about one thing: whether the church, when it employs someone, is bound by the measure it preaches to other employers.

What the page concludes, stated up front

The prompt behind this page

Everything below was produced by giving the following brief to a frontier language model with web search, which assembled and checked the sources. It is published so you can run it yourself, change it, sharpen it, or reverse it and see what comes back. Three experiments are worth more than reading this page. First, reverse it: ask for the strongest case, from Scripture and from church history, that work for the church should be paid differently from other work. Ask it to include Paul’s tentmaking, the vowed poverty of monks and friars, and the long tradition of unpaid choirs. Second, narrow it: ask only what Nehemiah 13:4–14 says about the singers, in its setting and in the Hebrew. Third, make it a test: take the last sermon you heard that touched on wages or fairness at work, write down what it asked of employers, and ask how each demand reads when the employer is a church. Use no names.

Write a detailed, source-first, interactive article, in British
English, for a general reader who is willing to work. Quote Scripture
from the Authorised Version. Date and attribute every other quotation:
give the work, the edition or translation, the section, and the page
where possible. Where an attribution or date is disputed, say so at
the point of use. Verify every quotation against a reliable published
source; where a quotation cannot be verified, cut it. Do not invent
quotes. Do not take verses out of context: where a text is being
applied beyond what it first addressed, say so.

  TITLE. Do As I Say, Not As I Do

  AREA OF INTEREST. Do as I say, not as I do.

  THESIS. A modern church rails against those who do not pay their
  employees a proper wage and calls it exploitation. This is fair.
  When they have an opportunity to hire a praise team leader they
  barely pay minimum wage even when they can easily afford to pay
  more. Does the standard not apply to churches?

  THE POINTS TO TEST.
   1. The sin of double standards (Romans 2:21-23). Paul challenges
      those who teach others but fail to practise what they preach.
      Does a church undermine its moral authority when it condemns
      in businesses the very practices it employs itself?
   2. The labourer deserves his wages (1 Timothy 5:18; Luke 10:7).
      Scripture explicitly applies the principle of fair
      compensation to those engaged in ministry. Why should a praise
      team leader's work be valued less simply because it serves the
      church?
   3. The condemnation of withheld wages (James 5:4). James condemns
      employers who enrich themselves at the expense of their
      workers. Does paying the lowest possible wage, despite having
      the resources to pay fairly, violate the spirit of this
      teaching?
   4. Ministry versus employment (1 Corinthians 9:7-14). Paul
      defended the right of those engaged in ministry to receive
      material support, even though he sometimes voluntarily
      declined it. Is there a fundamental difference between freely
      volunteering and being expected to accept inadequate
      compensation?
   5. The church's higher moral responsibility (Galatians 6:10).
      Christians are instructed to do good to everyone, especially
      those belonging to the household of faith. Should a church
      demonstrate at least the same concern for its employees that
      it demands of secular employers?
   6. The difference between minimum and just wages (Deuteronomy
      24:14-15). Meeting the legal minimum does not necessarily
      fulfil the biblical obligation to treat workers justly. Should
      compensation reflect responsibilities, hours, skills and
      reasonable living expenses rather than merely satisfy the law?
   7. The misuse of sacrifice and vocation (Colossians 3:23-25).
      Serving God is a Christian calling, but that calling does not
      eliminate an employer's obligations. Is it appropriate for
      church leaders to invoke spiritual commitment to justify wages
      they would condemn elsewhere?
   8. Stewardship versus exploitation (2 Corinthians 8:13-14).
      Churches must manage donated resources responsibly,
      particularly when finances are limited. How should they
      balance financial stewardship with the obligation not to place
      a disproportionate burden on poorly compensated employees?
   9. The historic Christian understanding of just wages. From the
      Church Fathers' condemnation of greed to later Catholic social
      teaching on just wages, Christian tradition has emphasised
      economic justice. How have Lutheran and Anglican traditions
      understood the employer's responsibility to provide fair
      compensation?
  10. The danger of performative righteousness (Matthew 23:23-28).
      Jesus rebuked religious leaders who emphasised outward
      righteousness while neglecting justice, mercy and
      faithfulness. Does publicly denouncing exploitation while
      practising questionable employment policies risk repeating the
      same error?

TWO LABELLED POSITIONS, used consistently:
  M - the One Measure: the church as employer is bound by the
      standard it preaches to other employers. HELD.
  E - the Exemption: church work is ministry and church money is
      given, so the standard for business does not bind the church
      in the same way. State it as a sincere holder would.
      UNDER TEST.

COUNTER-CASE. No separate section. Answer objections inside the
argument where they arise, at full strength - including donated
money and the duty of stewardship, small and poor congregations,
"he agreed to it", "it is a calling", the many who serve unpaid,
Paul's tentmaking, the parable of the labourers in the vineyard
(Matthew 20), and "be content with your wages" (Luke 3:14). Let the
part on stewardship (point 8) carry most of this weight.

TWO PARTS THE ARGUMENT OWES ITS READERS.
  a. The singers in Scripture: the Levite singers' training,
     appointment and daily portions (1 Chronicles 9, 15, 25;
     Nehemiah 11-13; Ezra 7), and what happened when they went
     unpaid.
  b. The churches on their own words: what Catholic, Lutheran and
     Anglican bodies have published about the just wage as it
     applies to themselves as employers, including any documented
     shortfall and how the body responded.

NAMING. No living person named anywhere. The church in the thesis
is not identified, and no actual congregation is described or
assessed. Deceased figures quoted only from dated published works.
Denominations and organisations quoted only from their own
published documents, verbatim. Every modern example is composed
for illustration and labelled as composed.

EXCLUDED. Employment law in any country. Any proposed figure for
any post. What senior pastors are paid. Whether churches should
preach on economic questions at all (grant that they should).

INTERACTIVES. A priors quiz. A sort of the claims inside the
thesis. Composed sermon lines about business, turned round to face
the church. A quiz on who each wage text says is to be paid. A
question on Nehemiah 13. A sort of composed cases into gifts and
wages. A sort of the reasons given for a wage by whether they
settle anything. A sort of verses by whom they are addressed to. A
calculator for the gap between what is paid and what the reader
judges the work to be worth. An objection drill the reader answers
in his own words first. A guess-the-source quiz on real, dated
quotations. A sort of statements by whether a church was speaking
to the world or to itself. A diagnostic for those who set or
approve what a church pays.

OUTPUT: a single self-contained interactive HTML page, professional
and readable, light theme by default with a dark switch, stating the
question at the top, publishing this prompt in full, repeating the
key points in prominent boxes for readers who skim, and giving the
reader something to do in every major section. Also produce a plain-
English quick version of about fifteen minutes with three short
exercises.

The page you are reading is the output of that brief after the sources were checked. Where a quotation could not be verified against a published source, it was cut. Three things qualified the brief. The thesis was made conditional. The brief describes a church. The page cannot check the facts of any church, so it states the four facts the charge depends on and argues only about what follows where all four are true. Three of the ten texts were read more narrowly than the brief uses them. James 5:4 is about wages kept back by fraud. Deuteronomy 24:14–15 is chiefly about wages paid late. 2 Corinthians 8:13–14 is about a relief collection between churches. The page says so at each point and argues from the principle each text states, not from a meaning it does not have. And one finding ran against the grain of the brief: this is an old failing and not a modern one. Nehemiah found the singers unpaid in the fifth century before Christ, Luther complained in 1529 that congregations would not support one preacher, and Bach told the Leipzig council in 1730 that the musicians’ pay had been withdrawn. Luther’s catechism also charges workmen with theft when they overcharge and idle. The commandment cuts both ways, and the page says so.

What do you currently think?

Ten questions. Each has a determinate answer, and you can check every one yourself in Part XIII. Answer them before reading and lock them in. They come back in Part XII with the sources beside them.

What follows

The charge, taken apart

A charge of double standards is easy to make and easy to get wrong. It sounds like one accusation. It is really four statements of fact joined together, and the accusation is only as good as the weakest of them.

Take away any one of the four and the charge fails. A church that has never preached on wages may be paying badly, but it is not contradicting itself. A member who offers to lead the music and wants nothing for it is making a gift, and nobody is exploiting him. A congregation of forty people that pays what it has is not keeping anything back; Paul says of giving that “it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not” (2 Corinthians 8:12). And a church that pays its staff properly has nothing to answer at all. Many do.

This page cannot know which churches meet all four conditions. It has no access to anyone’s accounts and it names no one. What it can do is ask what Scripture and the historic churches say about the case where all four are true.

It should also be said at the start that Position E contains several things that are simply correct. A church is not a business. It has no owners who grow rich on its surplus. Its income is given, often at real cost, by people who expect it to be spent with care. Most of what gets done in any congregation is done by people who are paid nothing and want nothing. A treasurer who watches every pound is doing his duty. None of that is in dispute.

Sort the claims yourself. Each of the eight statements below is contained in the two positions or follows from them. For each, decide whether both positions would accept it, or whether it is the point on which they divide.

0 of 8 sorted

“Teachest thou not thyself?”

In the second chapter of Romans Paul turns to a man who knows the will of God and is proud of knowing it. He is “a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes” (2:19–20). Paul asks him four questions:

Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.

Romans 2:21–24. The last sentence quotes Isaiah 52:5.

The context should be stated. Paul is addressing a Jewish teacher who relies on having the law, and his purpose in the letter is to show that everyone, with the law or without it, stands guilty before God. He is not writing about church employment. But the principle he uses is one he has already stated without any limit at the head of the chapter: “wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things” (2:1). And the first example he picks is the man who preaches against taking what belongs to another.

Jesus gives the same rule as a rule of measurement:

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? … Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:2–3, 5. From the Sermon on the Mount.

Two things in that saying matter here. The measure a person uses on others is the measure that will be used on him. And Jesus does not tell the man to leave his brother’s eye alone. He tells him what to do first. A church is not being told to stop preaching about wages. It is being told where to begin.

Teachers are held to more, and the New Testament says so plainly. “My brethren, be not many masters,” James writes, using the old word for teachers, “knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation” (3:1). “Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” (Luke 12:48). Gregory the Great, writing a handbook for bishops about the year 590, put the damage in a sentence:

For certainly no one does more harm in the Church than one who has the name and rank of sanctity, while he acts perversely.

Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Book I, chapter 2 (c. 590), “That none should enter on a place of government who practise not in life what they have learned by study.” Trans. James Barmby, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 12 (1895), as revised for New Advent.

Does the failure make the sermon false?

It does not, and it is worth being exact about this. When Jesus speaks of teachers who “say, and do not,” he tells the crowd to keep the teaching: “All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works” (Matthew 23:3). The factory worker who is paid too little has been wronged whether or not the church that says so pays its own staff properly. A true statement does not become false because the wrong person makes it.

What the failure does is remove the teacher’s standing. Paul names the result: “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.” The outsider who hears the sermon and then learns what the church pays does not conclude that wages are unimportant. He concludes that the church does not mean what it says, and he extends that conclusion to everything else it says. The Catholic bishops of the world, meeting in Rome in 1971, said the same about their own church:

While the Church is bound to give witness to justice, she recognizes that anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes. Hence we must undertake an examination of the modes of acting and of the possessions and life style found within the Church herself.

Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World (Rome, 1971), chapter III, “The Practice of Justice: The Church’s Witness.” Part X returns to this document.

Turn it round

The simplest test of a double standard is to take a sentence said about someone else and say it about yourself. Six sermon lines follow. All six are composed by this page; none is quoted from any preacher. Each is the kind of thing a church might fairly say about a business. Turn each one round so that the church is the employer, and decide whether it still holds. Two of the six do not carry over as they stand, and the reasons are instructive.

0 of 6 turned round

The labourer is worthy of his hire

The sentence is so familiar that its setting is easily forgotten. Jesus did not say it about farm workers. He said it about people he was sending out to preach. The seventy were to take no money and no bag, and to stay with whoever would receive them:

And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house.

Luke 10:7. Matthew’s version, in the sending of the twelve, reads “the workman is worthy of his meat” (10:10).

A generation later Paul quotes the saying as Scripture, and again he applies it to those who serve the church:

Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.

1 Timothy 5:17–18. The first quotation is Deuteronomy 25:4. The second is the saying of Jesus in Luke 10:7.

“Honour” here includes money. John Chrysostom, preaching on the passage in the late fourth century, was in no doubt:

The “honour” of which he here speaks is attention to them, and the supply of their necessities … Therefore to teachers should be granted a supply of their necessities without grudging, that they may not faint nor be discouraged, nor by attention to inferior things deprive themselves of greater; that they may labor for spiritual things, paying no regard to worldly things.

John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Timothy, Homily 15, on 5:17–18 (late fourth century). Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13 (1889), as revised for New Advent.

Chrysostom gives a reason as well as a rule. A person who has to worry about the rent cannot give his mind to the work. Paying him properly is how the church gets the work it is asking for.

The earliest church order outside the New Testament, the Didache, written around the end of the first century, uses the same comparison: “every true prophet that wills to abide among you is worthy of his support. So also a true teacher is himself worthy, as the workman, of his support” (chapter 13; trans. M. B. Riddle, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, as revised for New Advent). Paul puts it as a command of Christ: “Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14). And to the Galatians: “Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things” (6:6). “Communicate” in older English means share.

Which way the argument runs

Look at how these passages reason. They do not start with a special rule for clergy and stretch it to cover ordinary work. They start with the ordinary workman and apply his case to the minister. Paul’s examples in 1 Corinthians 9 are a soldier, a man who plants a vineyard, a shepherd, a ploughman and a thresher (9:7, 10). An ox is allowed to eat while it works. The Didache says the teacher is worthy “as the workman.” The claim of the person who serves the church is the labourer’s claim. It rests on the fact that he works.

That answers the brief’s question from an unexpected direction. Why should a praise team leader’s work be valued less because it serves the church? On the New Testament’s reasoning there is no ground for it. Scripture’s argument for paying ministers is that they are workers like any others. An argument that they should be paid less because their work is for the church turns the apostle’s reasoning upside down.

Two cautions keep this honest. First, the measure in these texts is enough to live on. The seventy were to eat what was set before them. “Live of the gospel” is Paul’s phrase. Nothing here supports a claim to wealth, and the same letters warn ministers against the love of money (1 Timothy 3:3; 6:9–10). Second, every one of these texts is about people who preach and teach: the seventy, the elders, the apostles. A praise team leader is not an elder, and a fair reader will ask whether the principle reaches him. It does, for two reasons. The reason the texts give is general: “the labourer,” “the workman.” And Scripture made its own provision for the people who led the music in the house of God. That is the subject of Part IV.

Six passages follow. For each, choose who the text says is to be provided for.

The singers, that did the work

The case in the brief concerns a musician. Scripture has a good deal to say about people whose work was the music of God’s house, and it says how they were chosen, how they were trained and how they were kept.

When David brought the ark to Jerusalem he told the chief Levites “to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of musick” (1 Chronicles 15:16). The man put in charge was chosen for his ability: “Chenaniah, chief of the Levites, was for song: he instructed about the song, because he was skilful” (15:22). Later the whole body was organised. “The number of them, with their brethren that were instructed in the songs of the LORD, even all that were cunning, was two hundred fourscore and eight,” and they drew lots for their turns of duty, “the teacher as the scholar” (25:7–8). “Cunning” in the Authorised Version means skilled. These were trained people working under a director, and the Chronicler adds that the leading singers were given no other duties: they “were free: for they were employed in that work day and night” (9:33).

They were Levites, and Levites had no land. The Law gave them the tithe in its place, and it calls the tithe by a plain name: “it is your reward for your service in the tabernacle of the congregation” (Numbers 18:31). After the exile, when the temple had been rebuilt, the arrangement for the singers is recorded specifically:

For it was the king’s commandment concerning them, that a certain portion should be for the singers, due for every day. … And all Israel in the days of Zerubbabel, and in the days of Nehemiah, gave the portions of the singers and the porters, every day his portion.

Nehemiah 11:23; 12:47. The letter of Artaxerxes to Ezra had exempted “priests and Levites, singers, porters” and other temple servants from tax (Ezra 7:24).

A daily portion, laid down by command, for the people who sang. King Hezekiah had given the reason for such provision nearly three centuries earlier, when he “commanded the people that dwelt in Jerusalem to give the portion of the priests and the Levites, that they might be encouraged in the law of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 31:4). It is the reason Chrysostom would give: people who are provided for can attend to the work.

What happened when the portions stopped

Nehemiah governed Jerusalem for twelve years and then returned to the Persian court. While he was away the priest Eliashib, who had charge of the temple storerooms, cleared out the great chamber where the tithes and offerings were kept and gave it to Tobiah the Ammonite, an old opponent of the rebuilding to whom he was allied, for his own use. The chamber had held, among other things, what “was commanded to be given to the Levites, and the singers, and the porters” (Nehemiah 13:5). When Nehemiah came back, a little after 432 BC, he threw Tobiah’s furniture out. Then he noticed something else:

And I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been given them: for the Levites and the singers, that did the work, were fled every one to his field. Then contended I with the rulers, and said, Why is the house of God forsaken? And I gathered them together, and set them in their place. Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn and the new wine and the oil unto the treasuries.

Nehemiah 13:10–12. In the next verse he appoints four treasurers, “for they were counted faithful, and their office was to distribute unto their brethren.”

Five things in those three verses bear on the question of this page.

The singers are called the people “that did the work.” Nehemiah does not describe the music as an offering the singers were privileged to make. He describes it as work, and the portions as what was due for it.

Unpaid, they went back to their fields. They had to eat. A musician who is not kept by the house he serves will find his living somewhere else, and the house will get what is left of his time. Nehemiah does not criticise them for it.

He blames the rulers. “Then contended I with the rulers.” The fault lay with the people who controlled the storeroom. The question he puts to them is not why the singers were disloyal. It is “Why is the house of God forsaken?” In his eyes a temple that does not keep its singers is a temple that has been abandoned by those responsible for it.

The resources had existed. The room that should have held the singers’ portions had been handed to a well-connected man. The story does not describe a poor community that could not pay. It describes one that had spent the provision on something else.

The remedy had two parts. The people were asked, and “then brought all Judah the tithe.” And honest men were appointed to see that it reached those it was meant for.

“That was the temple”

The natural objection is that all this belongs to the Old Testament. The church is not the temple, a praise team leader is not a Levite, and the tithe laws are not binding on Christians. That is true, and this page does not argue from the tithe. It argues as Paul does. When he wants to show the Corinthians that ministers of the gospel are to be supported, he points to the temple and draws the line across himself:

Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.

1 Corinthians 9:13–14. “Even so” carries the principle over from the old order to the new.

The apostle treats the temple’s arrangements as a pattern. Those who are set apart to serve in the house of God are to be kept by the people they serve. A church that takes its picture of worship from these chapters, with skilled musicians appointed to lead the people’s praise, has in the same chapters the terms on which those musicians served.

The right Paul would not use

Position E has an apostle on its side, or seems to. Paul preached at Corinth for eighteen months and took nothing from the Corinthians. He supported himself by making tents (Acts 18:3). If the greatest missionary of the early church worked for nothing, a praise team leader can hardly complain.

The chapter in which Paul explains himself needs to be read whole, because it says something close to the opposite. He begins by establishing, at length, that the wage was owed:

Have we not power to eat and to drink? … Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working? Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? … If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ.

1 Corinthians 9:4, 6–7, 11–12. “Power” here means a right. “Carnal things” means material support.

He argues from common sense, then from the Law of Moses, then from the temple, then from a command of the Lord. Only when the right has been proved four times over does he say what he has done with it: “But I have used none of these things” (9:15). And he gives his reason. He wants to be able to say that “when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge” (9:18).

Three features of this are easy to miss.

The decision was Paul’s. “We have not used this power.” “I have used none of these things.” The Corinthians did not decide that their apostle should go unpaid. He decided it, for reasons of his own, about a right he insists he possessed. He says the same to the Thessalonians: he worked night and day “not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you” (2 Thessalonians 3:9).

He did not give it up everywhere. While he was refusing money from Corinth he was accepting it from other churches, and he says so with some force: “I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service” (2 Corinthians 11:8). The Philippians sent him support more than once, and he thanked them warmly for it (Philippians 4:15–18).

He counted the Corinthians’ saving as a loss to them. “For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? forgive me this wrong” (2 Corinthians 12:13). The irony is heavy, but the point is serious. The churches that paid him had done something right which Corinth had not been given the chance to do.

So the tentmaker is a poor patron for the Exemption. Paul’s example shows that a minister may give his labour freely. It shows nothing about a church deciding that he should.

Who decides?

The brief asks whether there is a fundamental difference between freely volunteering and being expected to accept inadequate pay. There is, and it lies in who makes the decision.

A gift has to be free to be a gift. Paul would not even take a favour from Philemon without his agreement, “that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly” (Philemon 14). Givers are to give “not grudgingly, or of necessity” (2 Corinthians 9:7). When Israel gave for the temple, “the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly” (1 Chronicles 29:9). Peter’s words to Ananias state the principle about property in general: “Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” (Acts 5:4). Dossier 46 examines that passage.

When a member volunteers, he decides what to give, how much, and for how long, and he can stop. When a church creates a post and sets a low wage for it, the church has decided how much of the worker’s labour will go unpaid. The worker’s only choice is to take the post on those terms or not to have it. If the difference between the wage and a fair wage is called his offering to God, it is an offering whose amount was fixed by the person receiving it.

None of this is a case against volunteers. For most of Christian history the music of most churches has been sung by people who were paid nothing, and the same is true of most of what any congregation does. Nor is it a case against the minister who earns his living elsewhere by his own choice. The line falls at the point where the church turns a role into a job. Once it has fixed the hours, named the duties and made the person answerable for them, it has taken on what Scripture says to those who hire.

Eight composed cases follow. None describes a real person or church. For each, decide whether what is being given is a gift, or whether a wage is owed.

0 of 8 sorted

Minimum, or just?

The Bible’s wage texts are few and severe. This part reads them for what they say, which is narrower than they are sometimes made to say, and then asks what principle they share.

Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee.

Deuteronomy 24:14–15. Leviticus 19:13 has the same rule: “the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.”

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. … Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton.

James 5:1, 3–5. “The Lord of sabaoth” is the Lord of hosts.

Two prophets say the same. Jeremiah pronounces woe on a king “that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work” (22:13). Malachi has God coming as “a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages” (3:5).

What the texts are about, in the letter

Honesty requires a distinction here. The Law’s rule is about paying on time. A day labourer was paid at sunset, and to keep his money overnight was to leave him without supper. Jeremiah’s king paid nothing at all. James’s landowners kept the wages back “by fraud.” None of these texts, in the first instance, is about a wage that is low but agreed, and paid in full on the day it falls due. A church that pays the legal minimum every month without fail has not done what James describes. The brief is careful about this. It asks whether such a church violates “the spirit” of the teaching, and that is the right question.

What the texts are about, in principle

Look at how each passage frames the wrong. The heading in Deuteronomy is “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy.” Late payment is the example given, and oppression is the thing forbidden. The reason attached is the worker’s need: “he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it.” Malachi’s phrase is wider still: those who “oppress the hireling in his wages.” James’s charge is not only the fraud. It begins with accumulation, “Ye have heaped treasure together,” and it ends with comfort, “Ye have lived in pleasure.” Jeremiah’s king was building: “a wide house and large chambers … cieled with cedar, and painted with vermilion” (22:14). In every case there is plenty on one side and want on the other, and the stronger party has used its position to keep what the weaker party’s work has earned.

Proverbs gives the principle its most compact form, and it contains both of the conditions that matter for this page:

Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee.

Proverbs 3:27–28.

“To whom it is due,” and “when it is in the power of thine hand.” Those are Facts 3 and 4 from Part I. John Calvin, commenting on James in 1551, drew the general lesson: “What can be more base than that they, who supply us with bread by their labor should be pined through want?” and “the cries of the poor come to the ears of God, so that we may know that the wrong done to them shall not be unpunished” (Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, on James 5:4; trans. John Owen, Calvin Translation Society, 1855).

What is “due”?

Everything now turns on what a worker is owed. Position E has a simple answer: what the law requires and what he agreed to. The New Testament’s instruction to Christian employers uses a different measure:

Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.

Colossians 4:1. The servants in view were slaves, to whom Roman law gave no claim to a wage at all.

Paul could not have meant “what the law requires,” because the law required nothing. He names justice and fairness as the measure, and he gives the reason: the master has a Master.

A legal minimum wage is a floor. A legislature sets it as the least that may be paid for any work whatever, by any employer, to the least experienced worker in the country. It takes no account of what a particular job demands. It was never meant to say what skilled and responsible work is worth. And a church that preaches against exploitation has already said this. When it tells employers that paying the least they can get away with is wrong, it is telling them that the legal floor is not the moral measure. It cannot then appeal to the legal floor in its own defence.

Catholic social teaching put the point with precision in 1891:

Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.

Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (15 May 1891), §45. English text as published by the Holy See.

The modern Catechism condenses it: “Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2434). The same paragraph says what should be weighed: “In determining fair pay both the needs and the contributions of each person must be taken into account,” and it quotes the Second Vatican Council that pay should take account of “the role and the productivity of each, the state of the business, and the common good.”

That list answers the brief’s sixth question almost item by item. The brief asks whether pay should reflect responsibilities, hours, skills and reasonable living expenses. Responsibilities, hours and skills are the worker’s “contributions.” Living expenses are his “needs.” And the Catechism adds one thing the brief does not, which is fair to Position E: “the state of the business.” What the employer is actually able to pay counts. It counts in both directions. It excuses the church that has little, and it removes the excuse from the church that has plenty.

Two objections from the Gospels

The labourers in the vineyard. In Matthew 20 a householder pays the men who worked all day the penny they agreed to, and when they grumble he says: “Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? … Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” (20:13, 15). This looks like a defence of the agreed wage. But the penny was a denarius, the ordinary full day’s wage of the time, and nobody in the story was paid less than that. The complaint of the first workers is that others were treated generously. The householder’s promise to the later men was “whatsoever is right I will give you” (20:4), and he then gave them more than their hours had earned. The parable is about the kingdom of heaven. Read as a guide to wages, it would teach employers to overpay.

“Be content with your wages.” John the Baptist said this to soldiers who asked what they should do (Luke 3:14). The full sentence is “Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.” He is telling armed men not to add to their pay by extortion. It is an instruction to the person who receives the wage. Part VII looks at what happens when instructions of that kind are quoted by the person who pays it.

Eight things an employer might say about a wage follow. For each, decide whether it is something that counts towards making a wage just, or whether it leaves the question open.

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“As to the Lord”

The strongest religious argument for the Exemption is that church work is done for God. The person who leads worship is serving the Lord, and people who serve the Lord should not be thinking about money. There is a verse for it:

Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons. Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.

Colossians 3:22–4:1. The chapter division, which is medieval, falls before the last sentence and hides the fact that it finishes the paragraph.

The first word is “Servants.” Verse 23 is addressed to people who work for someone else, and it tells them how to work: wholeheartedly, for the Lord’s eyes and not the master’s. Then the paragraph turns, with a warning that applies to both sides, “there is no respect of persons,” and addresses the masters in their turn. They are told what they owe.

Paul uses the same structure in Ephesians. Servants are to serve “as to the Lord, and not to men.” Then: “And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him” (6:7, 9). Luther’s Small Catechism of 1529 ends with a Table of Duties that prints these texts under separate headings, each estate with its own: “For Male and Female Servants, Hired Men, and Laborers” has the first, and “For Masters and Mistresses” has the second. The same table, in a section the standard edition prints in brackets, has a heading “What the Hearers Owe to Their Pastors,” and under it 1 Corinthians 9:14, Galatians 6:6 and 1 Timothy 5:17–18 (Triglot Concordia, 1921).

Whose verse is it?

The principle the catechism’s layout teaches is that Scripture speaks to each party about his own duty. It tells the worker to work with his whole heart and to be content. It tells the one who pays to be just. Both sets of instructions are true, and each belongs to the person it is addressed to.

The trouble starts when one party picks up the other’s verse. A worker who quotes “the labourer is worthy of his hire” to excuse idleness has taken a text addressed to those who pay and made it a claim for himself. An employer who quotes “do it heartily, as to the Lord” to explain a low wage has taken a text addressed to the worker and made it a discharge for himself. When a church leader tells an employee that his work is for the Lord and so the pay does not matter, he is reading out the servant’s instructions to the servant and leaving his own unread. His own are in the next sentence.

The same is true of the other texts that are used this way. “Not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind” (1 Peter 5:2) is addressed to elders about their own motives. “Be content with your wages” was said to soldiers. “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11) is Paul speaking about himself, and three verses later he tells the Philippians, who had sent him money, “Notwithstanding ye have well done.” His contentment did not cancel their obligation, and he did not let them think it had.

Luther saw that the commandment against stealing cuts in both directions, and it is fair to Position E to quote him on the worker’s side. In the Large Catechism he counts it theft when servants are careless with their master’s goods, and he goes on: “The same I say also of mechanics, workmen, and day-laborers, who all follow their wanton notions, and never know enough ways to overcharge people, while they are lazy and unfaithful in their work” (Large Catechism, Seventh Commandment, 1529; Triglot Concordia). A church employee who does the job badly and expects to be kept on because it is a church is also taking what is not his. Each party has its own text to answer to.

Calling

Serving God is a calling, and nothing on this page takes that back. But the historic doctrine of vocation never set a calling against a wage. In the Lutheran account a calling is the place where a person serves his neighbour, and the farmer, the magistrate and the pastor are all called. The farmer is not expected to give his grain away because God called him to grow it. Dossier 12 sets out that doctrine. To say that a musician’s work is a vocation is to say that God is served by it. It is no reason to pay less for it.

One more text bears on this. When David was offered a threshing floor and oxen for nothing, so that he could build an altar, he refused: “Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). The congregation’s praise on Sunday is the congregation’s offering. If its real cost has been carried by the person at the front, who is paid less than the work is worth, then the congregation is offering to God something that cost it very little. That is an application and should be weighed as one. David’s instinct was that worship ought to cost the worshipper.

Ten texts follow. For each, decide who is being spoken to.

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Whose burden?

Position E is at its strongest on money, and its case should be heard in full before it is answered.

A church lives on gifts. Some of them come from people with very little, and Jesus noticed when a widow put in two mites. Those who handle the money are trustees: “it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). Paul took elaborate care over the collection he carried, “avoiding this, that no man should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us” (2 Corinthians 8:20). Every pound spent on a salary is a pound not spent on the poor, on mission or on keeping the roof on. Many congregations are small and many are poor. A treasurer who holds costs down is doing what he was appointed to do, and a board that spends freely with other people’s offerings deserves the suspicion it gets. Dossier 08 and Dossier 43 argue at length that givers and boards should watch where the money goes.

All of that is true. The question is what follows from it.

What the money was given for

Stewardship means spending given money faithfully on the purposes it was given for. In Scripture, keeping those who serve in God’s house is one of the first of those purposes. The tithe was the Levites’ “reward for your service.” All Israel “gave the portions of the singers.” The Lord “ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.” A faithful steward does not treat the worker’s wage as a drain on the offering. It is one of the things the offering is for.

The Book of Common Prayer makes the point every time a collection is taken. The 1662 Communion service provides twenty sentences of Scripture to be read while the alms are gathered. Five of the twenty concern the support of those who minister: “Who goeth a warfare at any time of his own cost?”; “If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall reap your worldly things?”; “they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel”; “Let him that is taught in the Word minister unto him that teacheth, in all good things”; and “let us do good unto all men; and specially unto them that are of the household of faith.” The last of these is Galatians 6:10, the text of the brief’s fifth point. In the Prayer Book’s arrangement it is read over the plate. The people who work for the church are of the household of faith, and are owed at least what the church asks employers to give to strangers.

“Not that other men be eased, and ye burdened”

For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality.

2 Corinthians 8:13–14. Paul is asking the Corinthians to contribute to a collection for the poor Christians of Jerusalem.

This is not a text about wages, and it should not be quoted as if it were. Paul is reassuring a congregation that he is not asking it to impoverish itself so that another can live comfortably. But the principle he states is general, and he states it as something obvious: relief for one party should not be bought by loading another.

Apply that to a church which has the means to pay properly and pays the minimum. The cost of the work does not disappear because the church declines to meet it. Somebody carries the difference between what the work is worth and what is paid for it, and that somebody is the worker. The congregation is eased: its budget is lower, or its reserve is larger, or its building is better equipped. One person is burdened. That is the arrangement Paul says he does not mean.

It can be put another way. A worker who is paid less than his work is worth is making a contribution to the church of the difference. In most congregations that makes him one of its larger donors, and on a low wage it makes him its most generous by proportion. But his gift differs from every other gift in the building. He did not choose the amount. It appears in no record. He cannot reduce it in a hard year. And nobody thanks him for it, because nobody has noticed that it is being made.

The gift nobody recorded

The following is an illustration. Every figure in it is yours, in your own currency, and the page proposes none. It simply takes the figures seriously.

When the money really is short

Sometimes it is. Paul’s rule covers the case: a contribution “is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not” (2 Corinthians 8:12). A church that cannot pay more is not exploiting anyone by paying what it can, provided it is telling the truth about what it has.

Scripture’s two examples of a shortfall in the support of those who served are both resolved the same way. Hezekiah “commanded the people that dwelt in Jerusalem to give the portion of the priests and the Levites,” and the people brought so much that it lay in heaps, and the chief priest reported that “we have had enough to eat, and have left plenty” (2 Chronicles 31:4, 10). Nehemiah restored the portions, and “then brought all Judah the tithe.” In both cases the leaders told the people what the work of God’s house cost and asked them to meet it. Neither settled the matter by setting the singers’ portion lower and saying nothing.

The Church of England gave the same answer about itself in 2015, when it was reported that some of its institutions were paying less than the Living Wage its bishops had commended. Its statement, as carried by the Church Times, said: “As charities, churches require time to increase giving levels prior to ensuring delivery of the Living Wage.” Whatever one makes of the delay, the logic is the right way round. The wage is the fixed point, and the giving has to rise to meet it. Part X returns to the episode.

So the brief’s question, how a church should balance stewardship against the burden on its low-paid staff, has an answer in the texts, and it is in four parts. Tell the congregation what the work costs. Pay what is just when the means are there. When they are not, say so openly, and consider making the job smaller before making the wage smaller. And never count what the worker has gone without as a saving the church has made.

There is a last test, and it comes from Nehemiah’s storeroom. Whether a church “can easily afford” to pay more is shown by what it spends on other things. A budget that has grown for buildings, equipment and reserves while the lowest wage has stayed at the legal floor has answered the question of means. Paul wanted the Corinthian collection handled so as to be “providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men” (2 Corinthians 8:21). A wage is one of the few items in a church’s accounts that an outsider can judge at a glance.

An objection should be heard here in the words of someone who holds it. Write your own answer before reading the page’s.

A debt of justice, c. 100 to 1891

The conviction that underpaying a worker is a sin against justice, and more than a failure of kindness, was not invented by modern politics. It can be followed through the church’s teachers from the second century onwards, and it is held on both sides of the Reformation.

The early church

The Didache, quoted in Part III, already treats the church’s teacher as a workman with a workman’s claim. The Fathers also preached about what employers owed. John Chrysostom, at Antioch around 390, interrupted a sermon on Matthew to describe the landowners in his own congregation. He chose them deliberately, as people who thought of themselves as respectable: “they that are possessed of lands, and reap the wealth that springs from the earth.” Of the men who worked those lands he said that the owners “like asses or mules, or rather like stones, do they treat their bodies, allowing them not so much as to draw breath a little,” and that the labourers were kept “by their labors and their sweat filling winepresses, and wine vats, but not suffering them to take home so much as a small measure” (Homilies on Matthew, Homily 61; trans. George Prevost, rev. M. B. Riddle, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 10, as revised for New Advent).

The preacher’s target was the comfortable Christian employer who had never thought of himself as an oppressor. That is close to the situation in the brief.

The medieval church

Thomas Aquinas, defining what it means to earn something, treated the wage as a plain case of what justice requires:

Hence, as it is an act of justice to give a just price for anything received from another, so also is it an act of justice to make a return for work or toil.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 114, a. 1 (c. 1270). Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920).

A wage, on this account, is owed in the same way that the price of goods is owed. It is not a kindness. The catechisms that grew out of this tradition went further and placed the defrauding of workers in a short list of sins said to cry to heaven for vengeance, with James 5:4 as the proof text. The modern Catholic Catechism preserves the list: “the blood of Abel, the sin of the Sodomites, the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan, injustice to the wage earner” (§1867, citing Deuteronomy 24:14–15 and James 5:4).

The Lutheran tradition

Luther dealt with wages where the catechism required it, under the commandment against stealing. His definition is broad:

For to steal is nothing else than to get possession of another’s property wrongfully, which briefly comprehends all kinds of advantage in all sorts of trade to the disadvantage of our neighbor.

Martin Luther, Large Catechism (1529), the Seventh Commandment. Triglot Concordia, trans. F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau (1921).

He applies it upwards as well as downwards. There are thieves, he says, who “are styled great noblemen, and honorable, pious citizens, and yet rob and steal under a good pretext.” And he states the commandment’s positive side: “it is commanded that we advance and improve his possessions, and in case he suffers want, that we help, communicate, and lend both to friends and foes.” On Luther’s reading, an employer who takes advantage of a worker’s need has broken the Seventh Commandment, and an employer who has the means is commanded to improve his neighbour’s living, which is more than leaving it alone.

Luther also wrote about the church’s own workers, and with feeling. Under the Fourth Commandment he tells the people what they owe to those who serve them spiritually:

Yet there is need that this also be urged upon the populace, that those who would be Christians are under obligation in the sight of God to esteem them worthy of double honor who minister to their souls, that they deal well with them and provide for them.

Martin Luther, Large Catechism (1529), the Fourth Commandment. Triglot Concordia (1921). He goes on to complain that people now “cannot now support one respectable preacher, where formerly they filled ten fat paunches.”

That complaint is the brief’s complaint, made in 1529. The same people who had paid generously for the old religious establishment grudged the cost of a single evangelical pastor.

In Lutheran Germany the cantor and the organist were salaried posts, usually paid by the town, and the most famous cantor of all left a record of what happened when the money was cut. In 1730 Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantor of St Thomas’s in Leipzig, wrote to the town council to explain why the music in the city’s churches was declining. Students had once been glad to sing and play, he said, because small stipends were attached to it:

But because now this no longer happens, the paltry few benefices formerly granted to the music establishment having been gradually withdrawn, the university students have lost their incentive. For who wants to work for nothing?

Johann Sebastian Bach, “Short but Most Necessary Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music,” memorandum to the Leipzig Town Council, 23 August 1730. Translated from Bach-Dokumente, vol. I (1963), as printed in the source readings accompanying the textbook Music in Western Civilization (2006). Other English versions word it differently.

Bach’s question was Nehemiah’s observation in another century. The singers were not paid, and they went to their fields.

The Anglican tradition

The Prayer Book Catechism, which every child was to learn before confirmation, defines duty to one’s neighbour as including “to be true and just in all my dealing” (Book of Common Prayer, 1662). Part VIII has already shown how the Communion service reads Paul’s wage texts over the collection. Anglican teaching on wages as such developed later, through the Christian social movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its results appear in Part X as resolutions which Anglican churches have passed about their own employees.

Rome, 1891

The best-known modern statement by any church on wages is Leo XIII’s letter Rerum Novarum. Part VI quoted its account of the just wage. Its list of the employer’s duties begins: “His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just.” It continues:

… to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven.

Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (15 May 1891), §20. English text as published by the Holy See. The next sentence quotes James 5:4.

Ninety years later John Paul II made the wage the test of an entire economy: “a just wage is the concrete means of verifying the justice of the whole socioeconomic system” (Laborem Exercens, 14 September 1981, §19). If that is the test for a nation’s economy, it will serve for a church’s.

Guess the source

Nine real, dated quotations used on this page. For each, guess where it comes from. All are checkable in Part XIII.

The churches on their own words

It would be possible to grant everything in Part IX and still hold the Exemption. Chrysostom was talking about landowners. Leo XIII was writing about factories. A church, one might say, is neither.

Several churches have closed that door themselves. Having taught the just wage to the world, they went on to say, in documents they published, that it binds them as employers. These statements are worth setting out in order, because a body cannot easily plead an exemption it has formally given up.

The Catholic Church

The 1971 Synod of Bishops, quoted in Part II, followed its sentence about being “just in their eyes” with a specific commitment:

Those who serve the Church by their labor, including priests and religious, should receive a sufficient livelihood and enjoy that social security which is customary in their region. Lay people should be given fair wages and a system for promotion.

Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World (Rome, 1971), chapter III.

In 1983 the principle became church law. The Code of Canon Law gives lay people who work for the church “the right to decent remuneration appropriate to their condition so that they are able to provide decently for their own needs and those of their family” (canon 231 §2). And it lays a duty on everyone who manages church property:

Administrators of goods: 1/ in the employment of workers are to observe meticulously also the civil laws concerning labor and social policy, according to the principles handed on by the Church; 2/ are to pay a just and decent wage to employees so that they are able to provide fittingly for their own needs and those of their dependents.

Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 1286. English text as published by the Holy See.

Notice that the canon has two parts. The first is to keep the civil law. The second is to pay a just and decent wage. If obeying the law were enough, the second clause would have nothing to add. The canon treats the legal minimum and the just wage as two separate obligations, which is the distinction Part VI drew.

The Catholic bishops of the United States applied it to themselves in their 1986 letter on the economy:

All the moral principles that govern the just operation of any economic endeavor apply to the Church and its agencies and institutions; indeed the Church should be exemplary. … We bishops commit ourselves to the principle that those who serve the Church—laity, clergy, and religious—should receive a sufficient livelihood and the social benefits provided by responsible employers in our nation.

National Conference of Catholic Bishops (United States), Economic Justice for All (November 1986), §§347 and 351. Paragraph 353 adds: “All church institutions must also fully recognize the rights of employees to organize and bargain collectively with the institution through whatever association or organization they freely choose.”

The last six words, “indeed the Church should be exemplary,” are Position M. In 2007 the same bishops said it about musicians in particular:

Professional directors of music ministries and part-time pastoral music ministers should each receive appropriate wages and benefits that affirm the dignity of their work.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship (14 November 2007), §52. Paragraph 50 says that all pastoral musicians, “professional or volunteer, full-time or part-time, director or choir member, cantor or instrumentalist,” “exercise a genuine liturgical ministry.”

The two paragraphs belong together. The bishops call the musician’s work a ministry, and two paragraphs later they say he should be properly paid, part-time musicians included. In this document the calling is not offered as a substitute for the wage.

The Lutheran churches

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest Lutheran body in the United States, adopted a social statement on economic life in 1999. It says of employers in general that they “have a responsibility to treat employees with dignity and respect,” which “should be reflected in employees’ remuneration, benefits, work conditions, job security, and ongoing job training.” Then it turns to itself:

We commit ourselves as a church to: hire without discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, age, disabilities, sexual orientation, or genetic factors; compensate all people we call or employ at an amount sufficient for them to live in dignity; provide adequate pension and health benefits, safe and healthy work conditions, sufficient periods of rest, vacation, and sabbatical, and family-friendly work schedules …

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All, social statement adopted by the sixth Churchwide Assembly, Denver, August 1999. The list is printed as bullet points and continues.

The Anglican churches

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church resolved in 1997 that its congregations and dioceses should press for a living wage in the places where they were. A second clause turned the resolution on the church:

That the above standard be likewise urged upon all parishes, missions and diocesan institutions of this Church as the minimum acceptable norm in the compensation of their employees.

The Episcopal Church, 72nd General Convention (Philadelphia, 1997), Resolution D082, “Urge Church-wide Promotion of the Living Wage.” Journal of the General Convention (1998), p. 285.

In November 2012 the General Synod of the Church of England voted to back the Living Wage, a voluntary rate set above the legal minimum, and to encourage the Church’s own institutions to pay it.

Saying it and doing it

A resolution is a statement of intent. What happened next in the Church of England is the nearest thing to a documented test case, and it is told here from the report in the Church Times of 27 February 2015, published online four days earlier.

In February 2015 the House of Bishops published a pastoral letter ahead of a general election which, as the Church Times noted, had endorsed the Living Wage. Within days a national newspaper reported that two English cathedrals were advertising posts below it. One was offering waiting staff £6.50 an hour, which was the legal minimum. Another was offering between £6.70 and £7.75. The Living Wage outside London was then £7.85. The Church was accused of double standards.

Its institutional response contained three things. The first was a statement of where it stood: “The vast majority of those employed by, or sub-contracted to the Church’s central institutions are already paid at least the Living Wage, and all will be by April 2017.” The second was that every parish, diocese and cathedral was a separate legal body responsible for its own hiring. The third was about money: “As charities, churches require time to increase giving levels prior to ensuring delivery of the Living Wage.”

The second and third points are Position E’s points, and they are fair as far as they go. But look at what the Church did not say. It did not say that the Living Wage was a standard for business and not for churches. It did not say that cathedral work was a calling and so outside the question. It accepted the measure, admitted the gap, and gave a date for closing it. The episode is embarrassing for the institution, and it also shows what holding to one measure looks like when a body is caught short.

All of these are large bodies with published social teaching. An independent congregation has no such documents. It does have its sermons, and the same reasoning applies to them. Whatever a church has said from its pulpit about what employers owe their workers is the standard it has published, and it is the standard it should expect to be measured by.

Ten statements follow, all real and all quoted on this page. For each, decide whether the church was speaking to employers in general or about itself.

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“They say, and do not”

The proverb in this page’s title has a source in the Gospels. Jesus is speaking to the crowd about their religious teachers:

The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

Matthew 23:2–4.

Later in the chapter he says what kind of thing they left undone:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. … Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. … Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Matthew 23:23, 25, 28. “Judgment” here means justice.

The context is specific. Jesus is addressing the scribes and Pharisees of his own day, and a reader should be slow to apply the chapter to anyone but himself. That is the point of Part II: the beam comes out of one’s own eye first. With that caution, the structure of the charge is plain, and it is the structure in the brief. There is a religious practice that is public, exact and inexpensive, and there is a duty of justice that is private, costly and neglected. The first of the two things Jesus finds inside the polished cup is “extortion,” which means taking what belongs to someone else.

The prophets had joined the same two things, and one of them did it with reference to music. Isaiah’s hearers complained that God took no notice of their fasting. The answer was: “Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours” (58:3), a phrase which most modern versions translate as oppressing or driving their workers. Amos is blunter:

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Amos 5:23–24. Addressed to the northern kingdom of Israel, about its treatment of the poor in general.

Amos was not writing about church employment. But a page that began with the wage of a praise team leader can hardly leave the verse out. God says he will not listen to the songs of people who are careless about justice. The warning is about the worship of a whole people, and it would apply with some irony if the injustice in question were done to the person leading the songs.

Why a sermon is cheaper than a salary

A sermon against exploitation costs the church nothing. It is heard by everyone, it is likely to be approved of, and the wrong it condemns is done by someone else. A fair wage costs money every month, nobody sees it, and it earns no praise. The first is exactly the kind of righteousness that is “seen of men” (Matthew 23:5). The second is the kind that is not. Dossier 35 looks at the same pattern in the way ministries describe themselves.

So does publicly denouncing exploitation, while practising it, risk repeating the error of Matthew 23? Where the four facts of Part I are true, yes. The pattern is the same: a public righteousness about other people’s conduct and a private exception for one’s own.

The remedy is in the passage. Jesus does not tell the Pharisees to stop tithing mint. “These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” A church in this position is not asked to stop preaching about wages. It is asked to pay them. “Cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also” (23:26).

For anyone who sets, approves or votes on what a church pays

Eight statements. Answer about your own church, honestly. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere, and nothing here is legal or professional advice.

Your answers, revisited

Here are the ten questions you answered before reading, with what the sources say. If you skipped them, go back to the quiz, lock in your answers, and return.

Check it yourself

Nineteen items. Nearly everything here is free, online and short. If you read only three, read the first three. If you do only one thing, do the last.

1. 1. Romans 2:1–24; Matthew 7:1–5; Matthew 23:1–28; James 3:1. Read this first. Fifteen minutes. The teacher who does not teach himself, the measure, and “they say, and do not.”
2. 2. Luke 10:1–9; 1 Timothy 5:17–18; 1 Corinthians 9; 2 Corinthians 11:7–9 and 12:13; Galatians 6:6–10; Philippians 4:10–18. Read this first. Twenty minutes. The labourer’s hire applied to the ministry, and the right Paul declined.
3. 3. Nehemiah 11:22–23; 12:44–47; 13:4–14; 1 Chronicles 9:33; 15:16–22; 25:1–8; 2 Chronicles 31:2–10; Numbers 18:21–31. Read this first. Twenty minutes. The singers: how they were chosen and kept, and what happened when they were not.
4. 4. Deuteronomy 24:14–15; Leviticus 19:13; Jeremiah 22:13–17; Malachi 3:5; James 5:1–6; Proverbs 3:27–28; Colossians 3:22–4:1; Ephesians 6:5–9; 2 Corinthians 8; Matthew 20:1–16; Isaiah 58:1–7; Amos 5:21–24; 2 Samuel 24:18–25. Thirty minutes. The wage texts, the two instructions to servants and masters, and the texts that join worship to justice.
5. 5. Didache, chapters 11–13. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, trans. M. B. Riddle; free at New Advent. Five minutes.
6. 6. John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Timothy, Homily 15, NPNF I.13; Homilies on Matthew, Homily 61, NPNF I.10. Free at New Advent. Twenty minutes. Read the last third of the Matthew homily.
7. 7. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Book I, chapter 2. NPNF II.12, trans. James Barmby (1895); free at New Advent. Five minutes.
8. 8. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 114, a. 1. Free at New Advent. Ten minutes.
9. 9. Martin Luther, Large Catechism (1529), the Fourth and Seventh Commandments; Small Catechism, the Table of Duties. Triglot Concordia, trans. F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau (St Louis, 1921); free at bookofconcord.org and Project Gutenberg. Thirty minutes. Read what Luther says about workmen as well as what he says about masters.
10. 10. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, on James 5:1–6. Trans. John Owen (Calvin Translation Society, 1855); free at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Ten minutes.
11. 11. The Book of Common Prayer (1662): the Offertory sentences in the Order for Holy Communion; the Catechism. Free at churchofengland.org. Ten minutes. Count how many of the twenty sentences concern the support of those who minister.
12. 12. John Selden, Table-Talk (1689), under “Preaching.” Many reprints; free at the Internet Archive. Two minutes.
13. 13. J. S. Bach, “Short but Most Necessary Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music,” 23 August 1730. German text in Bach-Dokumente, vol. I (1963); English in The New Bach Reader (1998) and in several anthologies, in differing translations. Ten minutes.
14. 14. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891), §§19–20 and 43–45; John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (1981), §19. Free at vatican.va. Twenty minutes.
15. 15. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1867 and 2434; Code of Canon Law (1983), canons 231 and 1286. Free at vatican.va. Five minutes. Notice that canon 1286 lists the civil law and the just wage as two separate duties.
16. 16. Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World (1971), chapter III, “The Church’s Witness.” Free online in several places. Ten minutes.
17. 17. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All (1986), §§347–358, “The Church as Economic Actor”; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship (2007), §§48–53. Free at usccb.org. Fifteen minutes.
18. 18. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All (1999), free at elca.org; The Episcopal Church, General Convention Resolution 1997-D082, free at episcopalarchives.org; Church Times, 27 February 2015, “Investigation into church salaries leads to Living Wage row.” Twenty minutes.
19. 19. The lowest wage your own church pays, set beside the last thing it said in public about fair pay. Do this one. You may have to ask, and the asking is part of the exercise. Write down the figure, the hours the post really takes, and what the church has taught about employers. Then read Romans 2:21 and Colossians 4:1 beside them. If the two agree, be glad of it and say so.

Every individual named on this page is deceased, or biblical, and is quoted from a dated, published source. Denominations and other organisations are quoted only from their own published documents, except that the statements of one national church in 2015 are quoted as reported in a church newspaper, which is named. No local church, congregation or ministry is identified or described. Every modern example, sermon line and case is composed by this page for illustration and does not describe any real person, post or church.