Poor as church mouse?
Saw this: Hundreds of clergy facing hardship despite vast C of E wealth
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/06/clergy-hardship-church-of-england-wealth?
Wondering what shipmates make of it? What are your experiences? Are things similar in other settings?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/06/clergy-hardship-church-of-england-wealth?
Wondering what shipmates make of it? What are your experiences? Are things similar in other settings?
Comments
The big "however" is that all of us know the score upfront. That sounds tough but I think it's true that most go in with eyes wide open. If you don't then beware …. not all promises are delivered and that includes grants and finance.
Ok there will be financial (a background in finance and i see virtually everyone hitting big £ crisis every 10 years or so). There are other crises too (bereavement, family breakdown etc) but the figures for the CofE may suggest some structural issues - clergy trying to live up to high standards enjoyed by their congregation in certain upper middle class areas or having a perspective on Ministry which can't work. I've seen the former quite a few times (it's tough being the one man in the church gang who doesn't go skiing) Perhaps it's time to look at team ministries involving lay and ordained and recognising that it doesn't need a priest to do stuff. Big ask I know … but worth the question just to avoid the human fall out.
The stipend was surely never meant to be a salary, but a help to those called as priests who couldn't support themselves sufficiently to work the necessary more than full time hours for the church as well.
Clergy are able to claim tax credits and other benefits, and I don't think they have to pay rent for their accommodation, but do pay council tax? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I wonder what studies ever include total household, as opposed to clergy only, income. Many clergy spouses work now -- when Mrs M was working she was pulling in more as a part time staff nurse than I was as a full time minister. Does that change the stats of clergy poverty to being "not well paid for the work w edo?" I don't now but would be intrigued to see what the overall income of clergy households are given that many clergy spouses of my acquaintance are in jobs like teaching, nursing etc. Some like one I could name are high flyers indeed with salaries into the 6 figure bracket.
They pay neither council tax nor water rates. Phone, internet and part of electricity also provided. Mileage at 45p per mile. pension used to be one of the best in terms of proportion of final salary and was non contributory. Not sure if that's still the case.
For those of us in other denominations the pension is now defined contribution rather like most other people in the UK. It's about 30% less in retirement year on year than the old defined benefit (years) scheme was.
There's also significant opportunities to access provided housing post retirement -- again a pretty unique position.
That is, maybe you are just bad at managing money, or you have expensive compulsive behaviour (gambling addiction or similar), or you are quixotically using your own funds to pay for things that the parish should pay for, and these are all real problems, but the solution to those problems isn't raising stipends.
That's one thing I wondered, the best part of £30k and a free house would be a massive step up for myself and and many folk I know.
The article did mention the house for duty and self supporting clergy who in the model of ministry presumably have other sources of income. I wonder if this model is working?
As a freelancer my earnings are a fraction of what they were when I was in a regular job, but we'd paid off the mortgage and I've got my late wife's pension - which isn't huge but helps - and a stipend for local government involvement. I find it hard to understand how a vicar couldn't make ends meet, but then I don't have a young family.
It's all relative. In some places clergy will be among the highest paid people in their community.
This annoyed me for a number of reasons. First it was unthinking: others in the church had very little money. Second I got frustrated at having so many people away, so much. Thirdly I felt sad that, in some cases, life for these folk seemed to exist merely for their holidays. Fourth I wanted to question their spending priorities (how much did they give to charity, which of course I didn't know). And finally - let's be honest - I was both judgmental and jealous. Fact is, in any society there will always be those who earn more than oneself. I don't envy the super-rich as their lifestyle is so stratospheric as to be completely unattainable; no, it's the folk just a few tiers above me (so near and yet so far) that get on my goat!
As EM says, those of us in ministry know what we're coming to, financially speaking. And one huge positive for most clergy is the job security which seems to have largely vanished for so many folk (possibly less true in congregational denominations where ministers are paid directly by their local churches). I accept that, for some folk coming late to ministry after a successful "secular" career, the financial implications are great; the inevitable "downgrading of lifestyle expectations" won't be easy. And I also wonder if there are still parishioners around who except their clergyperson to live up to the standards of an old-fashioned "squarson" and place pressures of them to do so even though they cannot?
And I think as this becomes less common this model of SSM will become less viable (it's also self selecting to an extent), and so the Church needs to be very cautious about relying on it too much.
So if the accommodation package was provided at market rental cost, with salary adjusted to be the same as it currently is - net of rent - the arguments with government over tax, benefits and perks ought to disappear. The financial situation of the parish should not change, because the extra money they pay in salary is returned in rent.
CofE parishes don't pay the stipend anyway.
I'm with others in struggling to believe claims of poverty from full time stipendiary clergy, given the big uplift in stipends from when I was growing up in the vicarage. Money was certainly tight then, my mum recalls buying our clothes with post-dated cheques because they didn't have the cash to pay for them upfront. Current stipends, however, are pretty much in line with my own pay as a classroom teacher once you account for housing and associated costs. By the standards of most of the country, that's a pretty decent living. The issue comes, I think, when you're carrying existing debt and struggling to get out from under it. With a clean slate the stipend provides a pretty comfortable existence.
I predate 2009 but I can assure you that they took housing as an income (or rather as a cost that I didn't pay) and I lost on appeal. Mind you I am not CofE
Not that surprising given the demographic profile of CofE clergy.
I'm pretty sure white British clergy of almost all denominations are overwhelmingly middle class, just like their congregations. Black British clergy probably skew more working class. The only major outlier is probably the RCC but the economics of their situation is so different as to not be comparable.
I don't think this generalisation is true, based on my dealings with clergy of all denominations. Rather, they are a mix of people from a mix of backgrounds.
For the sake of argument, coming from homes where the main earner was ABC1 as opposed to C2DE. It's more complex than that but in aggregate it's close enough.
I love my job and wouldn’t do anything else but I do sometimes look at my contemporaries who are earning five or ten times what I earn and note that there is sacrifice is this calling.
These days it's "if the washing machine breaks down, can I afford to just go and buy a new one without going into debt?"
Ministers in BU Home Mission Churches don’t get £27K – more like £23k – and the final salary pension scheme is long gone.
The housing is a tremendous help – there’s no way we’d be able to afford to minister where we are without it. Plus we get water, rates and phone / internet – but not gas and electricity. IME, most churches stopped paying energy bills years ago because of the cost. Many manses aren’t particularly heat efficient.
You can expense things, but they have to be paid for upfront and then you claim the money back. Expense claims are processed with varying degrees of speed. Which can really screw up your cash flow. Add in an unexpected bill or life event and it’s easy to see how someone can get into difficulties. Once you’re in that cycle, it can be hard to break out of it.
We really need to get away from the automatic assumption that people who are experiencing financial difficulties are crap with money or have a secret gambling habit. Sometimes the financial difficulty is that there simply isn’t enough money!
That said, having your housing provided, some bills paid and the potential to apply for somewhere to live when you retire is a tremendous privilege that needs acknowledging as none of our congregation members have it.
1. Tell me about it … I'm an Accredited Minister in BUGB too (albeit at slightly higher than minimum stipend - their choice not my ask). I was quoting the Anglican position which is better than BUGB at £27 plus the pension is non contributory for them.
2. Don't forget that you can claim a proportion of what you pay from HMRC on that part of the manse used for church activities. I claim 10% and its never been questioned.
3. Churches should recognise cash flow …. I email expenses to the Treasurer so he can prepare the cheque or send it via BACS.
4. I agree that there's often not enough money but I don't think it's always quite that simple. I don't have enough money for some stuff but enough to live on if I am careful. Admittedly I am much nearer the end than I am the beginning - in fact very close to it - but I guess my needs and expectations are pretty narrow. I am gradually reverting to the countryman of my youth …. pretty basic needs only. With a 20 year career in finance I can see many of the pitfalls but my retirement with only be something like 25% of what it would have been … however little I've lost in one way, I've gained more than I can say in others.
5. Yes don't forget that even in this straightened times that there are always possibilities for support into retirement. Mind you let's not forget that we went into it knowing what the deal was.
Yep me too but do we find it hard to live on £1500+ net pay?
I was going by the £27K + housing figure quoted in the article in the OP for Anglican priests. That's better than what I earn and (with housing) more than the average wage in the UK.
Don't get me wrong - I accept the clergy make sacrifices. My job takes up 35 not very strenuous hours per week, arranged around childcare responsibilities. Ordained ministry is vastly harder and seems to have no upper limit on the working hours expected by the congregation. There is no doubt that the clergy earn their crust and more. That seems to be slightly different, though, from the implication in the article that the stipend isn't a living wage.
I take your point - I meant 'living wage' in the sense of 'enough to live on', rather than an hourly rate.
The average wage in the UK is £26.5K so that's better than the average wage before housing (average home rental is £940 pm - albeit with huge regional variations).
As a child of the 1950s/60s I remember those times well: I certainly remember the day that my Papa's stipend (and we were in a "wealthy" parish) hit the dizzy heights of four figures, and it was only just while I was still at school, when the national average salary was then roughly a third (£5,000) a year more.
It is not that the stipend is very different from other people's, it is that the cost of housing prevents many clergy, especially those who have gone into training straight, or almost straight, from university from getting onto the housing ladder at the same time as a modest mortgage now requiring two incomes. With student debt this problem is only going to get worse.
However, clergy pensions compare very favourably to those in the private sector - indeed, many of us have no occupational pension at all and the cost of a personal pension which will give someone anything like a reasonable standard of living is beyond all but the most highly salaried.
Nowadays university costs are payable by all students, the church pays the fees for theological training.
Thing is, the housing isn’t necessarily a perk or a benefit, it’s more of an enabler due to the expectation / requirement by many churches that clergy live in the areas they serve rather than commuting in from elsewhere (cheaper) . Given the ludicrous price of housing in some parts of the country, that can be a pretty big ask. (The spouse’s salary is irrelevant. Because it just is. We're family rather a BOGOFF).
Clergy housing is a really mixed bag. Some churches are excellent landlords with well-maintained properties and a willingness to act quickly when there are problems. Others are, frankly, shite.
I’m not quite clear what the article is complaining about though. The fact that clergy may experience financial difficulties and worrying about them can impact your ability to do your job properly – which is pretty universal. Or the fact that unpaid, “house for duty” roles still exist in the 21st Century.
Even when it is an enabler - it's also undeniably a benefit as it is a cost that everyone incurs - albeit at different levels. And spouses salary is equally irrelevant for everyone isn't it ?
It is true that there are clergy who are eligible for benefits such as tax credits, which says to me that they do not have to be living extravagantly or have unrealistic expectations, to have financial issues
Living in the house is a requirement of the job and not a perk... It is something that ends when ministerial life is over. And retirement provision, in the CofE, is poor these days.
I can see some similarities. Local councillors seem to be prime targets for character assassination in the local media, which is an unenviable position.
But is this the right way to look at things? In most denominations clergy stipends are fairly "flat" with leaders getting little more than rank-and-file clergy except, perhaps, for expenses (however in my denomination, where ministers are paid locally, it's true that some folk get good stipends). In other words there isn't the salary progression you would expect to get in many careers, and this may rankle among those who have faithfully ministered for many years.
On the other hand, many of us have a job security undreamed of by many of our contemporaries in secular employment; that though has to be set against the need to move house when taking on a new role. And some of us may need to realise that there are those in our congregations and parishes who, although employed, face a daily struggle to pay the mortgage/rent, Council Tax and utilities, keep the family warmed, clothed, transported, fed and watered ... and so on. Life can be very hard even for people in work.
I'm sure there are clergy families who have had to subsist on very little - indeed that has been the case for me on some occasions. I'm sure, too, that churches and denominations can be insensitive to their clergys' needs; such attitudes need challenging and correcting. And we all know that the "prosperity" churches pay their pastors ridiculous amounts (because the Lord who owns the cattle on a thousand hills obviously wants them to live in a mansion and drive a Mercedes) - that is an aberration but can also make us envious. Nevertheless, let's be careful when we complain.
This is not good or healthy. Can your elders/deacons/trustees/congregation do anything to redress this?