Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Pulpit Payroll: A Battle of the Sexes

A recent survey from the folks over at Your Church revealed that women pastors earn more than their male counterparts. Exactly 10.4 percent more, in fact. In addition to looking at salaries, the study, which polled more than 5,700 full-time pastors, factored in housing allowance, health and life insurance, retirement and continuing education. Among the findings, the average female pastor is paid more than a man in regard to:
  • Salary (8.6 percent)
  • Housing (20.4 percent)
  • Retirement (24.8 percent)

There's one not-so-minor—OK, glaring— "detail" that we should keep in mind in interpreting the data, however: Men accounted for more than 93 percent of those surveyed. I don't point that out to refute the study but to caution against taking the executive summary of the Your Church report and running with it. We've all been guilty of making sweeping generalizations based on surveys, studies and reports without ever reading the fine print.

Obviously, male pastors are more common in this country than female ones. That seems to be true not only at the senior pastor level, but others as well. Yet think about this poll from a purely statistical view: If the aggregate data reflects a 90/10 ratio between the two groups, won't the results inherently be skewed? In this case, the women's responses—simply because there were less of them—carried more weight in defining their demographic. Had there been a more balanced poll, we likely would see a different result. How different—I don't know.

That little personal objection aside, the survey still presents some interesting questions that I'd love to hear responses to.

YOUR TURN: If women in virtually every other field and across the globe earn (on average) less than men, why do you think the tables are turned when it comes to ministry? What are your views of how women pastors should be paid in comparison to men? Have you encountered this issue at your own church?


Comments:
The tables aren't turned, you were right about the skew.
 
Your conclusion that the statistical results are skewed because of the 90/10 ratio is flawed thinking. If 5,700 pastors were sampled and 7% of them were female, then 399 female pastors participated in the study. That would result in +/-5 percentage point sampling error. With the salary question being a 10.4% difference, I would suggest that women are, in fact, earning more as pastors than men.

The data is comparing apples to apples so there is no problem or skew to the results.

Instead, it is a result of the newness of women in this position. For a woman to be hired as a pastor, it is likely that she is among the cream of the crop. So few women have broken this glass ceiling into the pastoral role, that those who have are in large churches, in large cities, with large budgets and the women are highly qualified. I suspect that as the number of female pastors increases, there will be more and more "average" women, with more "average" salaries and the gap will narrow. Alas, it will likely follow the way of other gender gaps in pay and a day will come when the female salaries average out lower than the men.
 
I am a woman pastor and I have been paid less than my counterparts in my denomination.
But I know that I have been paid more than my counterparts in some other denominations and some of these do not ordain women.
I wonder how these statistics would change if you only poled people from denominations that ordain women?
 
Your notes doesn't mention if the "pastor" is the senior pastor in a church or not? If it wasn't all senior pastors, could be that a large number of the women come from churches with a staff of multiple pastors.

In that case, I would expect they are paid more because pastors on staff at large churches have higher salaries on average.

I attend a church of around 1300-1400 people, and our staff is very well-paid. I am from a denomination whose average church-size is 250-350. We are one of the top 10 churches in the U.S. in our denomination.

We have a newly-hired youth assistant with only volunteer experience and who has not yet completed a bachelor's degree. Her salary is the same as mine. I am at the director level of a small privately-owned business and have a master's degree in my field of discipline.
 
Women who seek leadership roles in a "church" are in grave error. The arrogance of the feminist philosophy in your Western Culture condones what God has condemned all along. Women will never be pastors of local churches. Scripture forbids it, and there will be nothing whatsoever you will say or do that will make legitimate a woman's stubborn, rebellious and self-centered attempt to elevate herself over God's Authority concerning this biblical issue. Where there is a female in the role of "pastor" (regardless of financial compensation), that "church" can not possibly be a legitimate Christ ordained body of believers. She has no authority from CHRIST and, instead, she goes in her own strength - snubbing her nose up at God and His Word with every breath and work she takes and speaks! It is NOT a biblical ministry. It will NEVER be a New Testament Church. Instead, it is a pagan organization riding on the wave of "religion" in the name of a false christ concocted in the minds of depraved and ignorant people - who will never submit to the authority of God, His Son (The LORD Jesus Christ), and the truth of Holy Scripture. An appropriate question for all women is this: Are you in submission to you HUSBANDS? Shame on you! If you were married, would you submit to your own husband? Then neither will you submit to Jesus Christ, Who commands you to submit to you Husband! A woman who pretends to be in a pastoral, administrative role in the "church" does not know Christ the LORD. Her relationship to God is not right and she is only fooling herself and other ignorant persons who choose to "follow" her lead. The above described women are unregenerate. They will never please Christ! By the way, in case you are making the arguement of bible interpretation: The first biblical hermeneutical principle for proper and legitimate Bible interpretation is,... "When it makes plain sense, Seek no other sense". And NO, Phoebe was not a preacher in a First Century New Testament Church! That is not what "deaconess" means, and AGAIN, you will NEVER, EVER justify a woman in a leadership, pastoral role in a legitimate Church!
Mr. Mark S. Bias
 
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