Resources for “Why Pay the Preacher?”
Dan Hotchkiss makes the point that good preaching takes time, “including time that looks like work and time that looks like goofing off.” In the December 14, 2009 issue of Alban Weekly (“Why Pay the Preacher?“), he recognizes that congregational boards sometimes seek to apply management principles from the “time-clock” world to clergy vocations. When it comes to sermon preparation, though, such principles don’t always map very well.
Nevertheless, especially because preaching excellence is a gift and skill that so many congregations seek in their pastors, it’s important to respond to “time-clock” thinking in honest yet non-anxious ways.
What resources might support both good preaching and good ways to talk about what the preaching preparation process entails? In addition to the excellent resources listed at the end of the article, we encourage you to check out the “Sermons and Preaching” section of the Congregational Resource Guide. You might especially want to consider the free downloadable resource, “Preaching Today: Sorting It Out.”
What are your thoughts and stories about preaching and the factors that enter in to sermon preparation? And what resources have you found helpful? We look forward to hearing from you!
Great article!!!!
As a pastor, I heard, and as a District Superintendent (United Methodist)I frequently hear, “We are paying him/her to be the preacher, therefore: a. we will tell them what to do; b. they have to perform a certain way, c. Your choice. Folks are shocked when I tell them that they don’t pay their pastor to be a preacher. God calls them to be an ordained/licensed minister. You provide income to them so that they can be a resident,full time pastor/theologian in the community (or part time depending on status of church). I sometimes ask the questions, “Did you pay the heart surgeon that did 4 bypasses on you(or loved one) to be a heart surgeon, or did you pay him/her for skill and expertise? (I don’t get into insurance debates). I then move the discussion into the pastor doing heart stuff from the pulpit and in day to day ministry. A variation of this, is, “Do you want a heart/cancer surgeon who hasn’t cracked a book or attended containing education since graduation from medical school 20 years ago, or do you want a surgeon who is on top of the latest treatment and techniques? What I am discovering is that the value of what the pastor, as well as the church stands for and does, has significantly diminished. The value of the pastor, or anyone regularly developing their soul with prayer time, retreats, etc, is no where near what it used to be in a general sense. That devaluing creates the perception of the pastoral identity being determined by employee status and the church being a business. On one occasion, in response to a vote for no raise followed by the comment, “Well, I don’t know what he does anyway.”, I did a time study for 30 days. I discovered: 1. My schedule was unhealthy and ungodly (which they thought was great and they were surprised meaning they were getting their money’s worth); 2. The 70 plus hours a week documented did not include devotional or sermon prep time (Yes, I know. I was young and have learned and greatly improved). However, what I did was never an issue again. I also included the waste of time in doing the time study.
Dan Hotchkiss and the responders all share the wisdom that grows out of our conscientious work as ministers—a gracious work in the main that permits us to grow as persons with one another in emrgent communities. It is trying and exultant in turn. Yet in the end, our work is a grounding in the daily realities that takes us into the depths of the poignant beauty at the center of this miracle of life. Sharing that love together moment by moment and in our common worship to the best of our ability is what we ask of one another. Nothing more, nothing less.
Appreciatively, Paul W. Sawyer, Minister Emeritus, Throop Church, Pasadena
I can’t remember when, in 40 years of ministry, I’ve been asked the question about sermon writing time except from those who wonder how it can possibly fit into a normal busy week. And I’ve preached some very bad sermons (and sometimes those took the longest to prepare) I don’t think our task is so much different from any writer who has a weekly deadline and it trying to put something insightful and relevant on the page (and maybe that’s because I used to write a weekly newspaper column and suffered the same blocks and enjoyed the same moments of inspiration as I do in writing sermons). Some sermons seem to write themselves and others require difficult labor. But overall I think of a beautiful book I have where Ben Shan illustrated a paragraph from the notebooks of Rainer Maria Rilke: For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men, and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars—and it is not yet enough if one may think of all this.
One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again.
But one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises. And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again.
For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance, and gesture, nameless, and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.
I’d go with what the last two folks said. I am always gathering material. I look at the lessons on Monday, and think about them constantly, living with them in meetings, vestry and so on, so every action all week is, in some way, a product of the lessons.
The most specifically sermon prep time is time spent walking. So, in the time when I might appear least busy with this most important part of my vocation, is the time when I’m most busy.
Other than motherhood, I am hard pressed to think of any endeavor less understood and appreciated than the behind-the-scenes preparation for preaching. Do you count the time spent reading the article that sparked that great illustration ideas? Or the casual comment made by a child or a friend over coffee that put the whole text in perspective? How many hours a week does it take to be an effective parent? How much ought we expect to pay to be inspoired by a spectacular sunset or full moon or a strain of inspired music? We’ve lost our capacity to be in awe. Pity. In the beginning, for me, it was about an hour of actual focus per minute of sermon. Now, I really have no idea. I ponder for a few days and then write until I’m done. Fortunately for me, I type fast. That helps.
I am delighted to serve a church that seems to value me and often affirms me…but I have heard this question before. I like the answer offered by Waynethat it seems that the whole week is about the sermon. I strive to let the life of the community speak to me and then I form it into a sermon and speak it back to the community. It is a matter of letting the sermon reflect our lives and that includes all of our lives.
I fight the meandering process of writing, even though I know that nothing inspired, poetic or worth listening to (for me) comes out of some effort at engineering. Of course, the meandering often means watching a movie that promises no pay off (but surprises me with one), books with no relevance to that upcoming sermon (but which feed a later one), giving into serendipity and the way that wakes you up a bit. Thanks, Dan! The Puritan in some of us dies hard, and against all wisdom to its contrary.
What truth! This is a situation that I have dealt with most of my time in ministry. It is much like we are cursed if we do, cursed if we do not when it come to our time. The rural folks want you to be out getting your feet dirty and the city folks want to make sure you are in the office where they can see you. What a conundrum.
The major struggle is that too many folks think that a pastor is an employee. While it may be true that the pastor may be payed by the church. I believe that as soon as the church feels that way, pastor=employee, there is great possibility for failure and trouble.
Honestly, we need to help people understand that ministry is a calling. A calling that is with us all the time. Personally I can not leave my “work” at the office. It goes with me where ever I go. My sermon runs through my head through out the week. As I go visiting, in meetings, in the community, with my family, it all culminates to when happens on Sunday morning.
Then if there was a better understanding of calling, I believe that it would be carried over into the congregation and their responsibility to the Kingdom work.
Blessings!
This mimics ongoing tensions between regional judicatory exec.s and their staff editors who are asked to publish columns or write journalistic reporting or other features for the regional newsletters etc. Surprisingly, my judicatory execs. have always complained when a story could take days to write (“taking too long”). So I was EXTREMELY relieved when the veteran denominational editor-in-chief finally admitted to us regional editors that it always takes HIM about 3 days to research/write/edit/prepare EACH of the same pieces (- such professional relief was precisely why he revealed his on-the-job info to us). I find it interesting that our judicatory chiefs, who have also been parish pastors/M.Div.s, are so insistent that an hourly staffer not take the same 8-20 hours to research facts / Biblical / Internet references, conduct interviews, write & edit, do layout, plus research images for illustration and photo-process those images, then program the whole thing for online access too — all for publication to several thousand church-member readers throughout the region…
Maybe there is some unprocessed personal anxiety leaking out, when it comes to the ways which regional judicatory execs (or senior pastors?) can be critical of the same “sermon” processes required by their professional hourly production / communications staffs?
Maybe we all — lay church staff/leaders too — need to use this anxiety as an OPPORTUNITY to PRACTICE being GENTLE with each other. The rest of the capitalist world requires hourly justifications of a person’s monetary value via proof of uber-efficiency … and it is the antithesis of the creative process required of writing & effective ‘preaching-teaching.’
Plust, isn’t the church supposed to recognize Value via different (i.e., “non-empire”) insights, perceptions, processes? – Isn’t that the the church’s entire *raison d’etre*? Wouldn’t this question of ‘please prove your work’ be a flag that the church org./its teachers need to do some educating or reminding about the ways Jesus showed/instructed/told stories/sermonized to us about how we are to alternatively see and value people, process, gifts, and time applications?
Jesus was gentle with the apostle tax-collector, who insisted on a certain woman’s worth based on her social status and “resource-wasting;” Jesus constantly operated via a different value system and repeatedly, gently instructed his apostles about his shockingly different vision of Value. It is a terrific example for us. Like Jesus, the church should be gently and repeatedly reminding us incumbent apostle tax collectors about practicing the better health benefits of the Tao of Different Value.
Not to put myself in the same class as Ansel Adams, this is a little like asking him how much time it took him to take a picture. How much thought goes into choosing a topic? Can you do that effectively without knowing your congregation? Are you sure you’re not answering questions they aren’t asking? In other words, how do you draw a nice crisp line in the sand and say, “This is when I started sermon prep”? As far as I’m concerned, half the work is done by the time I sit down at the computer, and once I’ve actually decided where to start, the tough part is over.
After using all the types of answers we use when only shortly removed from seminary, I found the most enduring answer reflects the second great commandment. My answer is a question to the questioner, “How much time would you spend on preparing for a speech that you know will affect the lives of the people who hear it? How many resources will you incorporate into that effort. How will you feel about what you said when one person spreads rose petals at your feet and the next person spreads fertilizer?” OK, there are three questions, don’t we always get a follow up?
I prepare for a sermon 24/7 and sometimes change the whole thing two steps from the pulpit.
Having just gone through our annual budgeting process and with our annual business meeting looming in the not to distant future, the topic of “Why Pay the Preacher,” or its correlate, “How much to pay the preacher,” is fresh in mind. Placing a ‘value’ upon preaching and its benefits to the congregation is so highly subjective that it goes beyond our ability to define very well. In every congregation I have served there have been those who felt the pastor was under paid and others who felt he/she was over paid (and ought to get a ‘real job’). The Apostle Paul’s terse comment about the “folly of preaching” maybe misinterpreted by some as a devaluing of the medium. Yet I’m certain that those who have read this article can testify with me that there have been times when I (you) have gone into the pulpit feeling very unprepared and yet the Spirit of God worked in the hearts of your congregational members and other times when you thought your message was as close to being divinely inspired scripture and it fell flat. Pastoral ministry is a great place to hide laziness, but it can also be a phenominal place to allow your love and devotion for God to excell, and what better place for this to occur than through our preaching. The only thing better than this is to get paid for doing what you love!
Yes, over the years I have heard this query in a number of guises (and while serving for 15 years as a congregational consultant, this was a very common question asked during intervention in contentious congregations!). I would suggest that if any clergy begins to be questioned in earnest about time spent on preparing to preach, that would be a good time to contact an associational support officer because such questioning is usually a surface symptom of deeper issues that may soon appear.
However, I think there are some simple measures clergy can use to help people move beyond the thinking that produces the question about time spent on sermon preparation.
– share with the congregation some of the themes/ideas/directions/books you are considering as a basis for a sermon some months or weeks in advance. Sometimes you will then be blessed with suggestions for other resources that will enhance your own development of the sermon, plus you will engender a sense of ownership of the sermon by a wider circle. By the time you preach on the sermon, people will recognize how much time of contemplation they too have invested in the topic.
– if you preach from a Lectionary or the Torah, and therefore you know the general topic in advance, use those passages as educational teaching points a week or two before the related sermon. Such educational settings allow for a wider range of explorations of diverse interpretations than a sermon will usually allow. Those involved in the educational setting will come to see how much preparation is distilled down the actual sermon.
– if your tradition welcomes it (and thank goodness mine does), take advantage of every opportunity to have laity take charge of some services. If possible, have them worry/think/ponder through more than one service in a row, so they can get a sense of the many responsibilities of preparation that fall on you on a regular basis. I have heard so many times, after such lay worship opportunities, “boy, I am soooo glad I don’t have to do this every week!”
But, if you notice, all of these suggestions require us clergy to get out of our “Lone Ranger” mode, and partner with the laity in ways by which they can sense the real time and energy we put in our sermons. And maybe, if we can’t let go of that go-it-alone mentality, we need to ask ourselves if it is because we do not value our own efforts in relation to our preaching; and if so, why not? Some deep introspection might follow.
In the end, I am re-called to Emerson’s admonition to the Harvard Divinity School:
Had to laugh when reading this. Went through several difficult years of interrigation then remembered from CPE a study on the difference between urban, suburban, an rural. it is mostly what is seen as work. rural almost always sees time reading, contemplating, devoting etc to be recreational whereas the other two lean more to it supports what one does for a living.
I invite them to come along for a day or to fill the pulpit as the only way to truly understand. I have also offered that if you see me goofing off on my work day and get upset, do not call me on my day off!
not sure how much time i spend on sermon prep, seems that is what the whole week is about.
Having taught some ‘preaching’ classes to laymen transitioning to a second career in ministry it was interesting that they felt many sermons they had heard were totally unfocussed. As one said, “They (the sermons)were more like extended Bible studies, but with no application or “So What?” to help congregations know what to do with this knowledge.” If the preacher can’t get the main idea into 10 words or less, he/she may need to do more preparation. Unlike preachers, most congregations don’t have hours to study the scripture in advance of the sermon presentation. Many people come to church to be inspired, to get help facing life’s challenges, to get closer to God. When this fails to happen, they get frustrated, angry, and find somewhere where they can fulfill their spiritual needs.
Usually I start two – three weeks out looking for themes in our lections that I can carry forward from week to week and perhaps through the liturgical season. Using online and software resources, I gather about 20 pages of notes, cut them down to 10, list the top two or three points memorize the points, reflect on them while reading the newspaper, watching the news, conversing with community members, next door neighbors, my physical therapist, my spouse and friends and my children. After a lot of staring out the window and prayer, I preach to myself and to my faith community members as an act of love. It looks like I’m preaching “off the cuff” and telling jokes. Whimsical or not I find that it takes a lifetime to prepare a sermon. One time after preaching what I thought was a saccharin sermon on 1Cor 13, a member of the parish coming down the steps following the service shook my hand and said “That’s giving the hell, Father.”
I have not often run into this question, but when I do I honestly say that it is on the average 8-14 yours of work to prepare and practice a sermon. I also bring into my sermons and other discussions the importance of study, reading, prayer and devotions which all have a heavy impact on anyone’s preaching. For the most part I have been blessed with churches that understand what it takes and who appreciate the time involved to be a good preacher and pastor. We are obligated to teach and demonstrate by our work the importance of being with God and with eac other and that it is not always doing or as the world expects “producing.” Once have have been with someone for any reason they have a better understanding of that pastors presence in their lives and they appreciate what I am doing.
Inspiring article. My opinion is that wether I read the daily paper, drink coffe with a friend, read the bilboards or listen to music or tha radio I am busy to prepare a sermon. How else would I be in touch with what’s going on in the world to minister to the chalenges and the needs of our day.
I have kept and shared a detailed time log for 35 of my 40 years in ministry. It cancels out conversations like the one Dan cites. Far from some sort of concession to “time-clock-thinking”, it sets a model for valuing time, embracing mutual accountability and providing bedrock data for improving ministry-related projects.
There is no reason for keeping our congregational lay leadership in the dark regarding what parish ministry involves and how ministers execute their calling. There is even less excuse for ministers themselves to be unaware of where their time goes and how they might better focus their time and effort.
You can’t plan for next year unless you know what happened this year and that means counting it all up and doing solid analysis. When the minister and elders sit down to plan, the minister’s time is as much a congregational resource as is the bank account. You can’t budget either and focus them toward missional goals unless you know the quantities available to be shifted from one project toward another. Lay folk understand this–it is how their world operates–and they appreciate and reciprocate the honesty.
I agree with the author that so much of our preaching preparations appear to be mere procrastination or loafing. Too many days I go home to the question, “how was you day and what did you do?” Too often, after one of those deeply comtemplative and searching days, I respond with “not much, I sat at my desk and tried to come up with a sermon. I’m exhausted.”
When some church members ask about time and pay, I’ll often quip that I’ve worked hard and attend too many years of school (10) to get a job that requires only 20 minutes of work per week. Then I tease them. “If I work a full hour/week, & take 2 weeks for vacation, I only work 50 hrs/yr. Divide the pastor’s package by 50 and you get one great hourly wage. Don’t you wish you could have my job?” Usually they instantly laugh and decline the offer to take the job.
Somedays, I wish that we had more objective and empirical data to use. But, alas, our work is not measured in human terms. I keep telling myself that. One day, I’ll learn to listen more intently to myself.
After twenty-five years of ministry through a rapidly changing time I also am amazed that this question still seems to be so prominent. All but the mega-churches are shrinking. In a near-majority of our United Methodist churches the “preacher” is the only paid staff-person, and clearly most have only a part-time custodian and/or part-time “administrative assistant” in addition. This article seems to describe and seek to justify the senior pastor whose sole job is to preach. I doubt we have a single one of those in my Methodist conference of over 900 congregations. The truth is that our job description is much more broad and truly impossible. Preaching time use expectation is second only to pastoral care. We are expected to use more of our time preparing for preaching than in administration, counseling, program development and implementation, training and equipping, community organizing, legal issue fire-fighting, supervision and all the other roles combined. I clearly spend LESS time in “sermon” preparation than early in my ministry, but that’s offset by time spent preparing multi-media for preaching and worship. My two declining urban fringe congregations have stalled out on considering consolidation, so the next options are staff reduction or reduced clergy time (part-time retired) or both. The high expectation of preaching endures. In one of my two churches, by their previous design, the lay liturgist prays the prayer of illumination. They consider this a high moment in worship, as I am humbled and encouraged for the task. Preaching is not going away. It may outlast most of the churches.
If you had asked me that question 10 years ago, I don’t know how I would have answered. Today, though, having gone through my lay speaking class and being called upon to preach a number of times, I can only say that I am constantly amazed that pastors can pull together their sermons in a week! Christians have to remember that it isn’t just knowing what verse you are going to use, but finding out how God is going to use you to speak His word to your congregation. Listening for His guidance often takes more time than typing up bullet points.
I felt a sense of uneasiness about preacher pay in only one setting through my 24+ years as a pastor, so at that church I kept a detailed accounting of my hours for my entire first year. At that point I shared the results with the elders, two of whom were those I felt lived with questions about pay, and immediately there were lights coming on all around the table. When I asked if I should keep such an accounting for the annual report, one of those who seemed to feel uneasy at first said, “I’m not paying you for the hours it took to keep this log … I’m paying you to do all these things a pastor does! And by the way, I had no idea.” To be honest, as you suggest, the record keeping was eye opening for me as well! Now I have a copy of that log for future use if ever I’m asked.
“Time-clock” questions, questions about working conditions, and questions about compensation have been with clergy since antiquity.
In some ways, clergy are no different than other white-collar workers. We, too, suffer injuries on the job, we worry about rising health insurance costs, and we experience age discrimination and other abuses. Many of the working people in the pews share our concerns.
They, too, know what it’s like to be caught in a “Dilbert” world.
(I’m very fond of this comic strip. It has inspired more than one sermon and I’ve used it as a teaching aid at seminaries.)
I’ll offer an observation that may seem “outrageous” for American clergy…. For at least a decade, the Canadian Auto Workers have been
organizing clergy and bringing clergy into labor unions as members….
The CAW is not a “fringe group” of radicals. It’s the largest private sector labor union in Canada and it has over 225,000 members…. The CAW represents a lot of white-collar folks.
For some reason, the fact that Canadian clergy join labor unions -
well, some of them do – has never registered on the American radar
screen…. It’s a possibility that American clergy have never discussed…. Still, we can dream, and the next time that your clergy association is looking for an interesting speaker for a national event,
you may want to give the CAW organizers a call. Ask the question,
“Should clergy develop labor unions for clergy?”
Physicians and nurses, teachers and librarians and social workers, and other college-educated workers, have organized and joined labor unions. In Europe, it’s not unusual to meet college graduates who are very active in unions and very pleased with the results.
“Should clergy develop labor unions for clergy?” Well, it’s an
interesting question. If American clergy identified themselves as workers – if we put some of our “privileged” thinking aside – it might actually do some good. For a variety of reasons.
An excellent article. I also find myself wondering how much time I spend preparing for a sermon, and how to “count” that time. I have to admit that so very much of my preparation time does not look like working at all, as you point out – for me, preparation time IS the conversation with the wise grandmother, toasting the joy of newlyweds, because in my mind, all of it ought to somehow be added to the homiletical stew.
So much of preaching is or ought to be exegesis not only of the text, but of the people. Whether the abovementioned moments factor specifically into the sermon, they are there somewhere in the preacher’s head and heart. And sometimes I find the most effective element of a sermon is that illustration that puts the congregation, or members of it, in the drama of the text.
In my mind, being a preacher is like being an electrician. Not a glamorous job, really. The job is about connecting up all the wires, the things that carry the juice; conduits like how you goofed up your woodworking project, how you embarrassed yourself at youth bowling night, how the local barber told you a story that made you have to fight back a tear. Then the job is using them to deliver the ultimate source of power that flows through the text. A hard job, but humble and humbling, I find. Like laying pipe.
So, another answer to the question, “how much time do you spend on a sermon,” could indeed be, all of it….
In my prior life as an engineer there were folks who also wondered why we were paid the kind of salary the corporation paid us. It was because we spent time at a desk not getting our hands too dirty and it didn’t look like work. I find the same thing now though I have noticed that our more senior members seem to appreciate that the sermons that “speak” to them don’t just happen; they take study and contemplation.
Thanks for your article Why Pay The Preacher. I have encountered in the last months less a concern about the money but what seems an extreme concern for me to account for every minute of my time and every action. This is a new one for me and I am not sure I understand it yet. It does seem that in this particular case there is no understanding about or tolerance for the pastor’s role and work that you so succinctly describe as looking like procrastination and goofing off. After all we get to sit around and read books, pray, eat, go to lunches and visit all our friends. Who wouldn’t want a job like that? As little as some may value the pastors role in the life of the community of faith they would not want to do without it.
The question about how clergy spend their time can be framed in other ways, too. How it is framed emerges from the congregation’s anxiety. I think the congregation’s anxiety is rooted in whatever they perceive the clergy leader is not doing to their satisfaction. In a previous setting, the question about my time was always “Why don’t you visit people in their homes more?” In my current setting, it is about new member growth — “Why aren’t we getting new members?” In both settings, I received praise about the quality of my preaching. In both settings, I wrote newsletter articles about “where sermons come from,” describing the process of creating a sermon and the resources I use. I wrote them as descriptions, not as defenses, and they were received that way for the most part.
I wonder, then, if the question “Why pay the preacher?” is a question about the quality of our preaching, not the use of our time. In a culture that measures value in part by how much it costs and in part by how long it lasts — the $200 pair of shoes that falls apart sooner than the $50 pair is not a very good value — the measure of preaching quality is not in how much time we spend preparing, but in what we actually say, how well we say it, and in how effectively it shapes and guides a community of faith over time. Sorry, my dear colleagues, if that hurt a bit.
I also write four minute online devotions for the congregation that I serve. About 150 people receive them about four-five days a week, which they also share with their families and friends. Sermons are not just about Sundays anymore.
BTW, the Presbyterian Church of Canada has published over 250 of my devotionals with a readership of 5000+. I get a lot of feedback from all over the world.
Why Pay the Preacher for twenty-five plus years I have learned that there are two types of members when it comes to the question…why pay the preacher. There are those who think that the preacher is under valued and those who think he is over valued. So when my pay check arrives I thank no one and worry not a “twit” about what anyone thinks because I know why the preacher is paid. Incidently, I will share this story with my Lutheran brothers and see if they feel if they are more influenced by Calvin than Luther in their preaching.