To me, money is money, and is important for everyone regardless of religion or politics. I try to steer clear of those topics, when possible. (Of course, sometimes I allow guest posts that intentionally stir the pot, but those are the exception, not the rule.)

Moving on . . .

My point was that John has his views, Nathan has his. Nathan’s employees may have subscribed to his beliefs as he did. Not saying it’s right or wrong. Things worked out for him and his business.

The issue taken with Nathan’s words was simply his attribution to miracle the basic fundamentals of the market. By using this attribution, the implication is that his customers would not have come to him otherwise, meaning that his prices are too high or his quality is too low or he is doing an inadequate job of marketing. So he is asserting that God either (a) caused his customers to come to him against their financial interests, or (b) God put in a few hours of marketing to these customers on Nathan’s behalf. I am a spiritual person, but I subscribe to Occam’s razor, and the simplest explanation here is that market forces are acting like we’ve observed them acting for centuries: if you lower prices and everything else constant, demand will increase.

Putting your business at risk just because your customers asked you to and without doing the proper cost-benefit analysis (short and long term, yes) is irresponsible, and if I worked in that business I would get out immediately. It’s not just his business that he is risking; he is risking the livelihood of all his employees and the economic viability of each of their families (which in turn will burden the entire community, if you want to draw out the ripple effects the whole way).

(He alluded to me not knowing the whole picture, and he is right. I’m going off of only what he has said here and reading in between the lines a bit. But I don’t think I’m far off…)

I agree with those who have said the pay cuts shouldn’t be a permanent/continual solution or otherwise the congregation will continue to rely on this. While many churches offer free housing, the pay is not necessarily what one would call outstanding (of course, one doesn’t go into this field for the money), but clergy have to make a living too and constant pay cuts aren’t an answer. It’s a 24/7 job that’s highly political and stressful. Mainstream Christian churches are losing congregants to the newer churches (think of the mega-churches that are most often tagged as ‘evangelical’) and are clustering their congregations, with two or more churches in a region sharing a pastor and this may be a future step for the congregation in the main post.

I think the last sentence of the author’s post nicely sums up the article: “Financially, needs are all that matter.” I have finally come to a point in my life where I believe this and I attribute it in large part to reading GRS.

Nathan – Quoting God, prayer and miracles in a financial blog does not add any value. Else we all buy lottery tickets and pray every night for a windfall. And please do not preach regarding the great work since it is a known fact that religion is responsible for the most deaths. While some organizations do carry out good work; more often than not, it is with selfish motives of conversion and increasing numbers of followers. The NGOs do so without a selfish motive in heart. Many religious leaders do actively preach hatered and discrimination.

I’m a little edgy at the concept of voluntary salary reductions, because I have had a personal experience where salary reductions were abused. We first were approached to take a voluntary salary reduction at an IT consulting company I worked for. OK.

Then, the ones who didn’t opt for the reduction were in the first wave of layoffs. They asked for another salary reduction. Then there were more layoffs. Then they started announcing mandatory salary reductions, and there were a couple of rounds of those together with waves of layoffs.

They also awarded the yearly bonus and then asked us to voluntarily forego it.

By the time I was laid off, after over a year of salary reductions in the last round before the company actually closed its doors permanently, I was making 35% less in salary than when this started. I also missed out on a severance package that the first group got. I had to go on unemployment right away, and it was calculated based on my reduced salary, so that cut too.

The cherry on top was that I was in the group that got this speech: “You are our elite or you wouldn’t still be here at this stage. However we can’t afford to keep paying you anything. But — we think we can keep our doors open if you’d like to keep working for us for free until business turns around.”

Hell no.

db

Nathan

I worked for a non-profit that saw its rent raised drastically because the church providing the basement space was struggling. They wanted to raise our rent (for a meal kitchen) by around $25k a year. I went in and changed the hot water setting, had the pipes wrapped with insulated tape, replaced some of the appliances, changed the heat and so on. I got the church to do the same thing upstairs. Bingo. Their costs dropped and our rent didn’t need to go up nearly so much. (It went up around inflation instead.)

Has this church rented out its unused space? Looked at selling its space and leasing? Started a daycare? Renegotiated contracts with suppliers? And so on? I certainly hope they went through every other step before staff felt compelled to cut their already modest salaries.

This goes for other organizations, too. Too many companies look to cut staff costs before getting creative with other line items.

I hope that when the economy goes back up, these folks’ salaries go back up. Call me skeptical but too many employers, regardless of who they represent, have cut wages for workers while maintaining and even raising their own. Even in ministries. That has got to stop.

It’s not just an economic downturn, but the purchasing power of a dollar that’s at issue here. We’re getting paid less and less. Our dollar doesn’t stretch like it used to, and we’re asked to take on more and more burden all the time through healthcare premiums/deductibles, utility fuel prices, etc.

I wouldn’t keep asking the staff to voluntarily reduce their salaries; I’d ask why you haven’t received new parishoners, and if you have why those parishoners are not choosing to bequeath money to the church.

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. You didn’t get rewarded by God for your cheerful heart; you made a rash decision without proper analysis and got lucky. There is a price-demand curve for your service, and you were priced higher than the optimum. This is microeconomics 101, not a miracle.

I am a churchgoing Oregonian like the writer — though I’ve never met Steve — and like him, a values-driven earner rather than a high earner. My experience suggests that taking joy in things like community, God and nature can actually displace the ‘need’ for expensive, optional material goods that end up creating debt and suffering for many Americans after they purchase them. More about happiness with less consumption at http://www.diamondcutlife.org/

It seems that unfortunatly you appear to be the one who is really kinda out of tune with today’s realities. Unfortunately cutbacks, layoffs, and shutdowns do occur, but if you were to ask most folks they would rather take a paycut than have to look for a job. This economy right now is tough no question about it. I run an IT consulting company, and a lot of my clientele have asked me to bring my prices to a place they can afford, and, and even though I have a family, I have listened to them and lowered my prices. I did it with a cheerful heart…..and what do you think has happened…….that’s right……last week I picked up 3 new paying clients that MORE than made up for the revenue loss I had experienced……Think about it man……..I (just like that church office staff) am doing something I absolutely love, I almost lost a significant chunk of business (to the tune of about 15K a month), nearly had to lay the 2 guys who work with me off, but by being prayerful, humble, and cheerful about the situation I was rewarded with not only a short term solution, but with a long-term gain.

Times are tough, but by management of small businesses trying to work together with their employees because they believe in a team concept goes back MANY generations……and the idea of debt, and living in excess, and wastful spending practices have only been around for the past 40 or so years.

A class that I went through recently said it the best…….You want to learn how to get wealthy………spend some time and learn how to manage money from your grandparents………that same class also said this “live like no one else……so later you can live like no one else.” THAT’S exaclty what this church is doing right now…….they’re keeping the things that are important in front of them, and letting GOD sort out the rest, and they WILL be blessed for it….you can count on it!!!!

Nathan

I worry that some people who aren’t in the position of being handsomely compensated for serving God really can’t afford to have so much “faith” in their organization/employer. It’s one thing to sacrifice part of a comfortable salary to help a community that one is invested in beyond economics. It is another thing entirely for the millions of people ( probably most working people) who are barely getting by toiling for a paycheck from some faceless company.

and to # 2 Solomon,

Peter McWilliams was awesome. It’s really a shame that he was murdered by the Federal government.

What does working in a cash-strapped church, whose cash cows are dying off, have to do with “getting rich slowly” (key words: getting rich)? I don’t want to hear from people who don’t have money.

I think there are several things that we can learn from this story and apply to getting rich.

The first thing I asked myself was “Could I take a fake 10% pay cut and be alright?” followed closely by “Should I, and what would I do with the other 10%?”

The second thing is that the same scenario could easily play out in any small business, like where I work. It’s a small (~8 people) company. Do I believe in the company enough to take a pay cut if times get tough? At my current job I don’t, but if it were something I loved doing I might.

If we’re feeling particularly stretchy we could could even take this as a lesson in the importance of diversity in investment. If the congregation had been more diversified, perhaps cuts wouldn’t have been needed as much when one segment started dying off.

Besides, there’s only so much you can learn about IRAs and only so many ways to get out of debt. Investigating other aspects of money management and stories of other people’s choices are interesting too.

BTW, I’ve linked to this in today’s round-up post at FaM.

In fact, if they are making more than $20k each, then they made the perfectly rational decision, because 1/5 of $20k is $4k, and therefore their expected loss in salary is smaller if they offer to give up the $4k (ie, 1/5 of more than $20 is more than $4k — a greater expected loss).

The story comes off as if they sacrificed to save the church. They didn’t do that. The church was going to be saved regardless. They sacrificed to save their own rears, or — at best — the rear of their coworker who would lose her job.

There’s nothing wrong with this, mind you; I’m just pointing out that there is an alternate explanation for this that is much more logical and in line with human nature. There are plenty of examples of humans deciding to forgo self-interest for the greater good, but I hesitate to agree that this is one of them.

What if you were in a situation where your company wasn’t doing well and you were asked to take a 10% cut so the company can keep going? Some people might choose to quit and look for another job but others might realize that they would have a tough time finding a job that pays as well (even after the 10% cut) and might choose to stay.

What if management came to the workers and said that either everyone takes a 10% paycut until times get better or we lay off 10% of the workers? What would you choose?

Mike