Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have voted a new approach to setting wages for the more than 13,000 church employees around the world.
Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have voted a new approach to setting wages for the more than 13,000 church employees around the world. After an extended discussion, leaders meeting at Annual Council voted October 9 to implement a more decentralized method of setting salary scales.
The committee endorsed a common philosophy and guidelines for remuneration, but has given each of the church’s 12 divisions, or administrative regions, freedom to apply these standards within the unique context of their own territories.
In an interview with Adventist NewsLine, Gerry Karst, chair of the remuneration, said he thinks the process has resulted in a fairer, more practical policy for the church. “God has blessed us,” he said. “We’ve studied this through together, we have done a lot of praying, we’ve worked hard, we’ve brought in the policy to the Annual Council [where it] received significant debate, and that’s good. I think we need to debate these things.”
For more than 40 years, the Adventist Church has operated on a centralized wage-setting system, with the church’s General Conference establishing a basic scale, and each division setting a wage factor to use with the wage scale. Under the new approach, the responsibility for setting the wage scale shifts to division administrators. These leaders, Karst points out, are in a better position to set a wage scale that fits with local realities.
As with the previous remuneration system, this new approach uses the pastor as a key “marker” for setting wages at all levels of church work. It’s a system, says Karst, which acknowledges the central role of pastors in the life and mission of the church.
The new approach also responds to concerns in some parts of the world where the church has difficulty attracting and keeping qualified employees in areas such as business and education. Karst says some flexibility has been built in, allowing divisions, where necessary, to offer wages more in line with market rates, while still maintaining a commitment to the “spirit of sacrifice” that characterizes church employment. He admits that individuals will, on the whole, still be required to choose between making more money in the general marketplace, or working for the church.
The new policy places a limit on the extent to which remuneration for church administrators differs from that of pastors. Remuneration for the highest-paid church administrator in a division may not be more than 25 percent greater than that of the highest-paid pastor.
The division’s wage scale will serve as the standard for denominational organizations within a division. However, under a special approval process, an alternate remuneration plan for unique, limited situations may be adopted. Any alternate plan must not be more than 25 percent above the high-paid employee under the general wage scale.
Karst says the new approach may mean slightly higher salaries for church employees in some areas, while in others, salaries will have to be reduced to bring them into line with the policy. Church entities that are outside the policy will have five years to bring themselves into compliance.
“I think we’ve got to give and take,” says Karst. “Not everyone was happy, and nor will everybody ever be happy, on remuneration. So, we don’t have a perfect document, but I think we have the best that we could accomplish at this point in time, and I believe God will bless the church as a result of it.”
Annual Council’s action on remuneration follows a vote earlier this year at Spring Meeting, where leaders accepted the new approach in principle, but decided to take more time to consider details of implementation.