The recent move by Seventh-day Adventist Church administrators in the South Pacific to implement new salary guidelines for church employers highlights similar challenges facing church leaders around the world.

Over the past few decades there has been a growing gap between the remuneration policy stated in the church’s Working Policy, and the needs and practices of church institutions and entities around the world, says Gerry Karst, a general vice president of the world church and chair of the church’s Remuneration Study Commission.

“There are now many variations and exceptions to the one wage scale that we have used for many years,” explains Karst. “The time has come for taking another look at this issue. The questions are being asked, ‘If one group can move away from the standard wage scale, why shouldn’t another? And what are the principles that hold us together?’”

Established in September 2000, the Remuneration Study Commission is charged with reviewing and revising the church’s current Philosophy of Remuneration, which was first included in the church’s Working Policy in the early 1960s. The Commission will then move on to the second stage of its responsibilities-–to develop a salary scale for elected and appointed staff of the Adventist Church’s world headquarters that is consistent with the Philosophy of Remuneration.

Karst says the revised policy will help guide regional church administrators who are “feeling pressure in various sectors, such as the South Pacific has in its educational institutions, to make adjustments to their wage scale.”  One of the main challenges facing these church employers, he says, is to attract and retain well-qualified staff in often-competitive job markets.

The Commission is also concerned with bringing a greater sense of uniformity to what has sometimes been seen as a fragmented process of setting remuneration levels.  In North America, the church’s hospital and health-care system moved away from the single-wage-scale system some 20 years ago.  Further exceptions were added in 1994, when the Adventist Church’s executive committee voted to give General Conference institutions, which do not receive appropriations from the General Conference, the option to move to wage rates more in compliance with community rates.  The Pacific Press Publishing Association, based in Idaho, United States, and the church’s Risk Management Service, in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States, are among the entities that have adopted different salary scales.

The Remuneration Study Commission will meet for two days in July to review the church’s remuneration philosophy statement.  “We are studying and reviewing papers from both the White Estate and the Biblical Research Institute to help us develop a philosophy statement consistent with Biblical principles and with the sense of mission that accompanies denominational employment,” says Karst.  “From this foundation, we’ll attempt to build a remuneration policy that may provide a little bit more flexibility or latitude than we’ve had historically, while constantly aiming to maintain a sense of unity and mission. The work was begun with sacrifice and self-denial, and no less will be required to finish the work.”

The Remuneration Study Commission is made up of four General Conference employees and seven lay church members representing different world regions.  All recommendations of the Commission will go to the administrative committee of the world church for review and then to the General Conference executive committee for final approval.