Randy wrote:I don't know of a single megachurch in the SBC which publishes the pastor's salary (or staff salaries) along with all their perks. Right or wrong, they trust those decisions to be made by the Personnel and Budget committees that were duly elected by the church. I tend to think it works just fine and also keeps bloggers like the Watchdog from obsessessing in their spare time.
Actually, from experience and observation, few megachurches allow their members a vote on the pastor's salary package and perks, few members know what he gets, and in most cases, because of the amounts involved, they are at great pains to keep it that way. In addition, many megachurch pastors are in a position to make money off business enterprises that come about as a result of their position, such as their writing, speaking engagements and one local pastor whose ministry has a name, and a bookstore in the corner of the church building that packages and sells CD's and videos of his sermon series.
I've belonged to just two churches that qualified as "megachurches" by definition. One, North Phoenix, which was where I attended during college, was always above board in business, with every budget number and item being available to the church, a financial report presented to the congregation at business meeting, and major financial and budget decisions trusted to the church, and not just a select, exclusive committee of the pastor's private supporters and cheerleaders. In the other, here in Houston, I never saw a budget report, heard only appeals for money when it was needed in large quantities, had a hard time tracking down a financial report, and had difficulty discovering when the church conducted business meetings and when I showed up for one, was told that I didn't have the credentials to be a "voting member" and could only observe the proceedings and could not ask questions.
I guess that experience probably helped lead me to the conclusion, at least from a personal perspective, that megachurches collect too many people and too many resources in one place, and create difficulties that Jesus never intended for his church. So many of them, more than we read about, seem to descend into the depths of arguing over the perks, privileges and salaries accorded to the personality that is required to hold the operation together. Perhaps that is why the churches that Paul started, and the Christians in the scripture formed groups that met in homes, and when the group got too big for a living room, split and started a new group.
Immature church members who do not follow the dictates of scripture, but instead take their gripes about their church to cyberspace, are the product of pastors whose leadership of a congregation of thousands runs about as deep as a river in West Texas in the summertime.