Monday, October 8, 2012

Questions about paying pastors monetary wages

I am reading through the book of Luke with the university student Adventist group on campus. Their closed Facebook page allow us to share our thoughts on what we have been reading. Being the critical and analytic person that I am by nature, some interestingly critical questions arise regarding the church traditions today in comparison to what I read in Luke.

On reading Luke 20, Jesus uses the imprint on the coin to tell the people to render to the Roman emperor what belongs to the Roman emperor. I then wondered if the people gave Roman coins to the temple or if they had their special temple coins. I know that some pastor taught me in the past that money temple changers existed and developed a business on exchanging currency to the temple currency, which gave rise to the situation where Jesus had to chase them out and rebuke them for turning God's temple into a den of thieves (See story in Luke 19:45-46).

I also noted that God did not require monetary offerings, but only animal and grain offerings which would also serve as the wages for the priests as recorded in whole book of Leviticus.


This got me wondering if the church today has totally rejected Biblical principles in its funding. Shouldn't we be bringing food offerings meet our pastors grocery and dietary needs? And shouldn't we also bring clothing offerings to meet the clothing needs of our pastors? I can understand the paying of offerings to take care of building and utilities, but tithe going to conferences to pay wages for pastors? Isn't is like using Caesar's money to pay God's officers? Just asking.

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