How Much Should a Pastor Make?

Scripture actually settles this, and the answer surprises most people, because it runs opposite to our instincts. We reflexively want to cap what a pastor earns. The Bible worries about the other ditch entirely.

Paul writes that “the elders who rule well” are worthy of “double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine,” and he grounds it in two proofs he calls Scripture: “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain” (Deuteronomy 25:4) and “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (Luke 10:7, quoting Jesus). The word for honor — timē — carries both esteem and material worth in the same breath. Elsewhere Paul says plainly that “the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14), and that the one taught should share good things with the one who teaches (Galatians 6:6). Luther thought this so basic to Christian life that he wrote it into the Small Catechism’s Table of Duties.

So the biblical measure is not the county’s median income. It is the labor: is the man giving himself to the Word, and is he freed to keep doing so? That cuts both ways. It condemns the hireling who fleeces the flock (1 Peter 5:2), and it equally condemns the congregation that keeps its pastor anxious and underpaid and calls the stinginess humility. The answer to “how much should a pastor make” is not a number and never a ceiling. It is double honor, rendered gladly to a rightly called man doing the actual work.