Should pastors live the good life?

Lawrence Ookeditse | Monday December 9, 2013 13:59

Another argument that is akin to the egg and chicken debate is the one about money and religion. Should pastors be seen accumulating wealth? How do pastors know when they need to ask for more money, and how should they use it once they get it?

The debate is often awkward as it is provoking and ambiguous. For pastors scraping by while working two jobs and churches struggling to meet their obligations, money strains relationships and stretches faith.

While in many professions, success is expected to bring riches, with preachers of the Word, luxurious lifestyles are traditionally frowned upon. Some people have a hard time listening to sermons against greed and false idols from a pastor wearing a Rolex watch and an Armani suit.

A few people that Mmegi contacted in Kgatleng to find out their views about well off preachers characterised them as disturbing, but they generally agree that the church needs funds to function.

Sir Wonder Masebola does not have a problem with wealthy pastors driving flashy cars and living in mansions as long as the lavish lifestyle is not financed by the church. He does not have a problem either with the church having money. “I would only have a problem when a pastor uses church funds to enrich himself,” he says.

Masebola’s position is that all pastors have jobs or businesses to finance personal wealth, not church funds. According to him, church members should not be coerced to give money for the pastor to lead a wealthy lifestyle while the members are poor.

“I totally disagree with a situation where a pastor exploits church members to buy cars and pay for his children’s English-medium education,” he says.

Pastors, he opines, like everybody else, should work for themselves because Jesus Christ was not paid to bring the new message and heal people. “Moruti o tshwanetse a iphandlela (A pastor should fend for himself),” he insists.

But the church does need funds. “It has an administration,” Masebola notes. “The church is like a house. It needs stationery, water, toilets, electricity and all the other necessities. It must therefore have money to run the administration.”

But the money should be raised properly through the tithe (phalalo) and other offerings (meneelo).

While Mpho Paul agrees that the church needs funds to run, he does not agree with the practice of coercing members to part with their money “by extracting a certain percentage from their salaries. That is unfair”.

Paul says the church is the meeting point for people to fellowship in prayer; not for anyone to make money or to enrich a certain rank of people.

“We are free to pledge what we have for the church, for instance, moneelo,” he says. But pastors are to volunteer their services, “not to be hired because Jesus Christ was never hired.”

“However, we can agree as church members to give our pastor a stipend at month-end if he or she does not have a salaried job,” says Paul.

He is also of the view that pastors should go into businesses to sustain themselves so that they are not dependent on church funds.

Caroline Paledi has no problem with a wealthy pastor “as long as that wealth is clean and doesn’t come in a dirty way”.

That also extends to the church which must raise clean funds and pay the pastor in accordance with what has been agreed. “I don’t mind my pastor living in a seven bedroomed house, driving a Merc, and enrolling his or her children in English-medium schools, as long as he or she doesn’t use church funds,” Paledi says.

Businessman Scara Phiri, who is a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church, believes priests should have money to sustain themselves.

“But not to enrich themselves, just to lead a comfortable life,” Phiri notes. “In my church, for instance, every Sunday we contribute money for his grocery. We provide him with a car and a house too.”

But there is a school of thought that a wealthy pastor is not a sign of sin but of growth. “Church size translates directly into market power,” reads a bold statement from a book titled “How Much Should We Pay the Pastor?” ,” the book asserts: “To attract entrepreneurial clergy, some very large churches are paying entrepreneurial salaries.”

How pastors of this persuasion handle their wealth varies widely. Some admit to being millionaires while others do not. Ultimately, there are about as many ways to spend pastors’ wealth as there are to earn it, the book notes.