Paying Pastors

Paul reminds the Corinthians that those who served the altar shared in the proceeds of the altar, and applies that model to the church’s responsibility to support minsters of the gospel. That means that the Levitical system of paying priests (cf. Leviticus 7–8; Numbers 18) provides a model for Christian churches. It’s not a direct model, but we can draw some general conclusions at least.

From the data in the Torah, we can see that the Levitical priests were well supplied with payments in kind from sacrifices, grain offerings, first fruits, firstborn, tithes, etc. Just taking the tithe, we obviously have 10 percent of the yield of the land given to a single tribe—10 percent of the yield of eleven tribes to one tribe. Besides that, the Levites had cities of their owns, and the lands surrounding the cities, which were cultivated and supplied the cities. I’m sure someone with a knack for accounting can get a lot more specific, but it seems to me that the priests were certainly not penurious. 

The relative wealth of priests was connected, somewhat paradoxically, with dependency on the generosity of others. They did not inherit a portion of the land, and so their wealth didn’t depend so much on their initiative, hard work, and success as on the success and generosity of the other tribes. I suspect that is why the Levites are often classed with the strangers and poor (e.g., in the festival texts of Deuteronomy 14-16): Wealthy as they may have been, they were dependents—among the “weak” and “poor” in the sense of being landless and dependent.

The fairly high amount of wealth handed over to the priests makes sense only if the priests are performing a valuable service for Israel. According to the Torah, they are performing an essential service. They receive this compensation because they stand before Yahweh guardians of His holiness and the first targets of His wrath. They eat portions of the purification offering as a part of their sin-bearing responsibility. Without that, Israel’s sins could not be removed and borne away at the Day of Atonement. 

The responsibilities of Christian ministers, again, do not match that priestly vocation precisely, but there is an analogy: All believers are priests, called to “bear one another’s burdens,” and ministers are called to be head priests and shepherds of that burden-bearing people. Ministers have a particular vocation to model burden-bearing and to encourage others. They are ministers of the Word that is like a sacrificial knife; they are ministers of sacraments, which bring both life and death to the church. Which means we can’t decide what to pay the pastor without also asking what we are paying him for.