An Asset, not a Commodity

The story of the martyrdom of St. Laurence is one that has always stuck with me.  The story goes that when Roman authorities demanded he hand over the treasures of the Church, he brought with him widows and orphans, and said, "These are the treasures of the Church".  It may seem that Laurence was being cheeky with the authorities, and perhaps he was.  The authorities thought so, and put him to a gruesome death.  But Laurence was not wrong, either.  People are the true treasures of the Church.

Stock Lines

I have a few stock lines that I use regularly.  One is that I am in the people business.  Another is that our people, particularly clergy, should be viewed as an asset and not a commodity.  

It is important to remember this is not only true of clergy, but really anyone who is in professional ministry, from musicians to administrative staff.  However, being clergy, I most know my own profession and can speak from my profession.  It is also true that when it comes to professional ministry, clergy are iconic of religious vocation.  

While church musicians and administrators are invaluable (and I want to drive home the point that lay ministry is vital to the life of the Church), clergy have given themselves to the church in a way that is beyond profession.  At least in the Episcopal Church we see ourselves as ontologically changed and set aside for holiness of living.  Clergy have taken vows of obedience before God to their bishops, superior clergy and the people they serve.  In like ways, bishops have taken vows to care for their clergy and be the chief pastor.  

It is with this relationship between clergy and the Church in mind that I write this piece.  It is not to devalue lay ministries, but to hold up clergy as a model for how other ministries need to be viewed.  It is also in thinking about people, particularly clergy as valuable to the Church that I return to my earlier stock line that clergy should be viewed as an asset and not a commodity.

Commodities and Assets

Commodities and assets are a financial metaphor, but it is completely appropriate to think about how the Church interacts with its human resources in these terms.  A commodity is expendable.  It is something to be invested with.  In the financial world, we think of commodities as things such as crude oil, grain or oranges.  They have value, but their value is what we can get out of them.  

An asset is different than a commodity.  Whereas a commodity is something to be invested with, an asset is something to be invested in.  An asset is something like one's home or business.  Where a commodity might be individual stock holdings, an asset would be the portfolio.  An asset is something we care for because it is a measurement of our personal wealth.  If we don't fix the roof on our home, it will fall in and decrease the value of the house.  

In the Church world we have plenty of parallel assets.  We have endowments, real estate, stained glass and an organ.  These are important pieces of our portfolio which add to the financial health of our institutions.  While money is always an uncomfortable subject in the Church, for some good and some bad reasons, it is a reality of an organization.  Most churches are not financially solvent and struggle to make ends meet.  They are constantly fundraising and prioritizing assets.  Despite what too many believe about Church wealth, the Church constantly struggles with maintaining assets in a way that is wise and sustainable.  Outside of a very minute handful of mega churches, running a church may be one of the hardest businesses in the world.  

The People Business

Thinking in terms of assets and commodities, it is my observation that we have a problem when it comes to our people.  The Church is the people business.  Its primary function is to take care of people.  The Church is charged to take care of the poor, downtrodden, widows, orphans, the lost and the least.  The Church is also charged with taking care of its own: the bereaved, the youth, the aged, inquisitive and those who have a fire in their heart for Jesus.  While we do have assets as any other organization, our greatest asset is our people.

The problem I often observe is that the Church has a tendency to take care of those outside its walls, but regularly forgets those inside its walls.  This is often true of people who have dedicated their lives to the service of the Church.  I do not believe this is intentional.  I do not believe that anyone in the Church would say that clergy are expendable.  However, sometimes the priorities of dealing with other assets means that our most important asset is inadvertently moved down the list.  

Vocation Over Profession

There is a challenge in how the Church as an institution navigates the ministry of clergy as a profession over vocation.  It has been pointed out to me (occasionally by fellow clergy) that full time clergy in the Episcopal Church make a handsome salary, plus benefits.  Of course this varies greatly by diocese and region, but usually this works out to what one might expect of a middle class professional with a higher degree.  The converse that many of my clergy colleagues will often point out is that a Masters Degree from an accredited seminary is traditionally required for ordination and there are very few subsidies, grants, or scholarships to support this education.  Most clergy begin their ministries with student load debt, which would make doctors gasp.  

Exacerbating this problem is how clergy are generally free agents when it comes to deployment.  The IRS tax code understands clergy to be independent contractors (which is a big part of why we also have to pay expensive specialized CPA's to figure out what to do every April), and dioceses sometimes follow that line of thinking when job matching.  Before anyone thinks I am throwing bishops and deployment officers under the bus, the vast majority are big-hearted people who do take this pastoral role quite seriously.  There is a level of standardization across the Church.  We do have ways of listing open positions and diocesan staff do their utmost with what they have to make sure parishes have all the resources they need and the best list of candidates possible when a call is to be made.

The underlying issue is not with the good people doing the work of discernment and deployment.  The underlying issue is a system where the clergy person is plugged into a ministry to match needs, and moves on when those needs are met.  To badly paraphrase St. Augustine, this often inadvertently ends up commodifying clergy as a thing to be used and not necessarily a thing to be loved.  

At this point, I do want to mention that there are some clergy roles where plugging them in for a temporary task is appropriate.  Interim ministry certainly does this on a congregational level, and diocesan support staff interact with congregations on short-term bases to do certain necessary tasks.  Not all roles require long-term thinking as pertains to a congregation.  However, even in those cases, using specialized clergy is still an investment in the future of the Church. 

Too often when there are financial strains, the first solution is that churches should share clergy, without proper discernment of what shared ministry looks like; or reduce compensation without discerning what part time ministry really means.  This happens in church after church, in diocese after diocese, and denomination after denomination.  It is not an isolated problem, but a systemic one.  Balancing budgets on the backs of clergy without reassessing the whole system is too often the go-to solution, which nearly always backfires in the long-run.   It leads to more burnout of lay and clergy leaders and less viable ministry happening on the ground.

Changing Our Culture

The solution to this really has to do with changing how the culture of the Church sees its people.  The reasons that our clergy get back-burnered as an asset are not intentional.  Some of this comes from the fact that we live in an age that is skeptical of authority, and some of this comes from the stories of the few bad apples among clergy ranks who have done egregious acts.  This often blinds society to the caring and compassionate people who are in ministry to make the world just a little better than they found it.  This blindness finds its way into the Church.

The Church is called to be something apart from the world.  It is called to be countercultural, in that it does not always need to emulate the patterns of secular society.  In this, we have to commit ourselves to being in the people business, and taking care of our people.  We have to see our people as something to invest in and not invest with.

This shift must begin with how we discern people seeking holy orders.  Quite often, the well-meaning discernment process becomes a weed out system.  Every time I have set up a parish discernment committee, I have told the committee: "This person is called to ministry.  What that ministry is may or may not be a deacon/priest, but they are called to serve God and the Church.  Your job as a committee is not to discern 'yes' or 'no', but it is to help this person to discern 'what'."  Thinking in any other way degrades the ministry of the lay order, and leads to clergy who are burned out as they begin their ordained lives.

More than this, when individuals are discerning holy orders, parish committees, dioceses, bishops, seminaries, etc. must all thing of themselves as supporting these people who are committing their lives to the service of the Church.  People discerning should not be seen with an eye of skepticism, but rather inquiry.  Seminary education should not incur debt.  The Church could feasibly reduce salaries of clergy if some of the money was diverted to subsidize theological education.  Lastly, the Church should recognize that within individual orders of ministry, the actual work can be quite varied and an individual cleric will do different kinds of ministry over time.

After ordination, discernment for deployment must be done carefully and thoughtfully.  A somewhat disturbing use of language will refer to deacons (both transitional and vocational) as "property" of the bishop.  This should never be understood that people who are giving their whole selves to a vocation are available to exploitation.  It should be understood that the Church must handle deacons and priests (who are also deacons) as something of value that will enrich the Church through proper care.  And when it is time for a priest or deacon in a call to move on, there must be intention to using their gifts properly in the subsequent call.

Continuing education and sabbatical time, as well as healthcare must be the highest priorities of congregations.  Clergy burnout is a real thing and it is a real thing which harms the Church.  The average call in the Episcopal Church is less than five years.  Investing in clergy comes with the understanding that a congregation may not reap the benefits of every investment.  However, having a healthier and better educated corps of clergy will benefit the Church as a whole, especially its congregations.  

Finally, we can invest in our people assets through ensuring a stable retirement.  I will say that the Church Pension Fund is a phenomenal organization.  That said, having a pension is not the only factor in retirement.  Prioritizing supplemental incomes are important as is ensuring letters of agreement include equity funds when housing is supplied.

Much of this may be a challenge for individual congregations to manage.  Having a strong pension and medical trust are examples of where the Church as a whole was able to advocate for such things.  Dioceses have opportunity and authority to advocate and restructure to help here.  I have written elsewhere that payroll could be centralized.  In the same way, also could sabbatical funds, etc.  At the very least, clergy should feel assured that they do not always need to advocate for themselves, because the system to which they have dedicated their lives is set up to support them.

Shifting Our Thinking

Ultimately, thinking of clergy as an asset will not come from individual strategies, but from the change in the cultural mentality which underlies it.  In like ways, this shift in thinking should extend to lay ministers as well as clergy.  While I am not advocating the Church offloading endowments or stained glass windows, I am advocating a reorganization of priorities.  The shift needs to think about how we invest in our people first and other assets secondarily.  A new set of handbells can be a wonderful thing to add to the beauty of holiness in worship; however, if we cannot pay the music director, they do no good.  Our people truly are the Church's greatest asset, and we must care for them as such.