Worthy of His Hire
When I was studying to be a minister of the Gospel, my student churches were two adjacent wooden churches in the inner slum areas of Melbourne. For seven years during the 1950’s and 1960’s the people of those inner slum areas were my parish.
Churches agree that ministers should be worthy of their hire. The minister has the responsibility of being active and worthy and should complete the tasks as outlined to him. The church, on the other hand, has the responsibility of providing him with a salary and somewhere to live. The cost of where he lives is deducted from his salary before he gets it, and most salaries over the years have always been minimal in most denominations, far below that which is paid to a school teacher, in spite of the fact that the minister has many years of training at a graduate level.
Every minister could tell stories about Church Treasurers that they have known.
When I was an enthusiastic 18 year old student minister, I met the first of four Treasurers who were going to feature in the next thirty years of my ministry.
The churches at Newmarket and Ascot Vale were small and people of talent were rare. Our Church Treasurer was the only business man in the congregation. Harry was a tall and distinguished looking man but “business man” is not quite the term that should be used to describe him. His business was a one man affair, which consisted of selling hot pies out the back of his van during winter, and cool drinks in summer.
I very quickly discovered what Harry thought of me. On the first week when I came to be paid my six pound weekly wage he gave it to me in a large paper bag. The bag was full of penny, ha’penny, threepenny, sixpenny and shilling pieces. It was the whole collection from the Sunday School and the small change from the church offering. He said with a smile, “I do not have time to handle the change in the bank what with all of my business, so I keep the notes and you get paid with small change.” I then faced the task of carrying home about two pounds weight of small coins which I in turn had to take to the bank’s sorting counter in order to get my six pound a week salary.
For the next seven years Harry was my Church Treasurer and for the first year or so I suffered this business of having a heavy bag of small change given to me each Sunday. Then I decided that this was neither appropriate nor proper and spoke to him quite firmly about how I wanted to be paid by cheque once a fortnight.
From that time on my salary arrived by cheque without any problems, and his wife would bank the small change.
It was not that Harry was reluctant to pay me by cheque. It was that he and the other members of the Board in those days were so small minded that they never thought of such a thing. And Harry did not like taking small change to the bank.
During my student years that six pound a week was literally my survival money. During years of university study in spite of scholarships to the university, my expenditure was always somewhat larger than my income. One important book was often more expensive than my total week’s salary. In later years, after we were married, it was only the fact that my wife went to work for the first three years of our married life that enabled me to work both as a student minister and a full time university student.
Once a cheque did not help me. I was the guest speaker for a weekend at Mildura, several hundred miles up on the Murray River to the north west of Melbourne. By that time I had a little Austin 7 car with a canvass hood and flapping side curtains. It took hours of driving to reach Mildura, speeding along the highways at about 37 miles per hour. After speaking at more than half a dozen meetings over the weekend, including the Youth Club, Coffee Shop, Sunday School Anniversary and Church meetings, I finally left the church at 10.30 on the Sunday evening to make the long return journey to Melbourne. I had no petrol in the tank and not a shilling to bless myself with.
The church had promised to pay my travelling expenses so I was not unduly worried. The last person to see me off the premises was the Church Treasurer who thanked me for coming and gave me an envelope with my travelling expenses. I drove out of town into the night air to begin the long journey to Melbourne looking for the first petrol station open that late Sunday night. I pulled into the only one open and the man came out to fill the tank with petrol. I tore open the envelope to take out a wad of notes with which to pay him, only to find that the Church Treasurer had given me a crossed cheque made payable into my bank account only. Try explaining that to a garage proprietor on a lonely highway at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night!
Harry the Pie Man was my first Treasurer. My second Treasurer was Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan worked in the local brickyards when I arrived at that country church to minister. He had the roughest hands of any person I knew. He used to grab the hot bricks after they had been in the furnace for firing and stack them on pallets which front end loaders would take away. He despised leather gloves and his hands were like rough leather. But if the skin of his hands was hard, that was nothing compared to his heart.
The church had made a dreadful mistake in electing Ivan as Treasurer. He was a faithful man, a committed member and loyal in his attendance at worship. But he was fairly illiterate and certainly unable to keep accounts. His books were a mess. After our first week of work he called to see me in the country manse. “I am sorry I cannot pay you just now. I do not know where I am in my books, but I will work it out and I will let you know. I will be around during the week to pay you.”
The trouble with Ivan was that he never came around during the week to pay us. So we went to our second week in a new church without pay. At the end of the service Ivan apologized, “I am having trouble understanding this tax system but I will work it out. Do not worry. I know I owe you two weeks pay. I will be around during the week to pay you.” Throughout that whole week we waited for Ivan to call with our meagre resources of finances running out. He never called.
After three weeks of ministry he said, “I must apologize for not coming around to pay, but I cannot work out the deductions for holiday payments. I will work them out and when I get them fixed I will call. Do not worry, I will be around during the week to pay you.” Once more he never came.
I did not want to raise this issue with the members of our Deacons and Elders Board making Ivan appear in a bad light, but the fact was that we had run out of money and were now running out of food. The arrival of one of our relatives bailed us out because we received a small gift of money which enabled us to pay for the next week’s groceries. After four weeks I went around and asked Ivan to pay me immediately.
Ivan showed me a pile of papers on his desk. Things were in a terrible mess. I insisted that he work it out and pay me that week. He looked at me and said, “You have no idea how upset I am about all of this. But do not worry, I will be around during the week to pay you.”
The fifth and the sixth weeks came without any payment. I decided that I needed to report this matter to the denominational headquarters. I had only made this decision when, surprise! surprise!!, Ivan knocked at the door and came in beaming like Father Christmas. At last our pay had arrived. The cupboards were absolutely bare. We had been living by faith without income and had come to the end of our resources.
But if you thought that would be the end of Ivan’s mismanagement you have made an error. For he then said, “I am getting the books up to date, so I have only brought you one week’s pay. It will be enough for you to go on with while I sort things out. But do not worry, I will be around during the week to pay you.”
I was still a very young minister in those days but I determined that now was the time for strong action. I had an eyeball to eyeball confrontation with Ivan the Terrible, told him a few home truths about his accounting system and demanded that he resign. At the same time I visited a farmer whose careful use of money I had observed in the last few weeks and he agreed to be the new Treasurer. Ivan resigned and went back to stacking bricks while someone else started the task of counting the offering and paying the church accounts and the minister.
My third Church Treasurer was just the opposite. Ice Cream Charlie will always remain in my mind as one of the most delightful Church Treasurers with whom I have ever had the privilege of working. He was my Church Treasurer for 12 years. He was a senior businessman who had a large number of people working for him and a huge annual balance sheet for which he was responsible. He knew the world of figures and was able to talk at our church business meetings with authority and vision.
By this time the church, my third, where I was ministering was one of the largest congregations in Australia and Ice Cream Charlie was an ideal man for a period of growth and development. We bought houses, many of them around the church, in order to get land for new developments. We built $5 million worth of buildings and paid for all of our debts. By this time the income of that church where I was ministering in Melbourne had the highest weekly offering of any church known in Australia, and Ice Cream Charlie was the most competent Treasurer you could imagine.
He had his finger on the pulse of church finances. He was able to talk in round figures with positive vision: “This is going to cost us $750,000 but I move we go ahead. We have a vision for growth. We will have to lift our income by 15% next year but we can raise it. The people here have got the capacity to give. We have a good programme going that is bringing honour to God. Do not worry about the money. Fulfil the mission of the church and the money will come.” His speeches convinced many a special business meeting called to discuss some new project.
What an absolute delight to have a Treasurer with a vision like that! Charlie not only kept the books for what had come in and gone out with accuracy, but he had a vision of where we ought to go in the future. It was one of Charlie’s regular visits to come to our home on the night before Christmas and personally thank my wife and myself and our children for the year’s ministry. He always had our holiday pay made up in advance and always a bonus for last year’s service and, as well, an additional week’s payment, as he said, “To buy the kids an ice cream.” It was always his favourite saying and that extra week’s salary to buy the kids an ice cream was something that meant more to us as a touch of his love and concern than almost anything else.
Often during a hot summer’s January day he would stop one of our kids in the street and say, “Has your dad bought you that ice cream yet?” The kids could always reply with enthusiasm that we had a special treat at the end of each year knowing that it came from the church in appreciation of our ministry as a family.
As I was leaving that ministry to come to Sydney we had a change of Treasurer. Ice cream Charlie had served a long term and after our twelve years together decided that he did not want to be Treasurer with any other minister. The church elected Mean Michael as his successor. The contrast between the two men was extraordinary. Michael was a bank accountant and counted every cent. He spoke as if every cent counted. It did and he did. Every cent. Of that I was sure. Whenever he read out a list of expenditure at a church business meeting he read it out in full to the last cent. “Purchase of new land $157,963.21. Payment of rates on the land $4,901.67.” And so on. You could be sure that every cent had been counted and that whenever he gave a total it was absolutely correct. Ice Cream Charlie might talk in terms of three quarters of a million dollars and 15% extra but Mean Michael made sure it came down in exact dollars and cents.
As I finished that ministry I began to see that his attitude was having a profound effect upon what was happening in the life of the congregation. The church was ceasing to operate by faith and was now operating by the grace of Westpac. There was no venturing in trust. No relying upon the Lord to supply our provisions. Before anything could be done it had to be analysed carefully, the resources had to be counted up and before we ventured anywhere we had to have the money in hand. He had been trained only to operate by credit balances but it seemed that God taught us to operate by faith. There was no room for trusting God when we always had to have a credit in the bank.
In fact the way he now began to run the church finances made me feel that bank accountants of that kind should be banned from church boards. They had been trained in the very opposite system to God’s method. Churches do not prosper when they live by the grace of the bank, but only by trust in God.
What a variety of Church Treasurers over thirty years! Harry the Pie Man who paid in pennies and ha’pennies in a paper bag, Ivan the Terrible who refused to let any money go out because he was not able to record it accurately. Ice Cream Charlie who was bountiful and who lived by faith and saw phenomenal increases in the ministry income. Mean Michael who kept the cents so tied up that the church was afraid to venture in faith.
Church Treasurers are extremely important because their attitudes determine whether the church will develop and grow or not. At least that was the lesson I was learning as I walked out into the heavy air with the wind blowing from the abattoirs after my first meeting with Harry the Pie Man, with a paper bag in my pocket weighing about two pounds, full of small loose change, started my motor bike and headed back towards the College of The Bible to train for the ministry, thinking of my meeting with some of God’s children in the slums of Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES