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PLANNING FOR THE NEW YEAR.
It lias always seemed an anomaly that our
Church year should begin three mouths after
the fiscal year. It requires a considerable
amount of explaining, and sometimes, the mak
ing out of two reports. But as long as we are
a conservative people, slow to change, Ave will
have to adjust our machinery to this plan.
This does not prevent the congregations from
taking an inventory of its spiritual assets and
planning for 1923. The value of such plan
ning is that it gives the Church an objective
toward which it can work. Planless people are
generally shiftless people.
Progress is the watchword of the Church of
God. "1 press toward the mark of the prize
of the high calling," says the leading exponent
of Christianity. So in planning, let us see that
we make progress. The Christian life is de
scribed as "a walk," or "a journey." It means
getting somewhere forward.
We ought individually to set a higher stand
ard of Christian living. Most Christians are
satisfied with living on a low plane, we fear.
They do not enter into the joy of our Lord.
Few want to pillow their heads on His breast,
that they may enter the secrets of holy life.
Like Peter and the other disciples, they are
content to follow afar off.
What the Church greatly (needs is more
communion with its Lord. To set a high stand
ard of holiness. The reading and studying of
the Word, prayer and seeking His will in the
quiet hour is certainly a good thing to plan
for.
The uprooting of besetting sins is a high
plan for us. As we definitely seek to overcome
a physical weakness, so ought we to strengthen
the weak place in our spiritual life.
We have heard of a man who gave largely,
and when expostulated with as giving more
than he ought to, answered "I am giving in
order that I may crucify my love of money."
So we ought to mortify ? make to die ? the evil
affections and lusts of our sinful nature by defi
nite and sensible means.
As a church we ought to ask ourselves, are
we paying our pastor a living salary, and if
we are dependent on the Home Mission Com
mittee, we should determine we will be self
supporting. Many a field of labor of some sac
rificing minister is content to be fed year in
and out from the Home Mission bottle. Many
a church is not paying its minister enough, and,
while salaries are going up in some instances,
it is not so universal as one would think.
Finding and establishing a mission point is
a fine thing to do. The support of a missionary
in home or foreign field is even better.
Nothing ought to appeal more vigorously to
the local church than the putting over with a
margin of the Every Member Canvass.
We have been playing at the plan hereto
fore. While the amounts given have been
large, yet so much has been given to education
al institutions; to miscellaneous bcnevolences,
whatever that may mean, that we have not
reached our modest goal of the TS. M. C. for reg
ular benevolent causes.
We can do it, if we go at it in the right way.
It is no heavy burden on the Church. We
waste ten times as much each year, and never
complain about that.
This canvass takes place in March, which
gives us two months to plan for it. It requires
a long time to get even a simple plan into the
minds and hearts of many people. Thousands
of our members do not understand the Presby
terian Progressive Program. We judge all by
the few that are wide-awake and up-to-date,
but that is an incorrect judgment.
Put over this Program and our Church will
arise and shine, her glory having come. Plan
above all to sow the seed and expect to reap
the harvest.
* , ? A. A. L.
Contributed
A WIDE-SPREAD ERROR.
By Rev. W. T. Riviere.
Perhaps figures cannot lie; but unless care
fully studied, they can certainly deceive. The
average salary of ministers is misrepresented
by every set of figures 1 have had the oppor
tunity to examine. The following is submit
ted in the hope of indicating several sources
of error to our statisticians:
A recent article by a seminary mate of mine
gives the average minister's salary in each of
three Synods. From the table on pages 322
and 323, Assembly's Minutes for 1922, he di
vides the total pastor's salary actually paid,
third column from the right, by the number of
ministers, fourth column from the left. For
Texas, consequently, he divides $295,021 by
227, giving as the average $1,291; this is prob
ably a misprint for $1,299; and is approxi
mately correct. But that figure, just short of
$1,300, is by no means the average salary of
the ministers of the Synod of Texas.
To illustrate the errors in the above method,
let us examine more closely one Presbytery,
Fort Worth. By the same method divide $36,
656 by twenty-three ministers: the result is
$1,593. Now examine page 300 of the Minutes,
and note the following errors in the total al
ready arrived at:
The roll of Presbytery as sent in after the
spring meeting, 1922, included twenty-three
ministers, of whom three are marked "inf."
These three names are opposite blank lines:
no salary is attached to them. Whatever they
receive from the Church is allowed by the Ex
ecutive Committee of Christian Education and
Ministerial Relief, and is not included in the
$36,656 used in getting an average. If we arc
seeking the average income of ministers from
the Church, we must add some dollars; if we
want the average earning of active ministers,
we must subtract three from twenty-three,
leaving twenty. Then the average salary will
look like $1,832; disregarding all fractions of
a dollar.
Of these twenty ministers one is a foreign
missionary; his salary, meagre though it prob
ably is, does not come from funds contributed
to pastor's salary. Another is an executive
officer of the Southwestern Home and School
at Files Valley, marked on the roll as "Supt."
His salary does not come from funds contri
buted to pastor's salary. So we must add some
dollars, or else subtract two ministers from
twenty, leaving eighteen. And $36,656 divided
between eighteen ministers will give an aver
age of $2,036.
The roll of Presbytery, among the eighteen
left, contains an executive secretary, a super
intendent of Home Missions, a college presi
dent, and an agent for some kind of religious
publications, none of whose salaries are re
ported. One of these was being paid at the
rate of $300 a month ; another $250 and trav
eling expenses, Ford car being furnished, to
him; another had received a salary, but at the
time Presbytery met had resigned his position
on account of ill health; no data is available
about the earnings of the other. But here arc
four men, none of whose income appears in
the column "Pastor's Salaries Actually Paid."
Add some dollars, or subtract four from eigh
teen, leaving fourteen ministers. Divide $36,
656 among fourteen, and the resulting average
is $2,bl8. 'lhis is apparently the average sal
ary of a pastor in Port Worth Presbytery.
.But there are still two errors in our aver
age: one working in eaeh direction. Some of
the money paid for pastor's salary went to
men who are not counted. Two of these items,
iu federated churches, went to men who are
not members of the U. S. Presbytery : subtract
their $4,150 and the $36,656 becomes $32,506.
Others apply to summer supply work by can
didates and licentiates, and to salary paid to
ministers who left their pastorates during the
^ear, and had not been replaced. On the other
baud, Home Mission money, not reported as
pastor's salary, supplemented the salaries oi
three or four ministers. Not being able to fig
ure the last exactly, I divide $32,506 by four
teen active pastors and get $2,321 as the ap
proximate average salary paid pastors in this
l'resbytery last year. All but two of the four
teen had manses available, though one did not
use his, as he did not live on his field.
By the figures for the Presbytery on Novem
ber 1, 1922, as 1 know them, twenty -seven min
isters received an average of $135 per month,
or $1,620 a year, taking the total number of
ministers and dividing it into the total of the
salaries, including executive salaries and Horn;;
Mission funds, as I know them. But deduct
ing two infirm, one foreign missionary, one
agent, one steward in Orphans' Home, one in
transit, and one in seminary : the other twenty,
whose salaries can be figured almost exactly,
were being paid November 1st at the rate of
if 176 a month on the average, or $2,112 a year:
not counting manses furnished.
Similar corrections in a Presbytery in South
Carolina, less exactly computed, change the
average minister's salary of apparently $1,581
to an average of $2,966 annually to pastors.
Tn another, in Georgia, the change is from $1,
337 to $2,406. These Presbyteries I chose be
cause I have been a member of each.
The Presbyteries studied are perhaps not
typical ; nor, as indicated above,- are my re
sults accurate. But at least these figures show
that the ordinary average of minister's salary
is much too low.
There is one very practical application.
Many churches are satisfied to underpay their
pastors. Perhaps if they were shown that the
salaries they pay are not above the Assembly's
average, or the Synod's average, or the Pres.
tytery's average, but on the contrary much
below, they would give better support to those
who minister to them.
Therefore, will some competent statistician
please correct my method, as I have tried to
correct my predecessors, and give us accurate
averages of the salaries of our ministry and
in particular of our pastorates? Then let the
church remember that there are few if any
men in the Presbyterian ministry who could
not easily earn larger incomes in other voca
tions.
Cleburne, Tex.
WHY THE NORTH K1ANQ8U MISSION
DECLINED TO APPROVE OF A
NATIONAL CHRISTIAN
COUNCIL IN CHINA.
(Continued from last week.)
(In the part of this article published last
week the writers gave as the ground of their
opposition to the National Council four rea
sons. I. The great expense. II. It is not
needed. III. Leading Chinese oppose it. IV.
The affiliation* of most of the promoters are
with Modernism. ? Editor.)
V. Another reason why our Mission eould
not approve of the National Council was thr