(September 8, 2012 at 5:01 am)Godschild Wrote:(September 8, 2012 at 4:31 am)pocaracas Wrote: Here in Portugal, the most common religion is Catholic.
However, there are a few small pockets of evangelicals and the like.
I've heard stories of people who quit their day jobs to become evangelical preachers.... they earned about 5 or 6 times more that way!
And then I learned that most americans are evangelicals.... Just imagine how much those preachers earn... and think: the more people come to their preachings, the more they earn, so.... they build huge "places of worship" so they can host thousands at a time, every single idiot american contributing to the preacher's wealth. tax free!
You're showing your ignorance, most churches in the U.S. average less than a couple hundred people. My pastor was a nuclear engineer for TVA making an extremely good living. God called him to be a pastor and now makes far less than half of what he would be making, many pastors do not even get payed, what ever comes to them by way of donation is all they receive and work other jobs to support their families, and yes they do have to pay taxes on what the church pays them, so it seems the idiot is in the mirror, if you do not believe me go look.
If you had read what I wrote carefully, you'd have noticed that I extrapolated from the reality I know on this side of the pond.
And all extrapolations are prone to error. So yes, it was blatantly obvious that my argument came from an ignorant background, otherwise, there wouldn't be any need to extrapolate.
A couple hundred people per church is still more than you can find here in this traditional catholic country.
I tried to find some data on how much your pastors get paid.... and look what google gave my in the first hit (click for the full story):
According to the Western Recorder August 3, 2010 issue, the average salary for a full time Southern Baptist Pastor is $55,829; while the average pay package for a full time Southern Baptist pastor is $66,275. I don’t know about you, but these amounts sound insanely high to me.
Well, 50 to 60k is (discounting the conversion rate) about 10x Portugal's minimum wage, where 40% of the population is. So a preacher/pastor here making that kind of money would be obscene.... and IS.
And you said that they pay taxes on what the church pays them. But, if things are similar to here, I doubt they pay taxes on the donations.... and I bet there are quite a few of these.
No one that has a family will quit a well paid job to a far less paid one. It's not only themselves they have to think of.
