(September 8, 2012 at 8:18 am)pocaracas Wrote:(September 8, 2012 at 5:01 am)Godschild Wrote: 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.
There are those pastors who minister to mega churches (those having several thousand in attendance) that have salaries that probably exceed $100,000 thousand a year, then there are those who make less than $25,000 to $30,000 a year, not a lot in this country. I do not know of pastors that get donations, they may and because most are honest they pay taxes on donations if they receive any. Only the church is tax exempt, and why because there is a separation of church and state, makes sense doesn't it, no representation no taxes. Churches outside of the Catholic Church are nonprofit. My pastor did, his salary is less than half what it would be, our church would not be able to pay him what he could make as a nuclear engineer.
I'm sorry that the pay in Portugal does not equal that of the U.S., then most places in the world do not and most places in the world do not require one to spend as much as we have to pay for goods here.
Here is a fact for you there are many pastor who live below the poverty line here, and they are some of the happiest people I know, pastors of mega churches live their job 24/7, unless you are involved in their lives you can not imagine the work that the church places on them.
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
