Proper Remuneration for Ministers
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Those who have never carried the burden of such work, and who
suppose that the Lord’s chosen and faithful ministers have an easy
time, should bear in mind that sentinels for God are on duty constantly.
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Their labor is not measured by hours. When their accounts are audited,
if selfish men, with voice or stroke of pen, limit them unduly in their
wages, a great wrong is done.
Those who are bearing administrative burdens in connection with
God’s cause, can afford to be fair and true; they can afford to deal
on right principles. When in a time of financial stress it is thought
that wages must be reduced, let a circular be published setting forth
the true situation, and then let those employed by the conference be
asked whether, under the circumstances, they could do with less for
their support. All the arrangements made with those in God’s service
should be regarded as a sacred transaction between man and his fellow-
man. Men have no right to treat the workers as if they were inanimate
objects, with no voice or expression of their own.
* * * * *
The Minister’s Wife
The minister is paid for his work, and this is well. And if the Lord
gives the wife as well as the husband the burden of labor, and she
devotes her time and strength to visiting from family to family and
opening the Scriptures to them, although the hands of ordination have
not been laid upon her, she is accomplishing a work that is in the line
of ministry. Then should her labors be counted as naught?
Injustice has sometimes been done to women who labor just as
devotedly as their husbands, and who are recognized by God as being
necessary to the work of the ministry. The method of paying men-
laborers, and not paying their wives who share their labors with them,
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is a plan not according to the Lord’s order, and if carried out in our
conferences, is liable to discourage our sisters from qualifying them-
selves for the work they should engage in. God is a God of justice,
and if the ministers receive a salary for their work, their wives, who
devote themselves just as disinterestedly to the work, should be paid
in addition to the wages their husbands receive, even though they may
not ask for this.