Restraint of Trade in Pastoral Salaries?

Do a search of LCMS pastor salaries, and a bunch of documents like the one linked here show up -- http://oh.lcms.org/docs/Salary2007.pdf

It's been a long time since I took classes in antitrust law and the law of competition, but I think these sorts of documents would be considered restraints of trade in ordinary markets.

While I suspect their origination derived as a way to overcome the notorious cheapness of congregations, I wonder whether their continuing existence has the effect of suppressing pastoral salaries in the LCMS, by coordinating on relatively low salaries, rather than letting the market set pastoral salaries.

I suspect that part of the problem lies in the absence of a natural constituency for higher pastoral salaries. Every dollar the pastor gets is a dollar the congregation needs to cough up, so congregations don't usually push to increase pastoral salaries, and the pietism which pastors are often expected to reflect when they talk about what drew them to the ministry, prevents them from matter-of-factly talking about compensation.

From all reports I've seen, and from what I've observed, pastoral ministry is a human meat grinder. I recently read an LCMS report (I forget where I found it linked) that said something like over 50 percent of current LCMS pastors are on the edge of severe burnout, and plan to leave the ministry within 10 years. (I'm not sure about the exact percentage, but it was really high.) And wives were in even worse average shape.

Now, to be sure, money isn't everything. But it is one concrete way of showing honor to someone is by giving them money. (We call the fee that we provide to speakers, for example, "honoraria.")
In 1 Tm 5.17, Paul writes that especially those elders who work hard preaching and teaching should be considered worthy of "double honor." I've heard that the Greek word for "honor" is "weight," as in a sum of silver or gold.

Or this extended discussion in 1 Co 9:

"Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk? Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: 'Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.' Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more?

"But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. Don't you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel" (emphasis added).

So I don't see that we need to tiptoe around the salary question, pretending that it's somehow unholy to talk about money and the Gospel in the same breath. It's hard to get any more real than Paul put it: "The Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel."

So what's a "living"?

As a first cut, I'd suggest that when half your pastors (or more) want to get out of the ministry if they can, then they're not exactly making a living from the gospel.

On the more mundane level, simply consider the administrative requirements, the personal cost of seeing much of the unseemly under belly of sinful human life, the criticism, the isolation, and etc. (Plus, wives are often expected to be a second, "free" church worker.)

I do not know any profession that calls for so much from an individual for the average pay scale that seems apparent from the LCMS web documents.

I'm spit-balling here, but I'd think that mid-career pastors of ordinary competence in medium-sized congregations ought to be pulling down at least $100,000+. I'd guess that starting salaries should be in the mid-60s, and the salary of a senior pastor about ready to retire would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $130,000+.

That being said, the church shouldn't be surprised that she gets what she pays for. To the extent that high-quality candidates for the pastorate see that churches will not pay them sufficient to "receive their living from the gospel," and as a result do not go into the ministry, then the church attracts lower-quality candidates, some of whom we should not be surprised that they cannot adequately perform all that the ministry requires.

I suspect that at least part of the problem of pastoral burn out, is that a sizable proportion of these men are ill-equipped to be pastors in the first place. (Of course, it takes an unusually brave and honest soul to say to someone who says he's interested in pastoral work that he may not in fact possess the gifts required to be a pastor.) If the church pays pastors a "living," then she can also insist that they meet all of the pastoral requirements set down in places like Titus and Timothy.

Finally, that there are many, many competent pastors who dutifully perform their labor for the congregations they love for (relatively) low salaries is not an argument to keep it that way.

In any event, I don't think the sanctimoniousness about pastors and salaries benefits the gospel or the church.