smithakd
Andrew Smith, Orthodox Christian and Author
I've had the experience of full-time priests and of second-job priests (if I may call them that), and I have to say that the life of a second-job priest is amazingly difficult. To me, it seems like a failure in stewardship for a parish to not support its priest at all.
A parish has to have a certain amount of people in order to be a parish (rather than a mission). Theoretically, if there are 20 wage-earners in the parish, and each of these give a standard tithe...well, that should support a priest and a parish building, should it not?
It's very easy to abuse a priest who is giving of his time when there's no concept of how much his service is actually worth - even if it was just matched with a high school teacher's salary, for instance...
A parish has to have a certain amount of people in order to be a parish (rather than a mission). Theoretically, if there are 20 wage-earners in the parish, and each of these give a standard tithe...well, that should support a priest and a parish building, should it not?
It's very easy to abuse a priest who is giving of his time when there's no concept of how much his service is actually worth - even if it was just matched with a high school teacher's salary, for instance...
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