During a Sunday’s service, I heard a volunteer pastor mention that some believers were unhappy with the fact that the church’s pastors were paid. According to these believers, the church’s “rice bowl” (a Chinese slang meaning “a paid and stable job,” translator’s note) was really good. Nowadays, with the unemployment rate so high, it is absolutely difficult to find a job. So some people sneak into the church to find a job in order to be paid. However, as someone who is holding the church’s “rice bowl”, I think the “bowl” is not only difficult to hold but also burning hot.
My schoolmate, who graduated last year, returned to his church to serve and got paid immediately. He is earning two or three thousand yuan per month. The pay is much better than that of his schoolmates, who studied theology more than 10 or 20 years ago locally and are still earning only a few hundred yuan or volunteering. However, his daughter is only four or five years old and is attending early education classes. The two or three thousand yuan salary is completely insufficient. During his theological studies, it was his wife who earned money to cover most of the family’s expenses. Moreover, his parents and in-laws took care of their children and often subsidized them. He had another child this year, so his wife considered making money as soon as her confinement was over. Actually, he feels indebted to their parents, his wife, and his children and is not pressure-free at all.
Another schoolmate who is a second-generation pastor and his wife are both pastors. Although they together earn a total salary of more than six thousand yuan per month, their family backgrounds are not rich enough to rely on. Mortgage loans, daily expenses, and a newborn child called as "gold-swallowing beast" (a Chinese slang referring to the high cost of raising children in current socio-economic conditions, translator’s note) are all burdensome for many families. As a result, they struggle to make ends meet. To better support their families, they take on various part-time jobs, such as writing articles that often extend into late hours and hourly work.
A third schoolmate posted on WeChat Moments, expressing how his church job cannot support his family. One of the volunteer pastors sorted out surplus meditation books for sale. I joked that these were spiritual riches to be left for his son to inherit. He replied that it was impossible—he could not live on 400 yuan per month. He also opened a store to make money for his family.
Additionally, I am aware of people who extol the virtues of the church's "rice bowl" but would never permit their kids to pursue a career in theology. They would rather force their children and grandchildren to study hard to enter colleges in the future and take civil service exams to find well-paid jobs than send them to theological colleges with an admission rate of nearly 40%–50%. They cover up their contempt for full-time service in their minds by using the excuse that they are not called by God. Even if they sometimes care about the future of the church and pray for God to choose young people to study theology to serve God, their outstanding children and grandchildren are not included among those young people they are praying for.
In some regions, excellent pastors are indeed very well paid, and their quality of life is high. However, I believe that they must have once held this bowl,” shedding tears while eating from it! Now it is just that they have gone through the hardship and started enjoying their achievement. When I was studying theology, the school pastor at that time told us that holding the church’s “rice bowl” was not easy; if you wanted to eat well, theology was not the choice. Now I finally understand.
(The article was originally published by the Gospel Times and the author is a pastor in Jiangsu, China.)
- Translated by Charlie Li
