A worship pastor in Santa Cruz County, California, told me something I can’t shake.
“You get so conditioned in ministry to just ‘get what you get and don’t throw a fit,’” he said. “It’s labeled as ‘contentment.’”
He continued, “Wanting something more is sort of treated like you are spiritually immature.”
Hmm. So this guy was leading in worship but lamenting in private.
He was renting, in the housing-affordability spiral. The pastoral team at the top owned homes — bought early, spouse in tech, whatever. The rest were absorbing the cost of California housing on ministry salaries, shielding the church from a crisis it didn’t have to see.
“As long as we stay, that’s proof there’s no problem,” he said.
I run a housing nonprofit for ministry staff called Aslan Housing Foundation. I came into this work thinking I was helping churches solve a logistics problem — matching resources to needs, building tools, facilitating conversations. I was wrong. Somewhere along the way, the scales fell from my eyes, and I stopped being neutral.
It happened on a Zoom meeting, not the road to Damascus. A finance elder was pushing back on the idea that a pastor might want to own a home. The tilt was familiar: He’s a pastor. Why should he expect that?
I stopped him. “Hold on,” I said. “In the Catholic tradition, priests get modest pay, but they get lifetime provision — housing, insurance, retirement. The institution carries them.
“In Protestant churches, we’ve inherited the expectation of sacrifice without the institutional commitment that made it sustainable. And without getting into the errors of the prosperity gospel, we have a biblical mandate to support our pastors. If we think homeownership is a wholesome goal for the people in our pews — the stability, the rootedness, the equity — why would that not be a wholesome goal for the people in our pulpits?”
Sound in the room grew muted. I’d said the quiet part out loud. And I realized I wasn’t just helping churches anymore. I was fighting for pastors.
Scripture is not subtle about this. Paul tells Timothy that elders who lead well are worthy of “double honor” — and lest we spiritualize that into mere respect, he clarifies in the next breath: “The worker deserves his wages” (1 Timothy 5:17-18, NIV).
The Greek word for honor, timē, can also mean price. Compensation. Paul isn’t speaking in metaphor. He’s talking about money.
In America, in 2026, that wage needs to provide a roof.
But here’s what the system hides: Churches are exempt from filing 990s. Unlike every other nonprofit, they don’t have to disclose
So why not be transparent about pastor pay? Many congregations see a line item marked “personnel” and nothing more. Elders set salaries behind closed doors, benchmarking against vibes. The exemption isn’t the problem — churches could choose transparency anyway. The problem is that too many don’t. And in that silence pastors learn that asking is unseemly, that wanting is weakness, that contentment means keeping quiet.
This is the trap. Caring is the job, so self-advocacy feels like selfishness. The same instinct that makes someone a good pastor — attentiveness to others, reluctance to center themselves — makes it almost impossible to say: “I need more. I deserve more. My family deserves more.”
So they absorb it. They take the problem onto themselves and shield the church from seeing it. They rent in cities where their congregants own. They watch their kids grow up knowing they could be displaced any month. They tell themselves it’s temporary, or it’s sanctifying, or it’s just the cost of calling.
Until it isn’t. Until they move to Idaho.
That’s not a dig at Idaho. It’s a eulogy. A pastor I worked with told me plainly when Aslan was just starting: “If I can’t get into a homeownership position before my eldest starts kindergarten, we’re leaving.”
He left. He’s in Idaho now. The church lost a pastor. His community lost a shepherd.
Shrug. Shucks. It’s just the way things are.
No. It’s not inevitable. It’s a choice.
It’s a series of choices made by some churches and congregants that don’t see what they’re not looking at, protected by structures that don’t require transparency and sustained by a theology of pastoral sacrifice that never asks who’s actually paying the price.
I didn’t start this work as an advocate. I started as a facilitator. But I’ve sat in too many rooms, heard too many pastors whisper the thing they’re afraid to say out loud, watched too many finance committees flinch at the idea that their pastor might want what the committee members have.
So yes — I’m vehemently pro-pastor now. Not because pastors are perfect. Not because ministry is easy. But because in a capitalist society, love and care also look like money. And until churches reckon with that, we’ll keep losing the people we can least afford to lose.
I’m not asking for new regulations. I’m asking for old faithfulness. The kind that looks a pastor in the eye and says, “We see you, and we’re going to act like it.”
And in that silence pastors learn that asking is unseemly, that wanting is weakness, that contentment means keeping quiet
