Part 1 laid bare the current state and true cost of how Chinese churches support their workers. This article (Part 2) returns to Scripture and offers four principles — above-average support (not merely 'enough'), no self-provisioning, fair reward, and generosity — then addresses two common objections (will decent pay attract money-motivated people? / our church is small and offerings are low, let's wait). It closes with a mirror-image caution on 'mutual willingness' from both sides, and practical steps for 'transparent communication' (including the rule that voluntary pay cuts must be recorded in writing as two separate figures). How a church treats its workers is a declaration to the world of what kind of God it serves.
Speaker: Pastor Bond · Scripture: 林前9:7-14
Pastor Bond · May 2026 · Compiled with Claude
📖 How Should Chinese Churches Support Full-Time Workers · A Two-Part Series
Part 1 laid bare the current state and true cost of how Chinese churches support their workers. Now that we see the problem clearly, this article turns to Scripture for the way forward. ← Part 1: The Unspoken Realities and True Cost
Once we spread out those realities and return to Scripture, we find that God has already spoken clearly on this matter — we have simply overlooked it and failed to act accordingly. (To be fair, Chinese churches faithfully follow God's Word in many areas and have borne good fruit. But when it comes to pastoral compensation, we also need to be corrected from "tradition" back to God's Word.) The four principles below can serve as a starting point for rethinking the structure of worker support.
"To the children of Levi, behold, I have given all the tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service which they serve, even the service of the Tent of Meeting." (Numbers 18:21)
What God gave the Levites was not merely "enough" — it was the tithes of the entire nation. By the reckoning of that time, twelve tribes (the house of Joseph being divided into Ephraim and Manasseh) provided for one tribe of Levi, whose population was not large. Averaged out, this placed each Levite above the median household income in Israel. This is the biblical basis for the "above-average principle."
For the modern church, the question is: how do we define "average"? The national average? The city average? Or the average of the congregation the worker serves? My inclination is: the median income of those in the congregation who are in the same age bracket as the worker — not a simple average across the entire congregation.
A simple average ignores a basic reality: income naturally follows a curve across different life stages. Young adults fresh out of school earn less, but they also spend less — one person fed, no dependents, no mortgage, no children, no aging parents to care for. By contrast, those in their thirties and forties typically earn significantly more, and for good reason: this is the season of life when people commonly shoulder five simultaneous responsibilities — marriage, housing (not a single room, but a whole home), raising children (including education costs), supporting aging parents, and saving for retirement. Stack all five together and the threshold for "enough" rises to an entirely different level — one that no simple cross-age average can capture.
Take a concrete example: a church whose congregation is mostly university students has hired a full-time worker who is in his forties with a family. How should his salary be set? The answer should not be calculated based on "what a university student spends" — that would mean measuring the real needs of a middle-aged man caring for both elderly parents and young children against the lifestyle costs of young adults with no family obligations. The more biblically equitable approach is to reference the median income of congregation members in the same age bracket (forties), then set "above average" as the baseline.
This leads to a searching self-examination: if half the congregation members in the worker's age group earn significantly more than the full-time worker does — including bonuses, pension contributions, and other benefits on top of base salary — can he really be counted as "above average"? Many churches believe they are "already quite generous," but once you run this calculation, the gap between perception and reality becomes apparent.
"Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, and doesn't eat of its fruit? Or who feeds a flock, and doesn't drink from the flock's milk?" (1 Corinthians 9:7)
This is one of the clearest New Testament passages on supporting workers. Its core point is not that workers may receive support — it is that they ought by right to be supported. From this flows a set of searching self-examination questions: Is it glorifying to God to live in your parents' home, eat at their table, and serve full-time at the same time? Is it glorifying to God to have your wife carry the family's financial burden in the workplace while you serve full-time? Is it glorifying to God to neglect the financial support you owe to aging parents and dependent children while serving full-time? Is it glorifying to God to send a missionary off with a solemn commissioning service — laying on hands and "committing them to God" — while providing no institutionalized, long-term financial commitment? These are questions for elders and deacons to ask — and for every member. When a church under-supports its workers, it drives them into "self-provisioning," ultimately violating Scripture's plain command.
What about when the congregation's age profile doesn't match the worker's? Back to the example: a student congregation has called a pastor in his forties with a family. Principle One addresses which median income to reference. But in practice, there is often a further difficulty — the church's own giving capacity may genuinely fall short of that level. There are several biblically coherent responses that can work in combination:
This principle applies especially to missionaries. Many Chinese churches send missionaries in this pattern: a solemn commissioning service with the laying on of hands and blessings, followed by support that depends entirely on spontaneous individual giving — which dwindles over the years as the congregation turns over — with no institutionalized, long-term financial commitment from the church itself. This effectively inverts the principle of "no self-provisioning," leaving missionaries to provision themselves on the field while the church's only act was a spiritual gesture at the send-off service. The biblically faithful approach is this: to send a missionary is to commit to long-term, institutionalized support. That commitment should include at least five substantive elements:
Together, these five elements constitute what "sending" truly means. Without them, a "commissioning" is nothing more than a dignified farewell.
"Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and in teaching." (1 Timothy 5:17–18)
Fair reward has two layers. First, differences in role must be acknowledged: a senior pastor carries different responsibilities than a co-worker; full-time commitment differs from part-time; seasoned experience differs from those just starting out. Treating everyone the same is not fairness — it is actually inequity. Second, diligence and fruitfulness should be recognized: Paul says "especially those who labor in the word and in teaching" — not "all preachers receive double," but those who genuinely work hard and truly teach souls. In other words, Scripture permits and even encourages churches to distinguish those who truly put in the effort. Chinese churches often struggle to do this, because any mention of "differentiation" feels like "discrimination." But biblical fairness is not flat equality — it is "each according to what they are owed."
"But let him who is taught in the word share all good things with him who teaches." (Galatians 6:6)
"All good things" and "share" — these two expressions set the tone for the entire principle: not a minimum-threshold mindset, but an abundance mindset. Concretely: where you can give more, don't give less; within budget, err on the side of generosity rather than "just enough." Where you can provide now, don't delay — don't wait until retirement, healthcare, or children's education become urgent crises when you could begin provision today. Where you can institutionalize generosity, don't rely on personal initiative — make generosity structural, so it doesn't depend on "whoever happens to be willing at the time." Generosity is not extravagance or waste — it is a form of trust in God's abundance: believing that what God provides is sufficient for the church to be generous toward its workers.
At this point, some colleagues may already be running the numbers in their heads: "We understand the principle, but…" Let us address the two most common objections directly.
Many are concerned: "If we offer pastors a decent salary, won't some people enter full-time ministry out of greed or a desire for a stable income?" The logic runs: low pay filters out those who are in it for the money; adequate pay might let freeloaders slip through. This concern sounds reasonable on the surface, but using "suppressed salaries" to screen workers is applying the wrong tool to the right problem.
To assess whether someone is "in it for the money," Scripture offers a far more reliable method: let them be tested in the church over many years. The biblically faithful pathway has never been: "young person has a burst of inspiration → sent straight to seminary → graduates and goes straight into full-time ministry." (This "inspired straight to the pulpit" approach is itself deeply dangerous, and no amount of salary suppression compensates for it — a separate article will address the church's biblically faithful pathway for developing workers.) The biblical pathway looks roughly like this: become a disciple, faithfully following Jesus; commit to the local church as an ordinary member, serving over many years; grow and mature in character, gradually recognized by the church for faithfulness and giftedness; serve as deacon or elder, leading the church for some years; gifts and faithfulness confirmed, character, capability, and love for the church witnessed by many; only then does the church consider whether to call this person to full-time service, or to send them for theological training.
By the time someone has completed this pathway, the "money" question has already been naturally filtered out — because their years of serving the church while holding secular employment were unpaid. Someone primarily motivated by money would rarely be willing to sustain that level of committed service year after year with no salary. The correct filter, therefore, is not "suppress the salary" — it is "have a biblically faithful development pathway." The first harms workers in order to filter; the second uses time and demonstrated giftedness to filter. One injures everyone; the other glorifies God and builds up the church.
The second common objection is: "Our church is small, our numbers are few, offerings aren't enough. Once we have more offerings, we'll be in a position to improve compensation." This sounds reasonable, but on reflection it applies a double standard: on one hand, the church expects its full-time workers to have faith in God and not walk by sight; on the other hand, the church itself walks by sight rather than by faith.
Look deeper, and you find a paradox buried in the "wait until offerings grow" logic: because the salary standard is low, the church's monthly finances appear just sufficient; members don't feel a strong motivation to give (things seem fine as they are); and so the church never has the funds to raise salaries. But turn it around: once the church sets compensation at a biblically appropriate and generous level, members will suddenly realize "we have actually been falling far short of what our worker deserves — we owe a debt." Many who previously had little motivation to give will find that this sense of responsibility moves them to increase their giving.
So the key is: the church itself must first have faith in God — not building confidence on each month's offering total, but on God, who is the ultimate provider. Once the church takes that step of faith, giving tends to follow naturally. If the compensation standard is set correctly but actual offerings temporarily fall short, members will clearly see that "we are in arrears to our worker." In that environment, the vast majority of workers will also feel that their labor has been properly acknowledged and respected, and will be willing to bear the temporary shortfall — which is an entirely different thing from "the church matter-of-factly paying low wages indefinitely while expecting workers to absorb it silently."
Of course, beyond encouraging greater generosity from members, if a church faces structural constraints in its particular ministry context — campus student ministry, migrant worker ministry, ministry among socially marginalized groups, where the congregation's own giving capacity is inherently limited — the church can also appeal in its own name to other brother churches in the city for financial assistance. This is entirely normal in the "mutual support" tradition of the universal church. It is not shameful — it is biblical.
At this point, a mirror-image caution must be added immediately: if we only speak of "the church should be generous," this can be misused as pressure in the other direction. Supporting workers is not one-directional — it is mutual. On one side, the church gives cheerfully; on the other side, the worker receives cheerfully and, when necessary, willingly relinquishes. This can be unpacked in five points.
One: The church's willingness. The compensation and benefits a church prepares for its worker should arise from joyful giving, not from being morally pressured by a forceful worker into reluctant compliance. Once obligation creeps in, resentment is inevitable. But where does genuine willingness come from? Not from emotional impulse — from being corrected by truth. The key leaders and congregation as a whole need to deliberately fill in the blind spots in this area. The distorted ideas about worker support that have accumulated over recent decades — the romanticizing of poverty, the doctrine that frugality equals spirituality, the "enough is fine" mentality, the assumption that the pastor's wife comes as an unpaid bonus — all of these need to be brought before Scripture and re-examined one by one. Only when members are genuinely convinced that "this is the biblical thing to do" will their giving come from a place of heartfelt joy. Otherwise, even if they agree on the surface, the old traditions still grip them underneath, and resentment will eventually surface.
Two: The worker's willingness. Workers should also serve with willingness. Once reluctance sets in, bitterness is inevitable. Here it is important to emphasize a biblical reality that is often overlooked: Scripture nowhere requires that a church's leaders be "full-time" rather than bi-vocational. 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 list the qualifications for elders and deacons. Every qualification concerns character maturity and household health — self-controlled, gentle, not a lover of money, hospitable, able to teach, managing their own household well — yet Scripture never defines or requires full-time employment by the church. Of course, where someone is particularly gifted and the church has the financial capacity to support it, calling such an elder or deacon into full-time service so that gifts and energy can be more concentrated is a wise arrangement — indeed, this is what 1 Corinthians 9 and 1 Timothy 5:17–18 both permit and commend. But note: this is a practical wisdom arrangement the church makes for actual needs; it has never been a biblical requirement for eldership or diaconal office.
Yet Chinese churches often share a blind spot here — treating "full-time" (leaving so-called "secular" employment) as a more sacred calling, and drawing an artificial, unequal spiritual distinction between "full-time ministers" and "lay people." This way of thinking deserves examination on at least two levels. First, it contradicts the biblical foundation of the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9): every regenerate person is a consecrated priest before God, and there is no two-tiered system where a "more holy" class of priests manages a "lesser" class. Second, it actually crushes the full-time worker themselves — treating "full-time" as synonymous with "must be more spiritual, more sacrificial, more willing to suffer," loading on disproportionate spiritual expectations that ultimately become a crushing burden. (The call to "leave everything and follow the Lord Jesus" in Scripture is not addressed specifically to full-time ministers — it is addressed to every disciple.) Therefore, the worker's "willingness" also includes: being willing not to treat their full-time status as inherently sacred; neither leveraging that status to demand more, nor being bound by it to carry spiritual expectations they were never meant to bear.
Three: The freedom to say "no." The church has the right to extend an offer according to its own circumstances; the worker has the right to honestly accept or decline after careful assessment. A worker who genuinely feels an offer cannot sustain the family may decline the invitation without being accused of being "unspiritual." Both sides should communicate openly and honestly, but neither should be pressured.
Four: The freedom to make tents when necessary.
"Because he practiced the same trade, he lived with them and worked, for by trade they were tent makers." (Acts 18:3)
Paul himself sometimes worked with his own hands. This tells us: when necessary — for example, when the church faces temporary financial difficulty, in the early stages of church planting, or when the worker themselves chooses it — a minister engaging in outside work to supplement income is biblically legitimate. It is not a spiritual step backward or a sign of worldliness.
Five: Workers should be prepared to suffer. The hardships inherent in ministry — opposition, resistance, even persecution from the world — are costs a worker must be willing to bear. But a church should not artificially and additionally heap unnecessary burdens on the worker and their family. The former is the cross; the latter is the church's failure. Put simply: the genuine cross, the worker must carry; the avoidable suffering, the church must absorb for the worker. Both together form the complete picture of "mutual willingness."
The final point is perhaps the hardest for Chinese churches to practice — and the most crucial: transparent communication. Many churches are constitutionally unable to talk honestly about money. Workers dare not speak about their real situation for fear of being accused of "loving money, being unspiritual, coveting the world." Elders and deacons dare not proactively raise salaries for fear of criticism from members. Members bury their concerns and, over time, those concerns curdle into resentment. The pastor's wife is buckling under the weight of financial pressure, yet everyone wonders "why does she lack joy?" This is why the subject gets raised year after year with no result — because no one has ever actually had the honest conversation.
Transparent communication can begin with a few concrete practices:
Suppose the church calculates, based on the "above-average principle," that it should pay this pastor £5,000 per month. But the pastor proactively says: "The church is under financial pressure right now — £3,500 is enough for me." The church gratefully nods, pays £3,500, and nothing is put in writing. Several years later, four problems emerge:
This is not mere formalism. It is the practical way to ensure that love and sacrifice are seen.
</details>Transparent communication is not about haggling — it is about speaking the truth in love. And the hardest part of speaking the truth in love is not anything else: it is acknowledging that none of us has done this perfectly yet, while remaining willing to adjust together toward God's heart.
Let us return to the opening observation: why do we squirm when specific compensation standards come up? Because this is not just a money question. It is a faith question: do I believe God will provide for the church, so that the church has sufficient resources to be generous toward its workers? It is an ecclesiology question: do I view the pastor as an "employee," a "spiritual KPI executor," or as "a brother in the Lord, a fellow worker sharing together in God's abundance"? And more deeply, it is a question of our knowledge of God's glory: what kind of God do we actually believe in?
Believe in a stingy, hard-hearted God, and you will support your workers stingily. Believe in an abundant, generous God, and you will support your workers abundantly and generously.
Going further: the way a church treats its workers is the sermon that church preaches about God to the world. If it tells its workers "enough is fine — a little more hardship is alright," the world reads from that church a God who is miserly, unwilling to extend one more measure of grace. But if it tells its workers "we want to share all good things with you — we will make provision for your household, your children, and your old age," the world reads a God who "richly provides us with everything to enjoy" (cf. 1 Timothy 6:17) — a heavenly Father of abundance.
May Chinese churches return to Scripture, and come to know again the God "who didn't spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Romans 8:32) — and be willing to share generously with his servants the good things God has given.
"For God is not unrighteous, so as to forget your work and the labor of love which you showed toward his name, in that you served the saints, and still do serve them." (Hebrews 6:10)
May this verse come first to the workers: God will not forget your labor. And may it come also to the churches: Lord, make us not forget the labor of our workers.
📖 How Should Chinese Churches Support Full-Time Workers · A Two-Part Series
💬 If this article has prompted any thoughts or questions for you, you are welcome to ask Pastor Bond:
- "How do you calculate 'above-average' support in a biblically faithful way?"
- "When a church commissions a missionary, what exactly has it committed to?"
- "Why does a voluntary pay cut absolutely need to be put in writing?"