Only in the realm of Christian ministry is it somehow deemed a virtue to be underpaid and poor. Yet there is an argument to be made that salaries often reflect the value we place on things. Yes, I know that there are poor churches that cannot afford to pay a decent ministerial salary; but that is not the case with all; and yet clergy salaries in the Reformed world in the UK are, with some good exceptions, typically breadline affairs.

As I sat with Liam Goligher in my usual breakfast haunt near Philadelpia yesterday, we both speculated as to when the `rats abandoning the sinking ship’ theme would emerge in commentary on his potential move from Richmond to Tenth; little did we know that, back in Ealing, Paul was already putting fingers to keyboard.

Editor’s Note: Here is the blog post from Paul Levy to which Carl is referring:
Coming to America! – Posted by Paul Levy

Alistair Begg, Sinclair Ferguson, Derek Thomas, Jerram Barrs, Carl Trueman, Paul Gardner, Mark Johnston, Bill Hughes, Josh Moody and now Liam Goligher. The list could go on…….

On the 5th January 1989 the South Wales Evening Post arrived in the afternoon. I picked it up as a 12 year old boy and immediately burst into tears. Jonathan Davies the Welsh rugby captain and finest outside half of his era had signed to play rugby league for Widnes. For those of you in America, rugby is like American football without pads but with brains. There are two types of rugby – League and Union. In 1989 Rugby Union was still amateur while league was professional. Jonathan Davies was my hero. Posters of him adorned my wall. Every schoolboy in Wales grows up wanting to play outside half for their country. Jonathan Davies going to League triggered a mass exodus of Welsh rugby stars. We were hardly setting the world on fire but we lost our best talent for the guts of 10 years.

We’re experiencing something similar in the UK reformed church. The men I’ve named above are all Brits who’ve moved from a British church context to an American one. I don’t begrudge them going (not openly at least!) but these men are not your average Joes. They are some of our best and brightest men. Surely America can’t keep taking our best preachers.

Admittedly America is sending us their preachers too. We’ve got all sorts of your finest on the satellite channels and you are sending us missionaries (for which I’m very grateful. I have a number of them in my congregation) but by their own admission they would not be the leaders that the men I’ve named are.

So what’s the answer? I think we should trade; we’ll give you Liam Goligher if you send us Tim Keller, or how about if we give you a couple of Sunday school teachers and you return Trueman to us. It’s a fair swap, admittedly weighted in your favour. It’s funny how we don’t see reformed leaders from the US called to the UK but maybe I’m just bitter.

Paul is certainly right about Jonathan Davies though, were he a decade older, he would remember that Steve Fenwick, Welsh captain of a previous generation, had betrayed the Welsh Union for League and set the precedent. I seem to remember that feelings in the valleys ran so high that he was banned for life from even attending games at Cardiff Arms Park, but that may simply have been a proposal and never actually legislated.

It is, of course, difficult to respond to the main point of Paul’s post — the alleged brain drain to the US of British Reformed types — without appearing to be self-serving; yet to remain silent might just as easily appear to be self-loathing. So here goes anyway.

For myself, I am flattered to be included in the list he offers, but doubt that I was ever as significant as any of the other men back home, nor over here for that matter. When I came to the US, I was at the time a university academic who occasionally spoke at church youth weekends, and once led a seminar at Word Alive. True, I was editor of Themelios, but that was an international journal and I continued to edit it after emigration, until such time as the British owners decided to close it down. I was also an elder at a church where the average Sunday congregation was ca. 250 in the morning, and membership was probably somewhere in the low to mid 100s.

Now I am a seminary academic who speaks/preaches at church conferences, still writes a column for the restarted Themelios,and who, most Sundays, can be found in a tatty Philadelphia suburb at the church where I serve as a non-stipendiary minister, helping my wife to teach the five year olds a Bible story and a memory verse before the service, and then sitting in the sanctuary, along with ca. 95 other people, of whom maybe 55 are members. Not everything is bigger, more glamorous, and better paid in the USA.

I also speak more in the UK now than I did when the highlight of my week was watching Rugby Special over a pint of Old Bob.

Underlying much of the ‘rats abandoning’ material is, I suspect, a sneaking suspicion that, to put it in Sun-ese, `It woz the money wot won it!’, the notion that there is more cash to be made over here than over there. On the whole, I suspect that is true; but a couple of things are worth noting.

Most ministers here — certainly in the Reformed world — are not well-paid by worldly standards, and most could have made more money more easily, with greater social prestige, by doing something else. Few people in the UK criticise Christian lawyers or doctors or business men for being who they are on the grounds that they are motivated purely by money and should have chosen rather to live below the poverty line as ministers. Yet most of such in the UK will earn more than most pastors in the US.

Only in the realm of Christian ministry is it somehow deemed a virtue to be underpaid and poor. Yet there is an argument to be made that salaries often reflect the value we place on things. Yes, I know that there are poor churches that cannot afford to pay a decent ministerial salary; but that is not the case with all; and yet clergy salaries in the Reformed world in the UK are, with some good exceptions, typically breadline affairs. So, yes, US salaries are better; but not so much better that an argument about greed and prestige as motivations can really hold water; if someone wants those, they should become a televangelist or a lawyer; and perhaps on the whole, the higher ministerial salaries reflect a higher value placed on the ministry which, if the case, would constitute a good reason for the US to be more attractive.

Do I feel guilty about leaving? Sure; and not just for church reasons. Do I feel guilty enough to return? No; and nor do I think guilt would be an appropriate reason to return. The key thing is that each person works in the place where he has been called. And Christ will build his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, no matter how many eggheads and preachers who sound like Hugh Grant or Jimmy Krankie move across the Atlantic.

Carl R Trueman is Departmental Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has an MA in Classics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Church History from the University of Aberdeen. He is editor of the IFES journal, Themelios, and has taught on the faculties of theology at both the University of Nottingham and the University of Aberdeen. This article is reprinted from the Reformation 21 blog and is used with their permission. http://www.reformation21.org/blog/