Yesterday I commented that an answer to calculating a living (or “just”) wage is found in one of the place where people least tend to look, and that is at missionary societies who send workers overseas. Why these missionary societies? Let me speak out of personal experience as a former multi-term missionary.
Missionary societies have many of the tasks of a business, while at the same time they have the evangelical drive to ensure that what they do tallies with the Gospel so that the Gospel that they preach to non-believers will also be the Gospel that non-believers see being practiced. Now many of us would think that this applies only to behavior, dress, etc. But, interestingly enough, it crosses the line over into the economic area. What do I mean?
Like any business, a missionary society is concerned with income and outgo. It is no good talking about preaching the Gospel if one falls into insolvency and fails to preach it. At the same time, like any business, employee retention rates are an issue. Missionaries have to be trained, not only before they go to the field, but also during their first term. Many missionary societies do not consider a person to be fully a missionary until their second term overseas because the first term is the term when the missionary is learning the foreign culture, often the foreign language, and communication techniques that are efficacious in the receiving culture. It is often not until the second term that a foreign missionary becomes “productive.”
Thus, a missionary society is forced to look at the long-term. Given the year of training before going overseas, plus the training during the first term, a missionary society has put a substantial investment of funds into a missionary before that missionary becomes effective. Thus, to lose that missionary after just one term is a tragedy. Retention policies for a missionary have to include a living wage for a missionary that is more than just subsistence living, but also allows for some “luxuries.” What missionary societies have found out is that these “extras” are not truly “luxuries,” but are part of what keeps a missionary family mentally healthy and able to function.
I have met overseas one or two missionaries who worked for missionary societies that functioned on the “poverty” model, as though the missionary family had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I have also met pastors in the USA who were hired by churches who kept them at near poverty levels since, after all, they had decided to serve the Lord, thus they had decided to “sacrifice.” In almost every case, I met worn out pastors and wives, and children who were near the edge of resentment if they were old enough to understand the situation. All too often, many of them would not return for a second term.
Thus, missionary societies, decades ago, developed salary scales either using their own gathered information as to what a reasonable living wage was, or–startingly enough–used already existing information gathered by multinationals who often had to transfer personnel back and forth between countries. For each missionary specialty sent overseas, many mission agencies have developed an appropriate wage scale that will neither enrichen nor imporvish the person(s) being sent. These scales include many different job categories such as: pilots, aviation mechanics, pastors, secretaries, financial administrators, information technology specialists, communication specialists, translators, etc., etc., and all with a view towards retention and effective fiscal management.
Thus, to help answer the question as to what is minimum living wage and what is a reasonable wage for any of several fields and professions, both blue collar and white collar, I would turn to the foreign missionary societies. I can highly recomment societies such as the South American Missionary Society, or the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, or Wycliffe Translators, etc., etc. The upshot is that it is not as hard or as confusing as you might think to answer the Biblical question about a living wage. Just go to those who preach the Gospel in other lands, and you can find an answer for this land.
And, if you are reading this, why do you not take a moment to pull out your checkbook and give a Lenten gift to a missionary society. In my case I would recommend the Orthodox Christian Mission Center. Go to ??http://www.ocmc.org/ and donate now.
Author and journalist Steven Greenhut, director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Journalism Center, has written a book called Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives, and Bankrupting the Nation.
Why mention it? Because Greenhut is an Orthodox Christian. Orthodox Christians can have different studied opinions on these matters.
There is no doubt that Orthodox Christians can and do have different opinions on this and many subjects. I have had strong debates with other priests during Orthodox clergy conferences. In one storied Orthodox clergy conference I attended, a Metropolitan deliberately set up the entire conference to deal with the issue of Christian and Muslim, touching off no little debate in the conference. One could almost see the flying snippets of Scripture and the writings of the Fathers being tossed around. Saint Luke, himself, says of the council in Acts 15 that there was no little debate.
And, as the title you quoted points out, Orthodox Christians can speak very strongly on the issue, to the point of either saying that public employee unions are essentially robbing the country (for that is what it means to say that they are plundering the treasury), or, on the other side, saying that employers are withholding wages (robbing employees) to enrich themselves. In either case, there is an attempt to see how our Christian heritage is applied, in a practical way, to the problems of today, just as there has always been through the centuries. Notice that in either case accusations of theft are leveled. Either public employee unions are committing theft or employers are committing theft. It may be that both are, of course.
That type of strong debate has been present in Orthodoxy through the centuries.