Two last questions, because I’m just watching our time. Somewhat related to the previous. Over lunch, we talked yesterday about salaries, finances in the church, how leadership within the church should assess pastoral salaries, how people should think about money in general, but as it relates to the pastors and what they’re earning and those types of things.

You made some great comments that I’d love for you to share with others in regards to the way the church today functions in North America. It thinks like a big business. It thinks like the world around them. It doesn’t think Christianly about these things. So, can you speak into that and share some of the thoughts that you shared yesterday?

I can’t remember them all, but I’ll start talking, and you can tell me what I’m not saying. Churches should not try to keep their pastors poor and should not want to make them rich. That’d be a good place to start. “Don’t muzzle the ox while he’s treading out the grain,” which in context for Paul, meant, don’t make him moonlight (1 Timothy 5:18). Don’t call a pastor and say, “Well, we assume your wife is going to work.” That’s a bad way to call a pastor. Call a pastor and help him.

Now, a lot of people say, “Yeah, but Paul was a tentmaker, and he was bi-vocational.” Paul justified his tent-making almost by saying he was disobeying Jesus. He said, “The master said the workman is worthy of his wage. I will not take that right, lest I bring any reproach upon the gospel.” He didn’t take anything. He wasn’t bi-vocational. He was one vocational. He got all of his money from tent-making, lest the Corinthians or the Thessalonians said he was mooching off of them and a scoundrel trying to make money.

He did not want pastors to do that. What he says was, “Churches, pay your pastors.” So, all that at the bottom end of minimal salary, don’t make a moonlight, and don’t assume their wife is going to catch up. Pay them what they need to have a — now here’s the trouble. Have a what? A jet? “Can I please have your money so that I can get a new jet, Mr. Creflo?”

No, you may not have my money to get a new jet. So, establishing the top end is a little bigger of a biblical challenge. And there, I would go to texts like, “Those who desire to be rich fall into many temptations. They pierce themselves with many pangs and bring themselves to ruin” (1 Timothy 6:9). And therefore, I think pastors should teach their churches the dangers of money. “It is hard for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:23). Why would a pastor want to make it hard for himself or anybody else to get into the kingdom of heaven?

The prosperity preachers just don’t get this. They don’t seem to get the dangers. They think money is all a sign of blessing when the Bible regularly says it’s a sign of danger. You are liable to be cursed if you want to be rich.

And so, where we ended was, you live in Vancouver where houses cost a million bucks, or you live in Barnesville, Georgia, where you can get a house for $50,000, you need a formula that doesn’t criticize the pastor here who’s making six figures, and the pastor there who’s plenty well off at $60,000. So, the formulas should be the same somehow, and the quantity is going to be different.

So, the principles are: we want our people to be radically devoted to sacrificial service in this world. John Wesley said what? “Make as much as you can, save as much as you can, and give as much as you can.” And I think when he died, he had a silver spoon to his name. So, what we want, we’re not going to tell the guys working here or the women working here in Vancouver, “Don’t make a lot of money.” I never would say that. I would just say, “Don’t keep a lot of money.”

Figure out what a wartime lifestyle looks like in a world with suffering like an earthquake in Nepal, six thousand people groups who do not have the gospel, untold number of people disadvantaged anew, and use all of your American entrepreneurial ways to multiply giving. Multiply giving. Be a generous people.

So, I think what you want to create is conduits, and you want to preach. The conduits can be coated with copper — thank you very much — they don’t need to be coated with gold. So, let it flow, and the conduit of your house, your life, your car, keep it copper. Now, I could get more specific, if you wanted me to, about what copper is and what gold is. Lamborghini, whatever that car is, and Ford or whatever you have here.

If you make $500,000 a year, you don’t need to symbolize it with your car and your rings and your watches and your suits. You don’t. The culture will tell you, “You deserve a La-Z-Boy.” And you will go buy all the symbols of what you make. And so it becomes power. It’s really about power then. You don’t have to go there. That’s what I meant when I said we start to think like the world when we pay each other or do our lifestyles. And pastors like us should be helping our people break free.

So let me anger all my lead pastor friends, this is one of the questions or one of the discussion items related to this yesterday. Should lead pastors just necessarily be paid the most on a staff?

What I said was, there came a moment when we had grown from one pastor in 1980 to twenty-five pastors in 2013, and I had put a cap on my salary. I said, “Don’t go beyond this. I don’t need it, and I think it’s out of proportion.” And they said to me, “Look, you’re making it hard to pay these guys down the line what they ought to be paid because there’s you, there’s leads, there’s pastors, there’s the support workers, and they’re all gradated and these people aren’t getting enough because you put a cap on.”

And I looked at them and I said, “What makes you think they should be paid less than me? What governs that? Why do you need it? Where does this come from that I have to be paid more than everybody when I tell you I don’t need it?” And that’s just pure American.

That’s pure American. That’s not biblical. Need and merit both figure in. But if you got people down here aren’t making it, come on, catch them up. They need to be up, but you don’t need to raise me. You don’t need these big gaps between your pastors.