Michele and I watched a "Frontline" episode last night about retirement. Here's some of what we learned.
The days of the old-style pensions are over. Even if you have one, if the company you worked for goes bankrupt, you could lose much of your retirement benefit. The new alternative to the pensions, of course, are company 401Ks. The problems here are:
1. Only about 10% of employees max out their contributions, which is what most or all of them should be doing.
2. Many employees can't resist the urge to dip into these savings. In some cases, they use them in real emergencies, to make ends meet between jobs, etc. Other times, the withdrawals are not so necessary.
3. Some employees terribly mis-manage their portfolios and wind up making the least of their savings.
4. Sometimes corporate restructuring results in a change for the company's 401K plan. The new plan isn't as attractive as the old one.
Like a lot of segments in this series, the impact was mostly negative. "Frontline" sort of specializes in revealing nothing more than how bad things are. There's a place for that, I guess. But I also like to hear something positive and practical.
Anyway, the whole thing got me to thinking about independent congregations (i.e., those not affiliated with a denominational structure) and their ministers. Exceptions aside, from what I've observed most preachers and other church staff have a limited number of years they can stay employed with a church. On top of that, most independent congregations do nothing to encourage and help their staff members to be good stewards of the financial long-haul.
I wonder, if people with pensions and 401Ks won't necessarily be financially sound in their golden years, what about people without such benefits?
It seems to me that independent congregations should, at the very least, insist that their staff knows about and has easy access to good financial advice and resources for retirement planning. Some preachers know a lot of Bible, are people fluent, and with God's help succeed at building up the body of Christ. A lot of those same people are financially illiterate and will not fare well in the coming decades.
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2 comments:
Frank,
Very good thoughts. I know when I am interviewing young new staff, when I talk about our retirement plan, they smile and nod like. "I'm young I don't need to think about that". We have a 6% match here. If I were to let them know I was cutting 6% from their salary, they would pitch a fit, but they cut it from themselves by not contributing to the retirement fund.
As for preachers, I really think you should pitch that to the Christian Chronicle or even the Christian Standard as a story idea. Both periodicals reach independant church groups and I am sure it is an issue that needs to be looked at especially to share what congregations are doing it well.
The word, independence, is the operative word. With no limit on the minister's potential earnings, except those that are self-imposed and self-regulated, the responsibility for savings rests with the minister. The federal government's limits on personal savings only has to do with the degree to which they'll subsidize the efforts.
Releasing the church, local or denominational, from the responsibility of taking care of me was the best thing I ever did.
Ministers operate by commission. Co-mission. Ministers and their churches join hands in a common, but limited, expression of God's work. It's viable and life-giving only insofar as the vision is shared and the responsibilities of each party is upheld. When it's current, each party's primary accountability is to God, something that keeps the relationship both fruitful and in check. When it's over, no one owes anyone anything.
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