PCUSA staff leader says pay theologians more
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 27, 2002
LOUISVILLE – The Presbyterian Church (USA) is not providing adequate salaries for its theologians, Joseph D. Small, associate director of the Office of Theology and Worship, told a General Assembly subcommittee Sept. 26.
Small also warned that his office could lose grant support because the Presbyterian Church (USA) has not picked up the tab for theological programs that foundations started.
A large portion of the budget for the Office of Theology and Worship comes from endowments, but grant money cannot be used to supplement salaries higher than the assigned grades.
“We go after grant money all of the time,” he said. “One of the things people at the Lilly Endowment say to us is, ‘It’s difficult for us to continue giving grants to the Office of Theology and Worship when it is apparent that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is never going to pick up the work that we started.’ They ask the question, ‘Doesn’t the church care?’ It’s an embarrassment to me that it’s the Lilly Endowment that has supported all kinds of good programs; it’s not the church.”
Small’s comments about salaries and grant support came while he was discussing efforts to hire two new associates in his office.
“We have absolutely superb candidates for both positions,” Small said, but, he added, salary grades are not competitive to employ men and women with Ph.Ds in theology.
He told the Theology/Worship Subcommittee of the General Assembly Council that the highest pay grade in the denomination is 22 – where “John Detterick lives in splendid isolation.” The 214th General Assembly increased the annual salary for Detterick, who is executive director of the General Assembly Council, to $140,000.
Small himself is an associate director (pay grade 19) and theologians who are employed by his office are in pay grades 16, 17 and 18.
“The normal thing we do is hire at the bottom of the grade,” he said. “That’s $42,000. That’s everything. That’s salary. That’s housing. In this presbytery, most people coming right out of seminary get more than that.”
The Ph.D.-trained theologians whom the office seeks to hire are “in their 40s, in mid-careers. You can say all you want about service to the church, but that’s [the salary] madness.”
Small said he has been able to recruit good people because “there are some people who are willing to make significant sacrifices to come here because they think the work is important. But how do you retain people when the opportunity for advancement doesn’t exist? It simply doesn’t exist.”
Small emphasized that he was not complaining about his own salary. He also said he has the sympathy of budget planners.
“What can be done?” he asked. “There needs to be some recognition of the fact that in any organization there ought to be ways for people to achieve certain advancements.”
Small described the salary problem as being of “some seriousness. And the only thing that keeps it from being a real problem is the very wide and deep dedication of people who work in the office.”