Housing Allowance: Rick Warren giveth, will Ed Young taketh away?

My last post on the Minister's Housing Allowance, our Sacred Tax Loophole, was probably unwelcome with some of our Southern Baptist colleagues (Nope. You cannot use your housing allowance for a second home) because it shared the bad news that the more affluent clergy among us cannot expect Joe Sixpack to subsidize their second home at the beach or in the mountains.

Let's not get too upset about it because that first home that does qualify can be the Biltmore House and a high-income clergy person can pour as many hundreds of thousands of dollars into that as he can in order to maximize his or her tax break.

Makes sense in the same way that a lot of federal tax policy makes sense.

And, no, Rick Warren didn't originate the housing allowance but he was the catalyst for the federal law passed a decade ago that made it a bit smoother for us.

Ed Young? He has a pretty spiffy house in Houston that is or was on the market for over $2 million and Tom Rich of SBC Jax Watchdog puts a hefty figure on what his housing allowance comes to, a quarter million dollars or so. 

Rick Warren giveth...so how does Ed Young cause it to be taketh away?

Does anyone misunderstand that when clergy claim such exemptions to income by right and tax law that sooner or later folks will pay attention and say that something just isn't right here? Why should the government subsidize a mansion for clergy and not some hourly worker's hovel?

Why indeed?

There is some news here, rumblings on the horizon, because of a new legal challenge to the minister's housing allowance: Challenge to clergy tax break gets green light... My friend and CPA Peter J. Reilly has an interest in such things. The link is to his blog on Forbes. Read and learn.

The suit is being brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Peter Reilly explains it much better than I could.

The FFRF certainly has some material to work with, what with clergy  mansions like the one above, not to mention the clergy who are "qualified" for the housing allowance as ministers of loose basketballs, ministers of maintenance, ministers of fun overseas mission trips and other odd church staff positions.

I'm guessing that the FFRF lawyers know how to hit softballs out of the park.

The average SBC minister in my state has a compensation package (generally salary plus housing allowance, or rental value of a pastorium) of around $71,000 and the housing allowance probably translates into a savings of a thousand dollars annually or so. A thousand dollars is real money to most SBC clergy.

If asked, and I have been asked about this, I cannot say that we clergy deserve this tax break any more or less than any other group with some pull in D.C.

Is it unconstitutional? Guess we may see.

 

Appointment of SBC name change committee 'unprecedented'? Uh, no.

The argument that Bryant Wright’s action on the name change committee is unprecedented is factually incorrect.

Ed Young was first elected SBC president in June of 1992. That September he appointed not one but nine study groups to look in-depth at many SBC matters including theology, Cooperative Program, and many others.

Baptist Press, September 24, 1992

Facts are our friends, I’ve been told. Here are some friends.

SBC Megachurches...

...love them, hate them, or be ambivalent about them. According to Thom Ranier, head of LifeWay there are 177 of them in the SBC. That is, 177 churches that report on the Annual Church Profile an average primary worship attendance of at least 2,000 weekly and who give something to the Cooperative Program. Not all churches reported, so there's probably a few missing from this list. Some that are on the list are probably only nominally SBC.

Some observations on the 177 megachurches:

About 0.4% of SBC churches are megachurches but on an average Lord’s Day of the 6.2 million people that attend worship in an SBC church, about ten percent of these are nestled in a megachurch.

If your worship is in one of the megachurches, you attend church on that given Sunday with about 3,500 other souls. You probably know very few of them and the pastor might but probably doesn't know who you are.

If your worship is in a non-megachurch, you worship with about 120 other people on that Sunday. You probably know most of them, by name. Your pastor almost certainly knows you and calls you by name when you leave church and tell him what a great sermon he preached.

There are as many as or more SBC megachurches in California (9) than in any of these SBC legacy states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, or Kentucky.

Texas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee have about 60% of all the megas in the SBC. Texas has by far the most but churches there are known to inflate their members just like ranchers there inflate their acreage and cattle. Georgians, however, are scrupulously honest.

You probably don't recognize some of the top ten megachurches:
1. Second Baptist, Houston
2. Saddleback Valley Community Church, CA
3. Woodlands Church, TX
4. Prestonwood Baptist, TX
5. Thomas Road, VA
6. Potential, Ft. Lauderdale
7. NewSpring Church, SC
8. The Fountain of Praise, Houston
9. Lake Pointe Church, TX
10. Saint Matthews Baptist, NJ

I recognize only half of them.

How many pastors of these churches could you name? Well, Ed Young, Sr. I know; Rick Warren, I recognize, and Falwell the Younger can't be missed. But the rest? Plodder may be deeply out of touch but he has never heard of several of the others.

Two of the top ten seem to be black churches.

Notably, only four of the ten feature ‘Baptist’ in their name.

Suppose you were fresh out of seminary, had a few years of a student pastorate under your belt and got a phone call that started,

"Brother Emdiv, this is Fred Smith. I'm chairman of the pastor search committee for Mud Creek Baptist in Hendersonville, NC. We like your resume and would like to talk to you."

I know what you might think.

'Ain't no way I'm taking my wife to any Mud Creek church. They are probably wonderful folks and a wonderful little church, but I'm edumacated, ordained, and seasoned and am ready for a greater challenge.' ('Greater challenge' is, of course, SBC preacher code language for a bigger church, bigger salary, and greater prestige.)

Better hold your tongue there, hotshot. Mud Creek is a megachurch. There are only three SBC churches in NC are larger than good ol' Mud Creek.

Er, I'd be glad to talk to you.

Then again, you might not be ready for a megachurch.

Check with Joel Gregory first.

SBC presidents and the Cooperative Program

What shall we say about SBC leadership and their support, or lack thereof, for our grand Cooperative Program?

Here is a summary of the past SBC presidents and their Cooperative Program support over the past 32 years:
Less than 4%: Rogers, Smith, Stanley, Vines, Young, Elliff, Merritt, Graham, Hunt, Wright.
Above the contemporary average: Draper (7%), Chapman (11%), Henry (10%), Welch (15%), Page (12%).

Between 1979 and 1992, the year the Conservative Resurgence was effectively over, seven men were elected president. Only two of those were significant CP supporters, Draper and Chapman, and only Chapman’s church gave greater than what was held out as the standard at the time, 10%. I don’t recall either of them being elected on a platform of cooperation or CP giving, but rather on a platform of continuing the conservative takeover. For the entire period up to 2010, sixteen presidents have served. Only six of those gave average or above to the CP.

Since 1992, the convention has happily elected leaders who are not known for their outstanding CP support. Only Henry, Welch, and Page were above average, while Merritt, Graham, and Hunt were down in the 2% range. I don’t think you can find a greater contrast than in the election of last year where Bryant Wright, in the 3% range, defeated a candidate who was in excess of 10%.

Since the convention elected people whose CP levels were very, very low (Bailey Smith, 1% or so, Ed young the same, Stanley, Vines, Merritt 2% or so), one has to say that the Cooperative Program was clearly not an important factor for the Conservative Resurgence. Even in the years since the CR was completed, the convention has been quite comfortable in electing leaders whose CP levels are way below average.

I summarize these things because I keep seeing people who are dissatisfied with the giving of current leadership incorrectly interpret the SBC’s history of the past three decades. I think an honest view of the past would lead to the conclusion that the CR was not a boon to the concept of cooperation and to support of the Cooperative Program. The most salient of CP statistics, that churches give less and less of undesignated giving through the CP, is partly the result of the success of megachurch pastors like Rogers, Stanley, and Young in being elected to the SBC presidency in spite of low CP giving percentages.

For my part, a presidential candidate who shows strong support for NAMB, the IMB, and whose CP percentage is above the threshold of 3-4 percent is fine by me. In my book Bryant Wright is a very strong supporter of our cooperative work as Southern Baptists even though he may not meet the CP litmus tests of some. If we dismiss pastors like him and churches like his we will be a much weaker convention.

A future question to be considered: Why has the average church CP percentage been dropping for decades when almost all SBC pastors (87% in a 2007 survey) report that they are generally satisfied with the CP?