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Further Thoughts on the Empty Temple—My Response to Jon Garvey

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This is my response to questions raised by Jon Garvey in his post called Middleton on the empty temple.

I’m delighted to respond to Jon’s post, which reflects on a previous post of mine where I suggested that a priestly/liturgical read of the imago Dei can unify the entire biblical story. Jon raises very good questions in his post, questions I myself have wondered about.

Jon was intrigued with my suggestion that whereas the wilderness tabernacle and the Jerusalem temple are filled with God’s glory/Spirit/presence when they are completed (Exodus 40:34-35; 1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chronicles 7:1-3), there is no reference to the cosmic temple of creation being filled with God’s presence upon its completion (Genesis 2:1-3). Instead, I suggested that God intends humanity, as God’s authorized image in the temple of creation, to mediate that presence from heaven to earth, thus filling the earth not just with progeny (Genesis 1:28), but with progeny who manifest God’s glory, until (to use a Pauline phrase) God is “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Does Genesis intend to teach that God has not yet filled the cosmic temple?

But Jon wonders if we can really attribute this idea to the author/editor of the Pentateuch. Particularly, he wonders if God’s rest on the seventh day, which just happens to omit reference to cosmic filling, could be intentional or is just a “fortuitously omitted detail of one stand-alone creation myth.”

In response, Jon quotes Numbers 14:21, a later Pentateuchal text that I myself would have mentioned if he hadn’t. There God promises that even the disobedience of Israel won’t thwart his purpose, but that “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.” Although some translations (notably the NIV) render the imperfect of māle‘ as present tense here, the context supports the future (as Jon notes); and the LXX uses the future of epiplēmi here.

But there is another “fortuitously omitted detail” in the opening creation account of the Bible, which may suggest that neither omission is fortuitous. Whereas every “day” of creation from 1 through 6 concludes with the formula “and it was evening and morning, day X” there is no such formula associated with the seventh day (Augustine himself noted the absence of this concluding formula in the Confessions). This omission suggests that the seventh day has no conclusion and that everything that follows in Genesis (indeed, the entire Bible) may be read as occurring on the seventh day.

This intriguing possibility gains more credibility when we realize that among the polemical points of contact between Genesis 1 and Mesopotamian creation myths is precisely the notion of divine rest. In Mespotamian myths (Enuma Elish; Atrahasis; Enki and Ninmah; KAR 4) the gods are able to rest because they have created humans to do the manual labour that they disdained to do; so in these myths the gods’ rest is their abdication from a burdensome task.

By contrast, the biblical account suggests a different purpose for God’s rest, because of its more exalted view of human dignity and status. In Genesis 1 humans are created to share in God’s own rule of the world; they have been delegated the power and authority to administer the earth on God’s behalf.

This suggests that the creator’s rest on the seventh day represents God handing over the reins of power to humanity; the seventh day inaugurates the time of human historical agency.

So both forms of incompleteness in Genesis 2:1-3—the lack of reference to God filling the cosmic temple and the absence of the evening and morning formula—fit very well with the notion that humans are tasked with representing God’s rule and mediating God’s presence on earth.

What about biblical texts that suggest that God’s presence already fills creation?

But then Jon raises Isaiah 6 as a potential problem for the “future glory” theme, since verse 3 states that “the whole earth is full of his glory.” Although this is a legitimate translation of the Hebrew, there is actually no verb for “is full” here; instead there is the noun for “fullness.” So a more literal translation would be “the fullness of the whole earth is his glory,” which is quite compatible with the interpretation I was proposing.

Jon also mentions Ezekiel’s vision of YHWH on a chariot throne by the river Chebar in Babylon (Ezekiel 1-3). And he wonders if this indicates that God is omnipresent, dwelling in the Jerusalem temple and available to the exiles in Babylon (thus the cosmic temple is not empty of divine presence). Here it is crucial to read Ezekiel 1-3 in concert with the flashback the prophet is granted in chapters 10-11, where he sees YHWH’s glory exiting the east gate of the Jerusalem temple (10:18-19) and heading further eastward (11:22-23); he twice mentions that what he sees in this vision is the same as what he saw by the river Chebar (10:15, 20).

This journey eastward is completed when YHWH arrives in Babylon (Ezekiel 1) to accompany his people in their exile. So the point of the vision at the start of Ezekiel is not that God is omnipresent, but rather that this stern book of mostly judgment (oracles of restoration do not begin until chapter 34) nevertheless opens with the amazing grace of a God who himself goes into exile with his people (thus profoundly foreshadowing Christ’s identification with us in incarnation and atonement).

My own problem text—Jeremiah 23:23-24

Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1-3 aren’t that hard to deal with. The more difficult passage is Jeremiah 23, where God critiques the false prophets in Jerusalem who have claimed to speak on his behalf (23:15-22). The critique culminates in a series of rhetorical questions that challenge the prophets’ assumption of God’s immanence and availability:

“Am I a God near by, says the LORD, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD.” (23:23-24)

I have to admit that I have often wondered how this passage fit with the future filling theme; if it intends to affirm that God already fills the cosmic temple it would be stand out as quite distinct in the Old Testament.

I have therefore wondered it if is polemical hyperbole, to make the point that God is not only located nearby (in the Jerusalem temple) as these prophets thought, but is also far off or transcendent (in heaven)—and then earth is added for good measure.

This contrast between heaven and Jerusalem seems supported by the earlier point God makes in Jeremiah 23:18 and 22 that a true prophet stands in the council of YHWH (that is, he has access to the decisions made in the gathering of angels in heaven). But these false prophets are earthbound and so have no genuine word from God.

The motif of God in heaven is often associated in the Old Testament with omniscience, since from heaven God can observe all activity on earth (see Psalm 11:4; 14:2; 28:24 33:13; 53:2; 102:19; Lamentations 3:50; cf. 2 Chronicles 16:9; Proverbs 15:3). So the false prophets cannot hope to escape judgment.

It is also associated with universal dominion: “The LORD has established his throne in the heavens,/ and his kingdom rules over all.” (Psalm 103:19) This motif of the God of heaven is especially prominent in Daniel 2-7, where the point is that even Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has to submit to the universal ruler of the world.

Here it is important to note that immanence and transcendence are not two polar opposites as in much Christian theology today. Rather, in the Old Testament God’s transcendence (in heaven) grounds his immanence (on earth), in the sense of his intimate involvement in earthly affairs.

Jon had asked for clarification of this very point. And here it is appropriate to note the exodus story, where Israel’s cry “rose up to God” in heaven (Exodus 2:23) and God tells Moses, “I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:8).

Precisely because YHWH rules from heaven, outside the oppressive system of human evil (including Egyptian bondage), this God can be appealed to in a situation of injustice, and can be expected to care about human suffering (whereas appeals to Pharaoh, who is implicated in the oppressive system, are ineffectual; see Exodus 5:15-16). And as ruler and creator of all God has the power to change the situation of oppression.

In the Bible, therefore, God’s transcendence is not in contrast to God’s involvement (or immanence), as it sometimes is in our theological systems. Rather, God’s transcendence is precisely the condition of his involvement.

But, admittedly, the wording of Jeremiah 23:24 goes beyond saying that God is in heaven; it implies (through a rhetorical question) that God does indeed fill both heaven and earth.

At that point, I would simply say that there are diverse perspectives in Scripture (the Bible is a coherent, yet complex, unity). And yet the dominant tenor of the Old Testament is to affirm, with Isaiah 66:1-2a, that God’s throne is in heaven (the locus of his presence) and the earth is his footstool—until that climactic day when God’s dwelling/ throne shift decisively to earth (Revelation 21:3; 22:3).

Click here to read this post in its context on Jon Garvey’s website, along with responses and comments.

Middleton on the Empty Temple

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This is a post by Jon Garvey on his blog called The Hump of the Camel, where he interacts with a recent post of mine on humans as God’s image. In that post I argued that God’s intends humanity to be the locus of divine presence in the temple of creation. The Hump of the Camel is a fascinating website that addresses questions of theology and science, especially in the area of origins. In the course of his post Jon asks a number of questions for clarification. I will shortly post my answers to his questions.

Those helpful chaps at Academia.edu alerted me recently to an interesting piece by J Richard Middleton. Richard has commented here, and is one of the scholars doing good work on the science-faith interface. He’s written a book, Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (which unfortunately is still on my “to-read” list) on the image of God, and this new article updates and extends that thesis.

He notes that the idea, which I’ve discussed here quite often, that the image of God in man implies the ANE concept of a royal image that manifests the presence of a king (cf Daniel 3), is in fact now the dominant opinion of OT scholars. That’s significant, because it gets relatively little mention in origins discussions at, for example, BioLogos, where biological attributes like intelligence still guide the thinking, perhaps because of BL’s bias towards a scientific mindset.

Richard has, since the publication of his book, increasingly stressed the ANE ritual equivalent of that concept, namely the way in which the image of a god in a temple manifests the presence of the Deity. This, too, is encouragingly consistent with the line I’ve taken here, based on the work of John Walton and G K Beale, especially. It resonates well with the “cosmic temple” approach I’ve taken to the Genesis creation story in particular, and the biblical concept of creation in general, most recently in my waving a cautious flag for one of the less influential patristic writers on cosmology, Cosmas Indicopneustes. Richard too integrates his concept of the imago dei with the temple imagery used throughout Scripture.

I am very comfortable with the way his thought has developed, and intrigued by one new insight. That is his observation that, whilst in the Old Testament’s coverage of temple/tabernacle themes the concept of God’s glory (Heb. kabod) filling the sacred space is a recurrent motif (eg Ex 40.34-35, 2 Chron. 5.13-14, Rev 15.8), the Genesis 1 creation account, in which the cosmic temple is inaugurated, lacks any reference to God’s glory coming to dwell in it.

As you’ll read in his article, he links this fact to the Genesis 2 story of Eden, in which God later comes to dwell with his “authorised image”, Adam, in the sacred space of the garden:

When read against this ancient Near Eastern background, Genesis 1 and 2 are in profound harmony with each other, despite their genuine differences. In both texts humanity is understood as the authorized cult statue in the cosmic temple, the decisive locus of divine presence on earth. This understanding of the human role means that God never intended his presence to fill the cosmic temple automatically. That is precisely the vocation of humanity, the bearer of the divine presence.

The human race was created to extend the presence of God from heaven (the cosmic holy of holies) to earth (the holy place) until the earth is filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (combining Numbers 14:21; Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14); or, to use Pauline language, when God will be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28).

This first expression of the “glory” theme comes through the breathing of God’s own breath (Heb ruach) into his earthly human creation. Remember how in my discussion of Athanasius’s concept of the creation of man, it was in his view the very life of the Son, as Logos and presumably as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact image of his being” (Heb 1.3), that was breathed into man. “Image” and “glory” certainly appear to be linked by this.

Richard’s insight integrates with such ideas wonderfully, providing an interpretive framework for the entire biblical revelation. We can see the image damaged by the Fall, and restored in the salvation history culminating in Christ himself. The idea is present at the various stages along the way, in response to the faith of Abraham, Moses, or Israel, or Solomon, as God’s “glorious presence” (known to later Judaism as shekinah), in the burning bush or on Sinai, in the tabernacle and in the temple. In Christ, the Church becomes the bearer of God’s glory, helping to achieve what Adam failed to do, by their lives and cultural impact on the world.

This glory theme is, ultimately, eschatological (as Richard spells out), its final fulfilment coming in the “fusion” of heaven and earth illustrated in Revelation as the New Jerusalem (a concept encompassing both people and communal culture) coming down from God, and his eternal dwelling with redeemed mankind. Thus the creation of Genesis 1 is only finally completed by Revelation 22.

What I find most exciting in this idea is that it makes the transformation of the cosmos, the change into something beyond the merely physical (Romans 8.18-22), part of what was planned in the original creation. It gives weight to the suggestion that the role originally intended for Adam’s line was the completion of creation by bearing God’s shekinah into every part of it.

Now, two points for discussion occur to me in this. The first is to ask whether the author of the Pentateuch could really have seen things this way? Was he really implying that God’s resting on the seventh day, without overtly filling his creation, is a significant foundation to the rest of the Pentateuch and the biblical story? If not, it would seem to be reading a unifying biblical theology into an fortuitously omitted detail of one stand-alone creation myth.

I’m helped here by my recent reading of John Sailhamer’s work on the authorial intent of the Pentateuch. His overall thesis is that the Pentateuch, both in its original and final forms, was already fully committed to a Messianic and universalist understanding of the covenant, responding to the historical failure of Israel’s relationship to God through the Law. There are many good indications that the coming of God’s glory to dwell in Israel’s tabernacle, through their faithful obedience, was from the start seen as just one step of a process that would finally involve all of humanity and, indeed, the whole cosmos.

If we concentrate on the “glory” theme, one Pentateuchal passage provides a clue that the author of the Pentateuch did have such a view. Nu. 14 is a “compositional seam” (Sailhamer) of the Pentateuch, in which Israel’s rebellion threatens the whole covenant. Moses’s intercession is seen as pivotal in God’s not casting off Israel altogether. Vv20-22 say:

So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. (NASV)

The implication is that the earth is not yet filled with God’s glory, but that this is his firm intention whatever the outcome for Israel. NIV and some others translate a present tense here, but that would make v21 almost unique amongst a number of prophetic parallels that speak of the coming of God’s glory eschatologically.

There are a couple of passages that seem to paint a different picture. I don’t think they negate Richard’s analysis, but I’d quite like to hear his comments on them (if you’re around, Richard?). The first is the vision of Isaiah in ch6, in which the prophet has an experience of God’s shekinah in the temple, and the seraphim call:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The second is the vision of Ezekiel, in which God’s “chariot”, a kind of mobile temple in which God is seen in “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” I take it this vision was, at least in part, to show Ezekiel that God’s presence, influence and glory was not restricted to the distant and doomed Jerusalem temple but covered the whole earth. How, though, do these two passages fit the “future glory” theme?

This brings me to my second point for discussion, and that is the relationship of this “delayed glory” to the present natural creation, which does not appear to have been stressed in Richard’s article but would be, I’m sure, of relevance to his research interests as well as The Hump’s concerns. I’ve hitherto taken the sabbath rest of Day 7 of creation in Genesis 2.1-3, following John Walton, to imply God’s taking up divine residence in his temple, governing it for the good of mankind, for its own blessing and for his own glory. Apart from anything else, that treatment makes good sense of the Bible’s scattered but important teaching on “sabbath”.

Clearly, if Richard is right in saying that God’s glory was (and is) yet to fill the earth, some adjustment to my understanding is necessary. But “glory” aside, the whole biblical teaching on creation is one of God’s intimate involvement, which temple imagery represents very well. Heaven may be God’s throne, but earth remains his footstool, and all that is in it remains ontologically dependent on him, not simply an artifact of one initial burst of creative activity now governed purely by lawlike secondary causes (see my last article here).

The content of the temple and image themes Richard Middleton has brought to life is so rich that I’m convinced it’s valid, and especially in the way it unites salvation and creation – surely highly relevant to the origins question in which “natural science” and “supernatural religion” are often kept absurdly apart. It’s so rich that I have no doubt it has room for both the transcendence and immanence of God in nature. In one comment under the Patheos posting of his article Richard mentions that it is the dwelling of God in heaven that allows for his immanence in the world – but I’d like to hear more about how that works and, in particular how it relates to the Bible’s pervasive temple imagery.

It surely can’t be the case that the cosmos is altogether empty of God apart from the Church, though it is manifestly the case that we look forward to a time when it is full of him in a new way.

Click here if you want to see this post in its original context, with comments and discussion.

In the above post, Jon Garvey raises some important interpretive questions; I have responded to these questions in a follow-up post.

Fair Payment for Speakers—A Post from John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

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John G. Stackhouse, Jr. is Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Stackhouse’s comments are true to my own experience. In the future I plan to direct Christian leaders to this article anytime they invite me to speak.

By their Honoraria Ye Shall Know Them

The way some Christian churches and other organizations pay their speakers, it makes me embarrassed to be a member of the same faith.

A friend of mine is a gifted staff worker with a well-known Christian organization on a university campus. He is married, with three young children, and works hard and long at his job. Frequently he is asked to speak at churches’ youth retreats or special events sponsored by other groups. Rarely is he paid well for what is in fact overtime work—for audiences other than the one that pays his regular salary.

One weekend, he left his family to speak at a retreat for more than 100 young people, each of whom paid to go away to a well-furnished camp for three days. My friend gave four talks and participated in a question-and-answer session—a typical, and demanding, schedule. But his work didn’t end there, of course. Retreat speakers are “on call” all weekend: for impromptu counseling, offering advice over mealtimes, and modeling what they preach on the volleyball court or around the campfire. Make no mistake: There is very little relaxing in that role, however restful the retreat might be for everyone else.

So at the end of this tiring weekend, at the close of the Sunday luncheon, the leader of the group thanked him profusely at the front of the dining hall (he had gone over very well). Then he tossed the speaker a T-shirt emblazoned with the group’s logo while everyone clapped. It took my friend several minutes to realize that this shirt was his total payment for the weekend’s work. He got in his car, without even a check for gasoline, and headed back to his waiting family.

An isolated and extreme example? Not at all. Every professional Christian speaker has stories like these.

A widely-respected author was asked to headline a fundraising banquet for a women’s organization. She prepared a talk on the subject requested, left her husband and children at home, drove herself in the family car across the city to the site of the meal, chatted with her tablemates, and then delivered her speech. Again, it was apparent from the applause and the warm remarks that greeted her when she took her seat that she had done her job well.

The evening ended, and the speaker was saying her goodbyes. The convenor then appeared in a gush of appreciation. “Your talk was just excellent,” she said. “Exactly what we wanted. Thank you so much for coming!” Then, by way of payment, she grandly swept her arm over the room and said, “Just help yourself to one of the table centerpieces.”

We Christians have two problems in this regard. One might be remedied by an article such as this one. The other can be fixed only by the Holy Spirit.

The Problem of Ignorance

The former problem is that most people who invite speakers are not themselves professional speakers and so honestly don’t know how much is involved in doing this work well. So let’s price it out straightforwardly, and consider whether we pay people properly in the light of this analysis.

A speaker first has to receive the invitation, work with the inviter to clarify and agree upon terms (usually this takes correspondence back and forth), and confirm the date. Then the speaker has to prepare the talk. Sometimes a speaker can pull a prepared text out of a file, but usually at least some fresh preparation is necessary to fit the talk to this particular group and its context. (And let’s remember that the speaker at some time did indeed have to prepare this talk from scratch, so the inviting group does have a share in the responsibility for that preparation since they will be benefiting from it.) The speaker concludes her preparation by printing out her notes, and perhaps also prepares a photocopied outline, or overhead slides, or PowerPoint presentation for the benefit of the group.

Next, the speaker must make her travel arrangements and then actually travel. Most of this time is not productive: Airports and airplanes are not designed to aid serious work (unless the inviting group springs for first-class seats and airport lounges—an uncommon practice), and driving one’s car is almost entirely useless time.

The speaker arrives, and then has to wait for her particular slot. She finally gives her presentation, waits for everything to conclude, and returns home. If she is out of town, normally she will have to spend at least one night in a hotel room, probably sleeping badly in a strange bed and, again, spending time in transit that is largely unproductive.

Count up all of those hours. Not just the forty minutes she actually spoke at the banquet, or the four hours she was actually in front of the microphone during a weekend conference, but the many, many hours spent in the service of the inviting group from start to finish. Divide those hours into the honorarium, assuming her costs are covered (as they sometimes aren’t–for shame!), and you have the true wage the group paid her.

One speaker I know was asked to speak at a weekend conference requiring of her three plenary talks plus a couple of panel sessions. She would have to travel by plane for several hours and leave her family behind. The honorarium she was offered? Expenses plus $300. Her husband heard of it and replied with a rueful smile, “I’ll pay you three hundred bucks to stay home with us.”

Here’s yet another way to look at it. A speaker was asked to give the four major speeches at the annual meeting of a national Christian organization. He was also asked to come two days earlier than the staff meeting in order to address the national board twice. In return, he was offered travel expenses and accommodation for himself and his wife at the group’s posh conference center—of which they were extremely proud.

So the speaker asked for an honorarium of $2000: for the five days he would be away plus all of the time he would spend in preparation for this large responsibility. The group’s president immediately withdrew the invitation, saying he was charging too much.

Now, let’s think about this. Transportation to this remote facility entailed the speaker and his wife driving their car part of the way, then taking a ferry, and then perhaps a float plane. The group clearly had no trouble covering considerable traveling expenses. The group also was covering similar expenses for two dozen board members and well over a hundred staff. The conference center was advertised in its glossy brochures as deluxe, and it looked that way in the photos.

So what would be the total budget for a weekend like this? Figure on, conservatively, 150 people with travelling expenses of an average of $600 each (allowing for airfare across the country for most) plus accommodation expenses of at least $200 each for the long weekend. This comes out to a total budget of at least $120,000. Let’s assume that the group would offer the speaker some sort of honorarium—surely at least $500. This means that on a total budget of $120,500, this group disinvited its speaker because of a difference of $1500—slightly more than one percent of its conference budget. Is this good stewardship by a Christian nonprofit corporation? Or is it something else?

One wonders about the “something else” when one looks closer to home and examines the typical honoraria given to preachers who fill pulpits when pastors are on vacation. Most churches now pay $100 or so, although I know of many, including both mainline and smaller evangelical congregations, who still pay less.

Let us ask ourselves, before God, how we can justify paying a guest preacher a mere hundred bucks. He has to accept the invitation and get clear on his various duties from the person who invites him. He has to prepare the sermon—again, even if he is going to preach one he has preached before, he still has to decide upon which one to preach and then prepare to preach it well on this occasion. He has to travel to our church and take his place with the other worship leaders. He has to preach the sermon, and greet people afterwards. Then he has to drive home.

Time it out, and it’s likely ten hours or more that he has invested in our church. We offer him a hundred dollars, and that works out to ten bucks an hour—a little more than minimum wage. He has to pay all of the taxes on that, so now he’s taking home between fifty and sixty dollars. Is that what we think our preachers are worth?

Let’s look at this from another angle. The average congregation isn’t large, so let’s suppose that about 200 people are to hear that sermon. By offering the preacher even $150 (which is more than most churches pay), we’re saying that his sermon is worth less than a dollar for each person who hears it.

Those who would invite speakers to their events should do this simple bit of division: Take the proposed honorarium and divide it by the number of talks, then divide it again by the number of people in the audience. The result is the price per talk per person. So ask yourself: Is the talk you want your speaker to give worth less than an ice cream cone? Much less than a Starbucks coffee?

The Problem of Undervaluing “Spiritual” Work

Let’s look at it still another way. Many Christian speakers have expertise that is in demand from secular agencies as well. Invariably those agencies pay better, and sometimes a lot better. A Christian psychologist I know has told me that he is paid at least a thousand dollars per full day of consulting with government agencies. He counts himself blessed if he is offered even half that much by a Christian group. Flip it around, and we observe that even we cheap Christians routinely pay high wages to our physicians, lawyers, plumbers, airline pilots, and other skilled people whose work we want done for us in an excellent fashion. Why don’t we pay Christian speakers accordingly?

Some of us even self-righteously think that we shouldn’t pay such people at all because they’re doing “Christian” work or “spiritual” work and therefore shouldn’t charge for it. (I was once asked to speak to a national convention of Christian lawyers whose president inquired as to what was my fee–”if any.” In reply, I was sorely tempted to ask him to draw up my will, arrange for the sale of my house, and defend me on my next parking ticket, and then ask him what his fee would be–”if any.”)

The notion, however, that spiritual, or theological, or other “Christian” expertise should not be paid for is utterly foreign to the Bible. From the Old Testament requirements that generous provision be made for the priests to Paul’s commands in the New Testament that pastoral workers are worthy of their wages and should be paid such (I Corinthians 9), the Bible believes that people in such occupations are worthy of both esteem and financial support. Indeed, we show our esteem precisely in the financial support we give them. We think our physical health matters, so we pay good money for good physicians. How much does our spiritual health matter? Well, let’s see what we typically pay for it. We are, in fact, putting our money where our mouth is.

One speaker put it this way: “I’m not in this line of work for the money, but for the ministry. All I want is not to be insulted by the people I’m serving by them paying me less than they pay their kids’ piano teachers or their own hair stylists. They can say all the nice things they want when I’m finished. But when they hand me a paltry check, what are they really saying? What do they expect me to conclude about how much they value my work?”

Thus we encounter the latter problem, the one that only the Holy Spirit of God can address. It might be that we pay Christian speakers badly because we were unaware of all that is involved in preparing and delivering an excellent speech. Okay. But now that we know better, we should pay better. The latter problem of simply undervaluing such Christian service, however, is a problem in our hearts, not our heads. And the Bible is plain: We undervalue our spiritual teachers at the peril of undervaluing the divine truth they bring us. God frowns on such parsimony.

Indeed, God has threatened one day to mete out to each of us our appropriate wages for such behavior. And those wages will make even a T-shirt or a table centerpiece look pretty good.

This article was published in the Canadian journal ChristianWeek and is posted at: http://www.johnstackhouse.com/fair-payment-for-speakers/. An earlier version appears in the book Church: An Insider’s Look at How We Do It (reprint edition available from Regent College Publishing). This article may be forwarded or otherwise distributed as long as these credits are duly included. Copyright John G. Stackhouse, Jr., 2005.