This Is Not a Profession
An Autopsy of Professionalized Ministry
This is the third in a series of autopsies.
The first examined the table: This Is Not a Feast. The second examined the sermon: This Is Not Teaching. This one examines the professional.
They are not isolated failures.
They are one tangled system.
And the professional sits at the center of it all.
[Edit: The following section has been revised after initial publication.]
The last church Ashley and I were members of, we were active in. I taught classes. Played music. Led small groups. We were involved. We were committed. We believed in what we were doing.
But then a divide opened up. Over what could be called a philosophical idea of how people were best ministered to. Is ministry crafted around truth propositions given, and people respond or don’t to them? Or is it a totally different, more relational understanding of presence?
The idea itself isn’t the important thing for this story. Just to say: we and many others challenged the Senior Pastor and Elders’ ideas. I was unrelenting in voicing my feelings and objections. Things escalated because I would not be quiet.
I was invited to leave. And when I would not, I was brought up on ecclesiastical charges of division. Put in front of a tribunal of elders. Publicly accused of being a Titus 3:10 character. A divisive person. A troublemaker. Someone who needed to be removed.
Standing there, in front of men I had once called brothers, I felt the weight of it all. I was quite hurt by this. Deeply hurt. And angry. For a long time.
Until I understood something very important.
They did precisely what you were supposed to do. Given the titles and responsibilities that they held. And had conferred upon themselves. The realization came slowly, then all at once.
Besides some of them being liars and dishonorable in their actions, I hold them no ill will. They were acting out precisely what the system demanded of them. Exactly what the CEO of a company would do with a disgruntled employee who was challenging his vision and direction.
In that moment, something unspoken surfaced. The system had revealed itself. The mask had slipped.
The spell had been broken.
Naming the Category Error
We reach instinctively for the word vocation. It sounds right. Holy, even. It carries gravity, calling, beauty. And that is precisely why it hides the problem.
A vocation presumes a calling from God.
A salary presumes a role defined by people.
A contract presumes deliverables.
Those three don’t sit at the same table without one of them lying.
What we are dealing with is not a vocation.
It is not a calling emerging from shared life.
It is a profession.
A credentialed, salaried, institutionally granted spiritual profession.
And Scripture treats that category very differently than we do.
Jesus and the Professional Class
Any conversation about religious professionals must consider Jesus’ words in Matthew 23.
I cannot claim this as authoritative proof. But I offer it as a warning worth weighing.
Here, Jesus addresses the scribes and Pharisees—religious professionals of his day. He does not merely critique individual hypocrisy.
He names a structure.
Teachers who sit in special seats.
Titles that distinguish one group from the rest.
Authority that flows downward.
Religious expertise that distances rather than serves.
“You are not to be called Rabbi… for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.”
“The greatest among you shall be your servant.”
Jesus does not deny the existence of ministry.
He denies the class.
He dismantles the idea that some are religiously elevated while others remain perpetual recipients.
Consider who he was talking about.
Religious professionals.
And consider what he warned against.
Not merely bad leaders.
But professionalized spiritual authority.
A Word About Priesthood
If you find yourself reaching for the Old Testament priesthood to justify paid religious professionals, pause.
Go back to Exodus 19–20.
God’s intention was never a priestly class.
It was a nation of priests.
The Levitical priesthood emerges not as God’s ideal, but as a concession after Israel’s refusal to hear His voice directly.
The New Testament does not preserve that profession.
It abolishes it.
“You are a royal priesthood.”
What was centralized is redistributed.
What was professionalized is universalized.
To reintroduce a religious profession is not continuity.
It is reversal.
The Table as Test
As always, the table clarifies what abstractions obscure.
Sit twelve believers down.
No stage. No title. No paycheck.
Eat. Pray. Listen. Speak. Bear one another’s weight.
Now introduce a salary.
Who is expected to speak most?
Who is deferred to?
Who carries final responsibility?
Who absorbs conflict?
Follow the money and the answers appear quickly.
What we call “leadership” often turns out to be economic gravity.
The Exchange Test
Every structure creates obligations, whether acknowledged or not.
So ask the uncomfortable question:
Who owes whom?
For what?
And what happens if the payment stops?
A salaried pastor owes:
consistency
safety
manageability
institutional stability
A congregation owes:
attendance
funding
trust
silence when things feel risky
No one has to say this out loud.
The arrangement enforces itself.
These are the invisible debts professional ministry creates.
“But He Went to Seminary”
This is where the concern usually turns earnest.
“But he studied Greek.”
“He went to seminary.”
“How am I supposed to understand Scripture responsibly without experts?”
It sounds reasonable. It deserves a real answer.
And the answer is not anti-learning.
It is anti-monopoly.
I have in my attic my grandfather’s grammar-school textbooks.
Not seminary texts.
Not graduate studies.
Grammar school.
They include Latin.
They include Greek.
There was a time when languages were not professional gatekeeping tools.
They were part of general formation.
The church did not professionalize pastors because Greek was inaccessible.
Greek became inaccessible because pastors were professionalized.
Once knowledge is centralized, everyone else is told they cannot possibly do the work.
And so they stop trying.
But Scripture assumes something radically different.
That understanding grows within the body, over time, through shared labor.
“You may all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged.”
(1 Corinthians 14:31)
Not everyone needs to master Greek.
But no one needs to be barred from it.
At the table, languages are consulted, not wielded.
They inform the conversation, not end it.
They serve the body rather than ruling it.
The loss is not expertise.
It is confidence that the Spirit equips the body.
Doesn’t the Bible Say We Should Pay Our Pastor? Let’s Look at the New Testament Texts.
This is where the conversation often turns. The same passages are quoted constantly. Rarely examined. Let’s look at them together.
1 Corinthians 9
Yes. Paul says it.
“You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”
(1 Corinthians 9:9)
Paul applies the principle directly to gospel labor:
“If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?”
(1 Corinthians 9:11)
The word translated reap is θερίζω (therizō).
Ordinary agricultural language. Provision. Support.
And then Paul does something devastating to the modern argument.
“But I have made no use of any of these rights.”
(1 Corinthians 9:15)
Not once.
Repeatedly.
Publicly.
Intentionally.
Why?
“That I may offer the gospel free of charge.”
(1 Corinthians 9:18)
Paul does not deny the right.
He refuses to build a system on it.
The text only supports professional ministry if Paul is ignored as an example.
Luke 10:7
This phrase is quoted constantly. Rarely examined.
“The laborer deserves his wages.”
(Luke 10:7)
The word for wages is μισθός (misthos).
Pay. Compensation. Reward.
Context matters.
Jesus is sending disciples out temporarily, dependent on hospitality, not installing salaried offices.
Paul later cites the same saying while reminding whole churches:
“We worked night and day… so that we might not be a burden to any of you.”
(1 Thessalonians 2:9)“I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel.”
(Acts 20:33)
Paul affirms support.
He refuses salary.
Not as a personality quirk.
As apostolic instruction by demonstration.
At the table, this sounds like:
“I could ask you to support me.
But that would change how we relate to one another.”
That sentence alone collapses the modern pastoral contract.
Galatians 6:6
“Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.”
Again, context matters.
The Greek word for “share” is koinōneitō—from koinonia, fellowship, partnership, mutual participation.
This is not a command to pay a professional.
It is instruction for mutual sharing within a body.
The one who teaches shares the word.
The one who receives shares material goods.
This is reciprocity, not salary.
It assumes a relationship of mutual giving, not a professional contract.
1 Timothy 5:17-18
“Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’”
This is where the argument gets complicated.
Paul does say it.
The word for “honor” is timē—respect, value, or material support.
The phrase “double honor” likely means both respect and material provision.
And Paul quotes the same principle we’ve seen elsewhere: “Do not muzzle the ox” and “The laborer deserves his wages.”
So material support for those who labor in preaching and teaching is clearly in view.
I cannot make an airtight argument that this text forbids paying elders.
What I can observe is what the text assumes and what it does not assume.
The text assumes elders who are already there.
Paul is writing to Timothy about how to care for existing elders—plural—who have already been serving.
The sequence the text describes:
Elders are already serving.
They labor in preaching and teaching.
They rule well.
Then they are considered worthy of double honor.
The text does not describe:
Creating a position
Searching for candidates
Hiring someone from outside
Establishing a salaried office
It describes recognizing and caring for those who have already given themselves.
Now consider what comes immediately after this instruction:
“Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.”
(1 Timothy 5:19)“As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all.”
(1 Timothy 5:20)“Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands.”
(1 Timothy 5:22)
These warnings assume elders who:
Are known to the body (charges require witnesses)
Are accountable to the body (public rebuke)
Emerge over time through proven faithfulness (not hasty)
This is not describing a professional class that arrives from outside.
It is describing a body that recognizes those who have already been serving among them.
The modern practice of creating a pastor search committee, posting job descriptions, flying in candidates from across the country, and hiring someone who is essentially a stranger to the body—this does not match what the text describes.
The text assumes one-another ministry.
People who have been serving alongside you.
People you know.
People whose faithfulness you have witnessed over time.
Not a professional who applies for a position.
I cannot prove from this text alone that paying elders is forbidden.
But I can observe that the text assumes a very different context than the modern professional pastorate.
The text assumes recognition of existing service.
The modern system assumes creating a position and filling it.
That difference matters.
And when we read this text alongside Paul’s own example of refusing to build a system on the right to support, alongside Jesus’ warning about professionalized spiritual authority, alongside the pattern of mutual care rather than professional contracts—the picture becomes clearer.
This text is about caring for those who have sacrificed.
Not about creating positions to attract people to serve.
The distinction may seem subtle.
But it changes everything about how we understand ministry.
Is this all about money?
This is where anxiety often rises, so let me be clear.
This is the most personal of these topics.
Because it can seem like I am questioning people’s motives.
Like I am reacting to the excesses—multi-million dollar mansions, private jets, two-thousand-dollar Air Jordan tennis shoes.
Those serve as strawmen.
I am not arguing against them.
I am arguing against the system.
And I must stress: I have lifelong friendships with those who are professionals. People I love dearly. People I would never ascribe an ill motive to.
They honestly, earnestly believe in what they are doing.
They don’t view themselves as inherently better than or more important than anyone else.
Many of them are among the most faithful, sacrificial, and Christ-like people I know.
For the overwhelming majority of religious professionals, I do not believe money is the motivator.
Many barely eke out a living.
Many carry emotional and spiritual weight few ever see.
Many could make more money doing something else and choose not to.
That reality matters.
There are grotesque outliers, of course. But they are the exception, not the rule. And ironically, they often help us feel better about the professionalized version of our guy.
He’s not obscenely paid.
He sacrifices.
He lives modestly.
Which allows us to conclude: This must be fine.
But that conclusion misses the point.
The problem is not greed.
The problem is not insincerity.
And just as importantly:
The professional is not the enemy.
The professional is a victim of the same system.
There is an old adage that says the victimizer is often himself a victim. When I use the language of victimhood, that is exactly what I mean. I am speaking of those who knowingly or unknowingly suffer inside a structure that constrains everyone it touches.
Senior pastor.
Associate pastor.
Music director.
Youth minister.
Name the role.
They are shaped by the system long before they are empowered by it.
Pressured to perform.
To manage expectations.
To protect the institution.
To carry responsibilities Scripture never meant to centralize.
They are often perpetrators unwittingly, not maliciously.
A modest salary still creates dependency.
A sacrificial salary still centralizes responsibility.
Money does not have to motivate a person to motivate a system.
This is not an argument against people.
It is an argument against a form that binds both the body and the professional.
I earnestly want to see the paid religious professional delivered from this structural bondage every bit as much as the passive pew-sitter.
I believe these people suffer needlessly in these unscriptural roles. They bear weights and responsibilities that were meant for a body—or for Jesus himself.
And I believe they are forced to call these sufferings consequences of serving Jesus, rather than recognizing them as burdens the system was never meant to impose.
This is not theory to me.
It is observation.
It is heartbreak.
It is watching people I love carry what was never theirs to carry.
I have seen the exhaustion.
I have seen the isolation.
I have seen the weight of expectations that no one person was ever meant to bear.
And I have seen them call it faithfulness when it is actually the system’s burden.
This is why this is the most personal of these topics.
Not because I question their motives.
But because I have watched them suffer under a form that was never meant to exist.
But here is what must be said clearly:
Money is not the root problem.
Money is an outgrowth of the problem.
The problem is rule.
The problem is authority.
The problem is structure.
The problem is a category that Scripture forbids: professionalized spiritual authority.
Even if you remove the salary, the category remains.
Even if you have unpaid religious bosses, you still have the forbidden structure.
Jesus did not say, “Do not be called Rabbi if you are paid.”
He said, “Do not be called Rabbi.”
The prohibition is not against paid professionals.
It is against the professional class itself.
Money follows structure.
Structure creates dependency.
Dependency centralizes authority.
But the structure is wrong even without the money.
A volunteer pastor who sits in a special seat, who carries final responsibility, who is deferred to as the resident expert, who absorbs conflict as his role—this is still the forbidden category.
The salary makes it worse.
It makes the dependency explicit.
It makes the obligations clear.
But the category is wrong regardless.
What we are rejecting is not payment.
It is the form that payment makes possible.
The form that says: Some are religiously elevated. Others are perpetual recipients.
That form is forbidden.
With or without money.
One Tangled System
By now, the pattern should be visible.
The sermon depends on the professional.
The professional depends on the salary.
The salary depends on the institution.
The institution depends on control.
And the table?
The table has to go.
These are not isolated failures.
They are one tangled system, like a knotted ball of Christmas lights handed down year after year.
Pull one strand, and the whole thing tightens.
Which is why reform always fails.
And why only return works.
The Table Without the Professional
When spiritual care is salaried, the body learns to outsource responsibility, and the professional is pressured to manage rather than belong.
Now run the test in the opposite direction.
Sit twelve believers down.
No stage. No title. No paycheck.
Eat. Pray. Listen. Speak. Bear one another’s weight.
But this time, do not imagine absence as loss.
Imagine presence.
Someone opens the text, not because it is their assignment, but because it has been living in them all week.
Another pauses the reading and asks a question no sermon would allow.
Someone else says, “I don’t know,” and the room does not panic.
There is no expert guarding the interpretation.
And yet the Scriptures are not mishandled.
They are handled together.
Memory surfaces.
Another passage is recalled.
A lived experience reframes a word.
Someone senses a dissonance with Christ’s character, and the room slows down.
Understanding does not arrive polished.
It accumulates.
This is not chaos.
It is communal discernment.
What forms here is slower, but sturdier.
Less impressive, but harder to manipulate.
Authority does not come from credentials.
It emerges from faithfulness, coherence, humility, and shared submission to Christ.
Nothing here depends on a professional.
Only on presence.
At the table, you quickly notice something else.
Certain people speak, and the room changes.
Not because they are eloquent.
Not because they are confident.
But because when they speak, things clarify.
Scripture opens.
Tension eases.
Christ becomes visible.
The room listens.
But here is the critical difference.
Listening does not become deferring.
No title is conferred.
No role is assigned.
No expectation is set that this person must now carry the weight every time.
What is recognized is not the person, but the gift in that moment.
And the room knows this intuitively.
Because who is to say that the life experience that sharpened this brother’s insight today will be the same experience the body needs two weeks from now?
Next time, another voice opens Scripture.
Another story illuminates the text.
Another set of wounds and faithfulness brings clarity.
Teaching emerges situationally, not permanently.
Speaking remains fluid.
Listening remains discerning.
No one becomes the resident meaning-maker.
This is how the body stays awake.
Nothing here requires formalization.
Because the moment recognition turns into office, the table begins to tilt.
The moment we say, “We should probably let you handle this from now on,” we have quietly rebuilt the stage.
The body senses this danger long before it can articulate it.
So it resists instinctively.
Not by suspicion.
But by participation.
Everyone remains responsible.
Everyone remains interruptible.
Everyone remains capable of being wrong.
And that shared vulnerability is precisely what keeps truth from calcifying.
This kind of gathering feels unsafe to institutions because it cannot be controlled without destroying it.
You cannot guarantee outcomes.
You cannot script the arc.
You cannot measure participation with attendance alone.
You must trust:
that the Spirit actually teaches
that truth can survive conversation
that Christ does not require a weekly mouthpiece
Institutions solve for predictability.
The table solves for faithfulness.
Here’s what happens over time.
People grow articulate.
Quiet voices strengthen.
Confidence stops being confused with gifting.
Discernment becomes communal muscle memory.
And drift, when it appears, is met early, gently, and publicly—not after it has hardened into doctrine.
So return to the table.
Always the table.
Sit twelve believers down.
Remove the paycheck.
Remove the stage.
Remove the title.
Let the Spirit speak.
If the arrangement collapses without money, it was never a vocation.
It was a profession pretending to be a calling.
But if it flourishes?
Then you have found something that was always meant to be.
Next in the series: This Is Not Belonging — examining how professional authority creates institutional membership and gatekeeping.
Bo, First class piece. You adeptly hand the religious trauma system called churchianity. So many in “leadership” are as much victims of the system as those they absentmindedly victimize. The system is vicious.
Thanks for a clear explanation that isn’t whining or sour grapes.
I have seen good "preachers" who are merely puppets of a board of elders that sets the agenda, tells what must be preached and what can't be touched in the pulpit. They expect the pastor to be a fundraiser professional, as well, to satisfy their grandiose visions of a larger church, family center, gym, welcome center, etc. The pastors follow through because they are paid. Money controls the strings of the Christian marionettes. When a pastor tries to act according to the Spirit's leading, he often finds himself packing up the office. America Christianity is a very odd institution! Thanks for in-depth look and a fresh look at the scriptures that dispel our ingrained expectations and standards. I think you sound more and more like a Quaker with each essay!