The dumbest question you heard at HAC

[RAIDER]

I believe the honorarium fees / offerings have become a matter of pride and generated a good-ol-boy system.

I wonder sometimes,... A smaller church or a financially struggling church having guest speakers on a fairly regular basis. What if a pastor just Pastored his own local church? What if there were no special offerings to cover "Conference costs" or travel arrangements? What if,...

What if IFB churches actually used evangelist instead of having all their buddy pastors come to preach for them?

It is usually just to get the pastor and their friends/family together on the church's dime; Maybe go hunting or fishing too.

I have definitely witnessed that. 

 

[Bruh]

I believe the honorarium fees / offerings have become a matter of pride and generated a good-ol-boy system.

I wonder sometimes,... A smaller church or a financially struggling church having guest speakers on a fairly regular basis. What if a pastor just Pastored his own local church? What if there were no special offerings to cover "Conference costs" or travel arrangements? What if,...

What if IFB churches actually used evangelist instead of having all their buddy pastors come to preach for them?

It is usually just to get the pastor and their friends/family together on the church's dime; Maybe go hunting or fishing too.

I can honestly say that my pastor is not like this.  He is honest.

 

[16KJV11]

I believe the honorarium fees / offerings have become a matter of pride and generated a good-ol-boy system.

I wonder sometimes,... A smaller church or a financially struggling church having guest speakers on a fairly regular basis. What if a pastor just Pastored his own local church? What if there were no special offerings to cover "Conference costs" or travel arrangements? What if,...

What if IFB churches actually used evangelist instead of having all their buddy pastors come to preach for them?

It is usually just to get the pastor and their friends/family together on the church's dime; Maybe go hunting or fishing too.

Not at my church.
I enjoy when evangelists come, we usually have two revivals a year and some guest preachers & missionaries sprinkled around the revivals.
I pray about and usually choose someone I know is older and wiser than myself.
I tell the people that I need it as much as they do.
They hear preaching all the time, I need time to hear it too.
Also, I don't enjoy spending much time with the speaker and one of them got a little miffed with me b/c of it.
To be honest, I have 4 kids, drive a school bus, etc. etc., and I really don't enjoy having to babysit the guest speaker.
Usually when we go out to eat, I'll let the church pay for his and I personally pay for mine.
But we don't do that much b/c I can't afford it.
I usually cut the speaker a check for food commensurate of the size of their family and the length of their stay for food and kind of leave it at that.
We have a missions revival once a year and we save a certain amount for it out of the missions fund and take offerings each night b/c what was save usually cannot pay for both an evangelist and missionary love offerings.
We save a certain amount for guest missionaries so we rarely take offerings for missionaries when they come.
We don't have a lot of guest preachers and when we do, our general account can usually handle the cost.
Our revival speakers usually like coming to our church b/c we always give them a nice love offering for the size of our church, the people give generously b/c we don't take a lot of offerings during the year.
We also don't spend a lot of money for accommodations b/c we have a wonderful guest house on the property. 
This enables us to give better love offerings.

 

[Bruh]

I believe the honorarium fees / offerings have become a matter of pride and generated a good-ol-boy system.

I wonder sometimes,... A smaller church or a financially struggling church having guest speakers on a fairly regular basis. What if a pastor just Pastored his own local church? What if there were no special offerings to cover "Conference costs" or travel arrangements? What if,...

What if IFB churches actually used evangelist instead of having all their buddy pastors come to preach for them?

It is usually just to get the pastor and their friends/family together on the church's dime; Maybe go hunting or fishing too.

Not at my church.
I enjoy when evangelists come, we usually have two revivals a year and some guest preachers & missionaries sprinkled around the revivals.
I pray about and usually choose someone I know is older and wiser than myself.
I tell the people that I need it as much as they do.
They hear preaching all the time, I need time to hear it too.
Also, I don't enjoy spending much time with the speaker and one of them got a little miffed with me b/c of it.
To be honest, I have 4 kids, drive a school bus, etc. etc., and I really don't enjoy having to babysit the guest speaker.
Usually when we go out to eat, I'll let the church pay for his and I personally pay for mine.
But we don't do that much b/c I can't afford it.
I usually cut the speaker a check for food commensurate of the size of their family and the length of their stay for food and kind of leave it at that.
We have a missions revival once a year and we save a certain amount for it out of the missions fund and take offerings each night b/c what was save usually cannot pay for both an evangelist and missionary love offerings.
We save a certain amount for guest missionaries so we rarely take offerings for missionaries when they come.
We don't have a lot of guest preachers and when we do, our general account can usually handle the cost.
Our revival speakers usually like coming to our church b/c we always give them a nice love offering for the size of our church, the people give generously b/c we don't take a lot of offerings during the year.
We also don't spend a lot of money for accommodations b/c we have a wonderful guest house on the property. 
This enables us to give better love offerings.

It seems you try and do your best to save through out the year, and I'm sure the people appreciate this...

 

[Fresh Air]

It is not a lack of integrity for a preacher to accept a love offering.  Get your head out of............the sand.

Why were upper echelon staff allowed to keep their love offerings, but tour group speakers had to turn in to the college all of theirs?

They didn't schedule their own meetings. The local church was inviting the college in not that particular speaker. I don't see any disconnect there at all.

 

[Fresh Air]

He didn't get a paycheck from his own church?

So if you work ten hours a week on a side job you shouldn't be paid by the side job. After all, you already get a paycheck...

 

[Bravo]

He didn't get a paycheck from his own church?

So if you work ten hours a week on a side job you shouldn't be paid by the side job. After all, you already get a paycheck...

Fair question,...

But time spent on the side job is time spent away from the main job.

 

[Fresh Air]

Fair question,...

But time spent on the side job is time spent away from the main job.

Depends how it is structured. So much of what a pastor does is hard to quantify, via clockable/billable hours. Is he getting his work done? Is his church neglected? Your point is perfectly valid, but measuring it is almost completely subjective.

 

[rsc2a]

He didn't get a paycheck from his own church?

So if you work ten hours a week on a side job you shouldn't be paid by the side job. After all, you already get a paycheck...

I'm salaried.  Whether I work 40 or 80, it doesn't matter if it's part of my job. A full-time pastor is already paid to do that job...

...and, more importantly,  it's the wrong emphasis.  Probably because of the idea of  Pastor coupled with paycheck.  What's next?  Taking more of the widow's share to give bonuses to Pastor based on how many people walk down an aisle?

In case I wasn't clear: "love" offerings are often nothing more than a way to feed someone's ego while simultaneously letting them profit from "ministry" at the expenses if what the church is called to do... namely care for the widows and orphans while being a shining light in this dark world.

 

[rsc2a]

Fair question,...

But time spent on the side job is time spent away from the main job.

Depends how it is structured. So much of what a pastor does is hard to quantify, via clockable/billable hours. Is he getting his work done? Is his church neglected? Your point is perfectly valid, but measuring it is almost completely subjective.

And yet it was your argument...

 

[Fresh Air]

In case I wasn't clear: "love" offerings are often nothing more than a way to feed someone's ego while simultaneously letting them profit from "ministry" at the expenses if what the church is called to do... namely care for the widows and orphans while being a shining light in this dark world.

In case I wasn't clear - you don't have a scriptural leg to stand on. In fact, scripture repeatedly squashes such a parsimonious stingy attitude. But that's ok. You don't like it so it shouldn't be done...

 

[rsc2a]

I was unaware that you know anything about how much and where my family chooses to give.

 

[GeneFrenkle]

Unknown HACker, "Bro Hyles if you only make $____ a year how could you afford to buy Mrs Hyles a new car?"

Yep, that one got a lot of special attention during that Q&A session!

I was there and mere feet from that kid.  Sherman was his name.  Bro. Hyles came back to him what?  four times to harass him some more during that Q&A?  The kid didn't mean disrespect, but asked in the worst way possible.

 

[GeneFrenkle]

I believe the last question asked ever was by Sandy Taylor.  Something to the effect of which popular second-hand store in town would Bro. Hyles rather shop.  It was toward the end of the session, Bro. Hyles didn't answer, and it was the very last Q&A.  It was weird.  It was as if we knew it was the last.