HOME | CHURCH JOB OPENINGS | ABOUT MMI | CATEGORIES OF INTEREST | CONTACT US

image

Church Bases Year End Bonuses on Number of Souls Won

Orginally published on Friday, January 04, 2008 at 8:31 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Tominthebox reports that at Coastal Community Church, it's all about winning souls. "We care about people," said Senior Pastor David S. Young. "We take our marching orders from I Timothy 2:4 (click here) and II Peter 3:9 (click here). God's will is for no one to perish, and we intend to make that happen. We win souls at Coastal!" Despite Pastor Young's excitement, the church has not been growing over the past two years. In order to "spice things up" and "light a fire," Pastor Young decided to implement a creative and intriguing new plan to motivate the pastoral staff to "win more souls."

TBNN has learned that Coastal has a total of seven pastors (Senior, Music, Youth, Children, Evang. and Missions, Elderly, and Administration). Each year they all receive the same Christmas bonus: $900. Not this year.

Music Pastor Wallace Simmons informed us, “We could have just done things like always, but Pastor Young wouldn’t have any of that. He told us that this year there would be a competition. Starting November 1st and running until December 25th, the seven of us pastors would be competing for our Christmas bonuses. This is almost more than I can handle. I mean, I’m here to do the music, not go out on visitation!”

Pastor Mitch Dowd (Evang. and Missions), who is pictured here, said, “The Pastor put all $6300 into his safe at the church. He told us that at the end of the competition, he would pro-rate how we did. We aren’t actually guaranteed any bonus at all. Some people might say that this competition is an unfair advantage for me, but I’m more scared than anything else.”

Even Youth Pastor Colton Harris is intimidated by the new Christmas bonus plan. “This is almost more pressure than I can take. All I’m thinking about these days is who gets saved next. I have some advantage because I work with youth, but this is still rough.”

Pastor Young informed the staff that in order to keep this competition an objective and fair one, the souls-won count (and thus the size of each bonus) would be based only on the number of people who “check the box in the bulletin and put it in the offering plate on Sunday.”

The “box,” for those of you who do not know, is a place on the weekly bulletin where visitors can check off any decisions they have made. At Coastal, if they check the box, they are also asked to write the name of the pastoral staff member who “led them to the Lord.”

Read more here at TomintheBox...


This post has been viewed 686 times so far.



  There are 10 Comments:

  • Posted by

    What happens if a convert falls away from the faith-remember the parable of the sower of the seed, does the minister have to return the bonus money?

    I can think of a lot of different ways to motivate evangelism in the church, but financial incentives never made the top 1000 list.

    Plus, is competition to witness and wins souls to Christ a Biblical motive?  Another question, what determines a witnessing opportunity?  Is there an objective way to determine the outcome? 

    This wil eventually lead to resentment and a divided staff.

  • Posted by Brian

    Jim,

  • Posted by Brian

    Okay, not sure what just happened, but obviously I hit something that sent my posting waaaay before I was finished!

    Jim, you may not be aware that on Fridays, Todd posts humor pieces for the sake of helping us lighten up a little (and I could really use it lately!).

    This is one of those.  Not to be taken seriously at all.  Although, I’ve decided to adopt this practice at my church - even though I’m the only staff and I don’t get a Christmas bonus per se… ;P

    On the other hand, maybe you do know that and you’re waiting to see how many comment on your comment, in which case I took the bait and went for it!

  • Posted by Tyler

    what a great idea! smile

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    Wow. You can assign a monetary value to human souls after all!

    wink

  • Posted by

    Doesn’t the bible say, what can a man earn in exchange for a soul?

  • Posted by

    leonard you know better than that, haha

  • If this were a real story… I highly doubt the associate staff would be this open to talk about it to a reporter.

    At least I hope this story isn’t real, LOL.

  • Posted by

    As the minister of music, I would be in the running for getting the bonus.  I think is would be fantastic to create some type of accountability for who we, as the church leaders bring into the body of Christ.  So many times, the Worship Pastor and the Administrative time don’t serve in the capacity of an evangelist, but every leader should, as their first job, be evangelists.  Every leader in the church should be “preaching Christ” , thus effectively drawing men, because Christ said, “If I be lifted up from the earth, I ( a personal pronoun) will draw ALL (an absolute pronoun) men unto me.  If the leadership team does that well, then a healthy competition is good, if you have leaders who fail in that capacity, then maybe you should look @ replacing them.

  • Posted by

    Ray: Are you serious about your comments or is it a joke like Todd’s post?

  • Page 1 of 1 pages

Post Your Comments:

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Live Comment Preview:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below: