Perhaps we have all head the story of how Jesus sent demons out of a man who lived in a tomb into a herd of pigs and that the entire herd ran into the sea and died (Matthew 8:28-34).  Although an encounter like this for some fundamentalists may seem ideal when a religious leader encounters a demon possessed manager that crawls out of a corporate tomb to manage a company, the sad truth however is that some religious leaders need jobs outside of their regular religious duties.  Without the church owning the business that your religious leader works at, outside employment for him may be fraught with many challenges to say the least and intense spiritual warfare may be one of the largest of those challenges.

Sure, you might think that if your Pastor has already performed hundreds of funerals and even visited with people who renounced baptism even at death that a man like that could handle working in a secular job even if it is managed by the devil and all his angels.  Perhaps he is the kind of man who has visited with dozens of hardened criminals before they got executed on death row, and he never once flinched even when the executioners fired up the electric chair to put those mass murders to death.  Even if his father had performed autopsies at the morgue in your Pastor’s youth and clothed the entire family with the extra clothing that came from the cadavers at work, don’t you think your Pastor deserves outside employment that don’t give people the creeps or cause a major disturbance in the spiritual realm?

Have you ever imagined that perhaps for your Pastor work in a church owned franchise might be like a unicorn jumping over a rainbow on a sun shiny day compared to some of the alternatives?  Perhaps your Pastor is well acquainted with the man who was going to marry the love of his life only to find after the blood tests had been performed that it was really his sister, but should your pastor really have to work with the two of them at a company as close coworkers with no church oversight?  What if I told you that perhaps your Pastor has had enough drama in his life with the child that simply stares into his window at night when her mother condemns the child ever going to church because of the family’s devotion to the occult?

Sure, your pastor may certainly be the kind of person that diligently prays for the lost, weeps for the soul of the person destined for the fires of hell, and ends the tyranny of evil like a snow cone melting in the noonday heat of summer.  But what if your Pastor needs and wants a regular job like everyone else, and what if he’s the kind of person that could find the love of his life at a secular job and marry her?  Could your church handle an outside employer pulling the strings for the two of them?  Especially, if the company is run by people who all attend that ‘other’ church, and you know how they impose their values on everything!

Even if your Pastor is hired by a company that represents good moral integrity with little to no strings attached in that no real politics, views, and values are preached by the firm’s leadership that are contrary to sacred scripture, you know all too well how the Hebrews went into slavery in Egypt because a new Pharoah arose that knew nothing of Joseph (Exodus 1:8-10).  Perhaps your Pastor may have even been hired by a local firm based on a religious diversity initiative to promote religious diversity and plurality in the workplace, but what happens later if they hire a Satanist bent on evil to manage him?  Would you rather that everyone doubled down on their tithing to help save the day while your Pastor looks for his second job or would you rather find a more permanent solution?

I’m not talking about the church buying a franchise so that your Pastor could have eyes roll like dollar signs like in the case of Scrooge, but I’m also not suggesting that you pay him an Ebenezer wage either.  Although you may not be a business scholar, if you’ve learned anything from seminary, it could be that the institutionalization of sin leads to depravity but that an organization can be managed and run without the love of money.  Have you thus considered that your church could hypothetically own and operate a for-profit franchise even though the church is a tax-free business if the right conditions are met?  Although you should certainly consult an attorney and a tax professional before your church buys a franchise, what should be clear is that nothing is wrong with paying market wages for services rendered.  What if the so called, ‘profits’ from the franchise could be used to care for poverty-stricken people?  If your church is not going to pay your Pastor enough to work at the church as his only vocation, then could you really imagine any good reason for the church not buying a franchise to support his second vocation?

Submitted by Mathew Mount – Franchise Consultant