I know several of my readers are members of this church, so maybe one of you may have an answer.
I overheard a conversation about Pastor Ed Young Jr and his salary. It was stated that he makes over $500,000 a year, drives a Hummer, and lives in a mansion. I don’t really care about the car he drives or the house he lives in, but I was curious to know what his salary is at Fellowship. I wouldn’t doubt he makes $500,000 a year combined from other interests and his church salary, but I was wondering what does the church itself pays him? I tried to find the financials at the church’s website, but came up short, as well as a Google search.
While searching for the above info I learned the following from this article:
- The campus is $36.5 million and 313,000 square feet on a 140 acre campus.
- 165 full-time employees.
- 20,000 attend each weekend.
Also, while searching for this information I did find this article which I found interesting, here’s an excerpt:
Presbyterian senior pastors have a higher salary than those of any other denomination, a new survey showed.
The average salary for the head pastor in Presbyterian churches was $78,000 (plus housing/parsonage), according to Christianity Today’s latest church salary survey. Baptist senior pastors earned next to last with $67,000.
The survey found that Presbyterian churches have the highest-reported church income among churches with senior pastors, and some of that income goes to the head behind the pulpit.
Notably, however, while Baptist and Presbyterian churches that have youth pastors generate virtually identical church income, Baptist youth pastors earned near the top with a salary plus housing of $44,000 while Presbyterian youth pastors earned only $36,000.
The first comment was also quite interesting.
I think SOME churches should not be tax exempt. $500K is a whole lot of money for a pastor’s salary – I know it’s probably not the highest salary a person of the cloth might get paid. I haven’t checked the website to see if I can even find out how much the church hauls in each year, but ………….I’m just sayin’.
I couldn’t imagine making that kind of salary, having that kind of vehicle, or living in a mansion, but I can assure you if I did make that kind of money, I would not have a Hummer and I would not live in a mansion. I would do my best to give most of it away. But, that’s just me.
Oh yeah, Keith, check out this site – pardon me if you’ve mentioned it before and I overlooked it……………..
http://www.kiva.org
I’m thinking that’s what my family members might get for a Christmas present this year. They eat well, live in nice houses, and we all feel guilty giving ourselves presents we don’t really need or want every year.
The camel/eye of a needle verse has disturbed me more than any other in the scripture. And it is by far the most ignored verse by current day Christians. Words have meaning.
Interesting. I work in a church, and I fully believe I’m worth $500,000 a year. 🙂
I seriously doubt that he takes that from church salary. It is a much greater possibility that what they call ‘salary’ includes income generated from his para-church ministry. And I think $500k is a low figure, I believe Pastor Ed Young brings in much, much more than that. He has his hand in many things, and has developed many, many, many church resources over his career. These are the things pastors make money off of.
I also from first hand experience, (heard it from him), that both Ed Young and his father Ed Young, Sr. give lots of money to their church projects. When there is a fundraiser drive of any kind, they usually lead the way.
Anyways….
I’m embarassed to say I’m not sure how much Ed brings in. He is a very prolific writer and I’m guessing much of his income is based on book sales.
Fellowship Church has been very blessed with good fortune especially during the move from Irving to the main campus in Grapevine. Lets see if I can recount the details and please correct me if I’m off base. They bid on the Grapevine property not knowing that Grapevine Mills Mall would be located across 121. After they won the bid, property values soared drastically. A portion of the land was then sold (to a trucking or shipping company I think) to pay for the main campus in total. Most churches struggle to pay the bills. Fellowship never has had that delimma. They have continued to grow via satellite campuses and an East Texas christian retreat.
I will say I haven’t been to my home church in quite a while. I’ve been sampling the smaller churches around my house lately. My friends and I actually went to three different services this past weekend at three different churches in honor of our friend who was saved two weeks ago and died on a motorcycle Friday night. We dubbed ourselves Church Hopper Choppers. 🙂
PS. I just realized I said all that and didn’t even address the Ed Young income question. But I wonder how many souls he has brought to Christ and then try to put a dollar amount on that. I don’t know how much pastors do make or should make but it has to be rewarding work regardless.
Man…frustrating topic.
I’ve been there as well…80-hour weeks seemingly every week, interruptions in the middle of the night because someone decided to drink and drive and kill someone in your church, countless hours of study, preparation, development, and in the end…getting paid minuscule amounts. Every ‘yes’ to the church needs is a ‘no’ to your family as a pastor…In comparison…the hours and time don’t add up to the pay…nor will they ever. But name off the other on-call professions, the counseling, the leadership, the management, the mediators, all of those get paid huge amounts of money…and pastors…who do the same stuff, have to beg them to support the church ministries just so that they can pay the help. It is ridiculous that we pay football players and entertainers (by paying ticket prices) what we do and yet teachers and pastors are forced to survive on what we tithe as our scraps to our churches and our taxes…it is sinful in its own.
I have just lost my appetite this bothers me so much. The church is soooooo Fu$%ed up.
It is no wonder that we have commercialized Christianity…it’s the only way people will support ministers and ministries…run out to buy that new book/cd/dvd/conference title…but we haven’t given to the church in months because we don’t have any money. So if I can write a book/sell a cd then maybe I’ll be able to live like those in my community so that I can reach the like-minded…justify, justify, justify…
Or maybe even better, I can travel around speaking to make enough money to support my family, yet never get to see them. Then other Christians can call me godly because I make it a priority to be home on the weekends.
And where to people go when it hits the fan…church…to receive words from an under slept, underpaid, over-caffeinated, hadn’t seen his kids in days, hadn’t made love to his wife in weeks because he got home so late, thrilled to do it pastor who would die for his church if he had to…
that last poster, might need some counseling 🙂
Why is this shocking to christians? Moderate christianity is a bigger farce than the fundamental absurdities it’s based on.
But I’ve got nothing against Ed Young. He’s found the most naive target audience to sell his damnation to and are milking them dry…
get yo cheeeze Ed,
-TheHulkster
isn't it ironic that the large majority of people who complain about staff salaries are the people who for the most part don't give anything…..
I guess we disagree Hulkster. I’d say Ed has found a devout group of successful Christ followers who tithe appropriately and have allowed Fellowship to become a powerful
force in the community changing lives for the better, forever.
At the very least, we’ve found a huge topic to dicuss.
When Ed completes his final morphing into Jim Baker then I hope everyone can admit that they saw the writing on the wall, or hummer, or mansion or whatever.
I’m pretty sure jesus wasn’t blowing smoke up his followers asses when he said – If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Or even paul when he says that All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
Powerful force? Yes.
for the better? not even close.
I can only speak for myself. My life is certainly better now that I have a personal relationship with Christ.
Sorry…guess my being on staff at a mega-church reared its ugly head again. I was the lucky one…got out before the last paragraphs happened to me. Ahhhh…the American Christian Culture…so worthy of discussion, both lover and betrayer.
I am a member of Fellowship and I don’t know how much Ed makes and I don’t care. If you know anything about Ed or his family you know they are the real deal. Ed gives a lot back financially to the church so the more he makes (which most is from outside interest) the better for the church.
I do know, against popular belief, Fellowship is not a “rich” church. They have about 2 months of expenses in the bank so if they didn’t take the offering for 8 weeks, they would be broke.