The fact that we are facing the possibility of ‘industrial action’ by our senior staff because we are planning to increase their salaries places me as an economist in a state of acute confusion!
The economist who wrote these words was a Sydney member of the Tearfund Australia board, and the senior staff were the members of Tearfund’s leadership team at the time. (For those who haven’t heard of it, Tearfund is a Christian charity which partners with local churches to tackle global poverty and injustice through sustainable development and disaster relief.)
The economist’s comment was, of course, something of an exaggeration, and said with a smile. It’s true that the leadership team was of one mind in resisting the board’s intention to increase the salaries of senior staff. It’s also true that we communicated our convictions to the board with firmness, some might say passion. But industrial action!? Fortunately, I can’t recall any occasion during my 25 years as national director at Tearfund (1984-2009) when even vigorous debate within the board was not conducted with respect and affection. The same can be said of the interactions between board and senior staff. In this we were truly blessed!
With respect to this particular discussion, the leadership team knew that the board’s intentions regarding staff remuneration levels were noble and good, and we appreciated their pastoral care. Nevertheless, we opposed them. Shaping our response were two core convictions: the belief that Tearfund’s salary structure should be kept as flat as possible, and that Tearfund’s organisational commitment to a low-cost administration regime required staff salaries to remain modest but adequate. Our discussion with the board soon demonstrated that we were all of one mind. If my memory serves me correctly, one immediate consequence was a modest raising of Tearfund salaries, with the largest increases going to the lowest paid staff.
A commitment to low-cost administration was made explicit in Tearfund’s foundational document, and the reason for it was sound and simple: the desire to maximise the funds available for the programmes of our partners in economically poor countries. Sitting alongside this commitment was another of Tearfund’s core objectives: ‘to seek to motivate Christian consciences by informing the minds and directing the will as well as and not solely by an appeal for an emotional response.’ This was later articulated more clearly in Tearfund’s mission statement as a commitment to ‘inform, challenge and empower Australian Christians to make biblically-shaped responses to poverty and injustice.’ To do this with any kind of integrity it was essential that Tearfund practised what it preached, and this had implications for its remuneration policies and salary structure.
The leadership team knew that the board’s intentions regarding staff remuneration levels were noble and good, and we appreciated their pastoral care. Nevertheless, we opposed them.
Kingdom economics
I think it would be true to say that most, if not all of us, on the Tearfund board and leadership team at that time had been greatly influenced by a new wave of Christian thinking that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Led by people such as Donald B. Kraybill, René Padilla, John Stott, Vinay Samuel, and Ron Sider, it challenged affluent Christians to examine their relationship with wealth in the light of global poverty and the needs of the economically poor.
Ronald J. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1977) was a prophetically provocative challenge to resist the lures of secular consumerism and acquisition and embrace the biblical call to radical generosity and justice. In his concluding words he wrote:
All we need to do is truly obey the One we rightly worship. But to obey will mean to follow. And he lives among the poor and oppressed, seeking justice for those in agony. In our time following in his steps will mean simple personal lifestyles. It will mean transformed churches with a corporate lifestyle consistent with worship of the God of the poor. It will mean costly commitment to structural change in secular society.
The impact and influence of Sider’s book was profound. Among some it created a good deal of controversy and even anger, while for many others—myself included—it was an exciting call to action.
Kraybill’s The Upside-down Kingdom (1978), aimed primarily at Christians living in high income countries, carefully contrasted the ways and practices of the dominant culture around us with the values of the Kingdom of God, and urged Christians to live in alignment with the former. In a chapter devoted to the upside-down economics of the Kingdom he wrote:
Most of us today find ourselves in the ‘middle’ of on-going institutions that are concerned with continuity and self-preservation. Stable and predictable financial arrangements are necessary for organisations to continue. Protecting financial self-interest is basic to institutional survival. How then do we relate the economic teachings of Jesus, the ‘outsider’, to the issues faced by mainstream organisations, corporations, schools and churches? In what ways can the teachings of Jesus be incorporated into the structure of organisations without jeopardising their survival?
It was intellectually stimulating as well as faith-stretching and faith-encouraging to be with a group of people and part of an organisation that was committed to wrestling with such questions.
In what ways can the teachings of Jesus be incorporated into the structure of organisations without jeopardising their survival? - D. B. Kraybill
Challenging convention
A few years prior to the ‘threat of industrial action’, the board made another ‘unusual’ decision regarding Tearfund salaries. As a result of significant growth, the time had come to appoint our first Sydney-based staff member – someone to expand our engagement with churches in Sydney and NSW. In my view, we already knew the ideal person as he had been doing such a great job in a voluntary capacity. I also knew that he would not be able to meet his current yet modest financial commitments on a salary like mine. As a result, I proposed to the board that we offer him a job on a salary high enough to meet his family’s needs. This would have made him the highest paid member on Tearfund’s payroll.
The accepted and largely unchallenged wisdom then, as now, was that the CEO in any organisation—be it a large commercial bank or a small faith-based non-government organisation like Tearfund—should be paid more than any other member of staff. The reason for this seems obvious: the higher responsibility, the higher the pay. But why should I get paid more than anyone else on the staff to do the job to which I felt called and which I loved? My expectation was that my recommendation would generate some significant debate, but it didn’t! The board were happy to ignore conventional practice and embrace this modest expression of economic unorthodoxy. (As it turned out, the person in question decided to stick to his teaching job, and he continued as a wonderful volunteer for many more years.)
Heeding the call
In 1980 the World Evangelical Fellowship and the Lausanne Movement convened an international consultation on simple lifestyle. In response to the consultation’s papers and deliberations, the 85 participants gathered from 27 nations produced An Evangelical Commitment to Simple Lifestyle. Tearfund published it in full in the Autumn 1986 issue of its quarterly magazine. Jointly edited by Ron Sider and John Stott, this document remains both highly relevant and constructively provocative. Consider the following extract from that document:
We believe that Jesus still calls some people (perhaps even us) to follow him in a lifestyle of total, voluntary poverty. He calls all his followers to an inner freedom from the seduction of riches (for it is impossible to serve God and money) and to sacrificial generosity (‘to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and ready to share’ – 1 Timothy 6:18).
Challenges such as this became a consistent theme in Tearfund’s communications, education resources, and educational events. But it wasn’t simply a matter of encouraging others to give careful consideration to the Bible’s radical teaching on money and power, or wealth and poverty. We had to grapple with these issues ourselves, not just as individuals but also as an organisation. The respectful debate stirred by the apparent ‘threat of industrial action’ in response to the board’s desire to increase the salaries of senior staff is but one example of this. Moreover, we were all of one mind, board and leadership team, in believing we achieved the right outcome.
Since his time as national director for Tearfund Australia, Steve has helped design and develop the Master of Transformational Development programme at Eastern College, to which he continues to contribute. He is also a husband to Chris, Dad to Sarah and Tom, and Poppa to Isabella, Asher, Raphael, and Vinnie.
Appendix: a short list of some of the literature from the 70s & early 80s
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Foster, Richard. The Freedom of Simplicity, 1981.
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Kraybill, Donald B. The Upside-down Kingdom, 1978.
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Padilla, René, C. Mission Between the Times: Essays on the Kingdom, 1985.
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Schumacher, E. F. Small is Beautiful: Economics As if People Mattered, 1973.
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Sider, Ronald J. (Ed). Living More Simply: Biblical Principles and Practical Models, 1980.
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Sider, Ronald J. Cry Justice: The Bible on Hunger and Poverty, 1980.
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Sider, Ronald J. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study, 1977.
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Sider, Ronald J. (Ed). Life-Style in the Eighties: An Evangelical Commitment to Simple Life-style, 1981.
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Sine, Tom. The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, 1981.
Stott, John. Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 1978.
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Taylor, John V. Enough is Enough,1975.
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White, John. The Golden Cow: Materialism in the Twentieth Century Church, 1979.