Let's Give Up... Slow Payments
when congregations forget it's the 21st century
Hello, fellow travelers on the journey! It’s week five of my Lenten series!
We here at Hold My Chalice are a motley bunch from a variety of religious faiths, but there’s something quite lovely about a season where we consider what no longer serves us and how we might prepare ourselves for what’s next. So this Lenten season, we are considering seven things we say or do or believe in our congregations that no longer serve us, and maybe we can give them up.
Kimberley Debus
This week: Slow Payments
A few weeks ago, my colleague and fabulous Unitarian Universalist merch creator, HP Rivers, posted this message (it’s written to UUs but very probably applies to other denominations, so stick around):
Dearest Gentle UUs,
I don’t know which Unitarian Universalist congregation needs to hear this but I do know some absolutely do:
In this, the year of someone’s Lord 2026, you need to pay your pulpit supply speakers and other contractors electronically and within 48 hours of completion of the work.
This means if someone guest preaches for you on Sunday, they should have funds in their account by Tuesday afternoon at the latest.
If your church finance structure does not allow for electronic payments or policy dictates you may only write checks, you need to identify a handful of community members (NOT staff) who are willing and able to pay contractors and guest speakers directly at the time of service and wait for reimbursement from the church.
It is not appropriate, professional, considerate, or necessary to expect contractors and religious professional guests who visit your community to wait over a week, often much longer, to be compensated for their work.
Personally, the longest I’ve ever waited to be paid from a UU gig is over 4 years for a church that just never got around to paying me for a virtual service. It is common in community ministry to wait over a month for payments to arrive via mail and to have to follow up with communities several times. Usually this is due to lack of infrastructure rather than lack of desire to pay, and sometimes a lack of awareness of the socioeconomic status of many religious professionals. (Spoiler alert: most of us live gig-check to gig-check.)
If you haven’t considered this before, that’s ok! We don’t always get it right and when we know better we do better, so now we all know and we can all do better.
Thanks for having this chat with me. I know it isn’t always comfortable to be brave. I love working with UU communities and religious professionals specifically on things like this so I hope we can have more of these conversations as time goes on.
In Joy and Resilience,
HP
Now I’ve not waited four years (Lord have mercy) but I have waited three months. In that case, it was an ugly combination of mistrust of the person who but in the check request, four different steps/people the request had to go through, and people on vacation. But still.
I honestly don’t understand why we are even using paper checks, when we don’t pay anything else with paper checks. I know enough about church finances to know that your congregation pays its employees, utilities, subscriptions, mortgage, other bills electronically.
WHY ARE YOU STILL PAYING SPEAKERS WITH PAPER CHECKS?
Even if you don’t want to pay until the service or workshop is complete, surely you have enough ability to do a bank transfer, Zelle, PayPal, or Venmo. I can guarantee your guests have some or all of those. And we even put it on our invoices and ask for it when we book a preaching gig. It’s not hard; I have a regular guest preaching gig, and the payment arrives in my PayPal account by noon that Sunday. I once had a virtual gig where the treasurer hit send to my Venmo as I started the benediction. And more than once I’ve gotten a Zelle payment within 24 hours.
Here’s the thing: for people like HP and I - we who are consultants and entrepreneurial ministers - this IS our income. Few of us have anything supplemental or steady (like a part time congregational ministry, which I’m fortunate to have right now). We count on these funds to pay our rent, buy our groceries, get the gas we need to go to your congregation, pay our utilities. And when there’s a gap - when checks are delayed - that causes the dominos to fall. It’s hard to say to your landlord “a check hasn’t come in so rent is delayed.” Maybe they show grace (mine does), but the electric company is less forgiving.
TL;DR: Your delaying of payments causes harm. It’s not covenantal. It’s not just.
So like HP said, if you absolutely HAVE to write a check, have it ready when the person arrives - and if they’re offering their services remotely, send that check before the event (please trust that we’ll do the event). But we’d much prefer that you join the 21st century and put all of this on electronic payments. It’s how the world works.
Be sure to visit HP’s shop, Blessed Be. There is great UU merch, great Pride merch, even great poetry! I have a fantastic water bottle with a pride version of the UUMA logo, and it is the best one I’ve ever owned. PLUS, you’re helping HP on her journey toward ordination!
