Speaking of pastoral compensation, I thought this is interesting. Assuming that Rick Warren's royalties from The Purpose Driven Life are a fairly typical 8-10% of list price, here's roughly the total royalty amount we're talking about here: 19MM copies (and counting), with a list price of $19.99 = somewhere in the area of $38,000,000! [19MM X $2.00] The following is from Rick Warren:
"You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before.
I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped us to decide what to do. First, He gave me 1 Corinthians 9. In that passage, Paul says those who preach the Gospel should make a living by the Gospel. But that he would not use this right, because he wanted to serve God for free so he would be a slave to no man. So we made four decisions. First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan—to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.
Then, regarding the influence, God led me to Psalm 72. It's Solomon's prayer asking God to make him more influential. When you read this Psalm, at the start, it sounds like a selfish prayer. Solomon was already the wisest, wealthiest, most influential man in the world. Yet he wanted God to make him more powerful and influential. Then you read down and it says he wants this so he may rescue those who are oppressed, defend the afflicted and needy and to judge the afflicted with justice—to care, basically, for the marginalized of society.
To me, God said that the purpose of influence is to speak up for those who have no influence. That was a turning point for me. I had to repent and admit that widows and orphans have not even been on my radar. Now God is saying, "I'm giving you a platform to speak up for those who have no influence." And I said, "OK."
We intend to use the affluence and influence to do The Peace Plan and to mobilize hundreds of thousands of churches to speak up for those who have no influence. It's a whole new direction, and I know it is what God wants me to do. The phrase that I have adopted for the rest of my life is "living for the global glory of God." Purpose is all about that."