Pastor Salary Guidelines Updated

Mennonite Church USA and Everence have updated the Pastor Salary Guidelines (PSG) for congregations to use to guide their compensation packages for their pastors. An article from Mennonite Church USA can be found here. Everence provides a tool on their website and a printable version that we recommend all congregations familiarize themselves with and utilize. This can be found here.

The following is a summary from the article noted above concerning the changes/updates:

• Base salary. The 2023-2024 PSG increased the base salary and unit value by 8%, to adjust for inflation, based on government data.
• Seminary debt. Congregations are recommended to increase the salary by $1,000-$3,000 for pastors still paying off seminary debt, for the remainder of the life of the loan.
• Covered technological expenses. Congregations should provide the pastor with the technology necessary to do their work and compensate them for using their personal cell phone for work.
• 40-hour work week. Pastors may work more than 40 hours some weeks and less other weeks, but the average should work out to be 40 hours per week.
• Parental/family and medical leave. Congregations are required to offer up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for specific medical needs. The updated PSG recommends that congregations offer eight of those weeks as paid leave and allow the other four weeks to be covered by the pastor’s vacation and sick time.

Journey: A Missional Development Program

When God calls someone to leadership, a journey begins. Perhaps you are on that journey. Perhaps you are looking for mentors and companions along the way. Indiana-Michigan Conference invites you to join Journey: A Missional Leadership Development Program. This program is for lay leaders, pastors, church planters, and other emerging leaders who are called without specific training for ministry or who are exploring a call to ministry. The early registration deadline to apply for fall 2023 is July 11, with the final registration deadline on August 8, 2023. For more information visit www.ambs.edu/journey, or contact your pastor, or Joanne Gallardo at joanne@im.mennonite.net or 574-534-4006.

Public Lecture at AMBS

“Misunderstanding Judaism Means Misunderstanding Jesus and Paul” by Amy-Jill Levine, PhD. The lecture will be held at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Chapel of the Sermon on the Mount, 3003 Benham Ave, Elkhart, IN, May 8, 2-4 p.m.  Amy-Jill Levine is Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. She is Professor Emerita at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Amy-Jill has played a crucial role in Jewish-Christian dialogue and has contributed greatly to understanding the Jewish roots of Jesus and Christian practices. She is the author of acclaimed books such as Entering the Passion of Jesus and The Difficult Words of Jesus. For more information contact andybk@ambs.edu.

Baptism Study Guide

Greetings from the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism! We are reaching out to you to share with you a free study guide focused on the practice of baptism in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. 

Written by John D. Roth in collaboration with Tom Yoder Neufeld, the study guide seeks to accompany churches in accessing the commitments that grew out of the Lutheran-Mennonite-Roman Catholic Trilateral Conversation on Baptism. It offers accessible descriptions of the histories of baptism; explanations of the significance of baptism in the different traditions; questions for reflection; and prayers. The booklet was designed to be used in Sunday School classes or with small groups, but it could also be adapted to other congregational settings. A digital version of the study guide is already available online.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, the ISGA is able to make these available in bulk to Anabaptist conferences and congregations, free of cost. If you’d like to order copies for your conference, or pass this information along to your member congregations you know who might be interested, physical copies can be ordered (in groups of 10) here.

We hope that you will find this publication to be a valuable resource to guide theological reflection and ecumenical dialogue. Please note that the study guide is available in both English and Spanish.