A Gallup poll taken in 2019 just before the pandemic found that 85% of people around the world hate their jobs. That means only 15% of people globally like what they do. In the United States that number is slightly better with 30% finding satisfaction in their work and 70% disliking what they do. Still, 70% is a lot, which tells you something—most people are simply working so they can afford to live. Their work is not a reflection of their passion.

Compare this with job satisfaction rates in the 1970s where 79% of workers claimed they had a high job satisfaction rating. In the 1980s, that number had dropped, but was still high at 61% and in the 1990s it was 58%. Today, it’s 30%. So what gives? Are we just a bunch of complainers? Are we just looking for the easy ride where we get a paid a lot of money for doing relatively little? No, in spite of what the older generations might say, there are real and significant reasons for this shift.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to understand what happened is to tell you the story of this white shirt. In the 1950s, this piece of clothing was made by textile mills here in the United States. American workers would go into these mills and work 8 hour shifts to create clothes that were shipped all over the world. This shirt would cost the consumer about $2 in the 1950s. Baked into that $2 is the cost of the raw material, the cost of transportation and the cost of the labor to create the shirt.

Corporations, such as the one that made this shirt, started examining how they could make more profit out of every shirt they sold. At the time, the cost of the materials and transportation was basically fixed. The only real wiggle room they had was with labor or how much they paid a person to create this shirt. Of course, here in the United States there are labor laws such as minimum wage that legally restrict a company’s ability to pay a worker below a certain amount. But other countries, such as Taiwan and China, did not have those same restrictions.

So, beginning in the 1960s, corporations started making goods in foreign countries because it was cheaper to create the shirt overseas where the workers would get paid a fraction of the cost. Minimum wage in United States in the 1950s was about $1 per hour whereas overseas the labor costs were about 10 cents an hour. They could charge the same amount for the shirt, but make nearly 10 times the profit.

This worked for a period of time, but then everybody began shipping their labor overseas, so the edge over your competitor was nominal. Next, corporations made adjustments to the supply chain by cutting out the middlemen and wholesaling their materials. Again, this worked for a period of time, but then everyone caught up.

Finally, the only way the corporations could save money was to maximize the efficiency of their workers. This is when corporations in the 1980s began the process of consolidating positions and having a single worker do the job of several people at once. Those putting in 50-hour weeks rose from 22.2% to 30.5% between 1980 and 2001. Today, we see another 22% of workers spending 50-59 hours at their jobs, and there is 9% who are burning the candle at both ends with more than 60+ hours a week.

And this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re making a lot of money for doing all that work. Although recently wages have started to increase for the first time in 40 years, inflation has evaporated many of those gains. Workers today are expected to do crazy amounts of work for very little pay. This mentality, which began with this shirt and other goods in the 1960s has seeped into every sector of our society, including the church. In fact, pastors are one of the most extreme examples of this trend.

To become a pastor in our denomination, you have to possess a bachelor’s degree and then you have to go to seminary and receive a masters of divinity. For many professions, a masters is maybe a one or two year program. The masters of divinity takes a minimum of three years. On top of this, you have to take a variety of professional exams and go through a series of internships in churches and hospitals. And when you come out on the other side, the average salary for a PCUSA pastor is around $55,000 barely enough to live and not nearly enough to pay back your student loans.

There seven areas where a pastor is expected to be proficient. First and foremost, you are expected to be a professional speaker. Personally, I love this part of the job, but most of the people I went to seminary with were horrible public speakers. So right there you have a problem because that’s what most people see is the public speaking parts of the job.

The second skill you need to have is that you are like the CEO of the company, anticipating not only what the current people in your church want, but also what the people who aren’t there want. You have to grow the business and, under the conditions we are in right now, that’s super hard because, as we’ve discussed, people don’t really want to go to church anymore.

You also have to be a professional fundraiser. Not only are you raising money for your own salary and whatever staff you might have working with you, but you are also raising money to maintain the building and to help help people who are struggling financially. Speaking of helping people who are struggling, you are also expected to be a counselor for people who need help. Sometimes you act as a confidant. Other times you’re helping people mediate conflict and disputes.

In a church like ours, I am also acting as a human resource director. Yes, I have a committee who works alongside me and advises me, but I’m ultimately responsible for hiring and firing as well as creating a positive workplace culture.

But beyond all of these day-to-day tasks, you serve as a master of ceremonies at baptisms, weddings, and funerals, which means you are at people’s beck and call when they need you. People look to you as the keeper of the Bible and the guardian of orthodoxy meaning they depend on you to correctly interpret the Bible for them.

Oh yes, and did I mention that on top of all this, you are expected to be a pillar of virtue, meaning you must be blameless or morally pure. Your spouse and your children should all be perfect or close to it. And most importantly, you must be unconditionally loving, meaning you have to love everyone in your congregation and show them grace and forgiveness, no matter how poorly they treat you.

So you can see how crazy this is: Professional Speaker, CEO, Counselor, Fundraiser, Human Resources Director, Master of Ceremonies, Pillar of Virtue. In a normal company, you would have a different person doing most of these things; sometimes, multiple people. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can do all of these things. And yet, pastors are expected to do all of those things for $55,000 a year.

Compare what I just laid out for you with the biblical requirements for being a pastor in Titus: “He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or violent or greedy for gain; but he must be hospitable, a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and self-controlled. He must have a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching…” That’s a much smaller job description than what I just outlined for you and, frankly, much more reasonable.

Now, to be fair, even though I work 60 hours a week, I am compensated much more fairly than many of my peers. But my salary is an aberration. Most pastors will never come close to making what you all pay me here. But even though pastors are the extreme version of this working phenomenon where people are expected to do huge amounts of work for not a lot of compensation, we aren’t the only ones.  

I have had so many conversations with people about how their jobs just keep asking more and more of them. Many companies have taken to slashing positions and expecting the remaining workers to pick up the slack or slash benefits by moving significant segments of their workforce to part time work. As a result, people are working two and three part time jobs for not a lot of pay and getting super burned out.

But this is nothing new. This problem has been around for millennia. We read today from James’ letter. James says, “Come now, you rich people…The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.  You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.” Apparently, the practice of taking advantage of workers and squeezing every last ounce of production out of them is a very human trait, but it doesn’t have to be.

We are a very privileged church. Many of you in here are in positions of power where you determine the wages of your workforce. Be fair with your pay. Help your workers as much as you possibly can. Don’t ask them to do more than is humanly possible. They’ll only end up hating their job and leaving. Likewise, as a worker, don’t buy into this myth that you have to be a superhero. Trust me, I speak from experience. There is zero correlation between working yourself to death and happiness. In fact, the opposite is true.

So here’s your come to Jesus moment for today: From the moment we are born, the hours begin ticking away. The average human has approximately 657,000 hours at his or her disposal. Now that might sound like a lot, but humans are very routinized creatures and we all tend to spend our lives doing the same things.

The average human in America will spend 220,000 hours of life sleeping; 100,000 hours working a job; 64,000 hours being entertained by television or some other medium; 40,000 hours eating, drinking and preparing food; 38,000 hours shopping and doing household chores; 26,000 hours commuting from one place to another; 17,000 hours in class and studying for tests; 16,000 hours cleaning and grooming yourself in the bathroom; 14,000 hours caring for the needs of our family and friends; and, if you happen to be religious, 4,000 hours worshipping God.

That leaves 123,000 hours to do whatever you want and most sociologists will tell you that it’s what you do with those 123,000 hours that makes the difference between a life that’s meaningful and a life that’s wasted. You see, when the vast majority of your life is accounted for by other tasks, tasks that everyone has to perform, then those 123,000 hours represent something very unique. That’s the only time where you are truly free from the burdens of your day-to-day life. So if you misuse the majority of that time, even if you do all the other tasks extremely well, you will feel as though your life has been wasted.

But here’s the kicker: one of the biggest influences on how you spend those 123,000 hours is your job. If you’re exhausted and worn out from your job, then the quality of those free hours diminishes exponentially. Over time, as you keep losing more and more of those free hours, you become angry and bitter. Until, eventually, you have run out of time.

Therefore, take the bull by the horns and don’t allow your work life to destroy your family life. Set your own expectations; set your own boundaries and stick to them. One of my greatest regrets is allowing my work life to steal so many of those 123,000 hours. It’s just not worth it. I would much rather be spending time with my family and my friends than doing church work on a weekend. We need to let go of those unrealistic expectations for ourselves and for others. Then, and only then, will we find a life that is actually worth living! Amen.