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    Who Are Ministers?

    If the tithe is to be used essentially for ministerial salaries and expenses. what constitutes a “minister”? An independent publishing ministry in a North American conference is known to have designated six of its employees as “ministers.” None of these “ministers” is recognized as such by the local conference. Yet all of them (three field representatives, two workers who operate a cassette ministry, and the appointment secretary) are paid from tithes which, though the publishing enterprise does not actively solicit, it nevertheless knowingly and willingly accepts.EGWCPT 10.5

    The employees of this publishing ministry do not criticize the church. They publish tracts by the million and send their literature without charge to developing countries.EGWCPT 10.6

    Are these six persons actually ministers, qualified to be paid by tithe money?EGWCPT 10.7

    In the broadest sense, all church members should be ministers. Mrs. White wrote: “You may say, ‘I am not a minister, and therefore cannot preach the truth.’ You may not be a minister in the generally-accepted sense of the word; you may never be called to stand in the desk. Nevertheless, you can be a minister for Christ. If you will have your eyes opened to see the opportunities that present themselves for speaking a word to this soul and to that, God will speak through you to lead them to Christ.” 25The Upward Look, 247EGWCPT 10.8

    So we all should be God’s ministers. However, to suggest that Ellen White would approve of paying from the tithe all “ministers for Christ” although they are not “ministers in the generally-accepted sense of the word” is to give the word “minister” a meaning she never intended.EGWCPT 10.9

    For Ellen White the ministers in “the generally-accepted sense of the word” were men appointed by the conference as licensed ministers or ordained ministers. As noted above, she also included women Bible instructors who served under the aegis of the conference as worthy of tithe support.EGWCPT 10.10

    Literature evangelists were specifically excluded by Mrs. White as eligible for tithe support. This is in spite of the fact that they are either commissioned or credentialed by conference executive committee action, and often give more Bible studies in a week than does the local pastor. If literature evangelists were pointedly excluded from receiving the tithe, much less can we make a legitimate case for paying tithe to self-appointed ministers in a lay-operated publishing enterprise.EGWCPT 10.11

    In the publishing houses of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, not one employee, other than ordained-minister editors, is paid from tithe funds. It matters not whether he be a worker in a factory, a field representative, or even the president of the publishing house himself.EGWCPT 11.1

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