.
The legal setup of a religious non-profit organization aka church:
Starting a Pagan Church
Do you want to become a legally ordained minister? The Universal
Life Church can turn you into one immediately, click here and fill out the form,
print the resulting page and save it to disc. This is legal. . . look for the "Click here to see the Confirmation of Ordination" message on the bottom of the page, I recommend clicking it before signing up.
Another way to set up a pagan church
is to get a group together through your local Unitarian Church. . . as in
CUUCP (Council of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.) Of course, they may
already have a local group. . . all you have to do is find it. Start here for the CUUPS Web site, CUUPS mailing lists, and local chapter home pages. There is now a fully pagan UU church in Texas.
Or, you can set up a "religious non-profit organization", i.e., a church. This process will probably be
both difficult and expensive. One place to start is by getting
information from Aquarian Tabernacle
Church, I've been informed that they'll help with the paperwork for
a reasonable fee. That's all I can really tell you, I haven't dealt with
them.
The hard part (as if the above wasn't bad enough) is figuring out what you want your church to do. The rest of this page is discusses this.
What follows was originally a couple of posts on the Usenet alt.pagan newsgroup. This is in the process of revision and updating, the technology has changed and the issues have changed, though to a lesser extent. Further changes were made in order to make this easier to read in html format. I'm also doing a little experimenting with typeface and color here. Given the text color and background, if you want to print it, highlight all the text, hit Copy (from your Edit menu, or Control-C), and paste it into an open word processor document and print from there. Saving as text will probably lose you the formatting. The same is true with anything else with a black background. Of course, if you simply save to disk and view with a Web browser, you can just save it.
In general, quotes from the original newsgroup posts I was replying to will be in italics and differentiated from italics used for emphasis by having the sentence, paragraph, or section denoted by a > bracket.
Subject: Re: On Pagan Leadership
From: kmusser@mac.cc.macalstr.edu (ZAPHOD) writes:
In article <arlieD8MCqp.1zz@netcom.com>, arlie@netcom.com (Arlie Stephens) writes:
>This is mostly a serious question, in spite of the flippant/aggressive phrasing. I have never been a member of a church with paid clergy;
>what do the clergy actually provide to the congregation?
>The big advantage to having paid clergy is it allows the clergy
to work full time for the congregation. It frees them from
having to have a "real" job in addition to whatever they are
doing for the congregation. As far as what they do I think you
gave a pretty good answer.
I was planning to avoid posting to this thread. Looked at one of the downstream posts and decided somebody had better provide some facts so we know what in Goddess' Name we are arguing about. If you / a group you're with is seriously considering starting a Temple or hiring someone full-time as clerical or for organizational support, you probably should save this page as a file and read it in detail... it's over 8000 words.
Anyone with specific points to discuss with me can catch me in E-mail. Though I'm not an expert in this area, this is just a rough cut at an analysis of what the problems are.
While we as a pagan community don't need the total package of services that Christian churches provide their members using their clergy, we should at least know what they are, we DON'T have to totally reinvent the wheel, we are NOT the first religious group in the history of our species to try to figure out how to set up a structure to facilitate our serving our respective Deities in a way that increases our effectivness and incidentally, helps ourselves.
Let's look at Xtian church / infrastructure and see what's worth stealing outright and what can be adapted for pagan needs. For all most pagans know, the answer to your current problem in a pagan organizational context you are trying to deal with might have been written by Martin Luther several hundred years ago, or by Martin Luther King a couple of generations ago. Despite their fame in other areas, both spent most of their careers running church organizations with many of the same problems on a day-to-day basis that a permanent pagan organization supporting a local pagan congregation will run into today. ("The God-damned (oops, sorry, God) roof is leaking... when is that donor who promised the roofing materials going to show up???")
Our predecessors in ancient times running temples probably ran into many of the same problems... ("When is that idiot going to kick in with those roof tiles? That Hecate-accursed roof leak is getting worse every day!" ;-) ) Writing and the earliest forms of bookkeeping were largely invented by priest(ess)hoods to deal with keeping track of church based information. However, getting the advice of a priestess of Astarte in the original Phoenician might be something of a problem... and might not help you that much, even with English subtitles. Or might, try be aware of how they dealt with problems, too. It isn't just religion / mythology we can get from our spiritual ancestors.
The majority of services an Xtian church and its minister(s) and other staff provide for its members are non-clerical provided within a religious context.
I submit that the same is true for the services a pagan community needs.
> Let's look at a Christian church with standard paid clergy. What does the congregation get for its money? There's generally some kind of church building, with regular rituals (at least weekly, but often several sessions on Sunday, with extras during the week). You can get the priest/minister to perform extras like funerals/weddings/baptisms, provided you are an actual member of the church, and request these extras early enough. (An additional fee may also be involved.)
An additional fee (baptism? it depends) damned well IS involved... and should be.
>There may be some kind of religious instruction for children (Sunday school). I've never seen/heard of a case of counselling, but I presume this also occurs. I have no idea
The main responsibility of a Christian minister at a traditional church other than writing and providing the sermons at Sunday morning and evening services is to either provide personally or coordinate paid staff and volunteer help to provide the following:
While we don't need all of this, anybody disagree with me that things are getting to the point where we as pagans need SOMEBODY full time in Washington to represent our interests? However, that's a topic for another time.
These are just examples... not having actively participated in a church for 26 years, I can't speak from current experience.
The largest megachurches provide an incredible array of services, I've even heard of bowling alleys and beauty parlors and laundromats. Read Megatrends 2000. The section on the Xtian churches will scare hell out of you. When the businesses with the non-Darwinfish fish prominently displayed are included, it is possible for an Xtian to go through most of their lives without contacting "impure" people like us. I don't think this kind of isolation from reality is good for us as pagans, even if this could be made possible. I'm not sure the operation of a bowling alley would be improved with a prominent pentacle on the back wall. However, I'd like the choice of being able to shop from pagan-friendly vendors and a church bulletin with ads or a directory would be a good way to find them.
Actually, Xtians get a pretty fair return on their church donation dollar, largely because it is backed by the taxpayers. Tax-exempt donations and tax-exempt property owned by a church and used for church business over time provides quite a bit of leverage. We should be using this as well. Warning: pay very careful attention to IRS / state / local rules with respect to what is tax exempt for a church and what isn't.
>what the price tag looks like, but most churches I've known seem to be partly supported by long ago investments, keeping day to day costs low.
New churches go up all the time. That is, new Xtian churches and Buddhist temples and Islamic mosques. When's the last time you heard of a purpose-built pagan building going up?
> In a pagan context, might as well add basic training for newbies who are not children; I think some christian groups do this too.
This would be handy... but ... generic newbie pagan training??? The mind boggles. (Note 1) Is there ANYTHING enough of us agree on to make this possible? :-)
> On the other hand, many christians act like they need these rituals in order to connect with their God at all, and need clergy to tell them what they should believe. We don't need this.
>granted, among Pagans a clergy would be a resource not a need.
>> How much money is this set of services worth to me ?
>How much money is it worth to each of the following types of pagans ?
Good questions. I don't think we need a paid pagan clergy along traditional Christian church lines, with single groups supporting a paid full-time professional doing organization and spiritual guidance and handling church business and a church building and the rest of the traditional church services package described partially above. Among other things, no single small pagan group could afford one, and our community hasn't had to produce professionals with the kind of background that the average Xtian preacher takes 4 years to get.
The idea of the entire pagan community in an area collectively paying someone to minister to our collective spiritual needs is absurd, what's a Wiccan HPS going to be able to do for a pagan non-Wiccan (e.g. a Palos Mayemberos member) within the specific context of that non-Wiccan religion outside of give the kind of general advice anyone could give? I don't see the need for a pagan equivalent of a military chaplain giving generic pagan spiritual advice outside the military.
What I do think we need is physical structures and some full-time paid staff to make it more convenient for we as pagans and as pagan group leaders to provide ourselves the kind of services we need. Most of these services actually aren't specifically religious in nature. Some services are specifically religious, but different pagans religions and traditions will want to handle them differently. Some will want or need paid clergy, some won't. We can make it easier for pagan congregations to pay and hire full-time / part-time staff.
Paid clergy is just part of a pagan support system and should be discussed within this context. Personally, I suspect that paid non-clergy staff would probably be more useful, possibly considerably more useful to the local pagan community as a whole.
In my opinion, if the structure and infrastructure are set up properly, the more experienced pagans and the ones who are taking responsibility for larger pagan groups should derive greater benefits from the use of such a resource as their skills and knowledge and responsibilities increase. The entire pagan community should benefit thereby.
People would be needed to answer phones, keep the building maintained, keep the equipment running, tell people how to do things and what needs to be done... Some things work well with volunteer help, but in the long run, if things HAVE to be done all the time, best pay someone to do it / coordinate volunteer help to make sure it gets done, expecially when the doing or organizing volunteers takes 8 person hours plus per day.
The full-time paid volunteer coordinator is a way of leveraging a single person's time into organizing lots of volunteer person-hours that has worked well for many non-profit religious and non-religious organizations.
Among other advantages, the paid staff will know where everything is and how it works and who to call when it breaks. If these staff are also qualified intitiates / priestesses / priests in [tradition of your choice], well and good. But you don't have to know the Mysteries of the Goddess to help somebody find out why [expletives deleted] Pagemaker / Windows generates a GPF every time someone tries to print a specific document, or to dig a phone number out of a database program.
A permanent pagan Temple funded by contributions from the pagan community could provide secure meeting places for all the local pagan groups, ranging in size from conference rooms to full scale halls for big / public rituals. These meeting places wouldn't have to be magickally reconstituted from scratch every time a ritual is held, or realistically, put together with a fair amount of hard work by people with other demands on their time. Ritual tools, props, materials could actually be either left in place or put in convenient storage without fear of non-pagans trashing it. I suggest renting a good sized building... with lots of enclosed spaces of different sizes. Ideally, this would be on a large wooded property... but you take what you can get. Industrial/commercial space... e.g. a warehouse or ex-factory, is more likely to be available and cheaper by the square foot. If you go industrial, put lots of potted plants of various sizes in the back area...
Security, both human and electronic could be provided, and is a very good idea, there are going to be people who will not like a permanent visible pagan presence in a community. Some of these might show up inside the building, a HPS during a ritual could simply push a panic button to get help. Then, there's safe parking...
Private permanent spaces within the Temple could be rented by pagan groups so that everything could be left in place between events, these groups could use the common spaces for larger events. (e.g. a handfasting)
Pagan singles groups for socializing purposes? Why not?
A library (either in-house only) or lending library could be provided, particularly including the reference books we all need to access occasionally, but don't need on a day-to-day basis. How to make sure the books come back? Interesting question... perhaps a lock of the hair or drop of blood of the borrower should be kept along with the library card application? ;-)
Groups using the Temple could supplement this with their own libraries, perhaps renting private permanent spaces within it or storage spaces in the facility to do so.
Other support resources could be put on the premises, medium to high-end desktop publishing tools ,color printers, light tables, maybe a commercial copier (collator and other goodies), the most useful of which would be a centralized and secured pagan community database for an area to allow ALL or subgroups of pagans to be contacted for things ranging from event announcements to emergencies, both political and other.
A pagan writing material for the pagan community or putting a newsletter together for her Circle would have somewhere to bring her disks for reformatting to paper, not only not having to pay $10/hour for a commercial DTP service, but not having to worry about who might be looking over her shoulder. Particularly important if there's a problem and she has to call for help, it's a bit hard to diagnose a DTP problem without looking at the contents of the document. Further, the database could have a mailing list abstracted from it in mailing label forms with barcodes to send out a newsletter if that's what's needed and the person could use the organization bulk mailing permit with postal bar code label software to save serious money on postage.
I recommend use of the Web, mailing lists, and that your organization might want to consider using its own Internet server with special care taken about firewalls for internal communication using xDSL or cable modem to get to the Net if security appears to be a problem, or if you want to host services not available on your ISP, e.g. a RealVideo server. In most cases, your organization can run on an external ISP with your site appearing as an individual user subdirectory or as a separate domain name (e.g. www.yourpagantemple.org) without a problem.
Calendar listings (Reclaiming in the SF Bay Area runs a call-in calendar. The bad news is that it is a LONG list... painful if you're calling LD to find out about a specific event!) provided by phone, newsletter, and Webpage is a good place to start.
Your group can use a Website for:
You can get a guestbook, a counter, and I think chat and discussion forum services and other goodies from Toolzone.
You can get simple free Website tracking from Extreme-DM which will let you know what ISPs your users are coming from, when they come, how many, and what sites linked to yours or search engines are referring users to your site.
Remember that E-mail IS NOT PRIVATE! If the political climate changes in a way that suddenly makes it dangerous to be pagan, you may NEED to use encryption to communicate privately and safely with other pagans. You can get it at the PGP Website, versions of PGP will run on any common personal computer platform. If your ISP doesn't like crypto, find another one run by honest people. No honest sysadmin has a need to know the content of what goes through her facility; a law enforcement warrant can be met by turning over messages from the affected user in the original encrypted form.
This support system can be used to handle inquiries from newbies: "What is this thing called Asatru and how can I become part of it?" (By the way, Asatru is used as an example here mostly because it's one of the most obvious of the non-Wiccan pagan traditions.)
"Why don't you give us your address and we'll mail you a package. Or are you on the Net? If you are, go to [this web address]"
(a few days later: "OK, I read the package. Sounds like it's for me. How can I find a group?"
Somebody checks the database and calls an Asatru group that doesn't have a Webpage as yet that is taking new members, group leader checks for an available room when he's available, or perhaps the group has rented a permanent office for the group / group leader to keep a library and supplies in. The next call might be from a prospective Santerian or somebody who wants to find a local OTO lodge. Hopefully, the service will be the same.
From a new user standpoint:
Newbie gets call:"I run an Asatru group, why don't we meet at the Temple at 7PM Saturday in Room 234 and we can talk about this in
person?"
There are advantages to not having to meet prospective group members at a regular meeting or ritual at the home of a group member or even in a public place, the obvious one is that if this person is obviously nuts, meeting this person hasn't placed a member(s) of the group at the particular risks going with having an unsuitable person knowing where a group member lives. There are advantages to not necessarily having to use private homes or rent space on an event-by-event basis for events. There are advantages to not having to worry about finding pagan-friendly public meeting space providers.
Note 1 - General interest classes of the sort some pagan bookstores could provide can also be provided in the meeting rooms, fee based or voluntary donations would be in order, these classes could be provided by covens, groups, individuals... Covens could review instructors and curriculums and recommend specific training classes for new members and prospective ones, class listings could say "Recommended by XXXXXXXXX Coven..." They could even require that certain courses be taken by people who want to advance to various degrees. Being able to tap into a network of pagan classes means that an HPS/HP doesn't have to provide all this information to members themselves, especially good in areas where the HPS/HP just don't know that much.
This could also be helpful in providing places for people with information of interest in a pagan context, for instance, "I'd like to do a talk on cryptography for pagans, could you put this on your calendar and provide me with some space?" "No problem, is xx/xx/xxxx suitable? Good, you'll be in room 13 and we'll get it onto the calendar and announcement mailing list." or services "I'm an attorney, if your pagans have problem with religious based employment discrimination, give me a call" or donations of goods/services to make them available in a place where they will be available to the pagan community as a whole AND would get a piece of paper entitling them to a tax deduction from the IRS / state tax agencies from a place with the right IDs known to these agencies.
"This is Barney The Dinosaur Memorial Hospital. We've got a Wiccan (substitute any other tradition you like) who's dying alone from out of town and she's asking for a High Priestess... could you help?" If you happen to be that Wiccan, (substitute any other tradition you like) wouldn't it be nice if the hospital had someone to call?
The charitable stuff would be good for a pagan Temple as well... a place for pagans to donate, and ... help for individual pagans and ... food pantries (tied into the local free food network) would be a good way for pagans not only to do good in the larger community, BUT TO GET PUBLIC CREDIT FOR IT AS PAGANS!!!
Even a Xtian who is in need who thinks we are all evil devil worshipers will have trouble continuing to believe that after going to a place with a giant pentacle at the door, going to a side door, and getting a basket of food from nice, friendly, caring pagans who look like normal people with no attempts to convert her to anything.
Counseling services? I see this as a referral service for pagans who need help, this is what databases and Rolodexes are for, get a listing of people willing to help, if paid professional clergy are available, they can be a primary resource. However, a lot of volunteer help of this and other sorts would come forward if there were only some sort of framework which would give them something to volunteer for, a number to call or an e-mail contact address to volunteer at, and a place to go to perform one's services. With the right kind of setup, we could even provide places for pagans to perform court-ordered "community service".
Christian churches have permanent arrangements to provide child care during services. Why can't we? Perhaps this facility should have permanent child care facilities (Nothing fancy, just a room with toys and supplies and volunteer or paid staff to run it) built into it to care for kids too young to participate in ritual. Paid staff during core times? A permanent child care group allowed to use the premises free or at reduced rates in exchange for providing child care free to members of organizations using our facilities? What does the community as a whole want to pay for?
A pagan (substitute an appropriate day) "Sunday School"? (for kids accompanied by parents or who have given written permission.)
Parochial schools are possible in a pagan context.
A single media contact point if a story comes up that appears to involve a pagan or the occult would be a very good thing, particularly stories about pagan discrimination or spectacular crimes involving a person who claims to be a "witch", or worse, to be a member of a group known to be associated with the Temple.
Think outside the box. Maybe local pagans could use self-defense or firearms safety classes, especially if the political climate starts changing in a nasty direction. Remember that at this point, George Bush Jr. is making loud noises of the sort a GOP captive of the Religious Right make. (1/23/2000) Do they represent personal conviction? Is he likely to decide if he becomes President that whatever attacking pagan rights (e.g. in the military) is a cheap way of keeping right-wing crazy support? We don't know. I merely cite this as a reminder that a relatively good situation cound turn bad unbelievably fast. Not to say that there aren't current examples of religious discrimination even now (see my regular pagan page for links to current trouble, but things are relatively quiet right now.
What services do pagans in an area need? What are pagans willing to pay for? That's a regional question, each region of pagans needs to answer it for themselves. It is imaginable (though unlikely) that some very large, very well funded pagan communities might be able to pool resources to build a Christian megachurch style support structure. That would be worth seeing. If the pagan population in a region decide to work together as a whole to put together a pagan support structure, it'll cost a lot of time and a lot of money. I think that our return on this time might be amply repaid.
Others might simply pool resources to rent a small building or portion of a larger one, with volunteer help to keep things going, this is done a lot now.
Settle these questions yourselves, it's your group... I'm just giving you what questions I think need to be asked.
My take on a Temple question is that a Temple could give us a physical / resource / informational / support structure where the entire pagan community in a region can focus for mutual support, and paid staff (not necessarily clergy) would be helpful to make this structure work.
Meetings of the group, say a Board of Trustees, running the Temple could also provide a valuable regular forum for pagan leadership and others to discuss in person things of interest to the entire pagan community. Casual meetings between pagan group leaders of different denominations meeting in the hall on the way to different meeting rooms would also be of value. Then, there are the business and personal networking advantages to pagans who can meet other pagans outside their own groups and traditions casually as they are waiting or using common facilities. This is one important advantage Xtians derive from church membership. I think we could make good use of this as well.
This would facilitate the growth of the internal networks that turn a potential pagan community from a bunch of scattered individuals into a greater real community. Be nice to be able to do this outside the big rituals on the traditional holidays.
Paul and Michele (besnode@netcom.com) wrote:
>Not at all. I'm simply observing that it is true. I think even a casual survey of the modern Craft community reveals that the demographics have radically changed over the last 20 years or so. More and more today, there are people in the community who can only be called "lay Pagans." You see them at every public ritual -- well-intentioned folk who love the Gods, but who have absolutely no interest, nor time if they did have the interest, for serious commitment to the Craft. They attend public gatherings because they find the ideals of the Craft attractive and in tune with their own religious experience, but they do not have the bone-deep NEED that IMO is the hallmark of a true Priest of any faith.
[this is from a subsequent post of mine on this thread]
[BTW, thanks for the term "lay Pagan". It's a useful concept, don't be surprised to see it go into the common pagan vocabulary. This is the largest part of our community, probably most of the people who lurk on this newsgroup and the other on-line pagan conferences I participate in as user or moderator.](5 years later: even more true now.)
A pagan group of a dozen or two members isn't going to build a Temple. However, the majority of pagan groups and "lay Pagans" in a community coming together collectively could build a Temple. A "lay Pagan" might be willing to devote money and even time on an occasional basis in order to have access to a facility to worship in, it's a lot less hassle than the plug-ins one has to have in order to find even the regular big open public rituals.
[This is less true than it used to be, but finding them either requires connections or being good at Web search engines, making the happy assumption that the pagan groups holding the rituals remembered to list with the big search engines.]
If you are a pagan Webmistress / Webmaster, REMEMBER TO LIST YOUR SITE ON THE MAJOR WEB SEARCH ENGINES if you want people to find your site. At this point, this means Altavista,Lycos,Excite,Hotbot,and hipper people are migrating to FAST Search and Google. Each of those sites has an "Add URL" link, usually at the bottom of the page. Use it. Try to get listed on Yahoo, but don't hold your breath as to whether they'll list you or not.
A "barnraising" and party afterwards to build or fix up a structure for pagan purposes might be kind of fun mixed with the work that might attract "lay Pagans" from all over your region. Some "lay pagans" might be even willing to help on a regular basis or occasionally with tasks that don't take deep knowledge or committment, but do require skills they happen to have. More will be happy to send a check or bill a donation to a credit card as long as they believe they are helping something worthwhile and expecially if they know that nobody's going to argue the tax deduction.
Basically, a structure like this in a community could give a "lay Pagan" an environment where she could participate meaningfully as a pagan in the same way a typical Xtian who only goes to church on Easter, Christmas, other major holidays does. Perhaps "lay pagans" could be persuaded to go to major fundraising events to raise a "Pagan Temple". Especially if "name" pagans were presiding, or "name" entertainers were persuaded to donate time.
How to set it up? Who pays? How much? Who gets to use it and what for? What uses should be free to all groups and what should groups pay the organization providing the services to, and how?
That's an area by area question. There is no single answer that will solve the problems and fill the needs of all areas.
That's a restatement of the question that started this thread.
That's an OPEN question. The basic answer is that if your group or your group combined with others wants it and can pay for it, they should. However, becoming an employer is a hassle. An umbrella temple group can make this a lot easier on you.
This kind of support structure would make it a lot easier to provide a permanent staff and/or permanent clergy if that's in order. A pagan community as a whole setting something like this up could provide centralized bookkeeping / tax / payroll services and accounting for tax-deductible donations within its context, a group of Santerian groups could choose to use it to collect and account for donations used to pay a Priestess, a group of Wiccan congregations within a tradition could do the same, other Wiccan traditions, Asatru, ... It has to be done this way in a pagan community, nobody knows the rites and rituals of all pagan religions and traditions.
Setting up the kind of system that will support paid religious professionals or lay staff is a hassle and costs to set up and will cost on a regular basis to keep running. I'm suggesting that the entire pagan community in an area should set up one system to handle it, share the costs, and the individual groups and voluntary associations between groups should decide what to do with it and how to pay for it.
If enough of the Wiccan groups in an area, for instance, decide to support a full time minister for whatever purpose and can actually agree on the same person, this gives them a way to do this.
A group / groups that wants to devote specific funds to pay a full-time HPS might set up ACCOUNT #666 , SF BAY AREA GODDESS TEMPLE ASSOCIATION (SFBAGTA). This would take filling out an application form, checking off the appropriate options defining what the group wants to pay for, and submitting it and a check/money order/cash to the organization secretary.
People would:
Perhaps a benefits package for those organizations who want to pay for one could be structured as well. One will probably be necessary for those who work full-time on payroll to maintain the temple in any case. This has gotten easier now, there are several companies on the Web which will allow you to set up benefit programs and maintain them via forms available via Web brower. An example is [I'll fill this in later]
Of course, any groups which prefer not to participate in the structure and do the tax-exempt organization work and the accounting and the dealing with IRS themselves are free to. Nobody has to join the group, and members / member organizations don't have to use the services it provides.
BTW, there are many software packages designed for churches to keep track of donations, membership, tax / accounting / payroll. Some are even shareware. These could be used to serve our community as well as they do the Xtians.
>What I see is that the only folks who really need such services are the newbies, and they are, naturally, least likely to wish to pay for them, *not* being committed members of anything.
Somehow, I don't see newbies in need of systems to set up payroll for clergy. :-)
> It's the experienced folks who are being expected to pay, and sometimes being accused of selfishness for not paying... but get almost no benefit from the services to be provided.
So figure out how to provide services that the experienced folks can use that they wouldn't be better off getting for themselves. I just listed some. Others are possible. With proper design, it should be possible to work out a structure that the experienced will derive far more benefit from than newbies, just as learning about one's religion and magickal techniques provides benefits to the experienced.
Wouldn't it be a good thing to have access to a library with reference books and other specialized materials you aren't going to use more than once in a long while, but are unlikely to be found in a public library or to stay in one if they purchased it? The problem with pagan books in public libraries is that Xtians check them out to destroy them, and pagans check them out and keep them. A reference section of books that don't get checked out would be good as well as a lending library.
It think it would be easier if the proposed Pagan clergy were not thought of in the same terms that Christian clergy are. Christian clergy serve as almost a go-between for God and their congregation. A Pagan clergy would be more of a support staff.
Actually, so is a Christian clergy, in most cases. I doubt that more than 2% of even a serious, devout Christian minister's time is spent in either group or individual prayer to any Deity for any purpose.
They are:
I would like it if their was a physical building or space in most major cities that I could go to as a sort of Pagan community center. It's purpose would be more practical than religious. Some Pagan bookstores sort of serve this purpose as a meeting place, but they don't generally offer counseling, do marriages, visit people in prison, etc.
That's a summary of what I've said above. My point is that MOST services which are of use to the pagan community as a whole are NOT specifically clerical (as in clergy) services that require a HP / HPS within a pagan religion or tradition.
But suppose us ordinary working pagans were to see a potential benefit, that we were willing to pay for ... I still haven't seen any proposals that allow us to control the use of our money. It seems to me vital to have an organization such that those paying the bills determine:
>I don't want to see the potential clergy having a large say in these matters. I don't want them organizing the financial meetings. I'd rather not even see them determining clergy qualifications. The most I'd give them would be the same vote (each) as each working stiff who pays the bills. No extra influence for being more vocal and more aware of the issues.
That's how it is done in most Xtian churches. Usually, the final financial decisions, including hiring and firing of ministers is done by a Board of Deacons elected by the church members or equivalent. (The Catholic Church is the big exception to this, all the decisions are made by the church hierarchy.) I regard the "no extra influence" is a non-issue, if the minister, whether Xtian or pagan knows where the roof leaks and knows where to get the people and discounts on supplies, naturally what the minister has to say in a meeting to discuss the problem is going to be listened to rather carefully.
Perhaps the model we use should be a democratic model structured as a pagan regional umbrella organization whose voters are dues paying members paying a minimum of $XX a year, with something like student / unemployed members, regular members, sustaining members... nonvoting memberships for business / corporate groups who'd like to be affiliated... ("We'll be happy to put you in our "corporate" membership list, this will also give you a listing in our Pagan Yellow Pages...) Check your local PBS station, it's probably organized like this.
Voting on major policy questions by E-mail (PGP signed) or paper mail or via secured (https / shttp) Web server on major questions could be worked out. Day to day questions would be handled by the paid staff / elected director, enough annoyed members would be able to propose a removal and change the director by majority vote if there's a major problem. You can NOT micromanage a structure through the democratic process, it was never designed for that. That's generally how the big non-profits do it, by vote among regular dues-paying members. Perhaps the way to do this is via an elected Board of Trustees.
Perhaps a non-profit corporate model with each share of stock purchased or awarded to members for services buying one vote would be in order.
These are just a couple of ideas.
Different models should be created for the needs of the different areas and groups and individuals setting it up. This document is intended to suggest new possibilities most people who'd like more practical benefit from our religions probably haven't thought of.
This is not the first time in the history of religion that the questions of how to make a religious non-profit accountable to its members, structure it, or raise funds from members to pay for it have been asked. This is not the first time in the history of religion that a transition from all volunteer to partially volunteer, partially full-time paid clergy have been done. There are people who've been there, done that. If you are part of a group that's come together to do this, find some that'll work for or with your group. An ex-minister who's now pagan or even a friendly Xtian may have a lot of useful advice for you, take the advice that fits your needs.
How do the Buddhists get their temples up? There are probably fewer Buddhists (or Muslims) per capita than there are pagans in any defined area. They have temples, we generally don't. Many of our people are just as dedicated and care just as much and have just as much or little disposable income as we. Why do they have places to worship, frequently owned by the congregations (and the bank) and we don't?
In part, I think it is because many of us are trying to re-invent the wheel in figuring out how to provide a physical structure and organizational support structure for this kind of situation.
Not all Xtian or Buddhist or for that matter, Wiccan or pagan religious organizational experience is going to be relevant to your area's specific needs, the pagan structures I postulate here are going to be used by a lot of disparate pagan groups, what these groups will have in common respect for the Goddess and a pagan label. This kind of broad base will be needed to get enough of us together to be able to chip in a few bucks a week (if a pagan group can sell tithing to its members... cool!!!) to make something like this work.
Do we need a national organization on the order of the Southern Baptist Convention (minus the dogmatic aspects!) to provide Washington and state capital lobbying services, support for congregations, assistance in financing church construction, educational materials for Pagan Sunday schools (presumably on any day / night of the week BUT Sunday ;-)) and that sort of thing? I don't know. Perhaps this question doesn't need to be answered yet.
I think this is very important if some sort of clergy system is to be successful.
Accountability to its pagan members is important if any permanent support system for pagans / organizations that requires regular donations of money and effort is going to succeed. Nobody's goin to cough up cash on a regular basis if they don't know where the money is going and have some say as to how it will be spent.
Another 2 cents here. I guess that's 6 cents for the paid clergy fund :-)
OK, now that some of the possible services that a pagan Temple organization (including a setup for paying clergy) can provide its members has been defined:
How much money is it worth to each of the following types of pagans?
and the "lay pagan" category which will be the bulk of the (mostly inactive, except hopefully for dues-paying) membership...
Answer this question for yourself. If you can come up with reasonable answers, start looking for like-minded people. I really would like to see this happen (I live in SF Bay Area). Might even be induced to help as time / money allows me to do so.
You can't make people join something like this, you can only sell them on it... e.g. perhaps literature packages could be handed to people leaving the next area's big open ritual describing the plans and the planned membership services... enclosed with pagan magazines going to specific area codes... rent mailing lists from places like Llewelyn... make a PAGANINFO@site package available for regular E-mail, get a WWW home page... announce discreetly on appropriate Usenet newsgroups, drop in on pagan chat rooms.
At this point, you're advertising and selling a product / services to your fellow pagans. Make it a good and useful product. But remember that making a product is only half the problem, you've got to market it as well. Don't assume "if you build it, they will come".
Maybe you can provide members with a membership card that will get them access to services provided by the Temple, merchant discounts (e.g. local occult bookstores... though if your local car dealership wants to provide your group with discounts AND a percentage of profit...) on products, give them a free ad in your newsletter or on your Webspace! Look into affinity marketeting, credit cards, telephone billing arrangements, etc. How does the NRA sell itself? Whether you like them or not, THINK ABOUT IT.
Get a merchant credit card account for donations and purchase of literature / fundraising items as soon as it become apparent that you need one. Warning: DO NOT ACCEPT credit card payments via E-mail unless you require donors to encrypt their credit card numbers with your PGP key or your donation page is running on a secured Web server. (https/shttp) Doing so is DANGEROUSLY STUPID for BOTH you and the donors.
In the long run, people die. In the mainstream religion, they frequently leave bequests to their church that something of theirs will persist in doing good after their deaths. One reason why mainstream churches are so much better off financially than pagan groups with comparable or higher income levels don't is that Xtians have an obvious place to leave money for this purpose to. We should have similar mechanisms in place.
This may help you in using private property for religious purposes. There's a Federal law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. Check it out and seee if it applies to what you have in mind.
Finally, remember that while fundraising is important, remember what it is you are raising funds for and Who this is all supposed to ultimately serve.
Looks like I learned a hell of a lot more in my time as a regular Baptist churchgoer than I thought. :-) Hopefully, I've defined the issues a bit better.
Bright Blessings, A.Lizard