One of the roles of the Prayer League’s Board of Directors is to establish allowance levels for our workers around the world. In the January issue of Together in Prayer our Executive Director reported that the Board had established a task force to review our allowance structure, and he asked you to pray that God’s Spirit would guide its work. Thank you for praying!
The task force surveyed nearly all of our workers, both overseas and in North America, asking how well current allowance levels were meeting their daily needs and also investigating the adequacy of medical and retirement benefits. They also researched international variations in costs of living and asked our workers to provide monthly dollar amounts for various categories of their expenses. As expected, this part of the evaluation revealed large disparity in the cost to maintain a minimal standard of living from one area to another.
Our workers do not receive guaranteed salaries – nor do our workers, or the Prayer League, solicit funds. Consequently, if funds received in a given month are insufficient to pay full allowances, we go without. Our workers see this as an aspect of trusting God to provide what we need. If God does not provide, we do not need it, is the prevailing attitude.
However, while the workers responded that the Lord was meeting their needs, it was also apparent that couples were being led to take steps to reduce costs, or augment income, in ways that distracted them from devoting their full attention to ministry.
The task force reported their findings to the Board at their June meeting, and the Board voted for two changes. First, the base allowance from which all allowances are determined was increased by a small percentage. Secondly, a two-tiered allowance structure was established in order to compensate at least partially for cost of living disparities, the base allowance for the second tier being 15% higher. We ask for your prayers as management does the hard work of enacting the changes, as the task force does further work evaluating other aspects of our allowance and benefit structure, and as we trust the Lord to provide for these increased allowances according to his gracious will.