October 2, 2026
DALLAS (BP) – A $100,000 inflation relief fund for Baptist General Convention of Texas pastors was depleted within 24 hours of its availability, the convention announced July 13 as inflation reached its highest point in decades at 9.1%.
Two hundred pastors received grants averaging $500 each in the program announced July 11 and financed through a Lilly Endowment fund not available in other states, said Tammy Tervooren, a contracted grant administrator with the financial health team of the Texas Baptists Center for Ministerial Health.
“I don’t think we were surprised. It did go really quickly,” she said. “We’ve been working several years now with pastors and we kind of had seen this coming. If you lay out a map, you see it’s been a struggle for pastors already.
“Pastors aren’t in it for the money. They do it because they’re called. They were already stretched pretty thin, a lot of them. [Inflation] is not helping. It’s kind of exacerbated.”
Convention Treasurer and CFO Ward Hayes announced the grants on July 11, and they were all gone by July 12.
“Helping our pastors stay strong spiritually, emotionally, financially, and in all ways remains a high priority for Texas Baptists,” Hayes said in announcing the grant. “That we are able to offer this grant at this time is a tremendous blessing.”
Grants were awarded to pastors from a broad range of churches demographically, Tervooren said, including pastors leading large and small churches in urban and rural areas. Grant recipients were not available for comment, but Tervooren said pastors most commonly said they had trouble buying groceries and affording gas, especially to make hospital visits that can be 30 miles or more away in rural areas.
Pastors have been compensating by working part-time jobs in addition to full-time pastorates, increasing household income by wives working, minimizing travel and hospital visits, reducing grocery purchases, and even donating plasma twice weekly for compensation.
“These pastors… they’re giving everything they have, their whole lives to the church,” Tervooren said. “And I think we should be generous to our pastors, as generous as we can. If the church can do more, then they should do everything they can for the pastor, everything possible.”
The Baptist General Convention of Texas has participated in the Lilly Endowment grant program since 2018. While the grant expires in 2022, Tervooren said the BCGT hopes to receive a grant extension, especially to continue its financial education program helping pastors and churches manage budgets and compensation packages.
“Our hope and prayer is there will be a fund of some sort to help pastors,” she said. Pastors are frequently paid wages that make it difficult to manage financially, convention financial counselors have learned.
Among Baptist General Convention of Texas pastors only 59% of pastors receive a housing allowance, only 37% receive cash allowances for personal expenses, 36% receive a retirement plan or pension and 34% receive health insurance, Tervooren said the convention learned in a 2018 survey.
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