hen the more than 300 Adventist administrators, pastors, teachers, and laymembers come together for the North American Division (NAD) Year-end Meeting, November 3-6, in Silver Spring, Maryland, they will address a number of issues that will have widespread impact for denominational employees throughout the continent and Bermuda.

The year-end meeting of the NAD Executive Committee is the church's highest business session for North America. Committee members vote policies and resolutions, hear reports, elect division officers and departmental leaders, and approve the next year's budget.

This year's meeting is particularly important because the committee will discuss various ways to implement the new Philosophy of Remuneration that was voted at Annual Council 2002 in October. Under the new policy, each of the church's 13 world division's determine their own wage scale, within certain parameters.

The committee will also discuss several items from the NAD Remuneration Taskforce Report that were presented at last year's meeting. One significant item from the report was a change in the basic wage percentages on which ministerial and educational salaries are paid (to be implemented in 2003). For example, ordained ministers, teachers, and academy principals are now paid at 150 percent of the NAD monthly wage factor of $2,312.*

Officers and departmental personnel of local conferences, unions, and the division are paid at slightly higher percentages. Under the new plan the basic salary percentage for ordained ministers, which was 150 percent, would be set at 100 percent, with a monthly wage factor of $3,468.

Of the 15 recommendations in the taskforce report, only six were approved last year, including the change in the wage percentages. Other recommendations were referred to appropriate committees and will now be brought to the NAD Executive Committee for approval. However, outgoing NAD secretary Harold Baptiste anticipates that some of voted recommendations may be amended or modified.

Among those items coming back to the committee is a proposal to do away with the division's five cost-of-living wage categories. They would be replaced by one single wage scale and an additional cost-of-housing wage supplement determined by Economic Research Institute's housing index. Another proposal coming to the committee would expand the pastor's maximum remuneration (of 100 percent) by a few percentage points, allowing pastors with large churches, or those who oversee a pastoral staff, to earn slightly more. Even if the measure is voted, each local conference would decide how it would be implemented.

In the area of retirement, the committee will discuss a proposed change in the employer contribution to the employee retirement package. The proposal calls for employer contributions to be based on actual wage category for employees, including cost-of-living adjustments. Current contributions are based on the lowest of the division's five cost-of-living wage scales.

Along with the above policies, the executive committee is also expected to elect a new division secretary to replace Harold Baptiste, who was elected as a General Conference vice president.

^* This is the lowest of the five cost-of-living wage categories used to pay pastors and teachers in North America.

_________________________
Carlos Medley is news and online editor for the Adventist Review.