"Becky R. McMillan noted, in her report titled “What do clergy do all week?,” that preparing for preaching and worship is, indeed, the most time-consuming task clergy perform. But clergy also find the time to provide pastoral care, attend meetings, train people for ministry and assist in denominational and community-wide events. A majority of full-time Protestant pastors reported working between 42 and 63 hours a week. During that week, the two biggest tasks were preparing for Sunday morning services (one-third of their time) and providing pastoral care (nearly one-fourth of their time). from http://religioninsights.org/what-clergy-do-all-week
I don't think that paid pastors can be justified at all. There is no intermediatory between God and humans (including Jesus). People have always had direct access to God and require no messiah / christ or pastor / priest. Jews have always thought that and it is self-evident in the Old Testament.
The pastor (priest) became important in the past because he (sexism intended) and only he could change the bread and wine into the human flesh of Jesus to be consumed by would be Christian cannibals. In the past he (sexism intended) was also the best educated in the congregation.
Today, many of the people witin the church are better educated than or equally educated to the pastor. Nor are pastors required as much for weddings and funerals anymore as most of these milestones in life are now done by other people outside the church. As an educator I know that it does not take 6 days to prepare a 15 minute sermoan for Sundays. Nor does it take all week to organise a Sunday service. Some clergy do no pastoral visits or counselling whatsoever (like my former Baptist pastor who placed people with a psychologist in the congregation). One only has to read the Brontes who were children of a pastor to understand that pastors at their period of history (according to their novels and letters) spent most of their time amusing themselves and indulging in gossip. A time motion study would be very interesting. The average size of a congregation in Australia is between 60-70 people. ( See http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?sitemapid=131) It is not difficult to manage such a small amount of people. A manager skilled in Human Resouces would do a better job in most cases and would only require one day a week to organise the whole week.
The care I have recieved from pastors has mostly been substandard at best and harmful for the majority. By all means point me to a time and motion study on what pastors REALLY do - not what they SAY they do but what has been measured as their actual activity. I know of no such study but it should be done.
