I'm not a pastor but I don't think that in most cases pastor's get paid amazingly and the church keeps all the money. At least not in my province. I attend the biggest church in my city and the pastor I know personally gets paid 40,000 a year which is a decent wage but its nothing luxurious considering each month the church gets over a million in donations. I am also on leadership with the church, go to all the major debates and discussions. I know the church spends almost everything it makes on the community whether it be funding missionaries which my church has around 100. Or running local shelters, funding the creation of more church's and charities.

Oh, I don't disagree that most pastors are lower-middle wage earners. The average pastoral salary in the US is around $35,000. However, once you add in benefits like health insurance in the US, as well as a stipend for housing, your adding up a bit of money. At the church I used to go to (and am credentialed at), the pastoral leadership running about ~150 in attendance were making about $100,000/yr between all expenses. That is a crap ton of money for pastors. If its a larger church, I fully understand it, but if your running sub-200, it can be a huge part of expenses.

I believe last year the church's budget was like 14-million dollars spent on outreach and various other programs. Again I'm not 100% how much our senior pastor makes but I know the guy fairly well and he's not making a killing, if he is he does a good job at hiding it and living a fairly normal lifestyle.

Thats great. I don't disagree that if your running six or seven figures a year that the pastoral leadership shouldn't be paid, but most churches aren't that large. Again, where I live, your looking at many churches spending 70-80% of their budget on the pastor and upkeep, then 20-30% on all minstry expenses, from Sunday School books to whatever outreaches are there....Which is just egregoius to me. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a job. I've been on paid staff and volunteer, and IMO, I enjoy doing the same job for free, because it frees up incredible amounts of money for more useful purposes.

Infact I have friends in the congregation who live way better and more luxurious lives than any of our pastors do. Now do the pastors live in a rundown cheap apartment like myself, no but they don't live in mansions either. They make a middle class income to my knowledge.

Again, that is fine. I don't begrudge a pastor for earning a living, but I've just seen the opposite ends of it as a leader in multiple churches. Its all about balance - churches that spend a ton of money on upkeep and their pastor will never grow and help the community. Where I live, you essentially have two kinds of churches. Those that are growing, and those that aren't. 100% of the churches that are growing have massive outreach programs and are doing all kinds of great things for their community - soup kitchens, car shows, harvest festivals, and even inter-denominational youth events which draw hundreds to services. Comparatively, the churches that are dying or stagnant have no outreach, and simply are catering to the dead & dying who don't really care about witnessing to people through action.

That being said I can speak for not only my church, because my young adults pastor also worked at one of the biggest church's in the province I believe he said like 6,000+ attended. But he certainly wasn't making a killing their either and I am familiar with the church's community programs I'd assume since their pastors aren't making the money that it is probably spent like it is at my church.

Also running the church costs alot of money. When you have a church my size the electricity bills and construction costs to keep upgrading because the congregation keeps growing. These costs account for a couple million a year in itself. Not being spent on pastors or leaders but being invested in the structure and maintaining services.

I can testify to that. Very expensive running a church. Again, that is why I believe paying pastors should be one of the latter things to do. When you put ministry in front of your own livelihood, it yields a lot of church growth. The church my wife attended was planted in our town just 10 years ago by a pastor that had a vision to come to Circleville and start a church - having never been to the city before. He rented a building, got a job as a janitor at the school. They are now the 2nd largest church in the county, and run about 400 people a week, give or take - with the median age around 28-30 years old.

However I do know of Mega church in the US who have 100,000+ members and I'm not 100% sure where all the donations go. But honestly not many people get rich from pastoring at least not in North America. A few do, but that isn't the majority.

Again, don't disagree. But again, many do have wrong priorities. 

Many churches do that. In the denomination I am credentled through, there is a specific payscale for senior pastors that is supposed to be adhered to, which usually includes living arrangements and the like.

Unfortunately, many churches have enough money to pay their pastor + bills, and that is it. Therefore, all monies go to the church, and not to helping others. At the church I pastor, we believe (personal belief, not one we take as theology) that refusal of salary is the better way to go because it frees up a lot of capital for helping others. Again, the church I am at spends far more money helping the impoverished than churches many times our size, and some secular organizations - all because we put that $4,000-$5,000/mo into ministries instead of pastors. In my opinion, its worked out fantastic.

Are you a Bosniak? Or Serbian?

As for the Christians of the Middle East, for other people's info:

- The Christians within my fellow Palestinians/Jordanians are mainly Greek Orthodox (fellow Palestinians by ethnicity, and fellow Jordanians by nationality).

- Syrians are also mostly Greek Orthodox, but they have Syriacs/Assyrians, Armenians who belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, and Maronite Catholics.

- The Lebanese Christians are mainly Maronites, with some Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic.

- Iraqi Christians mainly belong to the Eastern Rite churches

- Christianity in the gulf countries comes from foreigners mainly.

- Egyptian Christians are mainly Coptic Orthodox.

- Sudanese Christians are mainly Anglican or Roman Catholic, but with a notable number of Coptics.

- Libyan Christians are Coptics.

- Algerian Christians are both Protestant and Roman Catholic.

- Moroccans I think are Coptics as well.

Do any religions demand that?