As someone on the hunt for my first music director job (I got laid off from my non-music day job a month and a half ago, so I determined, why not take a shot at it?), let me say thanks, Noel. This is something I'll keep in mind while I'm on the hunt.

instead of employing a musician for pay, they will just take volunteers,

I think that volunteers are always preferred by many parish employers. However, when a priest wants an adequate or better program - and also CONTROL over the musician, pay is worth it to them.

Without a written agreement and pay, the volunteer is free to do as they like and go out of control - causing havoc in a parish. Happens all the time, since they are not paid and have no reason to be reliable, qualified or hirable as a normal employee - this permeates some parishes with volunteers and hardly-qualified and poorly paid employees running the parish and maintaining it.

It is ALWAYS better to pay someone to do anything.

You just need to get to know a better class of priests. They are out there!

Man of them have never had the opportunity to experience working with a church musician. Developing that relationship is essential. If you are not comfortable with the pastor in hiring interviews, you may want to look further.

If they have been to a seminary or been assigned to a parish with a good music program, that's a good sign.

These guys often inherit a carpeted church with arm-waving cantors, everything amplified and poor choices of music - music people wanted instead of music chosen for them. If they have had a better experience they may have the guts to reform.

If, however, the pastor is involved in a building program, avoid this situation. He'll be transferred before or when it's done and the congregation will be unsettled.

If, however, the pastor is involved in a building program, avoid this situation. He'll be transferred before or when it's done and the congregation will be unsettled.

I'm sure this is true in some dioceses. Not all.

ClergetKubisz... If I could double thank you, I would.

I've got an even better solution: don't seek employment in the Catholic Church.

I slammed that door, nailed up a cross-bar, dug a moat and filled it with crocodiles.

Since then, my weight has dropped 10 pounds, my blood pressure is lower and my spiritual life is healing.

These constant, clever, endless debates about how to practically and safely navigate and survive employment in the Church are pointless.

I said nothing about abandoning my Faith. Since I quit my last Latin rite organist position, I've been attending a Ruthenian (Byzantine Catholic) church.

And, so far as I understand I'm not bound by canon law or conscience to seek employment as a musician exclusively in Roman Catholic Churches. If this is not the case, someone kindly correct me. Besides, my current full-time job is in the secular world and nothing to do with the Church. As an employer, the Catholic Church is full of abusive, officious, dysfunctional misfits with little sense of the true meaning of social justice or the dignity of work. The hypocrisy that I and many of my colleagues have not only witnessed but also directly experienced is disgusting. Unfortunately some, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty (not unlike the relationship between an abused spouse and their abuser) stay in these unhealthy employment relationships believing that either their employer will change with time, or it's really their own fault in the first place and they deserve the abusive treatment and that the Church can do no wrong, or they convince themselves if they can just tweak the situation things will get better. It's a pathology that is professionally, financially, personally and spiritually crippling.

I've slammed the door on employment in the Church, not my Faith.

Though I'm of course sympathetic to my colleagues who have posted here and the difficulties they have experienced (which are real and many have seen this)... I feel the need to weigh in - in case some youngster is reading this and is thinking "oh man.. I need to not do this for a career."

I've been doing this for 17 years - 7 as a student and 10 years full time. I've never been fired or forced out of anywhere. When I changed jobs it was moving on to either a better paying job, a parish in a more attractive place, or being 'promoted' within a Diocese. If I could go back to the beginning and start again, I would take the exact same path without hesitation.

Also come to my breakout session at the Colloquium in Minnesota about how to make a career in church music and be happy.

It's good to hear testimonies such as Matthew's, just above. Perhaps there are more. I, for one, have been a professional church musician for better than fifty-five years. There have been a few 'bumps' and unpleasantries, people I 'couldn't stand', trying incidents, etc., but there is nothing else that I would wish to have done. I have served Catholic parishes, one historic Lutheran one, a number of Episcopal ones, was the founding choirmaster of Walsingham and am still a staff organist there. Each has had its own rewards, for which I consider myself very rich and very blessed. I would never want to dwell on the matters that gave me great angst and fretment whilst 'in the fray'. It is the beauty that I was able to share, to inculcate, and the Christian culture from which I drew countless blessings that I prefer to remember.

We hear so many horror stories on our forum that one could be forgiven for viewing church music as a career, or hearing it as the Lord's calling, as a thing to be shunned. The truth probably lies in the simple human condition whereby there is going to be joy and sadness in every human endeavour, in every career and vocation, and in every life. Perhaps it seems exaggerated in the Church for the very reason that we expect the Church to be relatively free from it. The Devil and Screwtape have their greatest challenges in the very Church of God, and it is there that one can expect their finest performances.

I myself have railed in outrage here at some of the things reported of on our forum. And, there is much at which outrage is deserved. At heart, though, I, all of us, know that there are many, very many, spiritually mature, intelligently endowed, culturally conscientious priests who are a true blessing to all, who are gifts from God. And yes, there are those who aren't. The same may be said of our colleagues. Too, there are many congregations who are appreciative of the God-given beauty with which we have been gifted for to share with them.

Perhaps the wise person will keep in mind that, whilst to be here or there, or to be doing this or that, may seem or appear to be a bed of roses, it is well to remember that those roses have thorns. Indeed, are there any here who have failed, after hopping over a fence, to have discovered that the grass really is no greener there? This is, after all, a fallen world. St Paul reminds us that 'all creation (that means all space, inner and outer, and all time) groans for redemption'. No place is immune.

One of many lessons which I have learnt is not to be running from something you hate, but to find something that you love and run to it.

If you are blessed with musical gifts appropriate to the Church's worship and genuinely feel called to that service, by all means prepare for it and follow your genie, knowing full well that there will be 'ups and downs', delights and frustrations. This life is a test - and you will be tested for your mettle and integrity wherever you go.

"If, however, the pastor is involved in a building program, avoid this situation. He'll be transferred before or when it's done and the congregation will be unsettled."

This right here. This is why I don't want to take a job recently offered to me. The pastor already warned that he could be transferred at any time, and his plans to return to more traditional worship are not being well received. The pay is good, damn good for where I live. But every alarm and warning bell is going off in my head, and just thinking about the mess I'd walk into makes me want to run far away. And this is a Protestant church!

Every job has the good, bad, and the ugly. Like some others here, I've never been fired from a job-church music or otherwise. (Of course if there was an issue, and this only happened in non-music jobs, I quit before they had the chance to sack me.) A good friend and colleague recently took on a DM position at a huge and extremely wealthy mega church. THEY DIDNT PAY HIM. He believed, naively, that it would lead to a permanent position with some kind, ANY kind, of compensation. A year went by and nothing changed. He brought in professional musicians, and an entire orchestra, for their holiday programs. The church had a huge public worship service at a local arena and my friend had to coordinate everything. No money. Zero. Had any of us known what was happening, we never would have participated. They paid the musicians but not their director. I felt sick when I heard that, and relieved when my friend finally resigned from that place. Sadly, this was his first and probably last experience as a music director. Which is a shame because he is a great musician and composer, a hard worker, someone who literally gives the shirt off his back if you needed it-sometimes to his own detriment though.

As much as I would like to work in a Catholic music position, these discussions certainly make me think twice. I already know what happens when they decide for whatever reason that they don't want you and throw you out like trash. We pulled our children from Catholic school for similar issues.