Honorarium.

A rather funny thing happened on yesterday. I received an email from a pastor inviting me to speak at a leadership event his church was scheduled to have later this fall, and he wanted to know what my honorarium was.

Couldn’t help but smile as I read it since I wrote about honorariums in my book, 83 Things I Wish The Black Church Would Stop Doing.

For those of you have not yet read it, thought I include that
particular excerpt today for you to enjoy:

I personally have no problem with churches who provide guest speakers or artists with some form of payment for the services they render.

That is more than honorable.
Hence the word.

However, just not sure if many of our churches know what the word ‘honorarium’ actually means.

Honorarium derives from the Latin word, honorarius, which means a payment for a service (like public speaking) on which custom or propriety forbids a price to be set.

Simpy put, honorariums were a bestowed honor, not the payment of a prescribed fee.

Big difference.

Honor due upon request is not honor at all.
Honor due and given without request is honor indeed.

If an artist or speaker requests a church to pay them a specific amount of money to render a particular service, then that exchange should not be called an honorarium.

That’s called a bill.

And just in case you were wondering what my response to that church was, I told him that I do not charge an honorarium to speak. After hearing that, the pastor decided to buy a copy of my book for every leader on his team.

Needless to say, I was truly honored by that.

Related posts:

1. The Quest For Maturity.
2. Resistance.
3. Cancelled.
4. Setting.
5. The Bridge (Part One)

Category: Creative Leadership, Shameless Plugs