Praying that the current rulings get reversed and the tax provision is maintained. This may not eliminate all the financial stress your pastor faces, but it can ensure your church is doing everything they can to help. Copy and paste this link to subscribe to Sean's PIR ministry newsletter. (see footnote) However, the amount of a pastor’s salary is only one dimension of reasonable compensation; the manner in which they are paid is of just as much interest in evaluating compensation from a legal … How is the housing treated? When a church chooses or elects a pastor, it is their sole responsibility to provide some type of compensation for that pastor. The new research on church staff salaries and budgets is amazing. It is common for pastors of extremely small congregations to earn little-to-no salary. “Christianity Today” offers some creative tips to help small congregations improve its pastor’s benefit package: Offer an extra week of vacation, a sabbatical or trips to retreats and conventions. Consider this example: A church pays their pastor a salary of $34,000 in 2000. Additionally, not all pastors have a personality that will work with these options. If a church can’t afford to pay a full-time pastor’s salary and benefits, they may consider some creative options. Over 1,200 members – $48,915 to $79,900. The average Pastor salary in South Carolina is $92,121 as of November 25, 2020, but the range typically falls between $75,704 and $104,397. 9 Principles for Creating an Annual Budget in a Small Church. Pest Control Workers $34,370/year /> 2012-2016 +6.5%. Connectional denominations, such as United Methodist and Lutheran, are governed by centralized leadership. Click To Tweet, Sean Nemecek is the West Michigan Regional Director for Pastor-in-Residence Ministries (pirministires.org). It is ultimately up to the pastor to make sure his/her needs are communicated. Whether all or part of his income must come from another job, the bivocational pastor will need the congregation to fill in some gaps. The Money Series: How Much Should Churches Spend on Their Staff? Ninety percent of churches in the United States have less than 350 people attend each week; 64 percent have less than 200. A study conducted in 1999 by the Hartford Institute for religious research found that pastors of congregations in connectional denominations earned 15 percent more than pastors of congregational churches. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. The average church size in America is 89 adults. Needless to say I was surprised at his meager salary, lack of fringe benefits and his inability to provide for his future financially. If so, this will allow you to reduce the percentage of your budget dedicated to staff pay. Big Ambitions, Small Church (Schirle – 1999) Church at History’s Hinge (Anderson – 1994) Dynamics of Small Church Ministry (Koessler – 1992) Jubilee Year of The Rural Church Program (Farley – 2004) Lessons from the small Church (Sanchez – 2004) Nature and Characteristics of the Small Membership Church (Bob I. Johnson – 2004). In my experience, it is common practice in smaller churches for the pastor’s salary to be public information. For most small churches, this means they will not be able to pay their pastor the double honor that he may deserve (1 Timothy 5:17-18). They offer no guaranteed salary, but the people of the church give toward his financial needs. Salary ranges can vary widely depending on many important factors, including education, certifications, additional skills, the number of years you have spent in your profession. Salaries of such pastors, however, typically reflect not so much what they do as the number of people in regular attendance and their economic circumstances, which affects their ability to give. In larger churches, that information is kept private. Churches are not permitted to pay the SECA tax for their pastors; however, most churches assist ministers by providing them with a Social Security/Medicare tax offset of at least 50% of the SECA tax. Learn how your comment data is processed. The Trump administration sparked an outcry this spring by allowing churches to apply for COVID-19 relief funds set aside for small businesses. Do not calculate a living wage and reduce it by taking the cost of benefits from that amount. The Rev. In some cases, this is one church with two separate memberships because they represent two denominations under one roof. I serve in a small church, 140ish in Sunday School, in rural tennessee. In one church, they placed a black box at the back of the sanctuary and the pastor had the only key. The God Ask by Steve Shadrach and Friend Raising by Betty J. Barnett are great resources for how to make this work in today’s culture. A church that is not obedient to God cannot expect God’s blessing on their mission. It can be a great partnership when carefully planned. The most basic component of church staff compensation is salary. Thom Rainer says that it takes a ratio of 76:1 – meaning an average weekly attendance of 76 is the minimum needed to pay one full-time staff member. For example, the North American Mission Board, which is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, supports pastors and mission personnel that plant new churches. Financial pressure is one of the main sources of stress among pastors. However, be sure you have budgeted for the upkeep of the building and the tax implications for the pastor. This amount can be whatever percentage of his total salary he will use, but it may be wise to keep it under 50 percent to avoid an audit by the IRS. Their pastor should see that they are being generous (Galatians 6:6-8) and not stingy. According to the Evangelical Covenant Church, a healthy congregation with a weekly average attendance of 150 people should spend 40 to 50 percent of their total budget on staff salary. In order to maintain the value of your pastor’s salary, you need to raise it with inflation every year. If, however, the church only has forty people, they will probably need to spend 55 to 65 percent of their total budget – anything above 60 percent is very risky. Kelly Tanner has been writing since 2009. Salary is a contention point for every organization, but this is especially the case for churches. Copyright 2020 Leaf Group Ltd. / Leaf Group Media, All Rights Reserved. They require making some hard choices and asking the pastor to make serious sacrifices. Price, who applied for and received between $150,000 and $200,000 in small-business stimulus funds for his church, said the program accomplished its goal, at least in his case. In this article, we will explore how much you should pay your pastor and some of the guidelines you can use to do it well. Before joining PIR, Sean served as a pastor in a local church for almost 18 years. A free inside look at Life.Church salary trends based on 312 salaries wages for 168 jobs at Life.Church. That’s a great point. is that income? Salaries posted anonymously by Life.Church employees. ChurchSalary features the largest church-specific compensation database available anywhere. Pastors that work for congregations without the resources to pay a suitable salary sometimes opt to get an additional job. The consumer price index for the Midwest region in January 2000 was almost 165. The Full List of Church Staff & Pastor Salaries Churches often struggle to determine pay levels for their pastors and staff. Remember, this living wage calculator does not include benefits (more on that later). Here are five things to consider as you plan your pastor’s salary. A church pays their pastor a salary of $34,000 in 2000. Otherwise, you will be asking your pastor to live on less value. So each church, no matter its size, should do everything in their power to ensure that their pastor is fully supplied (Philippians 4:18). For further guidance on helping you plan your staffing budget, try Guidestone’s church compensation guides and templates for financial planning. Large congregations with multiple staff can afford to pay pastors better than a church of forty that is struggling to survive. This time should be considered part of his work for the church, not something he should do in his spare time. Compute the pastor's cash salary. This means that if the church didn’t keep up with inflation, the pastor’s salary would have almost $14,000 less in perceived value. Independent, nondenominational churches with large congregations also aid smaller churches through mission programs. Check with your denomination about the plans that they offer. If these numbers are correct, then a large percentage of American churches will struggle to pay a full-time pastor. It seems to me that there are competing values here. When these five factors are considered, the church will have a good picture of what it can pay. This allows the pastor to do the preaching and shepherding of the campus church while much of the administration and programs are handled by the large church. This provides an equivalent of Social Security/Medicare taxes that the church would pay on behalf of a lay church worker. As a third-generation pastor, he loves to serve pastors in the areas of personal soul care, leadership, and consulting and workshops for churches or leadership teams. Church polity also impacts the size of pastors’ salaries. 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