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5 Questions About How Much to Pay Your Church Staff | SBS Accounting & Advisors


In this video, we will discuss five questions often asked when considering how much to pay your church staff.

While we can’t help you select your church staff, we do feel that we can help you find the answers to some of these questions about how much to pay your church staff. So, without further delay, let’s jump right in.

Question 1: How much should we pay our staff?

Well the Bible is pretty clear that “The laborer is worthy of his reward”, and in 1 Timothy 5:17-18, Paul warns us to honour our elders and to not “muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn”. We believe this to mean that you should pay your staff well. It might be a good idea to look at the community around you and compare the salaries of those who do similar work. I can’t tell you exactly what you should pay each person, but I would caution you from paying them too little, and would advise you to keep in mind the amount of work you are asking them to do, and how many people you’re asking them to serve.

If you would like to check out some additional resources on how much to pay your staff, please check out the link in our salary! Or if you’d rather talk to a specialist, please contact us directly at PHONE NUMBER (***will be on screen too***) and we would love to discuss this with you and see if there’s any way that we can help you further!

Question 2: What if we can’t afford to pay our staff well?


You may need to take a look at the amount of staff you have and reconsider it. It’s better to have a smaller group of highly qualified, properly compensated staff than a large group of moderately qualified and under compensated staff. You might find that finding the right staff member can lead to them developing a volunteer base to help. There’s a common saying out there that “leaders attract leaders”.

Question 3: What percentage of the budget should be committed to staff?

This is a loaded question, so let’s unpack it carefully. Ultimately this is going to depend on your specific church, but one thing to keep in mind is whether or not your church has debt. If you are paying off debt, it would be wise to lower the percentage paid to your staff, and if you don’t have debt, then maybe consider raising the percentage. We recommend staying somewhere around 45-55%.

Another beneficial practice is to build the next salary into your budget before hiring. In other words, take a year to make sure you can afford that salary before hiring the next staff member.

Question 4: Should we be concerned with how other churches compensate their staff?

This is another loaded question. It is true that at some point as your church grows, and as your staff becomes more and more experienced, it would probably be wise for you to begin to compare their salaries to comparable salaries at other churches. If you find yourself not compensating your staff for their time, experience, and labour as they grow the church, you may run the risk of other churches try to hire your staff.

Question 5: Who should determine the staff’s salaries?

Right out of the gate we need to say that you should avoid voting on salaries. This always leads to things getting personal and people get their feeling hurt. We also believe that individual salaries shouldn’t be public knowledge. If your salary isn’t public in the church, why should the staff’s be public? We suggest something like this: have a finance team set the budget for the overall staff salaries, and also set the senior pastor’s salary, then give the senior pastor the authority to set each staff member’s salary. This way the senior pastor, who works with the staff on a daily basis is the only person who knows each individual staff member’s salary, and he is aware of who is deserving of how much.

This topic of paying the church staff can be a very divisive one, and you may find that your by-laws might stand in the way of the best practices. We definitely want to encourage you to approach this topic prayerfully, and with compassion in your hearts. The goal is see more people saved and for them to become disciples of Christ, so why not invest in your staff. Compensate them properly so that they can equip the body of Christ properly.

Thank you for watching and be sure to check out our YouTube channel and website for other helpful resources for you and your ministry.

If you need help with implementing these in your ministry, we’d love to help. Click to learn more about our Free Church Financial Stewardship Assessment:
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