If you have staff (or plan to have staff one day) one of the many things you must decide is what you will pay them. There are both objective and subjective factors that will go into determining this. In this post I’ll talk about the objective factors. A resource I’ve found super helpful in determining salary ranges is Richard Hammar’s Compensation Handbook for Church Staff. The book evaluates a variety of factors such as:
- Position (i.e. executive pastor, worship pastor, associate pastor, kids pastor, etc.)
- Church income
- Worship attendance
- Longevity (how long the staff member has been in your employ)
- Education (i.e. bachelors degree, masters degree, doctorate or none of the above)
- Setting (i.e. city church, suburban church, rural church)
- Geographical region (certain parts of the country have much a higher cost of living than others)
- Denomination affiliation (certain denominations pay less/more than others)
The book will help you in putting a monetary amount next to each criteria (listed above). You will then use the highest amount as the ceiling of the salary and the lowest amount as the floor of the salary. What amount you decide to pay each staff within the salary range is determined by a number of subjective criteria, that I will cover in my next post (on Thursday).