Church Salaries
Sep 27, 2005 Uncategorized | Print This Post
//MOOD: Hmmmm
//ITUNES: Write It On The Wall from the album “Big Talk” by Edin-Adahl
Surfing around this morning, I found a few interesting posts from the new book 2006 Compensation Handbook for Church Staff. The posts are here: Senior Pastor Salaries and Other Church Staff Salaries. These averages are very interesting. Since Riverview doesn’t have a senior pastor (or we have 5 of them depending on how you want to look at it), this can get a bit weird. Also, on of our pastors (Mark) is totally volunteer. Anyhoo, I want to list some averages for giggles. I will list both the Senior Pastor and Associate Pastor salaries for each. I am interested in getting the book, if for no other reason to see the methodology and job descriptions of all of the listed roles. Realize that each of these averages includes base salary, housing or parsonage allowance, retirement contribution, life and health insurance payments, and educational funds:
Average Senior Pastor Pay: $77,000
Average Associate Pastor Pay: $64,000
They also break it down by church size. For a church Riverview’s size, it would be (realizing we are young, and therefore poor so this doesn’t exactly work):
>1000 in weekly attendance
Average Senior Pastor Pay: $116,000
Average Associate Pastor Pay: $82,000
Of course, here is an interesting caveat that would definitely apply to Riverview:
About half of all associate pastors serve in churches with an average annual budget of over one million dollars. And salary packages didn’t reach the national average for most associate positions in church with an annual budget of less than $900,000.
I think I will order this book. I’ll let you know if any interesting things pop up.
(Thanks to Josh for the link.)
Technorati Tags: church







September 27th, 2005 at 6:30 pm
Thanks for the link. Great blog. Keep it up.
October 6th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
big thank