Yesterday I posted my thoughts on youth ministry compensation, and a lot of great discussion took place! I was trying to offer an alternative to approaching compensation as a cause and effect relationship where we get paid in order to complete certain tasks. Such a approach in ministry settings leaves a lot to be desired in terms of authenticity. I spoke of compensation in ministry as giving us the freedom to devote ourselves full-time to ministry without having to worry about how to pay the bills.

There seems to be a bit of a consensus, and I’d love to hear further thoughts:

• It seems that when it comes to ministry, most people are against typical business forms of compensation where you get paid based upon how much money you bring in for a company, in this case a church.
• The call to ministry is not a call to poverty.
• Youth ministers tend to be underpaid (more thoughts on this perhaps in a future post).
• We want to pay people enough to cover a reasonable amount of expenses, including educational costs.
• We don’t think you need to make a ton of money in ministry. How we define that is another question.
• You want to pay people enough to encourage them to stick around for the long-haul.

Those are great principles, and the practical steps taken to get there could go a whole bunch of different directions. I’m a little surprised no one suggested that perhaps there should be no such thing as full-time church professionals (probably because, I think, everyone who commented is one!). Sometimes that gets brought up in conversations like this, and I’ve thought about it some myself.

I want to make sure some of the comments that were made on the last post get highlighted, so I’m going to post some of the most interesting parts here for you to catch up on.

Adam had a great thought that is the natural outworking of approaching compensation as freeing us for ministry. If compensation isn’t about paying people what they are “worth,” then Adam suggests that all church staff should be paid the same:

If compensation is as you’re describing it – merely a way for a church to free a person to devote their time and talents to a certain ministry – then there is no reason why the sr. pastor makes more than the youth pastor (unless their are kids involved) or the office assistant or the janitor. If compensation is simply about providing food/house/clothing/etc, then why would the numbers be different at all?

Earl came at it from the other side of the coin and asked where competence and retention come into play:

But after some time, it costs more to free my time for ministry. If all this is is freeing time for ministry, why have any expectations of competence? Are there ministry goals? Counseling can be understood as a “paid friend” but it can also be understood as a helpful guide. Of what value is the guide part? I think a great deal. I also structure compensation as a way to affirm ministry and to retain people who are reliable. If I want to to teach people how to be in a relationship with Jesus and how to engage the problems of people with the Word, then I want more than just your time.

Erik suggests that staff should get paid the median income of their congregation, but goes a step further and says that churches should offer some level of accountability in the use of one’s compensation. I’m interested how people feel about that idea:

Perhaps a church should look at the median income from the congregation (ballpark figure) and pay all of their staff accordingly… In an ideal setting, church workers could sit down individually with congregational leaders (mutual ministry team, personnel committee, etc.) and draw up a realistic budget for the church worker. This would provide the employee with a built-in web of support and accountability for their own personal stewardship.

Erik also pushed back on the idea of using public school teachers as a way to judge fair compensation for youth workers:

The old structure of comparing youth ministry compensation to teacher pay is bogus. I graduated college with an education degree, and I continue to substitute teach a few days a week in a local high school. After 8 years of dabbling in both worlds, I have concluded that the two professions have almost nothing in common (aside from working with young people)… If a church is located in a community where teachers are among the highest paid professionals, then a church worker should make less than a teacher…but if a teacher is on the low-end, a church worker should make more than a teacher. Pastors are called into specific, local congregations, which means their compensation should reflect a median range of the members of their specific, local faith community.

Corey highlights that there are a bunch of different hats to wear in youth ministry, and if a church wants to hire someone with a certain level of education, they should pay accordingly:

Obviously we should be praying, reading the Bible, planning lessons/sermons/whatever one wants to call it, spending time with students and families. Additionally, there is often an expectation that we will fill in whenever/wherever there is a need (”Hey youth pastor, you aren’t doing anything- come help me move these boxes” I’ve had this happen to me numerous times). We also are often expected to attend games/plays/concerts etc. of our youth. Then there is the administrative side- budgets, logistics, correspondence, etc. And all this on a typically tiny salary… Factor in education/training costs, plus cost of living- food, housing, transportation, health insurance, utilities, clothing. I don’t see any way that any reasonable church would offer any employee such a low compensation package.

I really appreciated all the great comments. The above are only a snippet of what happened the the comments section, so make sure to go back to yesterday’s post and read through them.