Church Staff Salaries 2026: Pastors and Every Other Role

Churches in our October 2026 postings offer a median of $65,000 a year for the 45 jobs that state an annual salary, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a national median of $60,810 for clergy in May 2025. Posted pay runs from $15,000 for a part-time children’s director to $125,000 for a chief financial officer, and only 48 of the 379 postings state usable pay at all.

The numbers below come from three places. The first is the 379 church job postings on Church Posting, read October 19, 2026. The second is BLS wage data for clergy and for the occupations that match each church role. The third is published surveys from a denomination, a music association and a youth ministry staffing firm, each named with its year.

How much do church staff make?

The table groups the 45 postings that state an annual salary by role. Where a church posted a range, the table uses the midpoint.

A role row counts postings by the words in the posted title, so a few postings sit in two rows. The “all” row also holds associate pastors, campus pastors and other titles the role rows leave out. Six or fewer postings sit behind four of these rows, so each median describes those churches and does not set a market rate.

The lowest figure is a part-time children’s director at $15,000. The highest is a chief financial officer at $125,000. Three more postings state an hourly rate, and they run from $23 to $40 an hour.

What does BLS say church staff earn?

BLS publishes wages by occupation and has no table called “church staff.” Its clergy (21-2011) and directors of religious activities and education (21-2021) categories are the closest match for pastors and ministry directors. For the other roles the table pairs each church job with the BLS occupation that does the same work in any workplace.

All figures are May 2025 national estimates. Only the first three rows count religious workers alone. The others count every employer in the country, so a church that hires a sound technician competes with the whole market for sound technicians.

Two limits on the clergy row matter to a church setting a salary. BLS says its survey “covers wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments” and “does not include the self-employed,” so a pastor paid as a contractor is not counted. BLS also names “meal and lodging payments” and “perquisites” among the items it leaves out of wages. The clergy figures therefore cannot be counted on to include a parsonage.

How much do pastors make?

BLS puts the middle clergy salary at $60,810, with a quarter of clergy under $48,260 and a quarter over $76,640. The nine senior and lead pastor postings that state pay in our data run from $58,000 to $120,000 with a median of $70,000, and only one of the nine is above $100,000.

Denominations that set minimums give a second reference. The Presbytery of the Miami Valley set a 2026 minimum effective salary of $58,182 for a pastor without a manse. Carlisle’s presbytery set $62,687. The Miami Valley document also cites a full-time median of $71,600 for 2026 among the pastors who take part in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Board of Pensions benefits plan. Those figures are “effective salary,” which Carlisle defines as cash salary, housing and utility allowances, retirement contributions, the value of a manse and other allowances added together.

Is being a pastor a full-time job?

In most of our postings it is. Of the 118 postings with “pastor” or “minister” as a word in the title, 93 are full time, 5 are part time and 20 do not say. Among the 27 senior and lead pastor postings, 25 are full time and 2 are part time.

How much should a small church pay its pastor?

No survey we found publishes a single answer, and a church should not borrow one. A small church can set a defensible figure in four steps.

1. Check whether the denomination publishes a minimum. Presbyterian presbyteries do, and the two above are examples.
2. Read the BLS clergy median for your state in the table below.
3. Compare the posted ranges for the same title in your region. The pastor, youth and worship guides on this site list them.
4. Write down housing, retirement and health coverage as separate lines so the number can be compared with other offers.

Which states pay clergy the most?

BLS clergy medians run from $48,460 in West Virginia to $80,830 in Washington. The table lists the eight states with the most open jobs on Church Posting on October 19, 2026 beside each state’s BLS clergy median.

California is the outlier, at $17,000 or more above the other seven states. West Virginia ($48,460), Arkansas ($49,070), Alabama ($50,180), Kansas ($52,130) and Mississippi ($52,450) have the five lowest medians. Washington ($80,830), California ($77,710), Nevada ($73,910), Massachusetts ($72,190) and New Jersey ($65,500) have the five highest.

Regional pay in the postings points the same way, with a small sample behind each figure.

Open jobs by state are on the church jobs by state pages, and Texas, California and Florida hold the most.

How many church jobs are full time?

More than half, with a third of postings leaving the question open. Of the 379 postings, 206 (54 percent) say full time, 52 (14 percent) say part time and 121 (32 percent) do not say.

Four of the 52 part-time postings state pay. Two are annual ($15,000 and a $20,000 to $35,000 range) and two are hourly ($24 for a bookkeeper and $40 for a worship director).

Part-time pay in church music shows the same pattern. The 2025 Presbyterian Association of Musicians survey of 467 church musicians found that the most common full-time salary range was $55,000 to $70,000 and the most common part-time range was under $15,000. In that survey 72 percent of respondents worked part time, and 61 percent held other employment.

What is the highest-paying job in a church?

Four of the five highest posted pay figures in our October postings are finance or business jobs. The table ranks them by the midpoint of any range.

BLS shows the same ordering. Its median for accountants and auditors is $83,680 and for administrative services managers $114,130, against $60,810 for clergy.

Which churches state their pay?

Smaller churches do, and large multisite churches almost never do. On October 19, 2026, fourteen churches had five or more open jobs on Church Posting, and together they held 194 of the 379 postings. Only one of those 194 stated usable pay. The other 165 employers had posted 185 jobs, and 47 of them stated pay.

That split shapes every median in this guide. The posted figures describe pay at small and midsize churches, and a candidate applying to a large church usually has to ask. The ministry staff at the 14 largest posters, including Gateway Church (35 postings), Bayside Church (22), Elevation Church (20) and The Crossing (20), have no posted pay to compare. BLS covers them by occupation only, so it is the one source in this guide that includes them.

What benefits come with the pay?

Benefits change the comparison as much as the cash figure does. The sources here give four reference points.

A church that cannot match another church’s cash can compare these lines one at a time.

Do pastors live tax free?

No. A minister who qualifies can leave a housing allowance out of income for income tax, up to limits, and still owes Social Security and Medicare tax on it. IRS Publication 517 limits a homeowner’s exclusion to the lowest of the housing costs paid, the designated allowance and the home’s fair rental value with furnishings and utilities. The exclusion applies to income tax.

The church has to act first. Publication 517 says the employer “must officially designate the payment as a housing allowance before it makes the payment” and “must designate a definite amount.” The housing allowance and minister W-2 guide works through an example with a W-2, and the housing allowance section of the church job search guide covers what a candidate should ask.

Where can you read more by role?

Each role has its own guide with the same kind of table. The youth pastor guide uses a 2023 survey of 803 youth workers that put the average full-time salary at $51,234. The worship leader guide uses the 2025 PAM survey of church musicians. The children’s ministry director guide, the executive pastor and church administrator guide and the church production jobs guide cover the roles where posted pay is thinnest.

How do you read a posted salary?

Four details change what a figure means.

• Whether the figure is a range or one number. Of the 45 annual postings, 34 give a range with a median width of $13,500. Eleven give one figure that may be a floor or the offer.
• Whether housing is inside the figure. A single “salary plus housing” number is larger than the same cash salary with a parsonage on top.
• Whether the church counts benefits. Posted pay says nothing about health coverage or retirement unless the church adds a line for it.
• What BLS excludes. The BLS clergy numbers leave out the value of a parsonage, so a church comparing its offer to BLS should compare cash pay to cash pay.

One more number helps a candidate. The 2023 Youth Pastor Compensation Report, which drew 803 respondents, found that youth pastors who had an annual review earned an average of 7.5 percent more than those who did not. The interview questions guide lists how pay is reviewed among the questions a candidate can ask.

How we counted

The jobs came from the Church Posting job board as it stood on October 19, 2026: 379 postings at 179 churches and ministries in 38 states and Washington, D.C. The board has since dropped every job listed through a third-party job board, so the open jobs today are fewer and the figures here describe that day only. The postings are the churches’ offers on that day. They do not show what a church pays a person already on staff.

Of the 379 postings, 55 carry a pay field and we set aside seven of them. Six are not church staff jobs (a valet, a teacher, a social worker, an after-school assistant, a medical coordinator and a camp director) and one lists pay of $1 a year. That leaves 48 usable postings, 45 with annual pay and 3 hourly. The role rows use the words in the posted title, and region groups follow the Census Bureau’s four regions. BLS figures are the May 2025 national and state estimates, pulled from the BLS data service on October 19, 2026.

See open jobs by role on the pastor, youth pastor, worship leader, children’s ministry director, church administrator and church technical director pages, or browse every role at church jobs by role. A church can post a job free and put its pay range in the first line. The weekly newsletter sends new church job data and guides to your inbox.