Watch Your Staffing Hours

Dear Pastors

Watch Your Staffing Hours

I have previously written at length about the cost of running a church as we know it today. In summary….it’s expensive! And the biggest expense item for most all churches (and charities for that matter) is salaries and associated employment costs. As a batting average somewhere around 55% - 65% of tithes and offerings is needed to fund salaries (and wages). Generally speaking it’s a higher %age in churches under 120 in regular attendance.

When I was a youngster growing up in church it was common for there to be just one Minister in congregations of 200-300 people. When I started pastoral ministry in the early 80’s the accepted ratio was one pastor for every 100-150 attenders and perhaps a little bit of paid office time…..say 12-15 hours a week.

Today you would rarely find this ratio anywhere. A quick look at a set of any church financial accounts in that 120 range will show this. Today a church of 150 regular attenders will probably have a f/t lead pastor, p/t children’s, p/t youth and p/t office/administration. Around 2-2.5 full time equivalent. Add in other employment costs and the total cost is between $150,000 and $200,000 a year. This translates to between $3000 and $4000 in weekly tithes and offerings just to cover salaries.

I am very familiar with the reasons pastors and Elders give for this situation. It’s a new day, there are more programming demands, there are more compliance (and administration) demands and perhaps the main defence is that it is near impossible to ‘recruit’ committed volunteers for the long haul. All this is true. But it is also true that it is a financial model that for most small-mid size churches is simply unsustainable.

So you may well ask then how could we do with less staff? I think it is possible. Here are a few thoughts?

1. Are you crystal clear what are your ‘core ministries’? In other words what are the things you must provide as a local church that ‘qualifies’ you as a church.
2. Are you over programming and therefore needing staff to ‘run yet another programme’.
3. Are you making use of the myriad of excellent resources that are easily and readily available off the shelf. Remember it is far more cost effective to buy a children’s curriculum for example that may cost $1000 or so then hire a staff member to write a new lesson every week.
4. Do you have a really well thought through volunteer process that you are constantly working to improve. I know volunteerism has declined over the years but I am still amazed at people’s willingness to offer their time to serve the Lord in the context of their home church. The over 65’s are a whole new group ready to respond to a compelling vision.
5. Have you thought about 2 or 3 churches combining to hire a really good youth worker/pastor. Imagine a youth ministry that is a blend of big events that are combined and pastoral care and discipleship groups that are local or some variation of this.
6. Administration and compliance requirements are a significant cost these days. However, so much of that work can now be outsourced at a fraction of the cost of hiring people to do that stuff. If you would like to know a bit more about this please don’t hesitate to be in touch with me.
7. Are you as Pastor using your time optimally? If you are full time you have around 160 paid hours a month to do stuff. Have you thought through carefully how you are ‘utilising’ those hours?

Finally for now, let me throw out a challenge. I believe a normal church of up to 120 people can be ‘run’ by one full time pastor and 15 hours of paid administrative support. What do you think? I’d love to know.

Blessings
Alan