Figuring out how much to pay church plant staff can be daunting, especially if you’ve never been in a lead pastor role. He are some resources to help you determine salaries and benefits.

Before we jump right in to numbers, though, there are a few IRS-audit-avoidance things you should be considering in the hiring process.

These are plain-language translations of issues that the IRS asks about on the 501c3 tax exemption application:

• Do staff (including you) get to vote on their own compensation at Board Meetings?
• Do you record who voted on compensation?
• Do you offer a written compensation agreement?
• Do you ever backdate a job offer?
• Do you record in writing where you found the information you based your offer on?

I hope the answers to these questions are obvious!

Compensation Studies

Tony Morgan offers us a great shortlist of compensation studies that can help you ballpark an offer:

• Leadership Network – Large Church Salary Report
• National Association of Church Business Administration – Ministry Pay Church Salary Survey
• LifeWay – Southern Baptist Convention Compensation Study

and one more I would add:

• Christianity Today – Compensation Handbook for Church Staff

Cost of Living Comparison

You may also want to cross-reference the cost of living in your town. Here are two resources to see how you stack up against the national average:

• Kiplinger’s Cost of Living Index
• HomeFair’s City Profile Report

Next week we’ll tackle church plant staff benefits as part of figuring out how much to pay church plant staff.