Over the last two years, ChurchSalary has gathered salary data on campus pastors serving at multisite churches in the United States. The data we have gathered tells two stories.
First, multisite churches are not on the same page. Pay is inconsistent between churches, sometimes even within the same organization.
Second, despite these inconsistencies there appear to be two basic models for paying campus pastors. These two models conform to existing patterns for senior/solo and associate pastors and likely are a reflection of the level of responsibility that each campus pastors carries within the organization.
Before we can discuss inconsistencies, let’s unpack the prevailing models.
Table of Contents
- Model 1: Senior Pastor
- Model 2: Associate Pastor
- Hybrid Model: Associate first, then Senior
- Examples and Inconsistencies
- Conclusions
- Footnote: Why budget matters more than attendance
Two Models: Either Senior or Associate
Multisite churches appear to follow one of two models when it comes to campus pastor compensation:
• Model 1: Senior Pastor of a Campus-Sized Congregation
• Model 2: Associate Pastor of the Larger Multisite Church (or Central Campus)
Model 1: Senior Pastor of a Campus-Sized Congregation
Some campus pastors are paid like the senior/solo pastors of their campus—as if their campus is a stand-alone congregation. This Senior Model approach offers several benefits to multisite churches.
The first and most obvious benefit is that pay for senior/solo pastors scales rapidly as their congregation grows. Among campus pastors this can create a strong incentive for growth, if the multisite church clearly communicates this pay philosophy to the campus pastor, especially in the early stages of launching a satellite campus.
At the same time, the growth of senior/solo pastor compensation slows down once the congregation reaches a total operating budget of between $675,000 and $1,000,000 or between 300 and 400 people. This plateau occurs naturally as churches are forced to split every additional budget dollar between more and more paid employees to care for the congregation/campus.
The second benefit of this model is that pay for campus pastors will stay competitive with standalone congregations of a similar size. However, before we can discuss this potential benefit, we need to unpack Model 2.
Model 2: Associate Pastor of the Larger Multisite Church (or Central Campus)
Some campus pastors are paid like they are associate pastors serving on staff at the larger church (either the central campus or church as a whole). There are at least three major pros and cons to this Associate Model.
Benefits
For starters, the Associate Model is cheaper for churches in the long-run and makes it easier to sustain satellite campuses. This is because even though pay for associate pastors rises with the church budget (as it does for senior/solo pastors), it plateaus at a much lower level and has a much lower ceiling (rarely rising above $110K for 75% of associate pastors). As result, the church as a whole is likely to experience long-term payroll savings. This can help multisite churches launch and grow more campuses because more of the tithes from these locations can be utilized for the budget of the central campus or to launch new satellite campuses. To put it bluntly, the Associate Model makes every satellite location more profitable for the central campus.
At the same time, the Associate Model can offer churches and pastors both a minimum threshold and fallback plan. In terms of a minimum threshold, hiring a talented pastor who is capable of rapidly growing and nurturing a new campus can be a struggle. These pastors are often looking for full-time work and on the very low-end of attendance and budget the Senior Model only offers bi-vocational or part-time pay.
By attaching their pay to the church as a whole and giving them some responsibilities at the central campus, the organization can create full-time jobs for new campus pastor hires—offering them a higher starting salary. Additionally, attaching campus pastors to the central campus budget can offer these employees a fallback plan if the launch plan fails or the campus struggles to grow rapidly. Ultimately, pay for these campus pastors will not be as closely tied to small and rapid fluctuations in the health of the campus.
Obviously, the extent to which this line of reasoning is seen as a benefit depends on the philosophy and goals of the overall church leaders. Church leaders could just as easily decide that the employment of a campus pastor is entirely contingent on the success of the new campus.
Downsides
The biggest problem with this Associate Model is pretty obvious: it almost always offers worse pay and growth incentives for campus pastors.
Very quickly, once the campus surpasses around $250,000 or 100 people the median salary of a senior/solo pastor rises above that of an associate pastor at the central campus. This has the potential to create retention and incentive problems for the church.
First and foremost, the Associate Model can create conflicting growth incentives. For example, while growing their campus will rapidly increase the pastor’s level of responsibility and standing within the organization, it will not necessarily lead to a rapid growth in pay. Pats on the back and more responsibility is great but you can't spend that currency on groceries and your mortgage. When disillusionment or discouragement kicks in (it almost always does in ministry), the campus pastor may be more predisposed to step back and evaluate whether it is worth it to hustle and climb the ladder within their existing multisite church, as opposed to ...
- Taking a risk and planting their own church or
- Taking a senior pastor gig at an identically-sized standalone congregation down the street.
We do not currently have any hard data on how much this is occurring. But, it stands to reason that these kinds of lateral moves, especially to an existing congregation in the area, are incredibly tempting to overworked and underpaid campus pastors. They are already doing a lot of the same work that a senior pastor would, but they are being paid like an associate pastor. The opportunity to lead their own church and preach more frequently, while also getting paid better must be hard to resist.
Hybrid Model: The Best of Both Worlds
In light of these pros and cons, ChurchSalary believes that a Hybrid Model is the best way to create an attractive compensation philosophy that balances growth incentivizes and staffing costs.
The Hybrid Model breaks compensation and campus growth down into two phases. Initially, campus pastors are treated like associate pastors of the larger main campus (or church as a whole). Then, once a certain growth threshold is reached, compensation would shift over towards a Senior/Solo Model. This hybrid approach give new campus pastor an incentive to grow the campus, with a guarantee of full-time work, and a light at the end of the tunnel (in terms of pay growth and career advancement).
Practically, it looks something like this:
Phase 1: Multisite Church Chicago hires a new campus pastor and pays them like an associate pastor with a full-time salary tied to the central campus. During the initial launch and growth phase, the campus pastor's responsibilities include work at the location and and the central campus. This gives the campus pastor a sense of security and helps the church hire and/or promote talented and qualified associate pastors.
Phase 2: The church clearly communicates to the new hire that campus growth will lead to direct paycheck growth and a shift in responsibilities—thereby incentivizing them to dedicate time and energy to grow their campus and disincentivizing them from spending all their time on projects for the central campus.
In the long run, we think this Hybrid Model approach will offer campus pastors a real-world incentive to create numerical growth, while also helping the church retain talented and entrepreneurial pastors.
An even more realistic and practical arrangement might involve a contract and a concrete timeline:
“You have X years to grow this campus to ______ people, if you do, your pay scale will change and grow with the size of the campus. If you can’t, we will re-evaluate your place within the organization and the viability of the campus and your position within the organization.”
Examples and Inconsistencies
To illustrate the pros and cons of these two models, we have graphed a handful of campus pastor salaries along with the stats of both their campus and church as a whole. These examples help illustrate both of the models and how they can be applied inconsistently.
Note that the chart is graphed using a logarithmic scale for both the X and Y axis. This double log scale compresses the upper-end (larger budgets and higher pay) and stretches the low-end (smaller budgets and lower pay), enabling a more even visualization of the entire spectrum of budget (horizontal x-axis) and pay (vertical y-axis).
Click here to see a regular scale version that evens the scale and visualizes how pay in each model plateaus as budget increases.
The blue bands on the chart visualize the pay range for a Senior Model and the green bands visualize an Associate Model (darker = 50th to 75th or median to third quartile; lighter = 25th to 50th or first quartile to median). Green dots clearly follow an Associate Pastor model, while blue dots appear to follow a Senior Model.
It is important to note that not every campus pastor fits neatly into this binary model. Highlighting three of these anomalies can help us understand why a church might adopt a novel strategy or how churches are being inconsistent.
Illustration #1
Even though this highlighted campus pastor is leading a church plant, their salary is scaled as if they are co-lead pastor for the central campus. This is likely an intentional decision on the part of the planting church, to attract a highly-qualified pastor who can plant a congregation that eventually will stand on its own two feet (functioning more like a parish within a diocese). If this campus pastor was paid like the senior pastor of their own congregation, they would be paid around $30K less.
Illustration #2
Initially, we struggled to categorize two campus pastors serving on staff at the same church. No matter which model we used, these pastors seem to be underpaid.
- If they were paid using the Senior Model, these campus pastors would be earning around $30K more than their current salary.
- If they were paid using the Associate Model, these campus pastors would be earning between $30K and $50K more.
Ultimately, we realized both pastors are being paid like associate pastors of their respective campuses. The lower paid pastor is paid so little that they have to be bivocational. While lower than average per person giving at the central campus may be driving some of this, we fear that this strategy is unsustainable both for the church and the pastors. The lowest paid pastor could take a job leading a stand-alone congregation of the same size and immediately earn a full-time wage. The higher paid pastor could immediately earn more money by either taking a job as an associate pastor at a larger church—the same size as the central campus—or taking a job at a congregation that is the same size of their campus.
Illustration #3
Four of the campus pastors on this chart serve at the same multisite church. This multisite church has five thriving locations and the central campus has intentionally adopted a distributed leadership strategy.
Specifically, the church’s leadership structure is governed by three co-equal lead pastors in charge of the main campus, with another set of four campus pastors in charge the other four out of five locations. The four campus pastors are paid using an Associate Model. But compensation for the three co-lead pastors is following a Senior Pastor Model. Even though this strategy does not neatly fit either the Associate or Senior model, it is internally consistent and driven by a clear pay and staffing philosophy.
That said, this strategy could create problems for the central campus because pay between these four campus pastors is very similar, even though the campus sizes are significantly different. For example, the campus pastor of a 750 person campus is earning only $4,000 more than the campus pastor of a 300-person campus. Somehow that 2.52x difference in campus size is only translating into a 1.05x difference in pay.
Conclusions
Multisite churches are not monolithic. They are structured differently and, as a result, they may have different staffing needs. Because of this, there probably will never be a one-size fits all approach to paying campus pastors.
That said, there are clearly several well-worn paths and a defined pattern for both senior and associate pastor pay in churches. And they are being applied or adapted in multisite churches—though clearly not as consistent as we would hope.
If you want to hire a staff member to function like the senior/solo pastor of a small congregation, you should probably pay them using that model. Failing to follow a Senior Model in these cases could incentivize these campus pastors to make a lateral move to a standalone congregation—gaining extra money and pulpit time in the process.
If you want to hire campus pastors who will function like the associate pastors of the church as a whole or who will split part of their time at the central campus, it may make sense to use an Associate Model. Using this approach can help your church attract qualified and talented candidates early on, but it may make it harder to retain them long-term as the campus grows.
Footnote: Why attendance isn’t as strong a predictor of pay for pastors as budget, even among campus pastors.
Imagine two churches (or campuses) that have the same number of people (400) but different budgets.
Church A 400 has a budget of $400,000 with average per person giving of only $1,000. They must use this budget to pay the pastor and staff as well as all ministry and building expenses. Typically, churches allocate around 50% of their total operating budget for payroll expenses (salary, benefits, and miscellaneous payroll expenses). As a result, Church A can spend around $200,000 on payroll or personnel expenses. Because 400 person churches need more than one staff member, these payroll dollars must be split between multiple employees (i.e., they can’t all go to the senior pastor).
Members at Church B give more money on a more regular basis. As a result, average per person giving for Church B is closer to the current national average of around $2,700. As a result, Church B's total operating budget is $1,080,000 (i.e., 400 x $2,700). The congregation allocates 50% of their budget for staffing expenses, giving them a payroll budget of $540,000.
Stepping back, we can see that Church B has more than twice as much money than Church A to spend on staffing.
Which church do you think will be able to offer better pay and benefits to their staff?
Two churches or campuses with an identical number of people are not necessarily equivalent in their organizational and financial size.
For this reason, and many others, if you really want to know what a church can afford to pay its employees, start and end your analysis with their budget.
Even though it sounds crude to boil ministry for people down into dollars and cents, the reality is that leaders must account for costs and income when they are trying to allocate resources. Ultimately, while the Lord may provide, you cannot spend what you do not have.