“When it comes to benefits for senior pastors,” McConnell said, “it appears churches are doing the best they can. On average, the more people a church has attending worship, the more insurance benefits they provide for the pastor.”   More than half of churches with weekly attendances above 250 people provide insurance for the pastor and his family. Nearly half (47 percent) of churches that average 50-99 people in weekly attendance do not provide any medical coverage.

Compensation for full-time Southern Baptist pastors increased at a rate slightly faster than inflation nationally over the past two years, yet many churches continue to struggle in providing their pastors with adequate medical insurance.

These findings are part of the SBC Church Compensation Study, an in-depth survey of 12,168 staff members in Southern Baptist churches. Baptist state conventions along with LifeWay Research and GuideStone Financial Resources conduct this survey every two years. All the data acquired by the study has been compiled into an online tool LifeWay.com/CompensationSurvey

Compensation
Adjusting for church size (see Methodology below), the average full-time Southern Baptist senior pastor’s compensation (salary and housing) rose 5.5 percent between 2010 and 2012. That rate of change was only slightly higher than the 5.1 percent inflation rate for the same two-year period, according to figures supplied by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index.

According to Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research, “Other surveys by our team [among pastors] have shown that a majority of churches have not experienced growth in giving that would keep pace with these same inflation measures. In these churches, providing cost of living pay increases and covering the rising cost of benefits has required cuts in other budget areas.”

Overall, the value of the entire pay package (salary, housing and other benefits such as insurance) for the average full-time senior pastor rose by 6.4 percent.

For other full-time staff ministers, basic salary and housing compensation decreased 0.7 percent between 2010 and 2012, while salary compensation for full-time office personnel increased 2.8 percent.

When it came to determining pastors’ compensation rates, education level, tenure at current church and higher weekly attendance resulted in more compensation.

In fact, each additional educational degree level adds, on average, $2,878 in compensation. Seminary graduates receive, on average, $7,012 more in total compensation than non-seminary graduates and receive more vacation time.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on Baptist Press—however, the link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]