I’ve been on the staff of three American Baptist Churches in my life. Let me tell you about the most awkward part of the process of getting hired at one of those: negotiating salary and benefits. I’m not a bashful guy by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, I talk to groups of people on a regular basis. It’s not a career path for a shrinking violet. But when it comes to the question of money, I just clam up. I’ve never been good at it.
In many denominations, pastors who are being called by a church have some help in these negotiations from a regional office. In ABCUSA, we have regional and executive ministers whose job is just to support and help churches and pastors navigate situations like that. The American Baptists collect data on compensation packages, so that each church can have a good sense of what’s a reasonable wage for their new minister. Here’s a typical report they produce (DOC).
But for a growing number of pastors who are seeking work in traditions with little or no organizational structure, there’s just not a whole lot to fall back on. And if a church council feels like a pastor is asking for too much money, that could sour the relationship before the ministry even gets started. Well, maybe I can help just a little bit in this regard because I decided to analyze data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on clergy pay.
How Much Does the Average Pastor Make?
My favorite documentary series of all time is called Last Chance U. The premise is pretty simple - it follows the trials and tribulations of one of the best junior college football programs in the country. Teams at this level have a very specific recruiting strategy - they look for kids who got scholarships to large Division 1 football programs and then got in trouble. Those kids need a place to reset, get some game film and bounce back to another big time college football team after a year of slumming it at junior college.
About 18 months ago, I took my first pass at this data. The last time the BLS collected the information was in 2022. When I checked their website just the other day I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had updated all their datasets fairly recently. So, here’s what I’m going to do - show you how much wages for clergy have shifted from May of 2022 to May of 2024.
Before I get into the actual data, I know I’m going to get this question. So here’s how the BLS defines wages.
Wages include only the following items:
Base rates
Commissions
Cost-of-living allowances
Deadheading pay
Guaranteed pay
Hazard pay
Incentive pay
Longevity pay
Over-the-road pay (Mileage)
Piece rates
Portal-to-portal rates
Production bonuses
Tips
Notice that it does not include a housing allowance. A quick aside for you non-clergy readers. The IRS rules say that a housing allowance is “excluded from gross income for income tax purposes.” And I personally have had dozens of conversations with pastors who receive 35-40% of their total compensation in housing allowance. Which can easily boost their take-home pay by 10-15% because it’s not taxed.
All that aside, how has the mean salary for clergy increased?
In 2022, the BLS data indicates that the mean salary for a clergyperson was just over $60,000 per year. According to their 2024 calculations, the average wage had increased to $67,160. That’s about $7,000 more in just a two year time period. In percentage terms, that’s up 11.6% in just 24 months. Not bad, right?
Of course, the real question is: was that just eaten up by inflation? I used the BLS’s handy inflation calculator to figure that out. What I found was that if a pastor’s compensation would have kept up with inflation during this time period, it would have been $64,662 in May of 2024. That’s about $2,500 less than the actual wage increase. In other words, inflation was up by about 6%, while wages rose nearly twice as fast - 11.6%. Not bad!
But, what’s nice about all this BLS data is that it gives state-level estimates as well. I pulled those together and dropped them into a map for your viewing pleasure.