Leadership Network, in conjunction with Vanderbloemen Search Group, is pleased to announce the release of a 2014 update to its extensive and widely popular large church salary report, which surveyed 727 churches in North America with attendances ranging from 1,000 to more than 30,000 people.
It focuses on the salaries of top-tier leadership of large churches, and also includes information on budget and attendance, select employee benefits information, and other relevant financial trends. The highly visual release improves offers the most comprehensive, cross-denominational financial perspective ever collected about large churches.
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The report maintains all the informative elements from prior publications with several new additions to give a broader account of financial trends within large churches.
Many trends still hold. Newer findings, however, present a more intimate look into the financial state of North America’s largest class of churches. Some of these findings include:
• Church size is the strongest predictor of pastor salaries — far more than geography, ethnicity or other issues.
• The most common raise for large churches in 2014 was 3 percent;
• The salaries of senior pastors averaged 3.4 percent of the church’s total budget; second pastors averaged a raise of 2.5 percent.
The 2014 Leadership Network / Vanderbloemen 2014 Large Church Salary Report also contains insightful observations from the lead researcher and a Q&A section with Vanderbloemen Search Group, the premiere executive search firm for churches and ministries around the world.
Vanderbloemen has been helping clients create and negotiate compensation packages for many years, and their team has a unique understanding of best compensation practices.
“We partnered with Leadership Network because of their reputation as the leading organization to work cross-denominationally with North America’s largest and fastest growing churches. We respect the integrity of their work and are pleased to partner with them,” says William Vanderbloemen, Founder and CEO, Vanderbloemen Search Group.
ABOUT LEADERSHIP NETWORK
Leadership Network is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to fostering innovation movements that activate the whole church to greater impact. It helps its clients implement ideas to impact and serves more than 200,000 leaders annually. Leadership Network just completed 30 years of serving innovative, larger churches.
ABOUT VANDERBLOEMEN SEARCH GROUP
Vanderbloemen Search Group is the premiere pastor search firm dedicated to helping churches and ministries find their key staff. The firm provides consulting services customized for each client’s staff structure, long-term and emergency succession planning, and thorough compensation analyses. The company is based out of Houston and serves churches and ministries around the world. Complete this form for more information about Vanderbloemen’s services.
The Leadership Network’s annual survey is chocked full of great insights. However, I am always fascinated that the release information for these types of surveys or reports always seem to contain the most uninteresting information in the most ambiguous terms. I guess that is because they want you to get the report. For example, an average salary as a percent of an undefined denominator isn’t very helpful. (Does “Total Budget” mean Total Expense Budget? Total Operating Budget? Total Budget for All Spending, including loans and capital expenses? Are salaries concentrated tightly around this average or spread out around a wide range of possibilities.
What is most troubling to me is seeing the number of churches that hang their hat on a published number like this without any of this critical thinking or inquiry.