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(Editor's Note: For an updated look at compensation levels for church staff, please see "Pinched Paychecks," (Your Church, September/October 2009)).

If you are an associate pastor or youth pastor, your wallet probably got a little fatter during the 90s. Pay increases for those positions ran at least twice as high as inflation in the last decade, according to a recent study conducted for YOUR CHURCH. Pay for support staff, such as secretaries and custodians, managed to stay ahead of inflation too, but by a smaller amount.

No church staffer received a larger base salary increase during the 1990s than a full-time associate pastor. Between 1991 and 1999, the average pay for this worker climbed from $20,617 to $35,647, representing a whopping 73 percent increase. The inflation rate climbed 22 percent during that period, yielding a real pay increase of 51 percent for associates.

John C. LaRue, Jr., is vice president of research and online services for Christianity Today International, in Carol Stream, Illinois. He may be e-mailed at YCEditor@yourchurch.net. Other Special Reports can be found online at www.ChristianityToday.com/cbg/features/report.html.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
May/June 2000, Vol. 46, No. 3, Page 88

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