Your church needs an efficient staffing plan to evaluate staffing needs, find the right candidates to fill crucial roles, train existing staff, and build leaders within the team. This article will help you with essential steps and helpful tips, as well as three great websites where you can find the right candidates for your church.
While many smaller churches depend on volunteers, churches must hire some staff to oversee crucial departments. Church staffing takes time and effort to find the best options. This article discusses what types of employees your church needs, what churches must include in their staffing plan, and where you can find quality candidates.
Long-term growth isn’t possible without a plan. This is especially true when churches plan for staffing needs. A staffing plan gives churches a blueprint for what you want employees to do daily and long term. A staffing plan should include the roles you need to be filled, what each role entails, and succession planning.
Many smaller churches depend on extensive volunteer support, but churches must hire staff to oversee these volunteers and head departments within the church.
Every church requires at least one pastor or minister. This will be the most expensive employee, but the responsibilities as head of your church make them worth the money.
Music is one area of ministry that brings in a crowd, so it’s essential to have someone with talent and experience that can run your worship music program. This person can be part of your pastoral staff or a part-time employee.
Children’s activities may cover Sunday school classes, vacation Bible school, preschool, and other educational opportunities your church offers visitors and members.
Depending on the size of your church and the number of child-focused activities, you can hire many part-time and full-time employees. If your church also has a school, you’ll want a separate full-time staff to run those classrooms and activities.
A church’s operations department can cover everything from maintenance to fundraising to administration and bookkeeping. Many smaller churches hire a part-time or full-time secretary to cover these activities.
You may want to determine which operations need more attention and money as your church grows. Volunteers can run some church operations. For example, they help you with planning and running church events and peer-to-peer fundraising or crowdfunding for your projects. But if you’re looking to grow your church, it makes sense to hire fundraising staff with knowledge and experience of modern ways to boost tithes and offerings to your church.
For others, like accounting, you can hire freelance professionals to help only when needed.
Now that you know more about your church’s staffing needs, it’s time to create a staffing plan. Here are 6 steps to follow to make the process easier.
The primary thing to remember is to keep God at the center of your needs, goals, and plans. The best way to do this is by praying before you start. Ask the Lord for direction and support when things get tough.
The next step is to ensure you have the funds to hire staff. A healthy church spends 45-55% of its annual budget on staff. Paying your employees well is crucial, especially when they have the skills, character traits, and experience your church needs.
When preparing your budget, you must also remember staff costs include more than just salaries. Employee benefits like relocation costs, healthcare, office and supply costs, training, and education can all help you find qualified candidates.
Bonus: Visit our article on Church Salaries for a list of factors that influence salaries, payscale analysis, and benefits for each position.
Another crucial step in staff planning is developing policies for employee benefits and potential problems. A conflict-of-interest policy is required by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
All churches should adhere to this policy to ensure their employees and board members keep their internal financial desires separate from the organization. Other policies your church should have before hiring staff include the following:
Once you’re ready to hire staff, you must create and write detailed job descriptions. Whether for-profit or nonprofit, you must be clear about what you’re looking for in staff and volunteers.
Below are suggestions on where to focus when writing a job description.
Your staffing plan shouldn’t end with hiring staff. Onboarding is equally crucial for the plan.
Your internal policies are only the first step. The next step is to review your job descriptions and think about how you’d develop the perfect employee. Ask yourself the following questions to see how you can find the right person for the role.
Even after you hire and train your staff, you still have more to do. Churches must have succession plans to ensure crucial roles within their church remain filled.
As your church grows, re-evaluate your needs every two years and determine which employees are necessary and where you can save funds or hire more to ensure long-term growth.
It’s unlikely that you’ll find a candidate that meets all your wants and needs. Before you start interviewing, you’ll need to choose where you can compromise and how you can find someone to fill your must-haves.
Working for a church is different than any other job. Individuals that choose a church career are often answering God’s call. Finding these individuals should be your primary objective.
In most cases, skills and education can be provided in other ways. Integrity and a spiritual desire to lead and spread God’s message are essential.
A church is a community. Smaller groups within the church don’t work without a teamwork perspective. You must find staff that works best in teams rather than a skilled professional who excels at working alone. Hiring individuals who can lead or fit within an existing team is an area of great importance.
As the United States diversifies, you’ll also want to find a way to include diversity in your church’s staff. Look for ways to find a mix of strengths, ethnicities, experiences, genders, and ages whenever possible.
The best source for your church’s staff is its membership. Members of your church already have shown a commitment and passion for your church’s mission. The first place you should look to find the best individuals is your church’s volunteers and members.
When you fundraise or run your church membership with Donorbox, all your supporter data is stored in one place, the Donorbox database. You can easily segment this data to find more insights about your members, their giving abilities, past communications, and other details. Leverage these features to know your church members and reach out with a targeted approach.
The best way to find quality candidates within your church is to create a process to build leaders from the inside. Developing a system and training volunteers, lower-level staff, and members will help save your church time and money and help you strengthen relationships.
During the planning and hiring process, you must discuss the expectations and benefits you offer and make sure candidates are open and excited about them.
Churches can offer more spiritual health and support than other companies. Explain the benefits of attending Bible study, worship services, and volunteer opportunities instead of stating them as a requirement.
Therapy and counseling are much more accepted by people today than in the past. Your church may have pastoral staff that can offer counseling to staff when life gets complicated and stress or depression takes hold. Make this benefit clear when hiring.
You may not find the right candidate for a position by looking within the church members or the community, or even by training existing staff. In that case, you’ll need to search elsewhere. The following 3 websites will help you find individuals looking for a career in the church.
Church Jobs is a staffing website that employees and employers can use to find the best options. This website stands out because of the variety of ways to find what you need.
This website lets employers promote jobs by job type, denomination, state, and worship style.
Packages start at $139 for one month and increase until you reach Gold Star at $289 with no time limit.
Each job listing is sold separately, but you can purchase bulk packages for three jobs or more. These packages must be purchased upfront.
Church Staffing offers many of the same benefits as Church Jobs. Churches that use this website have access to over 85,000 resumes. There is no limit on clicks for those who see your application. This website stands out because of its offer to perform faith-based background checks by Active Screening Faith.
Prices start at $249 for one month and end at three months for $549. They also have job post bundles where you can start with three job postings for one month at $599.
ChristianJobs is different because it includes jobs for all Christian-friendly companies, agencies, and organizations. Churches may have more competition but they also have access to over 75,000 Christian job seekers and their resumes.
Prices for this website start at $199 for one month and end at $379 for three months. Churches can post more than one job with bundle packages starting at $399 for three jobs or $133 per posting.
This website stands out because churches not ready to post a job can still search for potential candidates with its Resume Database.
As you choose vital staff roles for your church, we hope this article will help you find the best individuals. Donorbox has written several articles to help strengthen your church’s leadership and congregation. Read them and find other insightful articles on the Donorbox Nonprofit Blog. We recommend that you sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive the best collection of our resources straight into your inbox.
As your church grows, securing enough funds can be a struggle. Donorbox is an affordable, simple-to-use, and highly efficient online fundraising platform for churches of all sizes. And we have a dedicated pillar called Donorbox MinistryMatters to help churches with innovative and conversion-optimized digital giving tools. Whether you want to accept online tithes and offerings or want to boost in-person, cashless giving at your church, we have a solution for everything!
Learn about Donorbox features and sign up to start fundraising for your church today!
Kristine Ensor is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience working with local and international nonprofits. As a nonprofit professional she has specialized in fundraising, marketing, event planning, volunteer management, and board development.
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Kristine Ensor