Last year, our Association Committee (of Elders) discussed a concern that we may not be paying our staff sufficiently.

In the past we effectively operated like a small business – paying our staff what we could manage, which wasn’t much, but they managed because they wanted to allow the church to get started. Not only is this not a good model to sustain, but as our church has increased in size, we have had to consider a more appropriate, and more sustainable, model for staff salaries.

So over the past few years we look at what is appropriate now that we are a larger church and that our staff have much more responsibility. We’ve also had to consider how we compare with other churches, not just so we know we are being fair to our staff, but also for when we need to recruit new staff – we need to be paying enough that potential staff members can actually afford to work for us.

However, we also need to be careful that we’re not overpaying staff, as there are potential problems there as well. For example,

• New Staff could be attracted for the wrong reasons – for the money rather than the job itself
• Higher incomes means it would be harder to employ more people
• And of course, it could develop a love of money (in the staff or in the congregation) that can take our eyes off Jesus.

Therefore, it was important that we try to get it right! So… more tomorrow.