Breakdown of a healthy church budget

Between working at four churches and being a part of numerous church consultations, I’ve seen plenty of church budgets.

Usually, they breakdown in similar ways...

45% Operational - The nuts and bolts of church life. Insurance, utilities, admin, maintenance.

35% Staff - Ministers for all ages of life.

15% Missions - Outreach locally, global, personal and institutional.

5% Sinking Fund/Debt repayment.

These rough figures are, of course, dependent upon one thing - property.

Your overheads will be higher with property.

Housing and payment of your minister will vary greatly if you provide a manse.

Having a space you can rent out will dramatically increase the funds available to your church.

But, approximately, these ratios keep a church in a healthy financial position and give a congregation an appropriate idea of how much they can spend on staffing.

If you want to pay your staff an appropriate salary, let’s say 70k for a minister, 40-50k for a full-time worker and 15k for each additional part-time placement, then you can work out the healthy budget required.

From the figures above, a senior minister, youth or children’s minister and an admin assistant would cost around $135,000. In order to spend approximately 35% of your budget on staffing, then you’d need a budget of around 385k.

Alternatively, if you have a total budget of around 200k, then you only have around $70,000 to spend on staff.

Now, you don’t have to stick with these ratios. A church with a quarter of a million dollar budget could outlay 120k, or nearly 50%, of their income on staff.

But, it will come at a cost.

Either, mission funding will be squeezed or the church will be vulnerable to financial pressures.

At times, this can be deemed appropriate or manageable but, long-term, messing with these figures will cause pain for the staff members, treasurer and, ultimately, congregation.