If you grew up going to church, the role of pastor probably took on a sort of mythic significance to you. Standing up in front of the congregation every Sunday, they spoke to you from the heart, touching on important matters of both the day and of the eternal, picking the right words and getting to the core of the subject with surprisingly clarity and compassion.
Nor would you have only seen them on Sundays. The pastor would be there in the background at every church event, from picnics to rummage sales. They would be an imposing authority at weddings; a comforting one at funerals. You might have been surprised sometime if you ran into them at the grocery store and they seemed downright human… maybe even a little funny, if you got to talking with them.
You would have the impression, eventually, of someone who was both paying careful attention to every person in their parish, and who cared deeply about the lives and well-being of all those individuals and families.
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A pastor’s job encompasses all of those qualities and more. To fill any role in Christian leadership it takes inspiration, education, and skill, but for pastors, it goes even further.
There are many different types of pastor jobs, but to be called to any of them will mean a lot of study, hard work, and a deep well of faith in yourself and your congregation.
A Complete Guide to Pastor Jobs
What Does a Pastor Do? - Understanding What Pastor Jobs Are Really Like
It’s a truism to say that the job of a pastor is never done.
While much of your congregation may see you only on Sundays, delivering some wise words and guidance from the pulpit in front of a long row of pews, they don’t see the hours you spend researching, writing, and rewriting that sermon. They don’t see you working on unclogging the toilet in the Sacristy, or chipping gum off the bottom of tables in the Sunday School room. They aren’t along with you as you visit parishioners stuck at home with illness or disability, and they may not realize that you stay up late writing to political representatives in support of causes of justice and social welfare.
You don’t need people to know these things, because that’s not why you do them. You do them because you are called to them and they are the right things to do in God's service. But you should have a clear understanding of what you may be expected to do if you decide to pursue a career as a pastor in your community.
A Pastor’s First Duty Is To Lead Parishioners in Celebrating Life and the Lord
Pastors ultimately hold responsibility in the eyes of the Lord for the faith and well-being of their parishioners. That includes not just the faces you see in front of you every Sunday, but also those who appear once every six months, or once a year, or perhaps simply live in your parish but who never attend church. In fact, it may be those who exhibit the least outward faith who are most in need of your attention.
Pastors have the unique job of spreading the Word while also standing as an example of its power.
The job of a pastor combines a testimony and celebration of God's glory with the concrete acts of service that make it so.
Pastoral work is the work of both words and deeds, driven not just by a job description, but by an obligation to serve.
Pastors have both a mission and defined job functions. While many of the tasks and duties of a pastor are in support of that mission, pastors have both the right and the responsibility to take their duties where God leads them.
When Parishioners Need Wise Words, Pastors Are Ready To Help
Christian counseling is a major part of the job for the most effective pastors. Although faith should never be found only in adversity, it’s a reality of human nature that many people will turn to clergy when they are facing the most devastating personal circumstances. Pastors have to be prepared to offer compassion and wise counsel in some of the worst moments, from sudden death to shocking abuse.
The Lord offers a positive side to this ledger too, however—pastors are also present during some of the most joyous celebrations in the lives of their congregants. Baptizing an infant, conducting a marriage ceremony, celebrating anniversaries—the most memorable moments of our lives are made more incredible by the right pastor.
A pastor’s job doesn’t stop at the church door, either. Many pastors spend the larger part of their time out in the community they serve. It’s your responsibility to reach out to both members of your church and members of the community at large, spreading the Word and offering succor and support. Visiting elderly or homebound parishioners is an important task for keeping up their spirits and checking on their mental and physical well-being.
The Day to Day Duties of a Pastor Are Both Spiritual and Mundane
The easier part of that job to define is the most typical and concrete duties of a pastor. These are the basic, day-to-day duties that will take up most of your time in any pastor’s job.
Prepare and deliver sermons - Preaching the Word of God has always been and will always be one of the core duties of a pastor. The biggest opportunity for accomplishing that duty almost always comes on Sundays, as your congregation gathers before you in God's house. That makes the weekly sermon a high-stakes event for most pastors, one that they spend a significant amount of time preparing to deliver. That includes contemplating and selecting topics, researching Biblical tracts, writing the sermon itself, and practicing the presentation.
Officiate religious ceremonies - Of course, some of the most significant duties of a pastor come with significant life events: baptism, weddings, funerals and other momentous religious occasions. The work of a pastor at a funeral can significantly aid and comfort the bereaved. The right words and perspective at a wedding can set a couple up for decades of harmonious joy together. These duties take relatively small amounts of a pastor’s time, but have an outsized effect on parishioners and demand attention to detail and genuine care.
Administer Church functions - A pastor takes on responsibility for all of the various functions of a church. That can span everything from cranking out the congregational newsletter to managing contractors to replace the leaking roof. Budgeting, organizing rummage sales, paying taxes, and every other detail of managing a going concern are the province of the pastor.
Music preparation and oversight - Particularly in small churches, pastors are also expected to prepare or oversee music as an integral part of church services. They might lead the choir or at least work with the choirmaster to recruit and coordinate members. They’ll probably select hymns for services in line with the subject of the sermon, and their voice will typically be the one that kicks off the singing.
Field trips and educational experiences - Pastors often lead outings and field-trips for their congregation. These can be simple day trips to a park or museum, or adventurous explorations of the Holy Land. Although these can be both fun and revelatory for pastors themselves, the goal continues to be the education and inspiration of your congregants. Shepherding a group of tourists through overseas trips, while caring for their spiritual needs, isn’t always a breeze.
Community service and charity - Charitable works go hand in hand with the mission of the Church. That leaves pastors with a core responsibility to plan, organize, and oversee a wide range of service activities, everything from running soup kitchens to homeless shelters. The scale of these projects can vary by the size of the church, the amount of resources available, or the skill and ambition of the pastor themselves. But almost every church will have some community service project that the pastor will be expected to organize and lead.
Of course, every church is different, and your duties as a pastor will be customized to the needs of the community and parish you serve. In a large church, the duties of pastors are shared among many, with each individual taking on a specific duty. In a small church, you may find many of your tasks driven by the demographics of the parish—in a church with an older population of congregants, for instance, you may spend more time in hospitals and conducting funerals than celebrating weddings or births. A pastor’s job will take them where they are needed most.
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In Larger Congregations, Worship Pastor Jobs Absorb the Challenges of Music and Worship
A worship leader’s primary responsibility is to develop an engaging and informative worship experience to the congregation. Pastors whose duties are focused mainly on the worship arts can hold the title of worship pastor. It's a relatively new position, but it evolved from the older post of music pastor, a term from the 1800s that denoted the rise of organists and musicians as respected members of the pastoral team.
Today, worship pastors are the rock star equivalents in congregations through the joy and inspiration of music and staging. In some mega-churches, they can be the primary figure that draws parishioners into regular services, setting up an introduction to the church for individuals who might not otherwise attend.
Worship pastors typically need a better-than-average level of musicality and an appreciation for the presentation and pacing of a worship service.
You may be asked to recruit and develop choirs or musical accompaniment, as well as maintain musical instruments. Expect to spend plenty of time in rehearsal or practice sessions making sure everything works just right before the main event on Sunday.
At large churches, worship pastors may also be in charge of the technical aspects of sound systems, lighting, and media. That means more and more familiarity with the streaming and computer equipment that is integral to those systems.
Worship pastors have the same responsibilities as any pastor to deliver comfort and counsel. Although their primary method of connecting with worshippers may be through music, they are also skilled in other kinds of communication. A worship pastor should be as comfortable conducting a funeral as a choir, and as willing to sit by the bedside and visit with a sick parishioner as to sing a hymn.
How Senior Pastor Jobs May Differ From Entry-level Pastor Jobs
Larger churches can have a dozen different pastors on staff. In hierarchical denominations, that requires someone to fill the primary leadership role. Although the title of the job may vary, that work comes down to the senior pastor.
Executive or lead pastors take on some of the same job duties as managers of any organization. Those tasks include:
Accounting and financial planning - The bigger the church, the more extensive the accounting and finance needs will be. For the largest churches, this might require an entire finance department to keep track of. A senior pastor will bear ultimate responsibility for the tracking and reporting of this information, requiring financial literacy and a basic grasp of accounting principles. With the nonprofit status of churches, an understanding of the tax code is also a must to stay on the right side of Caesar.
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Development - The other side of church financial matters is the need to support the ministry through donations and tithes. With the ultimate responsibility of keeping the lights on and salaries paid, senior pastors take the lead on church development work. That can include hunting down grants or supervising grant-writers, soliciting tithes, and organizing rummage sales or other fundraising events.
Human relations - Large churches have large staff, and that brings all of the same considerations of management that come in any corporation. Churches are not exempted from all the rules of state and federal regulators when it comes to staff, and senior pastors are ultimately responsible for making sure the right signs are posted and the right policies are enacted. Even in as well-meaning and good-hearted an environment as a church, there are also conflicts and misunderstandings among staff, and the senior pastor is the person whose desk they end up on for resolution.
Strategic planning - Although the Church is in many ways timeless, it’s also an entity that has to move with the secular times. Individual churches have goals, whether it’s increasing the size of their congregation or remodeling the choir practice room. The work of defining and prioritizing those goals falls to the senior pastor. Working with the congregation and other staff, the senior pastor will decide on the most important and achievable goals and put together plans to achieve them.
Of course, pastors at smaller churches handle all these various tasks too, but the scale creates a legitimate difference in how those duties are fulfilled in large churches. It requires a different level of executive ability to be a senior pastor and to delegate and manage the job.
Pastors are Accountable to Church, Parish, and God
Ultimately, and if you take it all the way up the ladder, every pastor is responsible to God. But until that day they are called to account by Saint Peter at the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, even senior pastors are accountable to others in the Church hierarchy.
This can depend on the denomination and organization of the church. Pastors may be responsible to a board of elders assembled from within the congregation, or to a bishop or committee established by the larger regional or national organization.
In either case, being a pastor involves reporting to someone or other about your actions and the material and spiritual state of your parish. Like any business executive, you’ll need to be able to quantify and communicate about these matters, and to request resources or offer recommendations to your superiors about congregational issues.
The Qualifications of a Pastor Includes Ancient Knowledge and Modern Skills
Believe it or not, the duties of organization and communication that fall to pastors require the same basic types of office and management skills as those of any business leader. You’ll probably keep contact with parishioners via email, balance the collection plate receipts using specialized software like Tithely or Planning Center, and quite possibly stream services via YouTube or Facebook when circumstances demand.
That means you have to be high-tech as well as high-faith to hold a pastor’s job today.
This may be even more important for youth pastors, whose familiarity with TikTok and memes might make or break their outreach to the next generation.
If you look over pastor job descriptions, you’ll find some things that are listed consistently even between different denominations. The essential skills for handling the work of a pastor are clear:
- Communication
- Leadership
- Empathy
- Ethics
- Teaching
Pastors have to be ordained by their denomination, a process that can require years of intensive study and preparation. Most major Christian denominations have at least the following requirements for ordained pastors:
- Be a member of the appropriate congregation for a certain period of time
- Be endorsed by a number of church elders
- Go through an interview process with an elder or committee
- Earn at least a bachelor’s, and commonly a master’s degree in divinity, theology, or a related field
- Pass an ordination examination
Although it's a long and intensive process, becoming ordained is exactly the path that gives you the broad set of skills you will need to be successful as a pastor.
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Pastor Jobs Require a Complete Education in Both Secular and Spiritual Matters
Most jobs for pastors have high standards when it comes to education. A Christian master's degree is a requirement in most churches, typically in divinity, social work, or similar studies.
These degrees combine studies in both traditional liberal arts topics that give you a well-rounded perspective on culture, society, and science with dedicated liturgical training that goes into Biblical history, interpretation, and Christian philosophy.
You can find specializations in these programs that will give you extra training in areas like Bible study, youth ministry, or pastoral studies that will help strengthen your knowledge and skills for your particular calling.
While a Christian bachelor's degree is your introduction to such weighty subjects, a master's of divinity or similar program allows you to sink deep into the mysteries of religion and to come back with answers and skills to make you worthy of the most advanced pastor jobs.
The two to three year Master of Divinity or Master of Theology degree has long been the standard required for all kinds of Christian ministers. While these graduate degrees have much the same kind of subject matter as bachelor-level degrees, they focus specifically on the religious and theological matters concerning the ministry, and engage with much more depth and intensity on the topic.
Many master's programs also offer internship or other practical placements to allow you to practice your profession while still under the guidance of experienced instructors. There is often a greater emphasis at the graduate level on the practical matters of public speaking, personal counseling, and congregational leadership that are core to the work of a minister.
Of course, your level of understanding and interpretation of the Bible and matters of theology will also make great leaps. Biblical hermeneutics, the process of interpreting and understanding the Word of God, receive a lot of attention in graduate programs. Through conversation, study, and instruction, you'll get an advanced level of skill in applying Biblical strictures to modern living.
The Qualities of a Pastor Come From Inside
In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
Every organization looks at the so-called soft-skills when they are hiring an individual to fill a role. The intangible assets of leadership, team-building, empathy, and communication are all elements that make candidates for any job more or less desirable.
When it comes to pastor jobs, though, the soft-skills are really the most important skills. Although you will be tested and questioned in matters of Biblical knowledge and of Church doctrine, your daily responsibilities to your congregation will revolve around connections.
Pastors also need a high level of spiritual and personal integrity. It's not overstating the case to say that pastors must be beyond reproach. As an exemplar and representative of your religion, it's a necessity that people be able to look up to you.
Motivation is another key pastoral quality. You have to inspire people, both in your congregation and in the larger community. There's a kind of light that fills the best pastors, bringing a glow to those around them. It's hard to put that on a piece of paper for a job description, but church boards and hiring committees know it when they see it.
What It's Like Pastoring for a Small Congregation vs a Mega-Church
Pastoring at a large church has both advantages and disadvantages. Most pastors will start out in a junior position such as youth ministry or worship minister when beginning at a big church. This lets you learn about the larger pastoral role in stages while attending to certain specific needs of just a segment of the congregation. At a large church, the process for applying and getting hired will usually be more systematic and the requirements better defined. And in a big organization, there is plenty of support around and mentorship available to help you learn the ropes.
For all these reasons, it's also somewhat easier to get hired into these positions: you do not need the breadth of training or experience that a minister working solo needs to bring to the job.
But becoming a pastor at a large church also brings with it some challenges. Your vision of your ministry of service will have to be aligned with the larger plan for the church. You'll report to senior pastors and act according to their direction. You may not have the freedom to fulfill every aspect of your calling at first.
Serving the ministry in a small church truly puts all the burdens of leadership on your shoulders, but it is also one of the most rewarding type of pastor jobs. You have the flexibility to build your parish in the way that you best see fit. You're likely to develop a better and deeper understanding of your congregation and community than you might in a larger church. And you'll surely develop strong relationships with the families and individuals you will be caring for.
You need a full range of experience and the ability to deal with any kind of situation that comes up, from a parishioner with chronic illness to issues of child discipline. Personality and doctrine can be critical in small churches, too. Pastoring for a small congregation means finding a good fit not just for your skills, but for your interests and character.
The Salary for Pastor Jobs Offers a Living Wage
The Apostle Peter had something to say about the compensation of pastors.
And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.
But you will need something to get by on before Jesus returns. Like everyone else, pastors require a paycheck to get by in modern society. You may not be doing the job for the money, but you will need to make some money as a pastor.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks the salary for pastors, ministers, and other positions that conduct religious worship and offer spiritual guidance under the general category of clergy.
In 2020, the median annual salary for all clergy was $51,940 per year.
Senior pastors in the top ten percent of the field earned $89,510 or more, reflecting higher levels of education, more experience, and responsibility for larger congregations.
Pastors who are just starting out in the field might fall into a different BLS category, that of directors of religious activities and education. Pastors in junior positions or working in education or outreach programs could be classified in that area, and expect a median annual wage of $45,110 per year.
Churches Looking for Pastors Pay Based on Local Factors
Your salary as a pastor will never skyrocket like a stockbroker’s or a doctor’s will. Although more responsibility and larger parishes may bring you more pay, the driving factor in what you earn will be your necessities rather than earthly desires.
That means that, like any other profession, pastors working in high cost-of-living areas will receive higher salaries. That’s a reality of earning a living in expensive places, where church committees recognize that higher compensation is required to maintain a basic standard of life. So you’ll find that pastors in urban areas and other expensive places will take home higher salaries—but not necessarily have a dramatically different standard of living.
The median salaries for clergy in these representative states around the country in 2021 were:
- New York: $57,120
- California: $72,760
- Illinois: $57,560
- Texas: $56,900
- Florida: $54,730
- Missouri: $52,880
- Georgia: $51,100
- Washington: $64,910
Something that might surprise you is the fact that pastors working in different sectors also have substantially different levels of compensation. Although most pastoral jobs are found working directly for religious organizations, in individual congregations, others are found scattered around both public and private sector employers.
General medical and surgical hospitals and skilled nursing facilities often have healthcare pastors on staff, for example; they offer similar salaries, at $57,580 and $59,180 per year respectively.
The highest paying employer of pastors, surprisingly, is the federal government. The average salary for clergy on that payroll comes out to $82,710 per year.
Of course, your greatest rewards as a pastor will never have anything to do with money. As a deeply personal vocation, it will always remain the work of inspiration. Your satisfaction in a pastor job has to be one of fulfilling the duty you were called by the Lord to perform. And although you know that duty will never be easy, you will always know it was what you were meant to do.
2020 US Bureau of Labor Statistics salary figures and job growth projections for Clergy and Directors, Religious Activities and Education reflect national data not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Data accessed January 2022.
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