Leadership Network and Vanderbloemen are releasing what they claim to be “by far the biggest-scale, cross-denominational response anyone has ever collected about church finances.” Specifically, they interviewed 727 megachurches about how they spend their finances, and the report has some interesting findings, all of which are free to download here. Among the findings: A little under half of a church’s annual income typically goes to staff, with senior pastors making at least 30 percent more than the next highest paid staffer. The biggest determiner of pastor salaries, by far, is the size of the church—race, theology and even age of the pastor had no appreciable bearing on on their income.

One interesting, perhaps unexpected finding: one of the biggest determiners of a church’s growth is, increasingly, a children’s pastor. Treat your children’s pastors accordingly …

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