{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Executive Pastor Podcast","title":"How to Keep Staff Costs Under the 50% Line","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1033,"description":"A common rule of thumb: staff should not exceed 50% of your budget, and a church with four well-paid pastors beats one with seven underpaid ones. We break down how to right-size your org chart to what you can actually fund. Listen for how to resist expanding faster than the budget allows.\nIn this episode\nWhy the 50% personnel rule exists\nFewer people paid well vs. more paid poorly\nHow to add a role without breaking the ratio\nTimeline:\n0:00 Cold open: hiring a bunch of doers instead of developers\n0:28 Welcome\n0:38 What percentage of your budget goes to staff\n0:55 The 40 to 55% range and the time we “hired like a drunken sailor”\n2:14 What we’ll cover: seven underpaid hires vs four well-paid ones, and the org chart\n2:38 Why the 50% rule exists and how it frees up the other budget buckets\n4:11 The biggest reason: funding the doing of ministry vs equipping others (Ephesians 4)\n5:45 What counts in the number: wages, payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement\n6:05 Fewer people paid well beats more people paid poorly\n6:24 The “three for one special” and stacking roles on one person\n6:52 Hire developers, not doers\n7:07 Volunteers instead of hires: the janitorial and money-counting examples\n9:02 What Jesus did when he called the disciples, and paying good leaders well\n9:40 How the 50% constraint forces creativity and builds lay-leader ownership\n11:50 Take the names off the org chart and organize by function\n14:04 How often to revisit it: yearly, or every six months if you’re growing fast\n14:38 Church plants and the full-time-equivalent ratio per 100 in attendance\n15:33 Example: a church of 500 and five full-time equivalents\n16:02 Recap, this week’s challenge, and a look at episode 9\n17:08 Outro","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/hmoldqtpv6NRZ5YiVX6JHu4bcWf7ZocQ7jPe1h0Y_8I/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80ODIx/NmI1MDVkNTllMjYx/ZTU0MzljNzI5YmJl/NzBjZS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}