Helping Your Church Get Personnel Administration Right

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, talks about how growing churches can move from informal “family” expectations to healthier personnel systems. He explains why churches must see themselves as employers and staff as employees, then walks through practical, scalable steps—basic policies, job descriptions, compensation benchmarks, and clear supervision and evaluation without losing the spiritual heart of ministry calling.

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:00

Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. That's what we do on the podcast. We talk about the ins and outs and ups and downs of what it means to lead a ministry organization or a church today. Well, was in dialogue with a pastor recently.

Jeff Iorg: 00:22

A church where he is working, is growing, showing signs of health and life and vitality. It's also a church that's in a transition location. It's been perhaps a more rural setting, now it's turning into more of an urban setting. So the church is changing. It's changing because it's growing.

Jeff Iorg: 00:44

It's changing because the demographic around the church is shifting. It's changing. And he raised an interesting question that prompted the subject of today's podcast. He said, how do I get my church as it changes to take on a better understanding of how it relates to its personnel? He said, in our church, there's really not much structure to that.

Jeff Iorg: 01:10

And as we're adding more employees, it's becoming more and more difficult to manage this without some personnel systems in place to get the job done. This raises a larger question, which is the theme for today's podcast, and that is helping churches develop personnel administration strategies. Churches are notoriously weak at this point. Now I'm not talking about the mega churches or the super large churches or the big churches. They tend to do this a little better.

Jeff Iorg: 01:45

I'm talking about the rest of you. I'm talking about the biblocational pastor churches. I'm talking about the small churches. I'm talking about the single staff churches. I'm talking about the church that might have a pastor and a part time secretary or maybe a halftime youth pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 02:03

I'm talking about churches that are relatively small and that struggle with personnel administration. So let's talk about that today and some problems to identify and some strategies to implement to perhaps help these churches improve their personnel administration strategies. The first thing and the hardest thing for churches to remember is that churches are employers and paid staff are employees. Now you might be thinking, well, isn't that obvious? Well, in some sense it is, but it's also hard for churches to think in those terms.

Jeff Iorg: 02:48

They think of the Ford dealership down the street as an employer and the people who work there as employees. They think of the school where their wife or husband teaches as the employer and their wife or husband as the employee. They they don't really think church members typically of their church as an employer in a community and the people who are paid to work there as employees. That's very important to get that distinction in our minds because just like employers in your community have legal obligations and employees in your community have legal rights, so they do at church. Churches are employers, and so many of the legal responsibilities that fall to employers in various states or contexts are also incumbent upon the church.

Jeff Iorg: 03:49

And employees have the same responsibilities to their employer, if the employer is a church, that employees might have in other contexts. So this is first and foundational, and it's significantly difficult to remember this because most people don't really think in terms of business relationships at church. They think this person's our pastor. This person's our church secretary. This person's our youth pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 04:18

This person's our worship leader. They think of them in terms of spiritual responsibility and familial or fraternal relationships. They don't really categorize it as employer employee relationships. And yet, that's what it is. And so perhaps the first step in helping your church to develop more effective personnel administration and personnel administration strategies is to remind the leaders that a church is an employer.

Jeff Iorg: 04:52

And just like they have employers and they are employees, so the church is an employer and it has employees. And therefore, it's important to understand the legal obligations of the employer and the legal responsibilities and rights of the employees as they work in this relationship together. Now, as you establish that, then what are some strategies that you can implement to improve, this kind of administration taking place in churches? Well, the first one may surprise you because I've been talking about the legalities of this and the the the administration of this and the realities of this. But now I wanna talk about number one as a strategy to underscore the spiritual aspects or what I'll call the spirituality of employment relationships in a ministry organization.

Jeff Iorg: 05:46

Look, God is at work to bring people into ministry responsibilities by his calling and to place people in ministry responsibilities in churches or ministry organizations by the decisions of those who make those choices. But usually, in the context of a person saying that God is calling them to a particular responsibility or people saying that they felt led or directed by God to employ or to offer employment to a certain person. This is spiritual work we're doing. And the rest of what I'm gonna say on the podcast is really built on that foundation. It cannot be dismissed.

Jeff Iorg: 06:32

We're doing spiritual work. And so it's not inappropriate to say that God's call and assigned responsibility under the direction of God is a part of the process of healthy personnel administration in local churches and ministry organizations. Now, that's the upside of that issue, but the downside is people say, well, if God called me, then I don't have to answer to anyone but God. Only God can fire me. I don't have to do what anyone says except what God says.

Jeff Iorg: 07:05

Well, this is an extremist kind of position that really undercuts and ignores all the Bible says about working in a collegial environment and also about working under authority. So just because I start with this spiritual foundation doesn't mean that's the only thing that needs to be considered in creating a really good strategy on this point. But we do start there. Good personnel administration in, local churches or ministry organizations starts with a spiritual foundation. God calls.

Jeff Iorg: 07:35

We assign based on our prompting or leading by the Lord to put people in certain positions and responsibilities. And as a part of that, we expect that through what we're doing, God will both use and shape and fulfill us and bless the people who are employing us in these contexts. So spirituality or a spiritual foundation or basis is essential. The second thing though is you we do personnel administration not because we're trying to satisfy some law or trying to check off some box. We do it because we want the church and the employees to both flourish.

Jeff Iorg: 08:15

We want organizational health. We want people to flourish. Saying that you want to address personnel administration in your church is not about, quote, fixing the problem. It's about helping people flourish. It's about creating systems and processes so that people are fulfilled, they find meaningful work to do, they do it in ways that are productive, the organization is advanced, and because of that, they have a sense of personal fulfillment.

Jeff Iorg: 08:45

So we start with spirituality and then we move toward mutual fulfillment of church and organizational health so people will flourish. Now another part of this, another strategy to remember is what I'll call proportionality. And I'm gonna talk about this one for a few minutes, so stay with me. Proportionality. What I mean by this is there is no one size fits all way to do personnel administration in local churches or ministry organizations.

Jeff Iorg: 09:16

There is a need for a sense of proportionality in how this is developed and implemented. So for example, if you're in a single staff church with one full time pastor and maybe a part time secretary or someone like that, you're going to need a very limited amount of administrative process and policy to take care of the personnel administration in that kind of setting. But if you're in an organization where I was before I came to my current job, where I worked at the seminary with a 100 and employees plus a lot of adjuncts and contract workers and others that were that were also on the payroll. Well, that required an entirely different approach. A manual that was fifty, sixty, 70 pages long, which spelled out and enumerated all kinds of detail about all kinds of issues and aspects of what it meant to work in that kind of a large organization, proportionality.

Jeff Iorg: 10:11

So when you hear me use the phrase personnel administration, don't think, well, I've got to write a 10 page manual for a church with one or two employees. That that's not that's not true. That's not required or even necessary. But it might be good if you had a one page summary or a couple of pages laying out some of the answers to some of the issues that need to be a part of good personnel administration. Proportionality.

Jeff Iorg: 10:36

Big churches, big organizations are going to have much more detail about this. Smaller churches or smaller organizations, much less. Now, a side issue in this area of proportionality is knowing what's required in the state where you live and where you work and making sure that those requirements are met. And that is often different for different sizes of organization or different kinds of organization. So for example, in my previous ministry role, I worked in California.

Jeff Iorg: 11:09

And the state of California has many laws that are applicable to every employer in the state that has 50 or more full time employees. And it has other breakdowns for other sizes of organizations. But for a certain break point, it's about 50 employees. Above that, there are all kinds of things that are required. Below that, not so much.

Jeff Iorg: 11:34

And so it's really important to understand this idea of proportionality is gonna be geared to not only the size of your organization, but the size of your organization in relationship to the laws in the state in which you're living. Now you may say, well, hang on a second. We're a church. Are are we are we subject to all those laws? Well, not all of them, but some of them you certainly are.

Jeff Iorg: 11:57

Now this is generally speaking, I'm not an attorney and I don't play one on the podcast. But generally speaking, there are laws that are applicable to every employer in certain states, laws that are applicable to employers of a certain size or number of employees in every particular state, and then some laws that are applicable to all employers unless they're exempted for some religious purpose. And you may not be able to sort all those out, but you can get help to do that. We're gonna talk about where to find that help in just a moment. But the point for now is proportionality.

Jeff Iorg: 12:37

So we're laying a foundation for helping a church think through how it can do better personnel administration. First, start with a spiritual foundation. This is spiritual work we're doing. We're here because we believe God called us to do this, and we believe that God has directed us to employ certain individuals, and they sense God's leading to take those jobs. Spiritual foundation.

Jeff Iorg: 12:57

We don't dismiss that. Second, mutual flourishing. Church organization and individuals working there both flourishing because of the strategies that we're putting together to make that mutuality happen. And then proportionality. We're making a response in this area in proportion to the size organization we have and the demands of the moment.

Jeff Iorg: 13:21

A fourth strategy to help you improve in this area is to find good resources. Now, where can you find resources to help you develop these kinds of policies? Well, here's some suggestions. Number one, you may have some HR people in your church or in your area that would be willing to help you with this project. You know, as I said, a lot of human resources, laws and policies and procedures, they're they're not really locked in just because you're a church.

Jeff Iorg: 13:54

There are things that are standard in the industry, so to speak, are standard in the state in which you're living and working. And if you have an HR person in your church or in your in your community that can help you, that's a great resource to draw on. But beyond that, this is a good time to call on your local association, your area director of missions, or your associational missionary, and say, do you have help, or is there someone in our area that can help us to develop better personnel administration policies and strategies for our church. And then beyond that, another good resource are your state convention staff. Calling your state convention and asking the same questions, they will have resources that they can make available to you as well.

Jeff Iorg: 14:35

And then beyond HR, people in your church and community, associations, take conventions, there's also, of course, another level, and that is, attorneys and people who work in the HR field from that perspective as well. Now, I put them last because I don't want you to be overly intimidated by this. We're not talking about here having to write some massive legal contract. Look, this is not a union contract we're writing here. Alright?

Jeff Iorg: 15:01

We're not having to bring in a big negotiating team with a bunch of high powered or high and high cost attorneys. But without having to do all that, it's still appropriate to perhaps find an attorney and say, can you help us to evaluate or to write or to put together some basic and adequate personnel policies for our church? Another resource you can draw on. So we've talked about spirituality and mutuality and proportionality and resources. And then one last thing, and that is as you're developing these strategies, make sure these strategies are what I'll call progressive, meaning that they are incremental and improved over the years.

Jeff Iorg: 15:41

One of the things that some leaders get tripped up on is thinking that in order to put a new policy into place, it has to be perfect before it can be implemented. Man, I learned this a long time ago. There are no perfect policies. There just aren't. You never get it right completely and totally the first time for all time.

Jeff Iorg: 16:00

So what I would advocate instead is that as you're working on this project, you say to your church leadership, hey, listen. Let's develop a set of personnel strategies or policies or improvement plan. Let's put it into place, and then let's evaluate it in a year and see how it's going, and evaluate it a year after that and see how it's going. And in doing this, we can improve it year by year. Now that's what I mean when I say the plan must be progressive or incremental and improved in incremental fashion.

Jeff Iorg: 16:32

We are still doing that even today in large organizations that I've that I've led both at the seminary and now here at the executive committee. We, once a year, go through our personnel policies to see if there's any revisions, any updates, or any changes that need to be made. And this is a standard part of our procedure at these organizations. Now you may not even have any of this where you are, but what I'm trying to emphasize to you is you don't write it one time and never look at it again. You write those initial set of policies and you put those into place, and then you work on them year by year and keep improving them as you go along.

Jeff Iorg: 17:08

As I said, this is something that we do here once a year. Our fiscal year starts October 1. And so about the August 1, we go through our personnel manual. We have an employee read through it, and, that's that's assigned to to keep up with these details, mark up anything that maybe they think has changed or is confusing or has come up during the past year that needs adjustment, and I'll do the same thing, read through their notes and see if there's anything I can think of that needs to be changed. And then some years, not all years, but some years, we we can send that out to, like, our insurance company and ask them to review it, our attorneys and ask them to review it.

Jeff Iorg: 17:43

Let's talk about that insurance company review for a minute. I got introduced to this a number of years ago while I was at the seminary. Our HR specialist would go through the manual, and then she would also send the manual every year to our insurance company and ask them to take a look at it. They did that for us for free. Now why would they do that?

Jeff Iorg: 17:59

Why would your insurance company look through your personnel manual and make any suggestions for improvement and not charge you to do that? Because they're trying to minimize risk. If they can do anything on their end to keep the risk lower, they wanna do that. And so they would give a read through of our manual and mark up some areas that they thought could be improved, maybe make a few suggestions of how that could be done in order to keep us from running into difficulty down the road. So progressive means you adopt something and then you progressively over time incrementally make it better as you go along.

Jeff Iorg: 18:37

Alright. We're talking today on the podcast about helping churches to improve their personnel administration, moving from not really having much to having a little more structure in this process and how that can help organizations. Basic strategies to remember. It's spiritual work. It's mutual work where we want everyone to flourish.

Jeff Iorg: 18:56

There's proportionality. We reach out for additional resources. We wanna be progressive in moving along incrementally and improving in this area. Now, with all that in mind, what are some of the basics that would be found in a set of good personnel policies or good administrative procedures to get you started? Well, let me give you four.

Jeff Iorg: 19:22

Number one, the first thing is to have some defined personnel policies that are applicable to all employees. These might be things like setting the work schedule for the organization, establishing how much work time and how much time off each employee is expected each week, how much vacation is allotted, and how to ask for and reserve that vacation time. Same thing about sick leave. How much sick leave or personal time off to, grant and how you schedule that and how you account for it? And another thing in some organizations is ministry time away.

Jeff Iorg: 20:07

A lot of ministry organizations run up to a difficulty with this because people will say, well, I wanna go on a mission trip with my church. Can I get time off for that? Well, no. Not unless you take vacation time. That's what your secular employer will tell you.

Jeff Iorg: 20:24

But you say, but I'm not working at a secular place. I'm working at a church or a ministry organization. Don't they give me time off to do ministry? Well, possibly, but possibly not. That's why a policy is important, but this is one of the things that could be included in the policy.

Jeff Iorg: 20:39

I know that when I went to my very first church, this was years ago, there were not long personnel manuals that were handed to me, but there was a one or two sheet summary of some personnel policies the churches had adopted. And one of the policies they had was that I was permitted up to two weeks per year to do ministry in other churches or other organizations. Now what they meant by that was I could go on a mission trip or I could preach a revival or I could go and lead a conference, but they were saying to me, you're limited to two weeks a year for this. Now that was sufficient. I I was a busy full time pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 21:21

I I didn't really have much more time than that to be away. But what they were saying to me upfront was, we recognize that you may have opportunity to do some things in other places, and we want you to take advantage of that to a limited degree. But you can't be a full time pastor for us and be gone one or two weeks a month in ministry to other locations. That's not gonna work. But one or two weeks a year, not only do we accommodate that, we actually encourage it as you connect with other churches and ministry organizations.

Jeff Iorg: 21:53

So the the first basic part of a good set of personnel strategies or personnel policies is to have basic policies that are applicable to all employees that govern the most foundational things about employment, like work schedule, time off, things like that. Now you say, well, do these need to be in a big manual? Well, they could be. But they all might also be in something as simple as a letter of agreement or an employment agreement that you reach with someone, especially if it's in a small church setting where you only have a few employees. It can be customized.

Jeff Iorg: 22:28

In other words, you might say that you're going to give a certain employee some things that other employees don't get, or there might be a class of employees like pastors that get certain kind of benefit, but other employees may be like custodians that would not get that benefit. These are things that are usually geared to the specific job and job demands and assignments. And it's not unusual that not everyone's treated the same, but these things are spelled out in some kind of formal way. So the first thing that I want you to work on is just basic personnel policies, like work schedule, time off vacation, sick leave, time away, those kinds of things. Maybe it doesn't need to be a long manual, maybe just a couple of pages, but it needs to be some way defined.

Jeff Iorg: 23:16

The second basic aspect of this is having job descriptions, where you just simply write down what you expect a person to do in the position that they have been assigned. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to spell out every single thing they're ever going to do, but it does lay out their primary responsibilities and the core of what their assignment really is. Now you may say, well, how do you write a job description for a pastor? Well, you can write one. It will be broad and it will have a number of different things, but it will spell out the kinds of ministry and leadership and service and decision making that is assigned to and expected of a pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 23:54

It will also omit things that a pastor can honestly say, that's just not my job. And that can be one of the most helpful things about this kind of job description. A third thing to set up besides some basically defined policies and some job descriptions is a compensation plan. I saw an article once entitled, how much should we pay the preacher? That is exactly what I'm talking about right now.

Jeff Iorg: 24:22

How do you determine how you're gonna set the salaries for the positions that you have? Well, there are lots of different ways to get at this. Going back to what I've already said on the podcast, you may wanna talk to your associational director of missions or an associational missionary. You may wanna talk to state convention. You might wanna reach out to GuideStone or some other organization like that that has survey information and salary information to help you set this up.

Jeff Iorg: 24:46

What I'm talking about here now, though, is setting up some kind of a plan for how this is gonna be administrated so that there's actually an understanding of the ranges or the compensation or the idea of what certain positions pay in certain communities. Now I don't have time to go into this in great detail on the podcast, but I'm often asked, you know, how do you how do you set a reasonable salary? And there's all kinds of ways you can do this with all kinds of massive studies that go on and all kinds of comparative data, but there's a simple way to do it. And that is ask your local school system for their salary structure. They are typically published even on their websites where you can look up and you can see that a teacher with this much education and this many years of experience is gonna make this much salary.

Jeff Iorg: 25:30

And it's a big chart that they publish, and that's how people are compensated. Now why is that helpful? Because teachers are helping professionals in your community, and your school district has paid the money to someone to discover what it really takes to attract quality candidates, the kind of salary it takes to live in your community, and that's very comparable work to what pastors do. And so I've said it this way over the years. If if you're the pastor of a small church, you should be paid like a public school teacher.

Jeff Iorg: 26:00

If you're the pastor of a mid sized church, like a public school administrator. If you're the pastor of a very large church, like a public school superintendent or someone in senior administration. So maybe small churches pay like teachers, mid sized churches pay like principals, large churches pay like superintendents. Now that's not a hard and fast rule. I'm just trying to give you some benchmark to say, this is what's reasonable in our community because this is what it takes to live here.

Jeff Iorg: 26:31

And people who are trying to attract professionals to come and serve in these kind of service oriented jobs, that's what they know they have to pay for a family to actually live in our community and to be able to thrive in those roles. And so one way to set a compensation plan is just to find a comparable compensation structure in your community, and I think the school district's the most likely one that's publicly available that you can then use and say, this is what our church wants to mirror what's going on here in the school district. And then finally, another basic structure is the or another basic strategy is the supervisory structure, including the evaluation, accountability, and reward system. In other words, when I know what the defined responsibilities are and the job description is clear and I know how much I'm gonna be paid, how will I be supervised and how will I be evaluated? That's the last part of the mix.

Jeff Iorg: 27:22

Supervisory structure means who's my boss? To whom am I accountable? Who will evaluate my work? And who will decide if I'm rewarded for what I've done with either more privileges or more resources or maybe just even public recognition in a service of some kind? Who decides those issues?

Jeff Iorg: 27:41

Well, the question that was asked of me that prompted this podcast was, how can I help my church to move to a more professional or a more polished or, just a just a healthier method of personnel administration where they begin to really understand that the people who work here are employees, and as a church, you're an employer? So I've talked about the strategies. It rests on spirituality and mutuality and proportionality. Resources available create a progressive incremental plan, just get started and get moving in the right direction. And that plan will have at least these four components, some defined personnel policies, articulated job descriptions, adopted compensation plan, and a supervisory structure that tells you who your supervisor is, how you're gonna be evaluated, and how you'll be rewarded.

Jeff Iorg: 28:31

Now, that sounds so simple, doesn't it? This takes hard work. This is gonna involve you meeting with some leaders, working in some small groups, developing a committee perhaps, bringing processes through your leadership structure to help your church to put these kinds of things into place. It's work, but it's worth it in the long run because it creates a greater environment for flourishing and a greater sense of employees really knowing what they're supposed to be doing, how they're supposed to be doing it, how they're being evaluated for it, and how they'll be rewarded or acknowledged for a job well done. It's interesting, isn't it?

Jeff Iorg: 29:10

You're both the employee and you're trying to shape your employer to be a better employer so that you're a more satisfied employee. This is not going to come from outside your church. It's gonna have to come from within. And you as a leader are likely going to be the one who facilitates it. This is hard work.

Jeff Iorg: 29:32

It's administrative work. It might seem like even tedious work, but it pays off so much in the long run. Think about how you can do it better in the place where you work today as you lead on. Hi.