New Compensation Guidelines Published
Rev. Rachael Pryor, Convener, Compensation Guidelines Task Force
If you visit the websites of many UCC Conferences, you’ll find compensation guidelines available that assist congregations and authorized ministers develop their budgets or provide recommendations to consider when hiring a new pastor or specialized minister. This year, the Compensation Guidelines Task Force was composed of Rich Bireta, the newly installed Conference Treasurer; two co-chairs of the Committee on Ministry, as well as members with expertise in Human Resources, Law, and other Professional experience serving in various capacities throughout our Conference. We’re thankful for their contribution to this important work. Rev. Rachael Pryor, Transitional Minister at Wichita UCC and convener of the Task Force, offered this perspective on the new guidelines:
“It has been almost 10 years since our Conference undertook a significant update to our Compensation Guidelines; and in the meantime we've seen steady changes in our local churches and in the availability and expectations of authorized ministers. To bring us up to date, it was important to invite a wide variety of perspectives into this conversation, including ordained and licensed ministers, and lay people from diverse professional backgrounds. Our team was made up of folks from rural, suburban, and urban settings in Kansas and Oklahoma; we had folks who serve with the Committee on Ministry, Conference Council, and in various local church capacities.
As we came together, we considered how to make this process as simple as possible for local churches, while also ensuring that we are working with guidelines and values reflected throughout the United Church of Christ. Each Conference has its own approach, and we studied the guidelines of more than a dozen other Conferences to evaluate a wide range of examples. Our compensation brackets were compared to those of other conferences with similar average cost of living to our region. We believe our new guidelines offer more flexibility for churches and pastors to work creatively, while at the same time providing a simplified approach to the financial aspect of compensation. As we see more pastors coming to KO from other Conferences to serve our churches, using resources from our national setting helps further simplify the process.
It is the responsibility of the Conference to provide these guidelines so that churches and authorized ministers can hold one another to a just and reasonable covenant of expectations for ministry. Pastors live with the same financial constraints as anyone else; yet, we also know that many of our local churches have experienced budgetary challenges in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope these guidelines will help churches and pastors find a way forward together, and to support a reasonable cost of living for authorized ministers, within the unique capacity of each local setting. Above all, we want to emphasize that these are guidelines: not a hard and fast requirement, but a starting point for conversations about just and faithful compensation, for which our Conference Minister and Committee on Ministry are always available to provide further guidance and support for local use.”
The 2022 Compensation Guidelines are available on our website under Resources in the “Local Church Resources” section. Click here to view a copy. This resource will be split into several documents at a later date, making it even easier for you to find the information that you need.