Chapter 10
Staff and volunteers
Staff cost more than anything else a church buys, and the right ones are worth it: a great preacher lifts everyone every week. Volunteers cost nothing at all, and are among the best value in the game, as long as you don't wear them out.
Staff
| Role | Salary a year | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Pastor (full time) | $55,000–$85,000 + $18,000 benefits | Preaches, leads worship, and cares for the congregation. Can know about 150 people well. |
| Bivocational pastor | $22,000–$38,000 | Preaches and leads worship part-time, alongside another job, as most small churches' pastors do. Can know about 75 people well. |
| Choir director / organist / pianist | $15,000–$35,000 | Plays the organ or piano, directs the choir, and chooses the music. Up to +0.06 for everyone. Part time. |
| Youth director | $20,000–$40,000 | Runs the youth group and keeps teenagers coming. Up to +0.08 for households with someone under 19. Part time. |
| Sexton | $18,000–$30,000 | Opens up, cleans, and fixes small things before they become big ones. Slows building wear by up to half. Part time. |
| Church secretary | $20,000–$35,000 | Runs the office, the bulletin, and the calendar, so the pastor can be a pastor. The pastor can care for 50 more people. Part time. |
Payroll taxes add 7.65% to every salary.
Hiring
- Advertise a role and three applicants apply, with skills from 0.3 to 0.95. Better ones ask for more. Hire the one you want, or Advertise again for a new three.
- A skilled pastor is worth paying for. Preaching moves everyone by (performance − 0.5) × 0.16, so the swing from a poor preacher to a great one is 0.16 for everyone, every week. That's more than the whole building's fit.
Overload
Past their capacity (150 people for a pastor, 75 for a bivocational one, 50 more with a secretary), a pastor's performance is divided by the overload. A pastor caring for 300 people preaches at half their skill. A growing church needs a secretary, or a second pastor, before the preaching suffers.
No pastor
A church with no pastor costs everyone 0.1 after every service (except an unprogrammed Quaker meeting, which has none). Pastors move on:
- after ten years, a pastor may be called elsewhere (0.4% a month);
- after 25 years, they retire (8% a month).
Where a bishop appoints clergy (Catholics, the Orthodox), a successor comes within two months. Elsewhere, the search takes nine months, and the church is without a pastor meanwhile. Hire your own sooner if you can: the search stands down.
Order of hiring
- A pastor: bivocational below about 75 people, full time above about 150.
- A choir director / organist once there's a steady surplus of about $2,500 a month.
- A youth director if you have young families.
- A sexton for a big or busy building.
- A secretary before the pastor is stretched.
Volunteers
| Role | On duty | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Greeter | 2 | Welcome people at the door. Up to +0.25 to the chance a visitor is welcomed (+0.15 instead of −0.1). |
| Usher | 2 | Show people to seats and help with the collection and communion. Visitors shown to a seat gain +0.03. |
| Nursery worker | 2 | Look after babies and toddlers during the service. The nursery only opens with someone on duty. |
| Choir | all of them | Sing every week they come. +0.04 for everyone with at least four singing (and +0.02 more from a choir loft). Eight are needed for the choir ministry. |
| Musician | up to 4 | Play the organ or piano for the hymns (one, unless a music director does), or all together in the band at a drum kit. |
| A/V tech | 1 | Needed on duty to live stream the service. |
Recruiting
Ask for two more on the Volunteers screen asks the happiest adults in the church, who say yes with a chance equal to their satisfaction. You can also ask a particular person from their inspector (Ask: Greeter, Ask: Usher, and so on). Recruit when people are content.
The rota and burnout
- Each volunteer is willing to serve 1 to 4 services a month. The rota asks those within their limit first, and asks someone for more only when nobody else is coming.
- Every service beyond their limit adds 0.25 burnout; a month within it takes 0.15 off.
- Burnout costs them up to 0.25 satisfaction a week, and at 0.8 they quit everything, usually unhappy enough to drift away.
- With services twice a week, each role needs twice the volunteers. The Volunteers screen shows each month's shifts against what your people will give.
- Ministry volunteers must be satisfied (0.5 or more), aged 16 to 80, and not already serving on Sunday.
Recruit wide, not deep. Six greeters who each serve twice a month beat two who serve every week.
The rest cheat clears everyone's burnout, if you're experimenting (see Sandbox, cheats and quick reference).