What an awesome first day for this year’s Executive Pastors’ Summit! From the record number of attendees (68!) to the Mystère by Cirque du Soleil backstage tour before seeing the show itself, this year’s Summit has definitely been worth the trip!
The format for the Summit is pretty much the same as previous years. We heard from Church Development Fund (the Summit’s corporate sponsor since the very beginning) and Kardia Consulting. And, of course, the staff of Canyon Ridge Christian Church, is doing an excellent job hosting all of us!
Our format is to facilitate large and small group discussions on church leadership topics that are usually the “business” of the executive pastor. Basically, the larger group was split into 6 smaller groups, each with a facilitator, to go off for 45 minutes (or so) to discuss the topic. We did this twice.
First Session (Staff Issues – Non Financial)
Obviously I can’t cover everything that was discussed, but there were a couple of note worthy “best practices.” In a couple of cases, churches are outsourcing their worship leader position. They hire professionals to come in and lead worship each Sunday. Some return on a regular (once a month) basis and some come only once or twice per year. I thought this was very interesting. If any of you are doing this, leave a comment.
There was lots of other discussion on organizational structure, staff performance appraisals, staff policy, appropriate staffing levels, staff work schedules, succession planning, definition of full and part-time staff, etc.
Second Session (Staff Issues – Financial)
Most of the discussion in this area centered on compensation and benefits. I was a little surprised about the number of churches who pay for short and long-term disability policies for their staffs. I was not surprised to hear that most churches pay 100% of the cost of medical and dental coverage. Most, though, only do this for the staff member themselves, not family members.
There was a bunch of discussion on what compensation data churches are using for comparision of their staff salaries to the market.
I look forward to today.
Related Posts:
Executive Pastors’ Summit – 2013
What’s Happening At VERVE?
Executive Pastors’ Summit – 2011
Executive Pastor Summit 2008 – It’s a Wrap!
