---
title: "Church Business Administrator"
description: "Runs the business side of a congregation, including finances, staff, buildings, technology and legal compliance, so clergy can focus on ministry."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/church-business-administrator"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Church Business Administrator

**Category:** Community and Social Service · **SOC code:** 21-2021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 21-2021.00

Runs the business side of a congregation, including finances, staff, buildings, technology and legal compliance, so clergy can focus on ministry.

Also advertised as: Church Administrator; Executive Pastor of Operations; Director of Church Operations; Parish Business Manager; Church Operations Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $52,100 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $25.05/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $34,670 to $98,310, with the middle half between $44,010 and $73,730
- **Total US employment:** 22,160
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.3% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 13,000 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 53/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 22,160 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $34,670 |
| 25th | $44,010 |
| 50th (median) | $52,100 |
| 75th | $73,730 |
| 90th | $98,310 |
| Mean (average) | $62,100 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AL | $79,310 | $89,290 | 90 |
| TX | $75,420 | $77,707 | 330 |
| GA | $72,910 | $75,717 | 320 |
| NE | $72,500 | $80,463 | 40 |
| CO | $67,760 | $65,753 | 100 |
| IA | $66,140 | $75,363 | 220 |
| NJ | $65,730 | $60,411 | Not published by BLS |
| NC | $63,280 | $67,086 | 260 |
| MA | $62,930 | $59,504 | 160 |
| NV | $62,460 | $62,473 | 90 |
| TN | $61,940 | $67,421 | 130 |
| DC | $61,870 | $56,296 | 170 |
| CA | $61,570 | $55,609 | 3,200 |
| VA | $59,020 | $58,376 | 380 |
| MD | $58,820 | $56,041 | 300 |

28 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 43 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/church-business-administrator/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/church-business-administrator.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 141,900 in the 2025–2035 base year to 146,600 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 4,700 jobs, or +3.3%. About as fast as average: 3.3% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 13,000 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 53.6% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 21.1% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 14.4% |
| Master's Degree | 9.2% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 0.9% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 0.6% |

## What the work involves

- Prepare and monitor the church operating budget
- Oversee bookkeeping, payroll and financial reporting
- Manage staff hiring, benefits and personnel policies
- Maintain buildings, grounds and facility contracts
- Ensure compliance with tax, employment and insurance rules
- Support finance committees and governing boards
- Coordinate safety, security and emergency plans
- Manage technology, communications and facility scheduling

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Philosophy and Theology — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Enterprising (E), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 7.00 |
| E — Enterprising | 6.41 |
| C — Conventional | 4.13 |
| A — Artistic | 3.38 |
| I — Investigative | 2.71 |
| R — Realistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFJ | 84.1 |
| ESFJ | 79.8 |
| ESFP | 76.3 |
| ENFP | 71.0 |
| ENTJ | 56.6 |

Best-fitting types: ENFJ, ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Director, Religious Activity and Education](https://nuecareer.com/careers/director-religious-activity-and-education) — median $52,100
- [Clergy](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clergy) — median $60,810
- [Educational, Guidance, and Career Counselor and Advisor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/educational-guidance-and-career-counselor-and-advisor) — median $64,330
- [Social and Community Service Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-and-community-service-manager) — median $80,390
- [Community Health Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/community-health-worker) — median $51,850
- [School Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/school-social-worker) — median $59,550
- [Education Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-teacher-postsecondary) — median $75,350
- [Rehabilitation Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/rehabilitation-counselor) — median $46,850
- [Education Administrator, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-administrator-postsecondary) — median $104,590
- [Instructional Coordinator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/instructional-coordinator) — median $77,440

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/church-business-administrator