# Job Description: Church Administrator
### [Church Name] · Approved by SPRC [date] · Reviewed [date]

**Reports to:** [the pastor / other]
**Supervises:** [none / custodian / nursery staff]
**Classification:** [full-time / part-time] · [exempt / non-exempt — see above]
**Hours:** [ ] per week · [core office hours]
**Compensation:** [range or rate], reviewed annually with the budget

### Purpose

To keep the church's daily operations, communications, and records running, so that
the pastor, staff, and volunteers can do ministry rather than administration.

### Core responsibilities — **FULL TIME (30–40 hrs)**

**Office and reception**
- Maintain regular office hours; answer phone, email, and door.
- Order supplies; manage the copier, postage, and office equipment contracts.
- Serve as first point of contact for vendors and building users.

**Communications**
- Produce the weekly bulletin, monthly newsletter, and email announcements.
- Maintain the website calendar and social accounts [specify which].
- Prepare and distribute worship materials as directed by the pastor.

**Records**
- Maintain membership and attendance records, including baptisms, marriages, and
  funerals, and prepare statistical reports for charge conference.
- Maintain the account register, key log, and document register.
- Keep the church calendar and manage facility-use scheduling and agreements.

**Financial support** *(support, not control — see the note below)*
- Process and record contributions as directed by the financial secretary.
- Prepare check requests and maintain vendor files.
- Assist the treasurer with reports to the finance committee.

**Ministry support**
- Coordinate volunteer schedules for worship and office.
- Support committees with meeting notices, room setup, and minutes distribution.
- Maintain confidentiality of pastoral, personnel, and financial information.

### At **HALF TIME (15–20 hrs)** — what changes

Keep: office hours (reduced and published), bulletin, records and statistical
reporting, facility scheduling, contribution processing.

Cut or move: the newsletter becomes quarterly or moves to a volunteer; social media
moves to a volunteer team; committee support narrows to meeting notices only, with
minutes kept by each committee's own secretary; volunteer scheduling moves to a
lay coordinator.

Say plainly in the posting: **office hours are [days/times], not "whenever
needed."** Half-time administrators are the single most over-drafted role in a
church, because the building is open and they are in it.

### At **QUARTER TIME (8–10 hrs)** — what changes

Keep only: the bulletin, the records that must be kept for charge conference, and
contribution processing. Realistically, one or two fixed days a week.

Everything else moves or stops: newsletter, social media, calendar management,
vendor coordination, volunteer scheduling, committee support. If the church cannot
name where each of those went, it has not made a quarter-time job — it has made a
full-time job with a quarter-time salary, and it will lose the person within a
year.

At this size, be explicit about **what happens when they are not there**: who
answers the phone, who opens the mail, who lets the piano tuner in.

### Qualifications

- Organized, discreet, and comfortable with interruption.
- Competent with [specify: Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 / church database].
- Able to hold confidences absolutely.
- [CHOOSE: church membership is **not** required for this role in most churches —
  decide deliberately rather than by default, and if you do require it, know why.]

### Screening

This position requires a background check `[and Safe Gatherings-type training if
the role involves unsupervised access to children or vulnerable adults]`, completed
before the first day of work.

### Working conditions

Primarily office-based. Occasional evening or weekend work for [specify — charge
conference, major services]. `[If the role includes lifting, standing, or setup,
say so concretely.]`

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**This is a starting point, not legal advice.** Employment law varies by state, and your annual conference may have policies that go beyond the Discipline. Before you rely on anything here for a hiring, firing, or compensation decision, run it past your conference office or chancellor.

Paragraph references are to the 2020/2024 Book of Discipline. This document paraphrases; for the binding text, see the Discipline itself.

From Itineracy Commons — https://itineracy.app/commons/jobs/church-administrator/
Licensed CC BY 4.0. Adapt it freely; keep the attribution.
Last updated 2026-07-22.