‘Sounding Board’ takes up results from a church musician salary survey

LOUISVILLE — During last week’s installment of “Sounding Board,” a conversation offered twice each month by the Presbyterian Association of Musicians, hosts Sarah Abushakra and Jeremy Roberts invited Dr. Sean Payne into the studio to discuss a 2025 survey on salaries paid to Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) musicians. The survey drew 467 responses.

Payne manages Research Services in the Administrative Services Group of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation. He appeared during the first half of the most recent edition of “Sounding Board” to discuss the 2025 PAM salary survey, which can be seen here.

Watch Sounding Board here or listen to the most recent installment here or here.

Payne said that PAM promoted the survey, which was sent out via email. Research Services completed a similar survey for PAM during 2022-23, he said. The previous salary survey report is here.

With both surveys, “we got enough responses to talk about trends and the patterns we are seeing in churches related to musician salaries and benefits,” Payne said.

Among the findings in the most recent survey:

• The most common annual salary range for full-time musicians and directors is $55,000-$70,000. Part-time positions are paid less than $15,000 per year, on average.
• Ninety-seven percent of respondents reported they have some form of medical insurance.
• On average, full-time musicians are compensated for 20 days of vacation each year. Part-timers reported nine days per year. For sick days, those figures were 11 and 6, respectively. Nearly 4 in 10 are paid to take study leave, with average annual funding of $1,500.
• More than half of PC(USA) musicians and music directors have a master’s degree, while 14% have an earned doctorate. Seventeen percent are in their first call.
• Four in 10 employed full-time said they have additional employment, while nearly 7 in 10 of part-time employees have such an arrangement.
• On average, church music directors are responsible for leading two ensembles. An adult choir was the most common response, followed by an adult handbell ensemble.
• Nearly half the churches that employed those who responded have 100 or fewer people in worship each Sunday. Almost 20% of respondents worked in churches with 300 or more in worship each week.

Payne said part-time church musicians reported making less than those who responded to the previous survey. 

“We do see a lot of the ability of the congregation to pay is based on membership size,” Payne told the hosts. Such factors as higher insurance and maintenance costs “are pulling on the finances of our smaller and medium-sized congregations. In many, it’s difficult to find the funds to keep full-time musicians on staff, or directors of music.”

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After their discussion with Payne, Roberts and Abushakra — who are both church musicians — shared some of their thoughts on the topic.

“Talking about money is not something I feel super comfortable with,” Abushakra said. “I think a lot of musicians are in the same boat.”

“When we’re offered gigs,” Roberts said, “we often hear, ‘how much should we pay you?’”

“It’s an uncomfortable conversation for a lot of people. We are doing something we love — creating music and community,” Abushakra said. “On our best days, I’d gladly do that for free, but that’s not the world we live in.”

Like other professionals, church musicians “put in countless hours studying and practicing and honing our craft,” Roberts said.

As Abushakra pointed out, that often doesn’t include time spent thinking “very deeply theologically about what we choose, what we play and how we paint texts. It’s so much more than just going in and playing and then we’re done. We’re ministering to people.”

 Roberts wondered if church musicians are sometimes guilty of “underselling ourselves.” A bride and groom might well shell out hundreds of dollars to pay a DJ to play at their reception, but balk at paying something anywhere near that price for the organist to play during the ceremony, he said.

Abushakra said the PAM office gets calls every week from churches wanting to know how much they should be paying their organist or choir director. PAM staff send them the survey “as an example of what is normal right now.”

“I believe in my heart that churches want to take care of those who are doing the work of the church,” she said. “No one has mal intent when they are offering salaries.”

Churches may have “assumptions” about how much to pay male musicians and how to compensate their female counterparts, “and I know this unfortunately from experience,” Abushakra said. Gender “really has no bearing on your value and your worth as a professional.”

“I think it’s important to examine that: are we being fair, or do we have these biases that creep in?” she said. In many cases, a female church musician can be the family’s primary breadwinner. “We don’t need to assume anything about people’s lives in that way,” she said.

Many musicians are well aware that more and more churches are hiring part-time musicians, she said, adding, “there’s almost no such thing as a part-time director. If you really care about ministering to people and crafting worship — and I like to think most of us really do — that’s more than 10 hours a week.”

A number of congregations have asked Roberts if he’s able to “just walk in on Sunday and do this.”

“I tell them, ‘thanks for thinking that I could, but no,’” he said. “I spend time practicing.” People in part-time music positions are “probably working like crazy” outside the church, he said. “Have some compassion for that.”

“We call them ‘road scholars,’” Abushakra said, “because they’re constantly on the road, just trying to scrape together their living.”

Roberts recalled having a conversation with another “Sounding Board” guest who said that “as people of faith, we’re not called to scarcity. That’s not the worldview that comes out of following Christ. Jesus is the one who fed the 5,000 with what looked like too little.”

“Are there creative ways to make sure someone is able to live, or ways we can partner with community organizations to help take care of musicians?” he asked.

How many times, Abushakra asked, have people made their way to the organ bench after worship to tell the organist that “It is Well with My Soul” was their grandmother’s favorite hymn.

“We really do minister to people’s hearts and souls and minds through these notes on a page,” she said. “We keep our heads down and make the best music that we can, and the Holy Spirit knits it all together to touch people’s hearts.”