ChurchSalary 3.0 represents a paradigm shift in how compensation data is gathered, analyzed, and utilized within the ecclesiastical landscape. Moving away from the static, point-in-time snapshots of the past, the new platform is built upon a dynamic, living database fueled by real-time user input.
This transition from a product to a platform is powered by three key innovations: (1) detailed Church Profiles, (2) comprehensive Employee Profiles, and (3) a robust foundation of Historical Survey Data.
1. Church Profiles: Foundational Context
In ChurchSalary 3.0, the information shared via your Church Profile serves as the cornerstone of organizational intelligence. Rather than simply categorizing a church by a single budget range, this feature allows leaders to input and manage precise, multifaceted data points that create a unique "fingerprint" for each congregation.
The Church Profile captures four critical "Cornerstone Metrics" that define the size and shape of each church organization:
- Total Operating Budget: The total amount allocated for the fiscal year, excluding capital campaigns and private schools or daycares.
- Attendance: Active average attendance, which drives the church's need to hire staff and informs giving levels relative to budget.
- Payroll Budget: The specific portion of a church’s budget set aside to pay for staff salaries, benefits, and payroll taxes.
- Staff Size (FTE): The total number of full-time equivalent employees, calculated by dividing total paid hours in a week (across all staff) divided by 40.
Additionally, the address information entered into each Church Profiles allows ChurchSalary to geolocate specific Census Tract, City/Place, County, Metro area demographic information. This precise information is dynamically sourced directly from several government databases such as the US Census Bureau’s API. This is a profound improvement over our previous method of relying on ZIP codes that cross city, county, and even state lines and fixed tables that needed to be updated manually every year.
Powering Applications
The information shared through Church Profiles powers ChurchSalary 3.0’s advanced analytical tools. For example, the Cornerstone Metrics are the engine behind the Staff & Giving Analyzer, enabling the application to mathematically model how a church’s spending and staffing levels compare to national averages and predict the impact of future budget changes.
Furthermore, precise addresses enable each of the Report apps as well as the Cost of Living Analysis app to analyze how pay and income metrics vary based on location.
2. Employee Profiles: Real-Time Intelligence
The second innovation, Employee Profiles, transforms the way compensation data is ingested.
Previously, data was collected via static surveys that grew stale rather quickly. Now, users and members can manage living profiles for their staff directly on the platform, ensuring that the database reflects the current reality of the market. Annual rhythms of updating profiles to generate a new set of reports will ensure that the underlying database remains as fresh as possible.
Church leaders create detailed profiles for each staff member that capture:
- Role and Responsibility: Information about the type of position, whether the employee is full-time or part-time, a keyword description of duties, whether they supervise other paid staff, and a simplified job title will enable ChurchSalary 3.0 to not only filter staff to generate reports but also to analyze whether our 18 positions are the best fit for the current market.
- Compensation Details: Details about annual salary, housing allowance, and compensation factors such as education, tenure, and ordination status are used to power everyone’s reports.
- Benefit Details & Total Comp: ChurchSalary 3.0 is now actively gathering information about how much churches spend on benefits and how that impacts total compensation in order to expand the sections of our salary reports in the near future.
Employee profiles are the lifeblood of the ChurchSalary 3.0 ecosystem. Rather than relying on checkboxes, the new profiles gather precise information where possible. This applies to capturing the exact years of experience and a tenure start date, so that we can automatically age up older records for everyone who is generating salary reports on the platform.
Powering Applications
The shift toward precise numbers that can be aged up also enables key applications to calculate average salary with a greater deal of accuracy.
For example, by enabling churches to create and save hybrid employees with multiple positions and a mix, we can now dynamically generate Hybrid Reports that draw on weighted averages and weighted percentiles for staff who wear multiple hats. Precise figures such as experience allow Pro and Pro+ Members to use the Market Survey Match app to filter the database to find the 3–5 most similar employees based on a specific range of experience. Similarly, Pro and Pro+ members can generate custom experience averages in the Precise Report application.
3. Historical Survey Data: A Legacy of Integrity
While the new profile system provides real-time agility, ChurchSalary 3.0 is anchored by a massive repository of historical data collected over the platform’s previous 2.0 iteration from 2017 through early 2025.
National Church Compensation Survey (Online)
Between 2017 and early 2025, ChurchSalary constantly gathered survey data through the National Church Compensation Survey. Over 20,000 churches across the United States provided information about over 35,000 employees during this time frame. We meticulously managed and aged up this extensive database and used the patterns within to create salary reports for the ChurchSalary 2.0 site.
Bridging the Gap with Precise Data
Beginning in 2021, in preparation for ChurchSalary 3.0, we redesigned the National Church Compensation Survey to start gathering precise budget and attendance data and reformatted how we asked about salary (and began gathering benefits cost data) to create a more robust dataset. Our goal was twofold:
- Capture the data necessary to start powering 3.0 with as much precise data as possible.
- Create an AI model of the precise data to infer and impute higher precision to older historical data.
This historical data, combined with our bespoke ChurchSalary AI quantitative model, ensured that our new 3.0 platform did not launch as an empty vessel. It provided the statistical baseline required to generate accurate reports immediately while new information is provided by our members and users.
Another rapid infusion of data was made possible via the creation of our Migrate Employees tool for legacy members. This tool allows legacy members from 2.0 to convert the over 200,000 saved reports into Employee Profiles with a single click. Legacy members have leveraged this tool to quickly migrate and build out their Employee Profiles, which has allowed us to grow our database to over 53,000 employees at around 25,000 church locations. This rapid infusion of data and our methodical approach to continuity is enabling the platform to offer reliable, data-driven insights from day one, combining the depth of historical research with the precision of modern analytics.
Safety & Security
ChurchSalary was acquired by Gloo from our previous parent company, Christianity Today in May 2024.
Gloo is a trusted platform whose goal is to release the collective might of the faith ecosystem. Gloo already serves over 70,000 churches on its platform, where they leverage tools like free texting, assessments to know their people and make better leadership decisions, connections to new people, and a growing marketplace of resources to serve every facet of the church.
The key staff that were responsible for the stewardship of ChurchSalary under Christianity Today’s tenure were hired by Gloo in May 2024. Those staff continue to steward our database and safeguard church and employee privacy.
Gloo shares ChurchSalary’s commitment to maintaining the privacy and security of your data. Gloo does not sell data to third parties. Neither Gloo nor ChurchSalary are data brokers.
While ChurchSalary maintains its own website and database for safety and security, we are assisted by a world-class team of engineers and privacy experts from Gloo who help us adhere to the highest standards of safety and security.
Your data continues to be used in the same way it always has: to analyze salary and help churches and church networks make informed decisions about compensation.
Learn more about Gloo’s privacy standards and safeguards here.