Who owns the staff's time?

1000 words ~ 4 minutes but an issue that keeps coming up lately so it’s worth it.

In part 1?of this two-part series, we covered a question from an executive pastor who had a staff pastor asking permission to work a second job to make ends meet.?There were the encouraged, discouraged, and permitted categories.

The church’s pay scale they considered competitive, and the staff member wasn’t complaining. But some needs in their family situation and some debt issues led the staff member to try some other income sources.

So read part one,?and I promised to address a few related questions in part 2. Here we go:

Priorities, seasons, family, time commitments

In most cases, the church as employer desires to be the?top priority for the staff?member. It is not your ministry but the church’s whole ministry that takes precedence.

Depending on geography, churches have seasons that are natural peaks and natural valleys.?In the peak seasons, all staff are expected to be all in.?The church wants priority and to have its entire staff complement. More permission is given in that church’s off-season for more time away for vacation and other commitments.?(see this post on seasons in a prior Church Leader Insider)

Family means two things for these churches.?First, is the staff member’s family being neglected with other commitments? Secondly is whether the “staff family” will be disrupted by the team member’s absence.?Does the absence mean rescheduling meetings for other team members or creating hardship for the team? If so, a church will quickly move from more permitted to discouraged categories.

Generally, looking at the various policies, most churches limit the time commitment allowed for other work to leave time, vacation time, and hours generally outside of norming work hours for that church. These time commitments flow into other questions.

Types of “outside” work

Ministry or other work? – A somewhat false distinctive as our faith needs to integrate us as whole persons, but the force of the emphasis is more on “does this involve other churches or compatible with our church’s primary mission” vs. “this is just an income-producing gig for my family.”

Most of the outside work I have seen among church staff relates to more ministry-related projects. These include speaking, book writing, consulting, songwriting, music production, artwork sales to another church, creative service consulting, wedding-related, corporate chaplaincy, online courses for other ministry leaders, and so on.

Other work includes everything else, such as real estate sales, retail stores or stalls in a flea market, shared ride services, financial product or insurance sales, carpentry or other building trade, computer code or design, consulting with businesses, writing outside of the ministry field and so on.

Generally, I see more of the former, ministry-related, and less of the latter in current practice.

But you must watch your church’s intellectual property policies and use guides here.

One policy explicitly reviewed ruled out any multilevel marketing type business due to conflicts that could be created with attendees. I also observed a rule against a staff member conducting a wedding photography business because of the impression that this could create undue pressure to use for church attendees. The same photographer could do other shoots for other purposes, however.

The particular case of books and music publishing is where things get sticky. Who owns the rights to sermons, songs, and creative works while in the employ of the church?

Many new pastors will cover these items in legal contracts with the church. Care must be taken for staff that those pre-employment agreements have yet to cover.

Technically, the church owns all that material as a work-for-hire. Various policies have written agreements to either share revenue from these materials or develop ways the church benefits from resource development.

I have not seen policies for online group coaching or online course development by one staff member and how the church handled that. I imagine they exist, but I haven’t seen them.

Steady, occasional but frequently occurring, or one-off??– In various documents, a distinction is made between a role/outside job/gig that is more ongoing vs. frequently occurring vs. one-off.

For example, a one-off could be a trip to give consulting advice to another church. A one-off could be an infrequent guest-speaking role.

In the case of some musicians, doing a side gig for a local concert occasionally was seen as great, but leading in another church regularly was not.

With the advent of the gig economy, ride-sharing, handyman services, and even graphic artist’s boards, many staff members can pick up occasional outside income by selling specialized services.

The particular case of substitute teaching -?one leader said they advocate for staff to be on the local public school substitute teacher list to take occasional days inside the schools and get paid for it. They permitted several workdays a month to use in this way as they felt it was a help to the community with some outreach on the side. They did not permit them to be “super subs,” however. This had to be managed carefully, but they claimed to see benefits from the relationships formed.

Approvals/Permissions/Agreements?– In almost all written guidelines, the church asks for team members to request permission and approvals before beginning another type of paid involvement. In a few cases, this is even required for significant unpaid involvements such as a non-profit board.

The most common is supervisor-approved, executive-level, and board-informed.

In the case of executive staff levels, these were thought through and subject to board approval.

Limited as to time – Is this a short season or a long exploration moving to a different direction in life?

Some staff need a short-term cash infusion to pay bills or set aside income to help with a purchase. These tend to be short seasons of outside work. But others could desire to explore a new field as a potential career path.

These understandings should be clarified in conversations with supervisors to preserve good relational health.

Time agreements?– Most policies use vacation and leave time to do any outside work. The second most common would be unpaid leave for particular circumstances for more regular outside work. Both were limited to time to a few weeks a year.

The least common scenario is establishing a regular ongoing outside work/gig platform, etc., to conduct more regular business or other activities every week. Again, all this would be understood through prior agreements and understandings on the front end of engaging in the work.

These two parts have described high-level generalities I have seen on this issue. Each church needs to formulate its own policies well to fit its context, situation, and staff. My hunch is that some fast-growing churches will see staffs desiring more flexibility in these areas in the future.

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When you are ready:

If you are a Senior Pastor of a larger church and?are ready to begin discussing?your succession plan, reach out directly to me. I only work with larger protestant churches and have now served over 180 in some way. I have worked on the issue in large churches since 1995.

Succession starts with the current leader and your future role in God’s kingdom work.

Just hit me back at [email protected], and we will have a private conversation to discuss your current situation.