Salary benchmarks › Children's Ministry Director

Children's Ministry Director salary & cost by state

The children's ministry director shoulders one of the most trust-heavy roles in the church — the safety, discipleship, and volunteer engine of everything under age twelve. It's frequently underpaid relative to its responsibility and its effect on whether young families stay, so it's worth benchmarking honestly. Pay tracks the local labor market more than church size.

At a national baseline (mid-size church), a children's ministry director costs a church about $59,423/year before benefits. Pick your state for a real, cost-of-living-adjusted estimate — and the exact figure in the calculator.

Your church's real number

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Plug in your children's ministry director's salary, housing, and benefits and get the exact fully-loaded cost — clergy or staff — then plan your whole team.

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Choose a state (est. cost to a mid-size church)

Alabama$52,768Alaska$60,849Arizona$59,838Arkansas$51,639California$65,781Colorado$61,265Connecticut$61,562Delaware$59,304Florida$61,443Georgia$57,225Hawaii$65,365Idaho$56,749Illinois$59,423Indiana$55,442Iowa$52,174Kansas$53,540Kentucky$53,599Louisiana$52,410Maine$57,699Maryland$62,394Massachusetts$62,870Michigan$57,164Minnesota$58,591Mississippi$51,698Missouri$53,956Montana$56,214Nebraska$53,540Nevada$59,423New Hampshire$61,918New Jersey$64,652New Mexico$54,787New York$64,117North Carolina$56,036North Dakota$52,886Ohio$55,145Oklahoma$52,174Oregon$61,443Pennsylvania$57,996Rhode Island$60,790South Carolina$55,679South Dakota$52,648Tennessee$54,610Texas$57,699Utah$58,769Vermont$58,234Virginia$60,076Washington$63,582West Virginia$53,183Wisconsin$55,917Wyoming$55,085

Other church roles

Senior PastorAssociate PastorExecutive PastorYouth PastorWorship DirectorCommunications DirectorOperations Director

Salary figures represent estimated cash salary, before employer payroll tax, benefits (retirement, insurance), and any housing allowance.

Benchmarks built on 2024–2025 source data (BEA 2024, BLS May 2025).

How these numbers are built: a national church-comp base for the role, scaled by church size and adjusted for state cost of living, then run through the same fully-loaded cost model our calculator uses. Sources: BEA Regional Price Parities (state cost of living, 2024); BLS Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (May 2025); Lifeway Research / GuideStone SBC Church Compensation Study (biennial, free). Figures are planning estimates, not a guarantee — your church's real numbers depend on experience, scope, and benefits.