Salary benchmarks › Communications Director

Communications Director salary & cost by state

The communications director runs a church's public voice — web, social, print, and the weekend's screens and messaging. Because it's a role borrowed from the broader marketing world, its pay is anchored to local market rates for communications work, which can make it competitive to fill and means it doesn't scale much with attendance.

At a national baseline (mid-size church), a communications director costs a church about $64,375/year before benefits. Pick your state for a real, cost-of-living-adjusted estimate — and the exact figure in the calculator.

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

Alabama$57,164Alaska$65,919Arizona$64,826Arkansas$55,941California$71,263Colorado$66,371Connecticut$66,692Delaware$64,246Florida$66,563Georgia$61,992Hawaii$70,812Idaho$61,478Illinois$64,375Indiana$60,061Iowa$56,521Kansas$58,002Kentucky$58,066Louisiana$56,779Maine$62,508Maryland$67,593Massachusetts$68,108Michigan$61,929Minnesota$63,474Mississippi$56,006Missouri$58,452Montana$60,899Nebraska$58,002Nevada$64,375New Hampshire$67,079New Jersey$70,039New Mexico$59,354New York$69,460North Carolina$60,705North Dakota$57,293Ohio$59,739Oklahoma$56,521Oregon$66,563Pennsylvania$62,830Rhode Island$65,855South Carolina$60,320South Dakota$57,036Tennessee$59,160Texas$62,508Utah$63,666Vermont$63,087Virginia$65,083Washington$68,881West Virginia$57,615Wisconsin$60,577Wyoming$59,676

Other church roles

Senior PastorAssociate PastorExecutive PastorYouth PastorWorship DirectorChildren's Ministry 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.