Salary Mistakes Former Pastors Make: How to Find Jobs That Actually Feed Your Family
Read Time: 3.5 minutes
Todd Linder
Founder & Head Coach
Overview
Welcome to the Ministry To Marketplace Minute! Today we’re talking about salary. Finding the jobs that pay you what you want to make, and the 4 downfalls that prevent people from achieving the desired salary that I see over and over again. Let’s dive in.
Today's Ministry To Marketplace Minute:
Mindset Shift: Don’t lower the vision for your life and work after ministry.
Strategy Shift: How to find the jobs that will feed your family as a former pastor.
Do This Right Now: Make this quick post-pastoring job search fix.
Who Will Hire Me?: 5 ministry friendly organizations with jobs for ex-pastors.
🧠 MINDSET SHIFT: Don’t lower the vision for your life and work after ministry.
Knowing the salary range of a job is one of the most important considerations before you apply.
Or write your resume. Or try to network. Or really anything.
Here’s why.
You have a vision. For your family. For yourself. For your friends. For you and your kids’ future.
And that vision inevitably involves finances to some degree.
And whatever salary you accept in this next job is your new floor.
That’s where you start the rest of your career.
Don’t lower the vision.
That might sound trite, but seriously, don’t lower it.
There are 3 ways that people respond to adversity towards their vision.
They conflate reality. “Ah, it's not that bad,” and just ignore at their own expense and the expense of others.
They lower the vision. “All I can find are jobs that pay X,” or “What I’d like to make is Y, but we could make it with Z.”
They recognize the gap and commit to becoming whoever it is they need to become to accomplish the thing that they are committed to.
Number 1 prolongs the pain of not achieving the vision by not doing anything at all.
Number 2 prolongs the pain of not achieving the vision by sacrificing the vision itself.
Number 3 upholds the vision and acknowledges the “I need to change” in order to get there.
So what if you can’t find the jobs that will pay you what you want to make?
♟️ STRATEGY SHIFT: How to find the jobs that will feed your family as a former pastor.
Likely, there are 3 reasons why you aren’t finding these jobs.
The constraints are too narrow.
Not only are you looking for a job that pays you $130K with benefits on top, but it must be…
in learning and development
remote
flexible so you pick up your kids from school at 3 pm
a ‘work when you want to work’ culture
with a Christian company, or church adjacent company in tech
one that doesn’t expect you to start from a lower position, even with zero technology experience
offering the same responsibility you have now that you’ve earned over the last 10 years.
Can you find that? Yep. But maybe at 3 companies at most.
The filters are just too limiting for creating a wealth of opportunities.
The salary isn’t posted.
This is actually only required in some states by law, so many positions won’t require salary ranges to be posted.
That makes it really hard to know, “Does this job fit my financial vision”?
You can do a quick search for that job or similar jobs on websites like Glassdoor and Salary.com to find out if you should apply or not.
If the salary isn’t listed, assume it is around the median and then decide if that aligns with your vision or not.
Looking in the wrong places.
The companies that will pay more are the companies that sell 1) bigger stuff or, 2) more stuff.
OK, that is a BIG overgeneralization, but in many cases it is true.
Tech companies print money, right?
Not if they’re selling things that are $4000 per year.
The people making big money at tech companies are working at Netflix (which has over 301 million subscribers) or Salesforce, which has an average sale size of $1M if a company stays for the average of 6 years. That is just with one company.
Think about construction: Huge buildings. How much do those cost?
Auto: pumping out cars that cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit.
Food and beverage: about 1.7-2.2 billion servings of Coca-Cola are consumed every day (that’s 1 serving for every 4 people)
Appliances: think KitchenAid, Breville, Frigidaire, Whirlpool, Wolf (if you’re fancy) etc, etc. Every home has to have some sort of appliance.
There are so many companies that have great jobs that can fit your vision.
In the Interview Accelerator, someone got a job selling fire safety equipment, making $285,000 per year, and by year 2 was scheduled to make $315K!
Here’s a thought exercise for you.
So to find jobs that pay you what you want to be making, that align with your vision - not lower it… just look around you.
Yep, right now. Don’t be shy.
Look around.
Everything you see has a company attached to it.
Someone designed it.
Someone produced it.
Someone sold it.
And on top of that, someone has to repair it.
And, there are probably 7+ other companies that make the same thing.
There are jobs, EVERYWHERE.
You just have to look around.
✅ DO THIS RIGHT NOW: Make this quick post-pastoring job search fix.
Check your vision. Which person are you? Are you ignoring reality, lowering your vision, or committed to becoming the type of person who achieves that vision?
Check your strategy. Are your constraints too tight? Are you researching salaries before applying? Are you looking in the right places?
Do the thought exercise and just explore what is out there. You might find something you never would have expected!
🚀 FROM THE COACHING GROUP
Networking on LinkedIn is VERY uncomfortable for me… At the end of last week, I really started focusing on working the program as intended and that immediately resulted in a great discussion… this morning I had an interview request! Much better use of time than sending blind applications into space!
🤝 WHO WILL HIRE ME?: 5 ministry friendly organizations with jobs for ex-pastors.
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