Hello everyone,

 Welcome to this month’s installment!

This month we will be discussing being compensated for worship leading. Yes, you heard me right, getting paid to lead worship.  Depending on the church you are involved with and the financial resources they have available, being compensated may not always be a choice or an option.  In fact, many worship leaders are strictly volunteers who have regular day jobs. 

But wait, don’t lose heart!  There are also, many worship leaders who are paid staff at their home churches, where leading worship is either a full or part time position.

Another typical or common scenario is one where the worship leader is not on the church’s payroll as an employee, but is receiving something like a weekly or monthly stipend.  Usually this means that the worship leader is compensated as an independent contractor and is sent a 1099 form at the end of the year, being responsible to report their own income taxes, health care, self employment taxes and such. But that also means you may be able to write off certain expenses, too. Also, depending on the amount of income you receive in a year, some states, such as California, require a business tax ID since, technically, you are a business. If you go that route, the cost is minimal. But you may be able use your social security number as your tax ID.

Another very common situation is one where worship leaders are needed from time to time to fill in when a church’s regular worship leader has to work on the odd Sunday morning at their regular job. If that church does not have a secondary leader, it creates a need for them to bring in a substitute, creating an opportunity for the independent worship leader to earn some extra income.

Almost all churches that bring in a guest worship leader, speaker, or pastor for the occasional weekend service, and you will generally be compensated for your time.  The amount you are paid can either be determined by you or by the church. I recommend you be flexible in this, as sometimes many small churches do not have the financial resources to pay us “Rock Star” salaries.

In fact, there are many instances where I volunteer my services, especially when I know that a church is not able to pay anything due to financial difficulty or hardship.  This volunteerism shows people it’s not solely about money, but for the more important purpose of serving others. Even churches that don’t have the resources to pay anything will be willing to at least take up what is known as a Love Offering, so that they can bless you for your service to them.

This is not to minimize our value as laborers who are worth our wages as the scripture makes clear (Luke 10:7; 1 Tim. 5:18b), but to simply point out that we must also remember to be flexible and remain humble as we administer our services to the church community as a whole in worship. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that when we are willing to humble ourselves and serve out of the goodness of our hearts, this will be remembered by those we serve and you never know what opportunities may present themselves to us because of our willingness to volunteer instead of always being paid for what we do.

So, in conclusion, whilst there are numerous ways to earn income through leading worship, there are always even more ways to serve others with the wonderful gift of musical worship with which we have been entrusted.

Until next time, let us continue to joyfully worship the King and serve Him and others with our gifts.