Church secretary job description: duties, software, and pay

Monday morning in a church office starts with the voicemail light. A couple wants to hold a June wedding date, a funeral home needs a time for Thursday's service, and a member asks to take her husband's name off the prayer list because he's home from the hospital. All three calls land on one desk before the pastor arrives, and the person at that desk has to know what to do with each one.

A church secretary job description covers running the church office: answering phones and greeting visitors, producing bulletins and newsletters, keeping membership and giving records, scheduling rooms and events, and supporting the pastor. Church secretaries usually report to the senior pastor, and many positions at smaller churches are part time.

Key takeaways

Job element	Typical in a church office
Core duties	Phones, visitors, bulletins, newsletters, membership records, the building calendar, and pastor support
Reports to	The senior or lead pastor; at larger churches, a church administrator or executive pastor
Software	A church management system such as Planning Center or Breeze, plus Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace
Confidentiality	Counseling appointments, giving records, and member details stay inside the office
Hours	Part time is common at small congregations; full time shows up as attendance and staff grow
Pay	Church-office roles often pay less than administrative jobs at Christian schools, hospitals, and nonprofits

Last updated October 2026

What does a church secretary do?

A church secretary keeps the church office running so the pastor and ministry staff can spend their time on people. A typical church secretary job description groups the work into five areas, and at a small church one person covers all of them.

Front office and hospitality

On weekdays, the church secretary is often the first person a caller or visitor talks to. That means answering phones, greeting walk-ins, sorting mail, and fielding requests for help with rent or groceries from people in the community. Many churches ask the secretary to follow a written benevolence policy, so a request gets the same answer no matter who answers the phone.

Bulletins, newsletters, and announcements

Weekly communication eats a large share of the job. The secretary collects announcements from ministry leaders, builds the Sunday bulletin or order of worship, sends the weekly email, and updates the church website or social media pages. Some also prepare the lyrics and announcement slides for the worship team.

Records and the church database

Membership rolls, attendance, new-member classes, baptisms, weddings, and funerals all go into the church records. The secretary enters visitor cards, updates addresses, and pulls reports for the pastor or the elder board. In churches that keep paper registers for sacraments, the secretary may maintain those as well.

The building calendar and events

Room scheduling gets complicated when the youth group and a wedding rehearsal both want the fellowship hall on the same Friday night. The secretary keeps the master calendar, handles facility rental requests, and coordinates weddings and funerals with families and funeral homes.

Support for the pastor and financial records

Pastoral support includes managing the pastor's calendar, typing correspondence, preparing agendas and minutes for board meetings, and ordering supplies. On the money side, the secretary may enter offering totals and send year-end giving statements.

Churches commonly separate cash-handling duties, with two unrelated people counting the offering and someone other than the counter making the deposit. If a posting asks you to count, record, and deposit by yourself, ask how the church protects both its funds and you.

What does a typical week in the church office look like?

The church calendar gives the job a rhythm that most office jobs don't have. A common pattern runs like this:

Monday: return weekend voicemails, enter Sunday's attendance and offering records, and collect announcements for next week.
Tuesday and Wednesday: draft the bulletin, send it to the pastor for review, and get the weekly email out.
Thursday: print bulletins, send the order of worship and slides to the worship team, and confirm weekend room setups.
Friday: many church offices close or keep short hours, since staff work on Sunday.

Some weeks break the pattern. Christmas and Holy Week bring extra services, extra bulletins, and choir rehearsals to schedule. Vacation Bible School brings registrations and volunteer lists, and a funeral means coordinating with the family, the pastor, and the musicians.

Which software does a church secretary use?

Much of the job happens on a computer, and church postings frequently name specific systems. The tools fall into four groups.

Church management system (ChMS): Planning Center and Breeze are two common examples. They hold member profiles, attendance, groups, volunteer schedules, and giving records.
Office suite: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for letters, spreadsheets, shared calendars, and email.
Design and email tools: Canva for bulletins and social posts, and an email service such as Mailchimp for the weekly newsletter.
Giving and bookkeeping: online giving platforms such as Tithe.ly or Pushpay, and QuickBooks where the secretary assists the treasurer.

If you've used a ChMS as a volunteer, put its name on your resume. A church that runs Planning Center will notice a candidate who has already scheduled volunteers in it, and the same goes for Breeze or any system the posting names.

How should a church secretary handle confidential information?

Confidentiality is one of the first things churches screen for, because the secretary sees more private information than almost anyone on staff. The church secretary knows who booked a counseling appointment with the pastor, how much each family gave last year, which members are in a church discipline process, and whose background check came back with a problem.

Practical habits protect that information:

Don't confirm or deny who met with the pastor, even to a spouse or a staff member.
Ask before a prayer request goes on the email list. A hospital stay may be public; a diagnosis or a marriage crisis may not be.
Lock your screen when you step away from the front desk, since visitors stand right next to it.
Keep giving records and payroll files in restricted folders, and mail contribution statements to the address on file.

Scripture gives the standard in plain words:

"A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret." (Proverbs 11:13, NIV)

What skills and qualifications do churches look for?

Formal education requirements for the role are modest. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics lists a high school diploma or equivalent as the typical entry-level education for secretaries and administrative assistants (as of its 2025 data). Churches tend to weigh experience and fit more heavily than a degree.

Skills that appear across church secretary postings include:

Organization, with many deadlines running at once
Clear writing and careful proofreading, since bulletin typos get read by the whole congregation
Comfort with the software above, or proof that you learn new systems fast
A calm, warm manner with grieving families and people asking for help
Discretion with sensitive information

Faith requirements vary by church. Many churches ask staff to sign their doctrinal statement, and some require membership. Expect questions about your walk with Christ in the interview too. Because the office handles money and information about children, a background check is also standard practice at many churches.

How much does a church secretary make?

Administration roles have a median of about $50k, with the middle half of salaries falling between $42k and $66k, according to ChristianJobsList.com listing data (as of October 2026). That figure comes from 602 administration listings that published a complete pay range. To compare administration with other fields, see salary figures by job category.

That category covers administrative work at schools, hospitals, ministries, and nonprofits. Church-office secretary jobs often sit lower, especially at small congregations with small budgets. ChurchJobs.net, for example, puts the typical church secretary range at $28,000 to $52,000 a year. For a cross-sector comparison, the BLS reports a median of $47,540 for secretaries and administrative assistants outside the legal, medical, and executive fields (as of May 2025).

Two notes help you read our numbers. Each listing counts at the midpoint of its posted range, and we convert hourly rates to yearly pay using 2,080 hours, a full-time schedule. A part-time church office job advertised at an hourly rate will show a full-time equivalent in our data, so a 20-hour position pays about half that figure in practice. Expect pay to shift with the size of the congregation and the local cost of living.

Should you look for part-time or full-time church office work?

Part-time positions are common in church offices, partly because most congregations are small. Half of the roughly 350,000 religious congregations in the U.S. had 65 or fewer people at weekend worship in 2020, according to the Faith Communities Today survey. A church that size may hire one part-time secretary to run the whole office. At a church of 1,000, the same work is often split among an office manager, a receptionist, and a finance assistant.

Part-time church secretary jobs often combine roles. Small churches sometimes post one position covering secretary, clerk, and treasurer duties, or secretary plus custodial or nursery coordination. Read the duties list closely and price the job by everything it asks.

Each schedule suits a different season of life:

Part time works for parents of school-age kids and for retirees, and office hours often match the school day.
Full time brings benefits more often, plus a clearer path to titles like church administrator or operations director.
Hours tend to run long around Christmas and Easter either way, so ask how overtime or comp time is handled.

How do you get hired as a church secretary?

Experience from almost any front office transfers. A medical receptionist knows scheduling and privacy rules, a school secretary knows parents and calendars, and a retail manager knows staff schedules and cash handling.

Read each church secretary job description line by line and match your experience to its duties in your resume, using the church's own words.
Volunteer in your own church office or on a ministry team that uses the church database, so you can name a ChMS on your resume.
Prepare a short testimony and read the beliefs page on the church's website before the interview.
Bring a sample of your writing, such as a newsletter or flyer you made, since communication is a big part of the job.
Ask who you'll report to, whether you'll handle money, what the office hours are, and how holiday weeks are staffed.

Current openings are listed under Christian administration jobs. Secretaries who take on budgets and facilities often move into church and ministry operations roles, and those who grow into bookkeeping can look at Christian finance jobs.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a church clerk and a church secretary?

In many Baptist and congregational churches, the church clerk is an elected member who records minutes of church business meetings and keeps the official membership roll. The church secretary is usually paid staff who runs the office day to day. Small churches sometimes give both jobs to one person, so read postings carefully.

What is the church secretary?

The meaning depends on the country and denomination. In the United States, a church secretary is usually a paid member of the office staff. In British Baptist churches, the church secretary is an appointed lay officer and a charity trustee who makes sure the church follows its constitution, according to the Baptists Together welcome pack.

What are the main duties of a secretary?

Across industries, secretaries and administrative assistants schedule appointments, answer phones, keep files, and prepare documents, according to the BLS. A church secretary does all of that and adds ministry tasks: weekly bulletins, membership records, wedding and funeral coordination, prayer list updates, and confidential pastoral scheduling. The church version also follows the rhythm of Sunday services.

What is the 80/20 rule in churches?

The 80/20 rule in churches is an informal rule of thumb that a small share of members, roughly 20 percent, does about 80 percent of the volunteering and giving. It's an observation borrowed from the Pareto principle, not a measured statistic. Church secretaries often see it in volunteer schedules, where the same names fill many slots.

A month of bulletins shows the workload

Before you apply, pick up or download the church's last four bulletins and newsletters. Count the events, announcements, ministries, and sign-ups in them, because someone in the office collected, formatted, scheduled, and proofread every one. If the list runs long and the posting says 20 hours a week, bring that page to the interview and ask how the hours were set.

Discover Christian job opportunities across every industry at ChristianJobsList.com. You can find work in education, healthcare, counseling, finance, marketing, and more at Christian schools, hospitals, nonprofits, and companies that share your faith and values.