Jobs for ex pastors: careers that fit, what they pay, and how to switch

The resignation letter might already be drafted, or it might still be a conversation you keep having late at night. Either way, the job sites want a resume with metrics, a title a recruiter recognizes, and a cover letter that never mentions shepherding. Years of sermons, hospital visits, budget meetings, and volunteer schedules now have to fit on two pages, written in a language you've never needed.

The best jobs for ex pastors put ministry skills to work in counseling, nonprofit programs, fundraising, sales, teaching, HR, and operations. Several pay more than ministry roles, according to ChristianJobsList.com salary data (as of October 2026), with medians of $77k in fundraising (76 listings with complete ranges) and $86k in human resources (85 listings).

Key takeaways

Decision point	What the evidence says
Pay	In our salary data, HR ($86k median, 85 listings with complete ranges) and fundraising ($77k, 76 listings) pay the most of the fields here, and ministry roles sit near $51k (92 listings). The national clergy median is $60,810 (BLS, May 2025)
Where church experience counts	17 of 105 sales and customer success listings at Christian Tech Jobs, our sister site, ask for or prefer church or ministry experience, including roles at Pushpay and Subsplash
Credentials	Counseling, clinical social work, and public school teaching need a license, and HR, training, fundraising, and program jobs don't
Taxes and benefits	The housing allowance exclusion and a Social Security exemption cover ministerial pay only, and COBRA doesn't apply to church health plans
A bridge option	Part-time or bivocational work lets you test a field before you resign

Last updated October 2026

Which jobs fit a former pastor's skills?

A pastor's week touches several marketplace job descriptions at once: public speaking, one-on-one counseling, staff supervision, budgeting, fundraising, writing, and event planning. Two-thirds (66%) of congregations' primary leaders also worked full time in a different career before entering ministry, according to Duke University's 2025 Clergy in America report, so your first career may be the shortest route back.

The jobs for ex pastors below line up with work you've already done, and every field on the list includes Christian employers.

Counseling and care roles

Pastoral care is the nearest match to counseling, since you've already sat with people through grief, addiction, marriage trouble, and crisis. Every state requires mental health counselors to be licensed, and they typically need a master's degree, plus supervised clinical work and a national exam for the license, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mental health counselors earned a median of $59,350 and marriage and family therapists $66,940 (BLS, May 2025). Substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors typically need a bachelor's degree, a lower bar to entry. Our guide to Christian counseling careers lays out each route, including the jobs you can hold while you train.

Nonprofit programs and community outreach

Running a food pantry, a recovery group, or an ESL class is program management. Christian nonprofits hire program coordinators, program managers, volunteer managers, and community outreach coordinators for that same work. With experience, the path leads toward director roles, and social and community service managers earned a median of $80,390 (BLS, May 2025). Current openings at faith-based agencies and charities are grouped under Christian nonprofit jobs.

Fundraising and donor relations

If you've led a capital campaign or a year-end giving appeal, you've done development work, including asking people to give. Fundraising titles include development officer, major gifts officer, donor relations manager, and grant writer. Fundraisers earned a national median of $72,550 and fundraising managers $125,470 (BLS, May 2025), and you can see current openings under Christian fundraising jobs.

Sales and customer success

Sales draws on habits pastors already use, such as persuading people without manipulating them, building trust over months, and following up when you said you would. Customer success, the team that looks after a client once the contract is signed, works much like a pastor's follow-up with new members in the months after they join.

The clearest fit is at companies that build church software, since they sell to churches and support them after the sale. Someone who knows how a church runs day to day, and who is at ease on a call with an executive pastor, starts with an edge. Of 105 sales and customer success listings on Christian Tech Jobs, our sister site for roles at tech companies, 17 (16%) ask for or prefer church or ministry experience, according to Christian Tech Jobs data (as of October 2026). Pushpay asked customer success manager candidates for church or ministry experience, whether on staff or through long-term involvement in a church, and Subsplash counts familiarity with how church staff roles work as a plus for its sales and client success hires.

Sales listings on Christian Tech Jobs had a $75k median over the past year, from the 21 that posted pay, and sales roles in ChristianJobsList.com salary data had the same median (87 listings with complete ranges). The site tracks customer success under customer support, with an all-time median of $60k across 65 listings that posted pay. Its openings are grouped under Christian sales jobs and Christian customer support jobs.

Teaching and education

Preaching every week is practice at explaining hard ideas to a room. Teaching paths for former pastors include Bible or theology teacher at a Christian school, adjunct instructor, academic advisor, admissions counselor, and student life staff. All states require public school teachers to be licensed, and every state offers an alternative route for people who already hold a bachelor's degree, according to the BLS. Teachers in private schools typically are not required to be licensed.

High school teachers earned a median of $72,040 (BLS, May 2025), and school and college openings are collected under Christian education jobs.

Benevolence requests, home visits, and connecting a family to rent help or a treatment program are the daily work of case managers and family advocates. Social and human service assistants earned a median of $45,930 in May 2025, and child, family, and school social workers earned $59,550 (BLS). Most social workers need a bachelor's or master's degree in social work, according to the BLS. A clinical license also takes a master's from an accredited program, supervised experience after graduation, and a clinical exam.

HR, training, and people development

Hiring staff and running leadership retreats translate into human resources and corporate training. Titles to search include HR generalist, employee relations specialist, recruiter, training and development specialist, and learning facilitator. HR specialists earned a median of $75,940 and training and development specialists $69,280 (BLS, May 2025). You can find current openings under Christian HR jobs.

Operations, administration, and management

Senior and executive pastors often run a small organization in everything but name, with a budget, a building, staff, insurance, and board reports. Operations manager, office manager, administrative director, executive assistant, and program operations roles use that experience directly.

Communications

Writing a sermon and a church email every week is a communications job in miniature. Communications coordinator and public relations specialist roles fit that background, and public relations specialists earned a median of $74,750 (BLS, May 2025).

Non-clinical care roles in healthcare

Faith-based health systems hire for care roles that typically don't require a clinical license, such as patient advocate, patient experience coordinator, community health worker, and hospice bereavement or volunteer coordinator. Community health workers earned a median of $51,850 in May 2025, and healthcare social workers, who need a social work degree, earned $67,880 (BLS).

What do these jobs pay compared with pastor pay?

In our salary data, several marketplace fields pay more than ministry roles, though pay inside each field spreads widely. The table uses twelve months of listings with a complete pay range, with the median and the typical range (the middle half of those listings).

Field	Median pay	Typical range (listings with a complete range)
Human resources	$86k	$60k-$121k (85)
Fundraising	$77k	$64k-$93k (76)
Sales	$75k	$50k-$90k (87)
Operations	$63k	$44k-$95k (1,216)
Counseling	$62k	$41k-$78k (61)
Communications	$62k	$50k-$83k (30)
Social work	$60k	$42k-$73k (121)
Education	$58k	$44k-$83k (426)
Administration	$50k	$42k-$66k (602)
Nonprofit	$48k	$37k-$70k (350)
Ministry roles, for comparison	$51k	$42k-$63k (92)

The ministry row includes pastor positions, and the national median for clergy was $60,810 (BLS, May 2025). Our pastor salary page has more detail on what pastors earn. Measured against either figure, HR, fundraising, sales, operations, counseling, and communications roles pay as much or more at the median, and administration and nonprofit roles sit below both.

Each listing contributes the midpoint of its range, and hourly pay is converted to a yearly figure at 2,080 hours, so a part-time job appears at its full-time-equivalent rate. About half of the past year's listings (51%) published a complete range. These figures describe what employers advertise, and pay varies by region and experience.

How do you turn ministry experience into a marketplace resume?

Hiring managers filling secular jobs may not know what an associate pastor does all week, so your resume has to tell them in their terms. Keep your actual title, since references and background checks will use it, and add a one-line description of the organization underneath with its staff size, volunteer count, and budget. Then write bullets that start with a verb and end with a result you can count.

What you did in ministry	How a marketplace resume can say it
Preached and taught every week	Delivered weekly presentations and training to groups of [size]
Hospital visits and pastoral care	Provided crisis support and one-on-one guidance to [number] families a year
Recruited and scheduled volunteers	Recruited, trained, and scheduled a team of [number] volunteers
Led staff and worked with the elder board	Supervised [number] staff and reported to a governing board
Ran a capital or stewardship campaign	Managed a fundraising campaign that raised $[amount]
Followed up with first-time guests and new members	Managed a pipeline of [number] new contacts a year and retained [number] past the first year
Oversaw the church budget	Built and managed an annual operating budget of $[amount]
Started a food pantry or recovery group	Launched a community program serving [number] people a month

A few more edits help employers outside the church read you correctly:

Swap insider words for plain ones. "Discipleship" becomes training and mentoring, "shepherding" becomes staff and volunteer care, and "Kingdom impact" becomes the number of people a program served.
Use only numbers you can back up from church records.
Write a LinkedIn headline that names the job you want next, such as "Nonprofit program manager, volunteer leadership, community partnerships."
Ask a church member who hires people in your target field to read the resume the way a stranger would.

How do you explain the move in an interview?

Expect some version of "Why are you leaving ministry?" early in the process. Keep the answer short, speak well of the church you served, and point it toward the job in front of you. A sample answer for a training role:

"I spent my years in ministry teaching adults and training volunteers. The part I want to keep doing every day is training, and this role lets me do it full time with a team that measures results. I'm also working toward the SHRM-CP."

If a Christian employer asks how your faith shapes your work, answer in a sentence or two and add an example from a work setting.

Which credentials are worth the time and money?

Alternative careers for pastors range from jobs you can start next month to licenses that take years. Choose the field before the credential, and let your timeline decide. If you need a paycheck within a few months, aim at fields with no license requirement (nonprofit programs, fundraising, HR, training, operations, communications), and start a license track later if counseling or social work is the long-term goal.

Counseling: an MDiv shows you can handle graduate work, and state boards decide whether any of its courses count toward a counseling license.
HR and training: the SHRM-CP doesn't require a degree, an HR title, or previous HR experience to apply, according to SHRM. The BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the entry-level education for training and development specialists and says certification is not usually required.
Fundraising: CFRE International scores applicants on fundraising education, months of employment as a professional fundraiser, and funds raised before they sit for an exam. Points must be earned within five years of applying, except academic degrees, which never expire. Plan on it after a few years in a development job.

What happens to your housing allowance, taxes, and health coverage?

Leaving the pastorate changes your taxes and your insurance, starting with your last church paycheck. Go through each item with a tax professional who knows clergy rules.

Housing allowance: the exclusion applies to pay for ministerial services, so it ends when your income comes from a marketplace employer, according to IRS Publication 517. If a church-run school or college hires you as a minister to teach or administer, ask whether the exclusion still applies, since a nonchurch college can't provide it.
Social Security: if you opted out of Social Security as a minister, the exemption covers only income from ministerial services. Wages from a marketplace job carry ordinary Social Security and Medicare withholding.
Parsonage: if you live in a church-owned home, agree on a written move-out date with the board before you announce your departure.
Health insurance: COBRA does not apply to plans sponsored by churches and certain church-related organizations, according to a Department of Labor guide (September 2022). Ask your plan what continuation coverage it offers. Losing job-based coverage can qualify you for a Special Enrollment Period on the Health Insurance Marketplace if you lost it in the past 60 days or expect to lose it in the next 60 days, so you can apply before your church coverage ends.
Retirement: ask your denomination's benefits board whether your church retirement account can stay put or roll over to a new employer's plan.

How do you handle the identity side of leaving the pastorate?

Leaving the pastorate can mean losing a job, a church family, a title, and sometimes a house at once, and grieving that is normal. When Lifeway Research asked current pastors why their predecessor left the ministry, the most common answers in its 2025 study were a change in calling (37%), conflict in the church (23%), and burnout (22%). If burnout is part of your story, rest and treatment come before the job search, and our article on ministry burnout covers recovery and the signs it's time to step away. A few habits also help in the first year:

Join a church where you're only a member, with no role to fill.
Keep meeting with a counselor or spiritual director after you start the new job.
Write one plain sentence to use when people ask why you left, so you don't have to retell the whole story each time.

Paul's instruction to the Corinthians covers a fundraising call or a training session as fully as a sermon:

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31, ESV)

What are the first steps toward a second career?

The search for jobs for ex pastors goes more smoothly when the money planning and the testing happen before the resignation. Work through these steps in order:

Set a money timeline. Count how many months of expenses you can cover, and line up health coverage before your last Sunday.
Pick two fields from the list above, choosing the parts of ministry you'd keep doing even without pay.
Talk to two or three people who do each job about what a normal week looks like and which credentials their employer valued.
Rewrite your resume and LinkedIn profile for your first-choice field, using the translation table.
Start one credential with no prerequisites, such as the SHRM-CP, while you apply.
Consider a bridge. Part-time marketplace work, or bivocational ministry while you still serve a church, lets you test a field with some income in place.
Search marketplace job categories on boards that list Christian employers, and set alerts for your two fields.

Frequently asked questions

What jobs can a former pastor do?

Former pastors move into counseling, nonprofit program management, fundraising, sales and customer success, teaching, social services, human resources, corporate training, operations, and communications. Fields with no licensing requirement, such as HR, fundraising, and nonprofit programs, are often the fastest switch for someone who needs income soon.

What percentage of pastors leave the ministry?

About 1.2% of evangelical and Black Protestant pastors leave the pastorate each year for reasons other than retirement or death, according to Lifeway Research's 2025 study, a rate statistically unchanged since 2015. Over the past decade, 7% of pastors moved into another ministry role and 3% into non-ministry work.

Are there remote jobs for former pastors?

Remote roles are a small share of openings at Christian organizations, with 1,109 remote listings in our data over the past year, about 5% of the total. Grant writing, communications, and donor relations work happen largely by email and video call, which makes them good fields to filter for remote options.

What can a pastor do after retirement?

Retired pastors may preach as interim or supply pastors, teach part time, volunteer, or take part-time work in fields like tutoring, nonprofit programs, or hospice volunteer coordination. Under IRS Publication 517, a retired minister can exclude from income the part of a church pension designated as a rental allowance, so check that designation before you retire.

What are some side jobs for pastors?

Side jobs that fit a pastor's schedule include substitute teaching, tutoring, healthcare shifts, skilled trades, real estate, writing, and consulting for nonprofits. A part-time grant writer role can also serve as a bridge into fundraising. Duke University's Clergy in America report found that 35% of congregations' primary leaders hold another job.

Spend 30 minutes with someone who already does the job

Of every step on the list, the informational conversation costs the least and tells you the most. Pick the field you're most drawn to, and ask a church member or former colleague who works in it for half an hour about their ordinary Tuesday. That person could also become the first reference on your new resume.

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.