Interesting that there's very little discussion of job descriptions. They vary so widely that the pay will vary, too. I am playing in a very small Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon. The cost of living here is rather high! My duties are: select the hymns (four per Sunday), select the music for the Ordinary according to Liturgical Season (three items per Sunday), prepare a prelude, communion voluntary, and a postlude. I play approximately 48 services in the year. I am payed $150.00 for each service. No choir. I think this is fair: based on 40 years experience!

I've been hesitant to jump into this conversation, for various reasons, but I will throw in my 2 cents.

I worked for a long time as an organist making a completely un-livable per-service fee, and supported myself with all sorts of non-musical odds and ends jobs. One job ago, I made $5,000 as a 20 hours per week music director. Historically, I worked about 75% of the time in Protestant churches, because per-service they have paid about twice as much as Catholic churches. This always bothered me, but the economics were clear.

About 2 years ago, I realized something. Being underpaid means you are not given the time to grow your skills, to practice, to really invest in the art of sacred music. Not to mention, being underpaid has an effect on your attitude. It is hard to want to revitalize and renew a music program, when the pastor doesn't care enough to pay you more than minimum wage. Wherever I worked, I came in and performed my job... and that was (usually) the end of it. I never saw, or was given the opportunity, to create real growth, like a church transforming over 5 years into a vibrant music program. It was just a fight, week-to-week, to turn something mediocre into something hopefully good.

So 2 years ago, I looked back on my life's work and saw 15 years of....mostly the same. Small successes here and there (a great Christmas concert!), and 51 weeks a year of roughly okay music...but never anything truly great, despite untold efforts.

Out there today, every single person in a pew is subjected to perpetual media: TV ads with thumping music, the radio with singles whose harmonies and balance were perfected by powerful software which costs more than most church's 3 year budgets, their personal music collection, streaming Taylor Swift on Spotify (well, not anymore). People expect at a bare minimum INCREDIBLY fine-tuned music. I mean, that's just the basics.

If music is to change hearts and minds, to proclaim Scripture with incredible beauty, it does it this day and age in competition with the listener's inner ear. Modern Americans IGNORE more music in a week, than a human one century ago heard in a year.

2 years ago, I realized that to effect any real, lasting change, to not just fight every week, but to GROW every week, I had to demand the resources and salary necessary to invest myself in the long, arduous, and incredibly rewarding process of renewing sacred music at a parish.

I quit my underpaid job. I committed to never applying for any job that offered less than the AGO standards. I searched in the 48 states for jobs of all denominations, but especially looking for Catholic parishes. It took me 12 months to find a place that:

1) paid AGO scale
2) had a pastor who really loved sacred music
3) the pastor wanted to invest in a vision of sacred music
4) was a Catholic church

It was a painful search process, and very depressing (I can't tell you how many interviews I had where a search committee recruited me hard, told me all sorts of wonderful things, and then told me they pay something like $4,000 a year for 40 hours a week).

From all sorts of perspectives (your individual energy resources, economics, family, pastoral support, a semblance of life balance), there is just no other way to make real beauty than a basic salary. You can keep maintaining the old jalopy, and replace the tire only when it falls off, and 20 years from now, still be stuck with a crappy car....OR. You can invest in a vision, take out the engine, clean every spare part, work them together again carefully, and build a beautiful new future.

So to answer the question:
I get paid on AGO scale.
And that's how much I should get paid.

Adam, that is pretty much what I do. I love it. But I do get a salary.

Until I moved to CA recently, I was the Music Director at a small Episcopal parish with only one service on Sunday. I was paid, but that wasn't really relevant. I had a full time job. The extra money was kinda nice, but it was hardly the difference between making a living and not.
The program I described above would have cut my church-music work load in half.

Every situation is different. Working for free (or cheap) for a parish hat truly can't afford someone is very different than working for a parish that simply doesn't want to pay. Or a parish that could have one full time person running a program but decides to have a different part-timer at each of 6 weekend masses. Or thinks that a single part-timer should be able to do music at 6 weekend masses. Or doesn't understand why a a single person ought to be in chrage of all the music at a parish.


I'm not saying church musicians shouldn't get paid. I'm saying that money isn't the primary reason churches don't have excellent music programs.

Torculus observes: "And then there is the issue that those who work for free or cheap make it difficult for their colleagues to earn a living wage."

Touché.

I have a colleague who calls every so often when he needs a violin for his trio. He called a while back asking if I would play for free at a local high-end restaurant. A $100 dinner was "payment". It's a nice place but I had to decline the offer. My friend who has two performance degrees and many years of experience as a jazz violinist called to schedule a gig at this restaurant and the owner balked at having to pay the musicians-no doubt because our dear colleague had been playing there for free for a while. This person single-handedly ruined what could and should have been a lucrative opportunity for several people. Very frustrating.

I'm quite aware of both of those things, Adam. Sigh...

The place does alright but it's actually a culinary arts school run by a local Italian food producer. I can buy their products at most of our stores and specialty grocers...and I know my way around a kitchen well enough to re-create most of the stuff at home.
On the other hand, if the gig offered high end sushi I may change my mind lol! Back to your regularly scheduled thread...sorry

"Well" this is a deep subject.

I am a non-degreed person who is trying to improve music at my church. I must tell you that it must take me three times longer to do my job because I am learning as I'm teaching. it is very difficult. I have a "in the world" type job so everything I do is at home and on my own time. I do not get paid to direct the church choir for the seasons nor do I get paid for the One Sunday Mass every week that I direct (The choir is getting pretty good by the way). None of the other musicians get paid for any of the other Masses either.

I have talked many times to the person in charge to see about getting at least the musicians paid a small stipend and the answer is always no. I even stated that I would gladly turn around and donate the money I make directly back to the church. Still nothing. We are trying to build a new church it is costing everyone a lot of money out of their personal wallets and to ask everyone to pitch in a little more to pay the musicians simply doesn't fit the budget.

Of course I think they could find enough to pay at least the lead musician at each Mass.

One of the music leaders always says he will never work in the church for money as a musician. He believes that he was given a talent to play the guitar and he should not charge God for it. He doesn't charge for Weddings, funerals or Quincenerra's (sp?).

The reason why I don't put my foot down and demand compensation or walk is because OCP is the norm at our church. Contemporary music rules the day, except for one Mass, the one I said I would lead so that I could make it more traditional. It has taken a while but its getting there.

My goal is, that once the church is built, to hire a full time director (traditional If I have anything to do about it) and just sing in the choir or lead a small schola.
We'll see if I can get that done in the next 2 years.

donr, I'd like to be the first to apply. Where should I send my resume? ;)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/christopher-candela-dispels-the-notion-that-all-organ-music-sounds-the-same/2014/08/25/e684dff2-2c64-11e4-be9e-60cc44c01e7f_story.html

I always enjoyed reading about the salaries of composers back in the day. If you were a court composer or musician you had a nice place to live, a firewood, wine, and bread allowance, and a little bit of cash for whatever. Being aware of my family's fragile financial situation, the deacons at my "work church" have been giving me gift cards to a local grocery store at random times. Now if only I can talk them into paying the mortgage and heating bills...

I can't agree with the downer on volunteer musicians. All the work of the church belongs to everyone, I would look at it as a pyramid, with those who are dedicated more fulltime, and hence more invested in training at the top, with a broad base of less qualified/experienced people supporting. In my field as an evangelist and catechists, one of the main problems for mobilising the laity is the perception that evangelisation is a specialist task only to be undertaken by paid professionals. I would suggest that rather than narrowing the base by confining it to paid workers, if we widen the base with even more involved volunteers, the number of people who will understand and appreciate the time and investment the professionals put in will increase, the number who love and value the music of the church will increase, and therefore the people who are wlling to see their hard earned cash pay for music ill increase, a win win situation.
A volunteer who supports themselves in not an unpaid musician, they are a paid musician whose principal donor is themselves. Why should it be okay for me to donate my money to pay some other musician, and not okay to donate that money to pay for myself? Particularly, as time is money, I can convert my time directly into service without the taxman taking a big slice.

Here's my conundrum. Consider the following quote from the 1958 Instruction on Sacred Music:

101. It would be ideal, and worthy of commendation if organists, choir directors, singers, instrumentalists, and others engaged in the service of the Church, would contribute their talents for the love of God, and in the spirit of religious devotion, without salary; should they be unable to offer their services free of charge, Christian justice, and charity demand that the church give them a just wage, according to the recognized standards of the locality, and provisions of law. - See more at: http://www.adoremus.org/1958Intro-sac-mus.html#anchor36301306

I have a full time job outside of choir directing. I don't see a cent, but I love doing the work, and our apostolate is just getting on its feet anyway. Am I lowering the bar for everyone else, if the alternative is no music at all for this group? At what point do I say, "I need to get paid for what I am doing"?

some priests get paid, so that they can devote themselves fulltime to ministry, including the time they spend in study to prepare. Other clerics don't, at least here, namely the deacons. however they are not expected to be as available nor do they have the same level of training.
I am not objecting to a musician, who giving a substantial portion of his working life to the music ministry getting paid, that would be right and proper, and something every parish should aim for. However, it is likely, where I live, that the possibility of such will be built up over time by volunteers in various fields, raising the standard of the parish to the point where paid for ministries of various kinds are a reality.
It is not either/ or , it should be both and, IMHO

In a lot of cases, religious-order priests have their pay for parish or chaplaincy work sent to the provincial office of their order, and then they receive a stipend from the province. Not all employers are in a position to run things that way, but it's common. I think my bishop is paid that way.