What is the Pastor Salary Support Program?

The Presbytery of Hudson River is exploring ways to provide resources to support churches engaged in their communities, looking for a significant change, and seeking full-time pastoral leadership to work with them to achieve a long-term sustainable vision for ministry over the course of this three-year program.

 

Arriving at this page means that a congregation you are looking at was approved and admitted into the Hudson River Presbytery's Pastor Salary Support Program (PSSP). The PSSP invests resources in healthy congregations that we believe have the potential to thrive with full-time leadership by providing funds to sustain a full-time call for a three-year term. The PSSP will empower the pastor and lay leadership with coaching and other resources to aid their ministry in establishing a sustainable future. Congregations admitted into the program have undergone a congregational assessment (Holy Cow!), a heavily vetted application process, and expressed a desire to try something new and creative.

Additional questions about the Pastor Salary Support Program can be directed to Rev. Casey Carbone, Director for Congregational Connection (casey@hudrivpres.org).

 

Core Principles:

  • Covenantal Partnership – This program is intense in its participants’ expenditure of time, energy, and resources. Therefore, buy-in and full commitment are necessary among all involved (pastor, church, and the Presbytery).

  • Building Up – This program is designed for churches that are engaged in their community and demonstrate a healthy potential to further their sense of faith, outreach, and connection to one another. The funds from this program help to provide full-time pastoral leadership to build upon this foundation and to allow the congregation to cultivate their sense of identity and purpose further.

  • Planting Seeds – While building on the foundations of a healthy congregation, the program is designed to plant seeds for long-term viability and sustainability by engaging the congregation in a Holy Cow! assessment and working with a coach who will help develop a ministry plan.

Qualifying congregations have completed the following:

Congregational Health & Vitality

  • The congregation completed a Holy Cow! assessment.

  • The congregation identified a team to receiving coaching.

Mission & Ministry

  • The congregation submitted three years of annual reports for review.

  • The congregation studied their MissionInsite report and completed a MissionInsite worksheet.

Finances

  • The congregation completed a financial health assessment.

  • The congregation demonstrated it conducts a stewardship program.

  • The congregation provided documentation that shows it can currently sustain minimally a part-time (1/2 time - 20 hr./wk.) call that includes cash salary, housing (housing allowance/manse), and benefits.

Discernment

  • The congregation entered into a time of discernment while completing the application.

  • The Pastor Salary Support Team entered into a discernment conversation with the congregation.