We asked pastors, ministry staff, and volunteers 43 questions about how they actually do the work. These are the things we couldn't stop thinking about.
We went looking for a gender pay gap and found something that matters more. Among people on payroll, men and women earn about the same. Far fewer women are on payroll at all.
Twenty years of experience is worth almost nothing. Sunday attendance is worth tens of thousands. Ministry pay responds to the building, not the person.
When we asked who's in the room for annual planning, nearly a third of leaders gave the same answer — and that answer travels with exhaustion in every direction we looked.
Part-time leaders are paid for a fraction of the week. Their exhaustion doesn't arrive in fractions — it arrives at nearly double the full-time rate.
Every ministry here exists for kids and teenagers. Most make their biggest decisions without a single one of them present — and the ones who don't look different in ways worth noticing.
Every story here is one slice of a much larger dataset. The full explorer has all 43 questions, twelve ways to filter, and a report builder — so you can check our work or find the story we missed.