Church secretary job description, and why the title is disappearing
A church secretary job description covers front-office reception, congregation communication, records support, and calendar coordination: the same work now usually posted as 'administrative assistant' or 'front office coordinator.' The duties haven't changed; the job title on the posting has, and that title affects how many people apply.
A church secretary job description covers front-office reception, congregation communication, records support, and calendar coordination, the same work most churches now post under "administrative assistant" or "front office coordinator." The duties haven't changed. Only the title has, and the title affects how many people apply. Published pay for the role runs from roughly $32,000 to $60,000 a year depending on the source, or $1,997 a month for the same scope full time if you hand it to a co-laborer instead.
You searched "church secretary job description" because you need to post this job, and somewhere along the way you started second-guessing the word "secretary." That hesitation is reasonable. It is also not the hard part. The hard part is that the actual list of things this person does every week rarely makes it onto the posting at all.
This post gives you both: the naming answer, and the real job description, with current pay data and a template you can post today. It is one page in our guide to every church role and what it pays.
Is "church secretary" still an accurate job title?
Yes, and plenty of churches still use it without a second thought. But look across current job boards and the newer postings for this exact scope of work increasingly say "administrative assistant," "front office coordinator," or "office manager." Fewer applicants, especially younger ones, search the word "secretary" at all. That is a naming problem, not a duties problem. The daily work underneath the title has not moved.
That distinction matters for one reason. If you post the job as "Church Secretary" and get three applicants, the fix is rarely the pay. It is the title. Post the identical description as "Administrative Assistant" or "Front Office Coordinator" and watch the applicant pool change before you touch the salary line.
None of this makes "secretary" a wrong word. Plenty of long-tenured office staff carry the title proudly, and plenty of congregations know exactly what it means and would find "front office coordinator" a little cold. This is a practical decision about applicant volume for a specific posting, not a verdict on the word itself. Pick the title that gets the widest, best-fit pool of applicants to actually click apply, and move on.
What does a church secretary actually do?
Strip away the title question and the job itself is not complicated. It is four buckets of recurring work, done consistently enough that the office runs the same way whether or not anyone is watching.
1 Reception & phones
- Answering and routing calls
- Greeting visitors and walk-ins
- First point of contact for the building
2 Congregation communication
- Bulletin and weekly newsletter production
- Mass emails and announcement slides
- General correspondence on the church's behalf
3 Records & data entry
- ChMS database updates
- Attendance and giving records support
- Filing and document upkeep
4 Calendar & scheduling
- Room bookings and building use requests
- Staff calendar coordination
- Meeting and event scheduling support
For the hour-by-hour version of this list, see what a church secretary actually does all week. One boundary belongs in writing, not just in practice.
Where this role stops
Benevolence requests, counseling inquiries, and anything confessional route to a named pastoral staff member, never to the person answering the front desk phone. That is not a knock on the role. It is a boundary that protects the front office and the person asking for help.
Copy-paste church secretary job description
Post this under whichever title fits your context best. The duties below hold regardless of what the posting calls the role.
Job description template
Church Secretary / Front Office Coordinator
Reports to: [Executive Pastor / Office Manager]
Status: [Part-time / Full-time]
Compensation: [Range: see current benchmarks for your region]
Position summary
The Church Secretary is the first point of contact for [Church Name], running front-office reception, congregation communication, and calendar coordination so staff and visitors both get a consistent, well-run front door.
Core responsibilities
- Answer and route phone calls; greet and direct walk-in visitors
- Produce the weekly bulletin, newsletter, and announcement communications
- Maintain the church database: attendance, giving support, and contact records
- Coordinate the staff calendar and room and building use requests
- Handle general correspondence and mail on the church's behalf
- Route benevolence, counseling, and confessional requests to [named pastoral staff member]
Outside this role
- Benevolence, counseling, and pastoral care conversations
- Bookkeeping ownership or financial decision-making
- Social media strategy or content creation
- IT and audiovisual support
Qualifications
- 1+ years of office, reception, or administrative experience
- Working proficiency in [your ChMS], email, and basic publishing tools
- Warm, discreet, and comfortable being the first voice a visitor hears
- In agreement with the mission and statement of faith of [Church Name]
What should a church secretary be paid?
Published figures for this exact title spread wider than almost any other role in this series, partly because the title itself is inconsistent from one posting to the next.
| Source | Full-time annual figure |
|---|---|
| ZipRecruiter, national average | $42,778 |
| Glassdoor, national average | $59,729 |
| Salary.com, national average | $32,016 |
| BLS median, secretaries & administrative assistants, all industries | $47,460 |
ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, and Salary.com figures pulled August 2026. BLS figure is the May 2024 published median for the nearest comparable occupation. For a closer full-role comparison, see the church administrator salary benchmark.
The spread is not noise. Postings titled "secretary" skew toward the lower end of that range, while the identical scope posted as "administrative assistant" tends to land closer to the middle. That is the naming question from earlier showing up in the pay data, not a difference in the actual job.
Full-time or part-time, and what happens when this person is out?
Most churches budget this role part-time, 20 to 25 hours a week, and most find the phones, the bulletin deadline, and the walk-in traffic fill every one of those hours without much slack. The real test is not the hours. It is what happens the week this person calls in sick.
If the bulletin does not go out, if the phones roll to voicemail all day, if room bookings collide because nobody updated the shared calendar, the role has no backup, and the church is one flu season away from finding that out the hard way. That gap is worth naming before you post the job, not after.
The usual fixes are modest: a second staff member who knows the bulletin software well enough to fill in for a week, a documented process for the recurring tasks instead of tribal knowledge in one person's head, and a clear answer to "who covers the phones" before the question is urgent. None of that requires a second hire. It requires deciding on the answer while the seat is filled, not scrambling for one the week it is empty.
Do you need to hire at all?
You have the naming answer, the job description, and the pay data. There are two ways to fill it, and neither one requires solving the title question first. The duties are the same regardless of what you call the posting.
CoLabor Staffing places full-time Christian co-laborers with churches and Christian-owned businesses. A co-laborer generalist can run the recurring parts of this job, the phones, the bulletin, the calendar, and the database, full time, so the front office never goes dark when the seat is empty and the coverage question above is already answered.
Post it yourself
The template above is yours, under whatever title fits your context. Budget against the figures above, and plan on the usual four to eight week search.
Copy the templatePut a co-laborer on it
Full time on this job description at $1,997 a month, flat. Both of our prices are published, so you can run the comparison without talking to anyone.
Book a 30-minute callCommon questions
Is "church secretary" still a job title churches use?
Yes, though many churches now post the same duties under "administrative assistant" or "front office coordinator."
What is the difference between a church secretary and administrative assistant?
In most churches, none. The duties overlap almost entirely; the difference is usually just the title on the posting.
What does a church secretary do all day?
Reception, phones, bulletin and communications support, records entry, and calendar scheduling.
What should a church secretary be paid?
It tracks close to the administrative-assistant range. See the church administrator salary benchmark for current figures.