Your full-time administrative assistant at your church discovers she needs surgery and will be out for 4 weeks.  She has worked at the church for 15 years.  Each employee earns time off each year and she has 4 days available for this surgery. Does your church provide salary continuation coverage for her time off after she uses her 4 days of leave?

You may not have heard this question yet but a situation with a minister or other full-time church staff will probably happen at some time.  Ministers at local churches have long-term disability coverage through participation in the Ministers’ Pension Plan but no short term coverage (less than 180 days).  The short term coverage usually needs to be handled by the church itself.  Maybe it would be helpful for your church to have a policy on salary continuation before the issue arises.   If you don’t cover a short term illness with salary continuation, it would be helpful to clarify this with your employees including ministers so they may be prepared with emergency funds saved for such a time.

Sometimes a church will treat the minister differently from the other full time staff.  Do you think this is right?  Should a minister receive coverage for surgery time and not the secretary?  Employment policies would urge you to treat all your full-time employees the same.  Do you think that the church would honor God and people better if they treated all staff equal in such situations?

A "Short Term Salary Continuation" sample church policy based on the denominational employee policy is available for you to review on the Church Administration and Financial Resources under Employment Issues/Benefits. One church I talked to has no short-term salary continuation for staff; another has a short-term disability policy; another has no policy but will cover a short-term disability with salary continuation after 8 days of sick.

Will your church cover salary for a short-term disability and will you provide the same benefit to all staff?  How have you covered short-term disabilities?