100 Highly Paid Ministry Leaders – 2025

Inspiration Network again tops the list

Below is a list of 100 highly paid Christian ministry executives. The information was derived from the latest available Form 990 prepared by the ministry itself.

We are not calling this list the “Highest Paid Christian Ministry Executives” because we know that many pastors and other church leaders who might make more are not on this list, because churches are not required to make their Form 990s available to the public.

Also, MinistryWatch has identified a growing trend among Christian ministries to identify as churches and thereby withhold their Form 990s. We think this is a troubling trend, and we have written about it repeatedly, most extensively here.

Now, nearly 100 ministries in the MinistryWatch 1000 who have made this election. They include: CRU/Campus Crusade for Christ, The Navigators, Gideons International, Willow Creek Association, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Joyce Meyer Ministries, Denison Forum, and Ethnos360/New Tribes Mission.

In addition, many megachurches and their related radio and television ministries also withhold their Form 990s. These organizations and individuals include: Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and Kenneth Copeland.

A Word About Timing

This information comes from the most recent Form 990 available from the Internal Revenue Service. For most ministries, they come from the year 2023. However, the IRS has been slow in processing Form 990s for more than a year. (We have written about this backlog here.) That means 2022 is the most recent year for some of the ministries on this list.

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A Few Notes of Interest

A list such as this is bound to have a few anomalies, or data points that need a bit of context. Here are a few such notes:

• In the case of Franklin Graham, only his Samaritan’s Purse compensation is listed. He also serves as president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Because BGEA does not file a Form 990, we were not able to determine what compensation he receives from BGEA.
• In the case of the Inspiration Networks:  Some executives receive their salaries from a for-profit subsidiary. The for-profit subsidiary, INSP LLC, is wholly owned by the non-profit organization The Inspirational Networks, Inc.
• The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is not an evangelical organization, but the organization advertises extensively on Christian radio and television, and a significant amount of its $271-million revenue (2023) comes from evangelicals, so we have included this organization in our survey.
• Prager University is also not a Christian organization but, again, it gets much of its $68-million revenue (2023) from evangelicals.

Also note that this list does NOT include salaries from Christian colleges and universities.  We will include these salaries in a separate list to be published next.

Finally, every time we publish this survey, we get the questions: “How much is enough?” and “How much is too much?” These questions do not have simple answers, but some of the issues donors should consider are discussed in an “Editor’s Notebook” I wrote to go with last year’s list. Click here to read “Are We Paying Our Ministry Leaders Too Much?”