125 Highly Paid Ministry Leaders – 2026

Inspiration Networks again tops the list.

Below is a list of 125 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 many pastors and other church leaders who might make more are not on this list. Churches are not required to make their Form 990s available to the public, even though many megachurches include media and other ministries that are funded by donors not associated with the church. These organizations and individuals include: Elevation Church, Joel Osteen and Lakewood Church, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and Kenneth Copeland.

Also, a growing number of Christian ministries 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, more than 100 ministries in the MinistryWatch 1000 who have made this election. They include: CRU/Campus Crusade for Christ, The Navigators, Convoy of Hope, Compassion International, Gideons International, Willow Creek Association, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Joyce Meyer Ministries, Denison Forum, and Ethnos360/New Tribes Mission.

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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 2024. However, the IRS has been slow in processing Form 990s for more than a year. (We have written about this backlog here.) That means 2023 is the most recent year for some of the ministries on this list. In one case, David Jeremiah’s Turning Point for God, the latest information available is from 2022.

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 $318-million revenue (2024) 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 $69-million revenue (2024) from evangelicals.
• Salaries are generally going up. Last year, the 100^th largest salary was about $407,000. This year, the 100^th highest salary comes in about $439,100.

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 in mid-January 2025.

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 in 2023 to go with that year’s list. Click here to read “Are We Paying Our Ministry Leaders Too Much?”

If you don’t want to read the entire article, I can boil it down here: MinistryWatch does not take a position on how much is too much. Some of the ministries we track have more than a billion dollars in revenue. You do not want amateurs running organizations of this size and complexity, and these executives deserve to be paid at a level appropriate to their skills, experience, and reputational risk.

That said, we do believe that the salaries of ministry executives should be made available to the public. This salary information is vital information for donors. A failure to release this information (usually in the Form 990) should be a huge red flag for donors. Indeed, in most cases, we would recommend that you withhold giving to any organization that fails to release this information.