The questions you were going to ask anyway.

This is the question that stalls most calls, and it is a fair one. You have never had this person before, so the work has never been organized into a job.

Start here: email and calendar, volunteer scheduling and reminders, database and attendance cleanup, the bulletin, slides, and weekly email, giving records and thank-you letters, event and registration logistics, social posting and replies, guest follow-up, vendor and facility coordination.

That list is 39 hours in a typical church week. Right now it is split between you at 9pm, an office manager doing it on top of their real job, and a third of it not happening at all.

On the call we ask one question: walk me through last week, and tell me what you personally did that somebody else could have done. Whatever you say is the answer to this question, and we write it into the scope document.

Ask what the task lives in. If it lives in an inbox, a browser, a spreadsheet, or a church database, location is irrelevant. That covers most of the list.

Here is what genuinely needs a body in the building, and no co-laborer will ever do any of it: setting up chairs and rooms, greeting at the door, printing and folding the bulletin, running sound, lights, or livestream from the booth, counting the offering, answering the door during office hours.

We say those out loud on every call. Naming what remote cannot do is what makes the rest believable.

Week one is shadowing and learning. Expect maybe three hours back, and expect to spend some of your own time answering questions.

Weeks two through four, they own your recurring work: the bulletin, the volunteer schedule, the weekly email, guest follow-up. That is 10 to 15 hours a week back.

Month two, they start catching things nobody assigned them. Month three, they are running processes they documented themselves.

Anyone who tells you a remote hire is productive in week one has never done it.

Church systems: Planning Center, Breeze, Tithe.ly, CCB, Rock.

Work systems: Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Slack, Canva, Zoom, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and the common CRMs.

If you run something they have not used, they learn it in week one and document it while they learn. That documentation is part of the job, not a favor.

No, and we will not make you take that on faith.

We pay more than double the Philippine national average wage, we pay 13th month, and every co-laborer gets a 5% raise every year.

Thirteenth month pay is a legal standard in the Philippines. We pay it and absorb it; it never appears on your invoice. The 5% raise is annual and automatic, not tied to a review we could skip. Your rate rises 5% at the same time so the raise is funded by the business rather than by cutting corners on your service.

We do not publish individual salaries. What we will tell you is that our people are paid well where they live, paid on time, and paid more next year than this year.

Because a person who is personally in ministry sat down and had a real conversation with them about it.

Not a checkbox on an application. Not a question with an obvious right answer. A conversation about testimony, local church involvement, and what they did the last time integrity cost them something. Then a pastoral reference from someone in spiritual authority over them at their own church, which we actually contact.

Every staffing company in this space claims Christian workers. We published the standard, which is a different thing.

Sometimes you should, and if that is the right call we will tell you.

But price the two honestly. A part-time US church admin at 25 hours runs about $2,570 a month once you load payroll taxes, benefits, workers compensation, equipment, and paid time off. A full-time church administrator runs about $4,800. A co-laborer is $1,997 for 40 hours.

There is also the posting problem. The 39 hours in question is nine different jobs. You cannot write a job description for it, which is why the position has been open in your head for two years and never on a job board.

The commitment is 20 to 30 minutes a week of direction from one named person. That is the actual number.

What you cannot do is skip it. And you cannot have five people directing the same co-laborer. A remote team member taking direction from five people cannot prioritize, defaults to whoever asked most recently, and produces less than half of what they are capable of. Placements fail on that more than on skill.

One point of contact. One short check-in a week. If you cannot commit to that, tell us on the call and we will tell you not to hire yet.

Handled under rules that do not bend, including if you ask us to bend them.

Background check required before any access to financial records, giving data, or member personal information. Least privilege, so access is granted per task rather than per person. Named accounts only, issued by your administrator through a password manager, never sent by email or chat. Never the sole administrator on any account. No banking credentials at any tier, ever, and no payments or transfers initiated. Bookkeeping specialists get read-only bank feeds and nothing more.

Confidentiality covers everything seen inside your systems and survives the end of the engagement. Access is revoked within one business day of any change in placement.

You tell your account manager. We run a documented check-in within five business days with a specific written correction plan, then one correction cycle, normally two weeks.

If it is still not right, we replace the co-laborer at no cost and your rate does not move. Where we can, we overlap the outgoing and incoming co-laborer by a week so your context gets handed off instead of dropped.

The person changes. The price does not.

Confidentiality breaches, access rule violations, and dishonesty skip all of that. Immediate removal.

We place full-time co-laborers. Forty hours, five days, one client.

The reason is not stubbornness. It is that part-time offshore work almost always means a person splitting attention across several clients, and the whole value here is the opposite of that. Someone learning one organization, deeply, until they know your Sunday better than your newest staff member does. That does not happen 12 hours a week.

There is also the arithmetic. A US part-time admin at 25 hours costs about $2,570 a month loaded. A full-time co-laborer is $1,997 for 40. Part-time is the more expensive way to buy less.

Your rate rises 5% on your engagement anniversary, and your co-laborer gets a 5% raise at the same time.

On $1,997 that is roughly $100 a month in year two. We publish it here and on the pricing page because you should never learn about a price increase from an invoice.

Your co-laborer acknowledges it, does not start it, and flags it to their CoLabor account manager the same day. Your account manager answers you within two business days with one of three things: it is in scope so proceed, it is specialist work and here is the rate, or it is not something we do and here is what we suggest instead.

Nothing is ever billed that you did not approve first. You will not get a surprise invoice from us.

A fixed shift set at onboarding, five days a week, with a minimum of five hours overlapping your normal business hours. It is written into your scope attachment and does not float week to week.

Holidays follow your calendar, agreed at onboarding. Philippine statutory holidays are covered by us and communicated in advance so nothing catches you on a Monday.

No. You pay CoLabor one monthly rate. We handle compensation, 13th month pay, and everything that comes with engaging someone in the Philippines.

No payroll to run, no benefits to administer, no unemployment insurance, no severance exposure, no laptop to buy.