Guidelines to Writing Job Offer Letters

Contents-At-A-Glance

• "Guidelines to Writing Job Offer Letters"
  
• New Church Job Description Samples
  
• Procedures for Internal & External Church Audits
  
• FreeChurchForms.com New Web Pages with New Forms
  
• Shepherdbase (Church Membership Database)
  
• Church Forms CD
  
• Church Office Package – Special Limited Offer
  
• Free eBook - ”Top 10 Tips on How to Organize Your Office”
  
• FreeChurchForms.com Table of Contents
  

"Guidelines to Writing Job Offer Letters"

Many churches, organizations and even christian schools use offer letters to communicate the terms of employment to potential employees. However, always remember that offer letters seem simple to write but they can get you into legal problems if you're not careful.

Here are guidelines when writing your job offer letter:

• Be Careful with Your Wording - You might be simply stating "We are so excited to have you join our ministry, and we expect you to be with us for a long time." This can be misunderstood by the employee and the courts to be a contractual offer of long-term employment. Six months down the road if you fire this employee for any reason they might sue you for breach of contract. Just be careful not to include language in your letters that the courts could treat as contracts.
• Exclude Certain Information - An offer letter should exclude promises of employment for a period of time, detailed information about all your benefits - refer them to policies, and acceptance by signing the letter.
• Always Include - Always include the Title of the job that is being offered, pay, reference to a benefit schedule (or attachment that discusses some information they might need - such as vacation/sick time, and insurance), potential start date, at-will and termination language, and acceptance of the offer.

Employment-At-Will language might appear too formal or sound like "legalese" but it is extremely important to include it your offer letter. Without this language, courts have construed offer letters as contracts. It allows the employee to end employment whenever he or she chooses, but it also gives the ministry the right to terminate an employee with or without cause for any reason not prohibited by law.

The final portion of the letter requests that the applicant formally accept the offer. It's also the opportunity to end the letter on an upbeat note.

Click Here to download the Free Job Offer Letter Samples & a Pastor Acceptance Sample Letter.

New Church Job Description Samples

Job Descriptions for church staff can be a very effective way to organize your church employees. Unless the jobs of your church employees or volunteers are described and defined they will not be able to work as effectively as they should.

New Church Job Description Samples