This article deals with the religious specialists (Buddhists, Taoists, spirit-mediums) who were hired during the late imperial period to live permanently within temples and provide regular services there. A temple did not absolutely need resident religious specialists to operate properly on a regular basis (temple leaders could instead invite specialists to perform rituals during festivals), and most did not have one. Among the temples that could afford to hire a temple manager, some temple leaders chose not to hire anyone; others chose to employ a cleric (Taoist or Buddhist), called zhuchi 住 持, and otherswhile yet others chose to employ a lay manager, called miaozhu廟 祝. This article uses inscriptions, legal documents, and narrative sources, this article to describes the variety of such relationships between lay leaders and hired resident specialists, and discusses the reasons --- , social, economical, and theological --- , behind such choices. It examines the ritual roles, contractual rights and duties, and patterns of recruitment and succession amongof employed zhuchi and miaozhu. It argues that the basic patterns of relationships and contractual agreements between lay leaders and their hired managers formed a repertoire of social know-how that could be found throughout China, as documented by instances of very similar contracts and regulations from different parts of China regions. Zhuchi and miaozhu idioms, embedded in a legal and contractual framework, were part of a China-wide repertoire of temple management, put to use in different ways in each local system and each individual temple community.