Where does tithing go to?

[gem2477]

The thing is no one seems to know exactly how it is used -- Leaders never give us that information. I think they should. We are accountable to the church leaders multiple times in a year for pay our tithing (temple recommend interviews and tithing settlement), yet they never tell us how they use the funds.

I know they use funds for building, maintenance and stuff - but we the members do many things for free. We ourselves pay for missionary work, cleaning buildings, bringing food to events....the things that are always mentioned seem to only be a fraction of what the church has.

I am not trying to be controversial, I am just searching for answers....I don't know if anything is being mismanaged, but I know it could easily be a temptation. You take professionals and businessmen, put them in positions of unquestioned authority with morality that is unquestioned, stir in billions of dollars to use, and you could easily run into problems. Then they just need to read their own press and say "well, I would never really do anything shady" to excuse themselves.

[AngelMarvel]

I am sure you have already read this...but, others may not have. What is done with the tithing that Mormons pay? | Mormon.org

[gem2477]

I am sure you have already read this...but, others may not have. What is done with the tithing that Mormons pay? | Mormon.org

yes, but those people don't know any more than I do because the church has never released that info.

[Dravin]

I am not trying to be controversial, I am just searching for answers....I don't know if anything is being mismanaged, but I know it could easily be a temptation. You take professionals and businessmen, put them in positions of unquestioned authority with morality that is unquestioned, stir in billions of dollars to use, and you could easily run into problems. Then they just need to read their own press and say "well, I would never really do anything shady" to excuse themselves.

Church finances are audited and reported to the First Presidency. So if Mr. Mission President is engaging in financial shenanigans it'll show up. If the concern is over the macro disbursement of tithing funds, rather than things like embezzlement, it is the First Presidency's call if that is proper use of tithing funds or not. The only reason for, "The records should be public!" is so the rank and file can somehow hold the First Presidency accountable for the use of tithing funds and that simply isn't how the Church works. Accountability in the Church follows stewardship, of which, generally speaking, we have none in this arena. Now does this mean the Church cannot and must not release public financial records? Nope, but it means that idea that, "We need to hold the First Presidency accountable to make sure tithing money is being used properly." is in error.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Dravin

[lds2]

The Church has auditors so there is accountability and double and triple checks when it comes to donations. For instance when tithing/funds are counted there has to be two leaders there, you get a receipt for your donation, you go over those donations at the end of the years with the bishop, these things must be entered into the computer and reports are made/given.

Several years ago the First Presidency said that they will not go into debt to run the programs of the Church and that temple and missionary work are to take precedence over other things. As a result with the huge influx of missionaries and temple building other programs have been reduced. many greatly reduced.

My child is going to Asia on a mission to a place that will literally cost thousands of dollars each month for food and shelter, we will only pay $400 of that. Then there are the other Church paid expenses of insurance, transportation, technology, etc. By December there are going to be close to 100,000 missionaries, paying just $400 per month (if they can pay that, many if not most in other countries can't.)

Instead of asking where, I think the bigger question is how on Earth does the Church keep doing all it does with building and maintaining Churches, Temples, administrative buildings, then there are all the welfare services including many farms, LDS counselors, bishop's storehouses, etc. Missionary Work including MTCs, mission homes and missionaries, employment centers, deseret industries, Church dry pack canneries, museums, Nauvoo and other historical sites, visitors centers, research centers, technology/software/computer services centers, family history centers and software and cost of collecting billions of records, Church schools and universities around the world, , etc. etc. etc. Have I mentioned the Humanitarian warehouses and the millions given each year to other's not of our faith when calamities strike and then other programs such as wheelchairs, water wells, health services, etc. I don't believe that these things could all happen without the help of millions of miracles.

Then understand that the majority of LDS adults are NOT full tithe payers, many of our numbers are children, and that relatively few areas of the world are self-sustaining through tithing funds and all that the Church accomplishes is even a greater miracle.

Edited September 11, 2013 by lds2

[estradling75]

AngelMarvel shared how it is used but I suspect you want a detailed analysis of every penny spent put out into the public domain?

You seem to want to justify wanting such detailed information two ways.

First the church asks you if you are a full tithe payer so you feel that you are entitled to know how it is spent (in detail since you already know in general) However in my experience the tithing question is a simple yes/no they don't ask for details... In return I see generally were it is spent (the things listed aren't cheap) and also every year in general conference we hear from the Church auditors. They do track every penny they know what is going on with the church finances... And like me in tithing settlement they give us a brief yes/no answer on if the tithing is being spent according to the revelations from the Lord on the subject and according to best financial practices.. Seems more then a fair return on how they ask me to explain my tithing.

You next point is about corruption... and you are quite right that there could be some because they are all human. At the low levels could some one embezzle church funds? Well they could try, but the church does audit the records and follows best financial practices. Which means a the low level they are at about as much risk as any large organization that has its finances in order. This seems unavoidable but they church does all it can to stop it and that is good enough for me. Then there is the possibility of corruption at the top. At our top we have the 1st Presidency and the quorum of the 12. That is 15 men that have dedicated their lives to building up the kingdom of God. 15 men that left behind the wealth they could have gotten legitimately in the private sector. 15 men that we can truly expect to fear god more then men because they have repeatedly acted in that manner. I feel much more confident in them and their checks on each other then I do any CEO or others officer of major corporations

Finally understand that paying tithing does not make you a shareholder in the church. Tithing is paid because we have faith that God commands us to. If God commanded us to sacrifice our tithing on an altar of fire, where we watched it get destroyed, those with faith would still do so. But that is not the command. Instead we get to help the work of the Lord roll forth in some very tangible ways, buildings, temples, missionary work, family history work, etc

[gem2477]

Church finances are audited and reported to the First Presidency. So if Mr. Mission President is engaging in financial shenanigans it'll show up. If the concern is over the macro disbursement of tithing funds, rather than things like embezzlement, it is the First Presidency's call if that is proper use of tithing funds or not. The only reason for, "The records should be public!" is so the rank and file can somehow hold the First Presidency accountable for the use of tithing funds and that simply isn't how the Church works. Accountability in the Church follows stewardship, of which, generally speaking, we have none in this arena. Now does this mean the Church cannot and must not release public financial records? Nope, but it means that idea that, "We need to hold the First Presidency accountable to make sure tithing money is being used properly." is in error.

why can't we hold them accountable? If I am dirt poor and paying tithing instead of paying bills, I want to know my money is being used properly.

[Guest]

There's your mistake. You are thinking of it as your money. It's not yours, it's the Lord's. This isn't a Mormon thing, it goes back to the Old Testament.

[gem2477]

AngelMarvel shared how it is used but I suspect you want a detailed analysis of every penny spent put out into the public domain?

You seem to want to justify wanting such detailed information two ways.

First the church asks you if you are a full tithe payer so you feel that you are entitled to know how it is spent (in detail since you already know in general) However in my experience the tithing question is a simple yes/no they don't ask for details... In return I see generally were it is spent (the things listed aren't cheap) and also every year in general conference we hear from the Church auditors. They do track every penny they know what is going on with the church finances... And like me in tithing settlement they give us a brief yes/no answer on if the tithing is being spent according to the revelations from the Lord on the subject and according to best financial practices.. Seems more then a fair return on how they ask me to explain my tithing.

You next point is about corruption... and you are quite right that there could be some because they are all human. At the low levels could some one embezzle church funds? Well they could try, but the church does audit the records and follows best financial practices. Which means a the low level they are at about as much risk as any large organization that has its finances in order. This seems unavoidable but they church does all it can to stop it and that is good enough for me. Then there is the possibility of corruption at the top. At our top we have the 1st Presidency and the quorum of the 12. That is 15 men that have dedicated their lives to building up the kingdom of God. 15 men that left behind the wealth they could have gotten legitimately in the private sector. 15 men that we can truly expect to fear god more then men because they have repeatedly acted in that manner. I feel much more confident in them and their checks on each other then I do any CEO or others officer of major corporations

Finally understand that paying tithing does not make you a shareholder in the church. Tithing is paid because we have faith that God commands us to. If God commanded us to sacrifice our tithing on an altar of fire, where we watched it get destroyed, those with faith would still do so. But that is not the command. Instead we get to help the work of the Lord roll forth in some very tangible ways, buildings, temples, missionary work, family history work, etc

That is part of my point that you are proving. You are saying our top leaders are moral, just simply cause....they are. Without question. With that kind of mentality, they could get away with a ton of questionable things. Now I am not saying that they are corrupt, only that they are human. I don't know them, or much about their lives, except what is told in conference. So, I really can't say how morally they have lived their lives or have repeatedly acted in that manner.

I am not saying I am a shareholder, I just would like to know my funds are being used properly, and not being used to fund a maid for a mission president, for example.

Edited September 11, 2013 by gem2477

[Guest]

If you have a testimony that this is the restored church of Jesus Christ on the earth, and that He is at its head, and thus leading those who are stewards of His tithes, then that's not something you need to worry about. You just have to worry about what you yourself are doing. Are you paying tithing as we've been commanded to do? Then you are right before God when it comes to following that commandment. Even if the tithing were being misused, that is not on your head, it is on the heads of those who misuse it.

But you seem to have either a lack of testimony or basic distrust in the organization and leadership of the Church. I'd suggest that if you are concerned about "your" money and what's being done with it, that instead of pointing fingers, you do the work to gain a testimony of the restored Church and how Christ guides His prophets.

[estradling75]

I am not saying I am a shareholder, I just would like to know my funds are being used properly, and not being used to fund a maid for a mission president, for example.

Repeat after me... they are not your funds... they are not your funds...

You consecrated them to the Lord and once you did so you loss all rights to call them yours

[EarlJibbs]

I am not sure how many people are involved with the tithing reaching the end of the line and then distributed as needed. But I do know that it goes through the Bishopric. Could someone somewhere be corrupted at that level? Sure, but how many are there that handle funds at this stage? Two per ward times how many wards there are, I can't imagine "The Church" being corrupted at that level can you? Then the next level, the Stake times how many stakes there are. Then I believe there would be a region.... etc... all the way to make the final report. So sure there may be a few here and there that either make a mistake or are not honest, but to mention "The Church" like it is some blob of mass that hovers around that we want monitored is incorrect in my opinion. We ALL monitor the "Church" as we are the Church.

On the auditing side, they are not just Church auditors, they are a separate company that risks a lot if they are involved with any foul play. That company puts their name on the line each time they audit and put their stamp of approval. We monitor ourselves and we have a separate company monitor as well. That is plenty enough for me. These are not taxes that we pay to pave a well built road to heaven, but the Lords money. If they are not honest with it, condemnation will fall upon their heads.

But in the end, who am I to question God how his money is used? I dare not ask.

[Leah]

why can't we hold them accountable? If I am dirt poor and paying tithing instead of paying bills, I want to know my money is being used properly.

What evidence do you have to support your suspicions that it is not?

[Leah]

That is part of my point that you are proving. You are saying our top leaders are moral, just simply cause....they are. Without question. With that kind of mentality, they could get away with a ton of questionable things. Now I am not saying that they are corrupt, only that they are human. I don't know them, or much about their lives, except what is told in conference. So, I really can't say how morally they have lived their lives or have repeatedly acted in that manner.

I am not saying I am a shareholder, I just would like to know my funds are being used properly, and not being used to fund a maid for a mission president, for example.

Whether you were born into the church or converted later, you at some point made the voluntary choice to be a member of the church. With that choice comes the knowledge of paying tithing. There is no covenant that you get to determine how those monies are spent. If you think something is "appropriate" to spend money on, but some other member disagrees, who gets to decide? If you don't trust the leadership to have appropriate stewardship over tithing money, why stay a member of the church? Do you distrust their leadership in other areas or just when it comes to money?

[Leah]

Repeat after me... they are not your funds... they are not your funds...

You consecrated them to the Lord and once you did so you loss all rights to call them yours

For anyone who has been through the temple, this should be crystal clear,

[Just_A_Guy]

That is part of my point that you are proving. You are saying our top leaders are moral, just simply cause....they are. Without question. With that kind of mentality, they could get away with a ton of questionable things. Now I am not saying that they are corrupt, only that they are human. I don't know them, or much about their lives, except what is told in conference. So, I really can't say how morally they have lived their lives or have repeatedly acted in that manner.

I am not saying I am a shareholder, I just would like to know my funds are being used properly, and not being used to fund a maid for a mission president, for example.

To put it perhaps a little more delicately than Eowyn did:

If I don't believe the Church leadership are what they say they are in the absence of complete financial disclosure, then the presence thereof isn't going to convince me, either. We're talking about (by the best estimates from ten years ago) a $30 billion institution with annual tithing revenues well above $6 million. There will always be something to second-guess. Always.

I mean, take the maid-for-a-mission-president example you cite. What if the mission president was in a low-paid profession before he was called, and can barely cover his own living expenses? What if his wife is a quadriplegic, and the mission president can't keep house because he's at the mission office for fourteen hours per day? Is the use of a maid still a sign of corruption? How do you incorporate the fulness of that situation into a single line-item in a multi-million-dollar budget? At the end of the day, carpers gonna carp.

It's hard to wrap our 21st-century-western minds around it; but the fact is that the LDS Church is not a democracy. It is a kingdom.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Just_A_Guy

[Guest]

I do believe this is the first time I've been accused of being indelicate in my opinions. I never.

[Guest]

p.s. . . I believe the OP was responding to estradling.

[MarginOfError]

I am currently an auditor. I perform 2-3 audits in my stake every 6 months. I am very familiar with the practices and procedures that are supposed to be in place at the local level. With that background, let me make a few observations about local unit audits

• The audits performed by the church on local units every six months are invasive in the sense that every. single. unit. is audited. However, these audits aren't very comprehensive. Mostly, they look to see that documentation exists, but there isn't much time spent scrutinizing the documentation itself. Also, the sample of documents that are reviewed is relatively small.
• Although the Church has strict procedures in place for how money is handled, that shouldn't leave people with a sense of security that it is difficult to take money from the Church. The controls that are in place would make it challenging for a single person acting alone to take funds. However, I can dream up a number of ways to inappropriately take money from the Church. (No, I won't discuss how to do this on a public forum)
• While the Church conducts and invasive audit every six months of the local units, that still only represents a small piece of the money that the Church spends. All information about the results of these audits is filtered up in the organizational chain. The only details that go down are given in the financial report where someone says something to the effect of "finances have been handled in accordance with Church policy."

I have mixed feelings on the idea of transparency. It bugs me that the Church is so opaque with financial information. It bugs me that the Church distributes so little money to the local units. And it bugs me that the only accountability the upper leaders of the Church have is internal and among themselves.

At the same time, I don't think it's necessary for the Church to release all of the financial details of its corporate dealings (at least not any further than the law requires of other corporations). In fact, I think it's prudent that those details be hidden. Can you imagine the furor that would be sparked if it were discovered that the Church owned stock in Coca-Cola; or an organic, free-range cattle farm; or leased property to movie studios that produced R rated movies? We don't need that kind of nonsense in a culture that's already hyper-vigilant.

But I do wish they were more transparent about how the voluntary contributions were managed. Do I trust Church leaders to be responsible with the money? Yes, I do. But just because you trust people doesn't mean you stop requiring them to follow practices that are designed to encourage honesty and good faith. The other benefit to transparency is it completes a feedback loop that doesn't exist in the current system. The only people with the capacity to critique the use of funds are those that are already responsible for how they are used. That's how things like Group Think get started. I'm not a fan.

[pam]

We are accountable to the church leaders multiple times in a year for pay our tithing (temple recommend interviews and tithing settlement), yet they never tell us how they use the funds.

Actually this is not quite true. All is asked is whether we have paid a full-tithe. We don't have to bring them any kind of pay stubs or anything to document exactly how much we made and whether we really did pay 10% of it. It's an honor system. Of course the Lord really knows if you are being honest or not but we are talking about church leaders here.

Just knowing that every single temple, every single meetinghouse, every institute building that the church owns is 100% paid for before dedicated or used tells me something right there.

[Finrock]

Everything that everyone has, belongs to God. Nobody owns anything that they have. This is a fact. You may not believe it. You may not like it. But it is truth.

All of the money anyone ever makes, belongs to God. When He asks you to pay tithing, He is only asking you to give back to Him 10% of His money and He is allowing you to use the 90% for your stewardship. We have no "right" to it. But, God doesn't force us to give His money back. He allows us to steal it from Him, if we choose. We can make any choice we want but we ought to realize that if we don't pay tithing then it is the same as stealing money from your neighbor. You are a thief when you refuse to pay tithing.

The Church is God's Kingdom on earth. The First President is the steward of the money God wants us to give back to Him. I don't question that stewardship. My faith, my belief and I don't ever feel bugged, bothered, or unhappy about it. I feel good about it.

Regards,

Finrock

[Dravin]

why can't we hold them accountable?

Because it's not within our stewardship. Just like it's not within my stewardship to hold you accountable to covenants and give you temple recommend interviews.

Repeat after me... they are not your funds... they are not your funds...

You consecrated them to the Lord and once you did so you loss all rights to call them yours

Amen.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Dravin

[NeuroTypical]

I just would like to know my funds are being used properly, and not being used to fund a maid for a mission president, for example.

This line of thinking is increbibly tenacious. Folks of this mindset, upon getting the information they desire, invariably discover all sorts of expenditures with which they strongly and vocally disagree.

I remember after Mother Theresea died - I didn't know much about her, so I was researching. I looked up criticisms levelled against her, and found many akin to gem's. They were ticked off at how she used her sway with world leaders, griping about how she should have done more in this area, or not focused on that area so much. The dear lady left behind worldly posessions of a bucket, a pair of glasses, a pair of shoes, and two simple coverings - but people were still accusing her of being a sellout, a dupe, a willing conspirator to the evils of the world.

Hey Gem - some of our tithing went to refurbish a few chairs at some temple. The total bill was in the thousands of dollars. Do you wish to opine about the expenditure?

[pam]

I am not saying I am a shareholder, I just would like to know my funds are being used properly, and not being used to fund a maid for a mission president, for example.

I guess I have a different mindset on this. Many mission presidents put careers on hold for 3 years to serve a mission. This is pretty much financed on their own but receive a small stipend for some living expenses. I've never known one that had a maid that was funded by the church.

They oversee hundreds of elders and sister missionaries. They sometimes have to house missionaries temporarily. They are sometimes asked to host visiting general authorities over the missionary program. All this they do to see the work going forward. I have a friend who was a mission president. In fact he was Dravin's mission president. They give up much during their 3 years to serve the Lord. To me..so what if the church paid to have a cleaning lady come in once a week. With all that they do and all that they are responsible for...it's a small thing.

[Smeagums]

According to the actual law of tithing:

2 For the building of mine house, and for the laying of the foundation of Zion and for the priesthood, and for the debts of the Presidency of my Church.