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Have you all seen this? http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p1 Pretty interesting. Bridget
Yeah. I read it this morning. Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk 2
Any thoughts cwald? I’m in the process of reading a book about the history of Nauvoo in the 1840’s. JS can’t even make interest payments on the real estate loans outstanding.
He relies on converts coming to Nauvoo to help with the financial problems.
As I understand it, he was considering financial bankruptcy.
People within the Church & outside the Church were taking financial advantage.
Fast forward to today. It looks like the Church has learned from history.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry sometimes.
Mike from Milton.
Holy mackerel. Well, as long as we’re shooting for that “no rich or poor among us”, and “all things in common” thing….I don’t see any problems here…
🙄 bridget_night wrote:Have you all seen this?
Business Week Article, “How the Mormons Make Money”Pretty interesting. Bridget
Here is a corporate organization that is taking the time, talents, and everything with which the lord has blessed people and is building up a kingdom. ’tis a miracle to behold. Of note is an example where a senior missionary couple spends 2.5 years working on a hunting reserve for no pay (in fact, as I understand it, each senior missionary couple pays their own living expenses as well) to turn this reserve into a profit maker for the “Corporation Sole” of the president of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. Such faithful dedication to spend 2.5 years in no-paid service in order to help the church make a profit.Puts a whole new meaning into “We thank thee, oh God, for a Prophet”.
I continue to pay, year on year, a significant amount of money in tithing. My TBM DW asked me when we were passing through Utah a couple of months ago, “What does the church need with a $2Billion Mall?” I answered that it is what the brethren have decided is a good use of “Reserve” funds. She thought I was being cynical, I thought I was being accurate.
She asked how this wasn’t tithing money. I said it’s quite simple. The church collects perhaps between $5B and $9B per year in tithing. this money goes into a bank, most likely somehow owned by the church. That’s why everything has the label “Reserve” in the name. The non-profit money is ‘held in reserve’ so that the church can weather ups and downs effectively. The reserve funds, being deposited, provide the liquidity and capital for the holding bank of the reserve to use the money wisely, as any bank would, to grow the money. The bank takes the majority of these deposits (depending upon the Federally-mandated “reserve requirements”) and loans them out to other investments — specifically, “for profit investments”. Being that it’s the church’s money, they can say where the money gets loaned to. And of course, this money then goes into the Church’s for-profit enterprises in order to “make money” for the bank while the “sacred money” is being held in “Reserve” for future use. (Subsidiaries of Deseret Management Corporation include “AgReserves, Hawaii Reserves, Farmland Reserve Inc., Property Reserve, Intellectual Reserve….)
It’s exactly what the lord rewarded in the parable of the Talents, isn’t it? Money from lesser profitable enterprises (the members) is being given indirectly to the guy making 10 talents (Deseret Management Corporation) in order to help the church make more money and build up the kingdom of god on the earth. And because the original deposits are held in “reserve” in an ‘account’ at the bank, they are technically never used for the profit making ventures…or at least, directly. It’s the Lord’s plan.
But who knows?
The church no longer uses Common Consent as the means to provide accountability for its affairs. It’s a black box, into which members faithfully contribute and hope their contributions provide the right protection for their salvation. There are no real questions asked by the faithful, because the promise of exaltation and salvation from the fires are good enough to justify the significant investment.
Another very interesting statistic is the grossing up of all charitable donations to reflect that 1.3 B in 25 years has been donated to humanitarian causes. When put on an annualized basis, this amounts to 52M per year or what might be estimated at 0.7% of total donations. this, compared to the 29% of donations going to relief by the Methodist church. Then the clarification that half of that is in the form of non-monetary relief: a.k.a. missionaries around the world.
The other day, I was contemplating a covenant members make into the church: to consecrate everything they have or ever will have to the church to build up the kingdom of god on earth (the church and its financial empire), and for the establishment of Zion. The last five words, to me, are my motivation for existence in the church: “For the establishment of Zion” — where people are of one heart and one mind, and there are no poor among them — quite a relief effort. So far, I’ve seen a huge amount of money going into the building up of the kingdom of god on the earth.
The church has indeed mastered Babylon, but, where is Zion?
The contents of this article are one reason I have problems with tithing. My wife told me the other day that Ron L. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology said “the easiest way to make a million is to start a church”. The part that gets me the most is how little, comparatively, the church gives to outside organizations compared to other churches. I have read this several times — in Mormon America, and again in the article.
Again, I believe the local people believe with their soul that paying tithing is important for salvation and do it with a pure heart, but in aggregate, the percent of the funds that flow back to the local wards is astoundingly small.
There was a website in Canada that listed each Ward and its gross revenues, as well as the size of their ward budgets.
Reading stuff like this makes me so angry that the Mormon church scammed me out somewhere around $200,000. bc_pg wrote:Reading stuff like this makes me so angry that the Mormon church scammed me out somewhere around $200,000.
But I don’t see it as scamming…I think they honestly believe they are doing the right thing in making the members sacrifice. However, I have to agree that the article really paints a different picture, and the statement that the church looks a lot more like a corporation has merit in my view.
I have settled on the fact that just as the church gets me as member, with all my faults and tolerances, we end up with talented businessment in key positions who bring what they have learned from industry to the church, and so, it looks like a corporation. And that bothers me, unfortunately.
Quote:But I don’t see it as scamming…I think they honestly believe they are doing the right thing in making the members sacrifice.
If they’d refund my money I’d be inclined to agree. However since the foundation of the church was fraudulent (first vision / book of mormon) and I was indoctrinated from the time I could barely talk that 10% of my money was their’s, and it was used as extortion to be in good standing with the church, e.g. temple recommend, I’m sticking with “scam”.
I do agree with your sentiment that most church leaders believe paying tithing is a benefit to the members.
This is another admin comment, not a participator comment:bc_pg, as I’ve said to others, I want your participation here, but that last comment crossed the line for this site. I’m not editing it in any way, because I want you and others (including those who lurk and only read) to understand why I’m writing this comment.
We allow venting; we don’t allow claims like the ones in that comment – especially worded as absolutes and, frankly, from someone who has left the LDS Church and appears to have no desire to stayLDS or help others stayLDS.
Please remember, that’s our mission – to stayLDS and help others stayLDS. There are exceptions, and we support those who make conscious choices to leave – but we don’t support them if they try to take others with them.
Please respect that mission and approach.
We deal with a lot of crap here, but we don’t fling it in people’s faces who believe differently than we do. That has nothing to do with being conservative or liberal, TBM or individual path, etc. It cuts both ways, and we call people on it no matter the content.
Wow. The purpose of this website is, supposedly, to help folks stay LDS despite problems in the Church(TM).
It feels, sometimes, that we’re all holding back from the opinions that what we call “the Church” has become an ugly corporate oligarchy.
What haunts me, and maybe some of you, is the question “What do we do now when we realize that things are so wrong?”
Several years back I had to ask the local BP for some help with rent….Since I enjoy an mild barley drink from time-to-time and hadn’t paid 10% in a while, I was denied. I told him that he was throwing King Benjamin’s admonitions under the bus but he pointed to the pictures on his wall of the 1st Presidency. Apparently, the handbood of instructions is more important than the word of God.
Please tell me that the “prophet of God” did not say “one, two, three…Let’s go shopping”….
How many single parents are out there that could use a hundred bucks, or so, to make ends meet this month?
This is getting past pathetic.
No, Bruce, we talk about issues like this specifically because they aren’t perfect examples of the Church being an ugly corporate oligarchy. If it was that easy, I’d be gone. I mean that. It’s not that easy, and I’m not gone. Yes, there are elements of the corporate in the modern Church – and some of them are massive and obvious. However, not all of them are bad – and some of them aren’t bad in any way, shape or form. There are just as many elements that are just as massive and obvious that are not corporate. There are some elements that can become ugly, especially at the local level where the hurt is the strongest – but there are far more elements that are not ugly and, in fact, are beautiful.
It’s interesting that Joseph is ridiculed by many specifically because he was a lousy money-manager – and our current leaders are ridiculed by many specifically because they appear to be good money-managers. We don’t want the earlier extreme, I assume – but we don’t want the Catholic extreme, either. I presume we want something in the middle – which is where the LDS Church currently is. So, it’s not the financial health of the institution that bothers people; it’s their perception of the proper balance between “building up the Kingdom of God on earth” and “establishing Zion”.
Balance is tricky – but, at least, I think the effort to balance is important. I see that effort, even in cases where I might have chosen differently about specific things.
Money issues are a sore spot – for a lot of members. That’s not news. Money issues are a sore spot for many couples – and pretty much any organization. Everyone has opinions about how money should be used – and there are as many opinions as there are people.
I don’t love every financial aspect of the Church’s organizational structure. There is abuse of monetary control in some areas – but there also is generosity and relief and kindness and support (locally and globally) in just as many areas.
This is not a black-and-white issue – but we recognize nuance and gray areas much more easily in non-financial areas than we do in financial areas.
bridget_night wrote:Any thoughts cwald?
Yes. But I will keep them to myself.
See administrators post
This was a really hard article for me to read. I’m just the kind of person that almost never gets angry, but for some reason materialism has always been a hot button issue for me. I have a really hard time around business-minded people. Even when I know them personally and know their character, when they start talking about business ventures I just want to explode. I’m really trying to keep a positive attitude towards the church as I’m going through my faith journey. But I really need to back up and take some deep breaths after this one though.
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