Recent Church communication regarding Finances

This is a nice article. I had read the transcript of the actual remarks and what I like about this article is that it consolidates and summarizes what was said. This info was presented much more haphazardly in the actual interview.

That said, I don’t think anyone argues that it doesn’t take money to run the church. I think a good segment of the membership has never really thought about what the money is actually spent on, and this is good in that respect. I don’t know that there were any major surprises for me, except perhaps how much it costs to run the church’s universities – but see below.

Here are some of my observations where we weren’t really told the whole story, and again, I don’t think the general membership gives it a bunch of thought:

Missionary Work: The Church funds 399 missions as well as the travel and health care expenses of 67,695 missionaries.

There is funding for mission presidents, offices (many of which are now located in existing church buildings), travel, etc. that does not come from the $500 per month those 67,695* missionaries pay (67,695×500=33,847,500). A chunk of that money does not come from tithing, it comes from the missionaries/parents and those who donate to missionary funds via tithing slips (based on my experience in the clerk’s office that’s more than most people probably think). (*I do realize that missionaries outside the US/Canada and some of Europe do not pay $500/mo and a good chunk of them pay $0 – it is my understanding that money comes from the aforementioned general missionary fund or local missionary funds.)

Higher Education: The Church’s five universities and colleges, which educate 90,000 students, operate at a cost of $1.5 billion a year paid for by tuition and tithing.

In fairness, tuition is mentioned and it would seem that tuition could not cover all of the $1.5 billion. I currently have two children at BYU, tuition is $5620** not including spring/summer and there are about 33,500 students at Provo and that is a somewhat small percentage ($188,270,000). Tuition is slightly lower at the other institutions and their enrollment is also smaller. But wait, there’s more, particularly at Provo. There are also donors, some of them very large donors. Again, yes, that’s a big price tag and yes, tithing pays for some of it – but not by any means all of it. (**Tuition for non-members is double that, but there are very few non-members who choose to go there.)

Religious Education: Seminaries and Institutes of Religion provide religious education through 50,000 teachers to more than 800,000 teens and college students around the world.

And outside Utah, almost all of those teachers are unpaid (called). Yes, it does cost for those that are paid but we don’t know how many that includes (but most certainly the vast majority are unpaid). Materials also cost.

Family History Work: The Church allocates resources to obtain and produce searchable records.

Again, the vast majority of the labor is unpaid.

$1 billion annually is provided by the Church for humanitarian and welfare aid.

Yes, I am being critical and nit picky, and $1 billion is a hefty sum and is likely unmatched by (m)any humanitarian causes. That’s still only 1% of the reserve. I think people would like to see less money spent on lavishment in temples and more spent on humanitarian needs, not to mention welfare needs which some local church leaders can sometimes be very stingy with.

I had a super long screed typed up but it got nasty. I’ll leave it at:

Sorry, no pats on the back from me.

I feel more disconnected than many about church finances because I have not paid tithing in about 10 years. This allows me to have a “they can do what they want with their money” attitude.

I do sense that some of what the presiding bishops are saying is PR spin. That is why I was glad that it was disclosed that the figures that they were using for humanitarian aid included fast offerings. It helps to some small extent to understand how they are doing their math. I suppose it remains a good question if donations from church members that flow through the church and are earmarked to help humanitarian causes should be reported separately than any humanitarian expenses from the church financial sheet itself. I had never considered fast offerings as an expense of the church organization. Similarly, the giving machines that we tend to see around Christmastime connect willing donors with those in need. Should the amount given through these machines be listed as humanitarian aid given by the LDS church?

Beyond that I ask myself how the public knowledge of this huge nest egg that the church has might change church operations. If the church had 100B in securities last year and almost nobody knew about it and today the church has 100B in securities and it is public knowledge how does this change in disclosure change church operations?