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Hey guys me again, I’m the guy who was worried about being able to bless my baby before here: http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9223 I’ve been doing better at making it to church since January, and turns out that I have a new bishop now. I was just hadn’t attended Sacrament Meeting enough to realize that.
I’d like to try and get a current reccomend sometime in the next few months for my sister’s upcoming temple wedding. But that means paying tithing again and I’m scared that no matter how much I pay it might still be a problem that I’ll get cornered over.
I’ve heard rumors of a way to pay tithing directly to the church somehow so that ward leaders can’t see your donation amounts. I think I also read that it was discontinued unless you were grandfathered in, but I may be wrong about that.
I’d be happy to pay a reasonable amount that my wife and I agree that the Lord would accept that would still be a sacrifice while not potentially risky/harmful to my ability to care for my family’s needs financially.
Tithing used to be easy for me to pay when I was single, but became much harder now with a wife and 2 kids that depend on me alone for income. Especially when you add in life’s occasional unexpected expensive events (for example car damage from sliding on ice, to an accidental broken tooth,
2 such events I’ve been unlucky enough to have occur in my little family so far this year). As far as I know all tithing paid via
https://www.lds.org/donations/ has the amount donated recorded and then that number is sent to the local ward. Which is exactly what I don’t want. They do have an option in settings that says,“My financial statements do not need to be printed by my Ward.”. But I don’t know what actually does. My guess is that it means no print out for tithing settlement but I don’t know. Also if there is still some way to pay tithing more privately, what do you do if/when you get confronted by the bishop/stake president about why you’re paying it differently? Has anyone ever had a leader not believe you’ve been paying during an interview, if so then what?
I’m sorry for so much rambling, I just really want to be able to go to the temple with loved ones again. Someday I hope to be able to work past this anxiety and stress of paying any tithing.
Thanks for any advice you can give me. It’s very much appreciated!!I’ve heard you can pay it directly to Salt Lake, and there may be an online payment system…like the one below… https://www.lds.org/help/support/finance/online-donations?lang=eng I’ve heard that if you pay it directly to Salt Lake, they don’t know… here is the link for it…
https://www.lds.org/help/support/finance/online-donations?lang=eng SilentDawning wrote:
I’ve heard that if you pay it directly to Salt Lake, they don’t know…here is the link for it…
https://www.lds.org/help/support/finance/online-donations?lang=eng
As far as I know that page on the website is the same as the one I linked to (well it’s the FAQ page at least).I did find this though:
Quote:
If you will print your own donation statements, click the My financial statements do not need to be printed by my Ward check box. If you do not check the box:Your ward will print a year-to-date donation statement for you and give it to you before tithing settlement.
Your ward will print a donation statement or Official Tax Statement for you and give it to you in January.
Which might make tithing settlement easier unless the ward can still see the amounts donated if a leader wants to check.
Edit: I’m currently reading this thread on the subject:
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21036&start=40 Edit 2: After reading that it all seems old and possibly invalid now. I’m not sure.
Why not call church HQ? You don’t have to give them your name. I heard that privacy issues require the church to leave the amount donated secret from local leaders, but am not sure. I would simply pay it to salt lake city and then go to tithing settlement. See what happens. If the leaders ask for the receipt, say you didn’t print it, but you consider yourself a full tithe payer, if you do in fact consider yourself so. This isn’t as helpful to people outside the USA, but for the people in the USA there’s little incentive to get the yearly tithing totals report other than for your own personal audit to make sure the church received what you believe you’ve given. In the past there was more incentive to use the report for itemization of deductions for income taxes. Now the standard minimum deductions have been raised so high that most people no longer itemize, meaning there’s no point in reporting charitable contributions to the IRS.
If you’re in that boat and don’t care about the church’s report to confirm receipt of your donations you could look into ways to donate even more anonymously, local leaders wouldn’t know the contributions because not even the church knows. Something like a money order where you don’t include any information about the payer.
Tyler Goodman wrote:
Also if there is still some way to pay tithing more privately, what do you do if/when you get confronted by the bishop/stake president about why you’re paying it differently? Has anyone ever had a leader not believe you’ve been paying during an interview, if so then what?
I’ve never been questioned. That’s not to say that it couldn’t happen though. Leadership roulette and all that.
If questioned, I’d answer, “I pay anonymously.” and leave it at that. I think it would be inappropriate for a leader to pry for additional details about my methods of payment or my accounting.
If you do the anonymous money order thing you won’t get any credit for having paid, meaning if you get a leader that presses you won’t be able to prove anything to them, short of the money order stubs you’ve retained. But if they can’t take you at your word that you’re a full tithe payer… I dunno. It’s fine for me because I play by my rules now (I don’t like being counted or measured – tithing, home teaching %, nothing) and if my rules aren’t good enough to get a TR then I’m prepared to do without.
I have not done as you describe with paying online and do not know how it would work. I do know that bishops tend to have a fair amount of discretion in giving temple recommends. This means that you could answer all the questions correctly but if the bishop feels not quite right about it they could deny you a temple recommend and appealing that decision would be problematic. There does not appear to be a good way to force a bishop to give you one.
I believe that this means that it is smart to avoid an adversarial stance or approach with your bishop.
If I were in your shoes I would just start paying however you want to and then answer yes to the question. How you define tithing is between you and the Lord. If there are any follow up questions (there really should not be but it could happen) then I would gently redirect the bishop that you and your wife determined your tithing very carefully and prayerfully and that you are a full tithe payer.
I imagine that only in strange circumstances would the bishop pry further. Even if the bishop were to deny the recommend, do not lose your cool, get defensive, or say something that you might later regret. I suppose if that were to happen to me I might say at the close of the meeting, “Well thank you bishop. I was certainly hoping to walk out of here with a recommend, but I understand that I still have some things that I need to work on. I’ll get there.”
Again, I do not expect that to happen. For me I tend to feel more relaxed and confident when I have contingency plans (and contingencies for my contingencies
š ).Just pay something. They don’t know your salary. They also usually don’t ask for support of that statement. They don’t keep a sheet of paper with your donations on it. My family actually has the private pay deal, I just answer yes and let it go. It’s never held me up. Also try not to look or act guilty at church. We go around claiming discernment. What it really turns out to be is our own behavior. Show up, dress the part, be friendly and helpful. That will get you tons farther than tithing.
mom3 wrote:
Just pay something. They don’t know your salary. They also usually don’t ask for support of that statement. They don’t keep a sheet of paper with your donations on it.My family actually has the private pay deal, I just answer yes and let it go. It’s never held me up. Also try not to look or act guilty at church. We go around claiming discernment. What it really turns out to be is our own behavior. Show up, dress the part, be friendly and helpful. That will get you tons farther than tithing.
:thumbup: These are my thoughts on the subject exactly (except I do not do the private pay deal).
Go into the interview and answer yes or no. There is no need to explain or expound any answer, and frankly I think most leaders appreciate it when we don’t.
In my current church role I can see all donations that the ward knows about. When we went through tithing settlement about 25% of our ward ledgers had any amounts on them. The rest were blank. There are two conclusions for this: 1) 75% of the ward doesnāt pay tithing. 2) some lesser number doesnāt pay tithing but most pay directly to the church. Iāve been in this latter group. I have paid my tithing for years through an online transfer originating from my bank. My member record is associated with the payments. I receive monthly emails from the church itemizing my donations for that month, as well as a year end statement. My ward record accessable by the local leaders shows no donations. Iāve seen other members records show that they pay online. And it shows the dates and amounts. I think the difference is that my bank sends it directly to the church without using the online payment portal from LDS.org. I could probably test this, but Iām unresolved on paying tithing this year. Maybe Iāll test this process just for experimental purposes before I get released. On another note, any bishop who pushes back on the amount of tithing you pay is in the wrong. That amount is between you and God. What people pay is all over the map. If you have a bishop digging for details and withholding a TR on that basis, then he is practicing unrighteous dominion over you.
Good luck!
So I tried to make the first move towards getting a recommend by approaching my new bishop after church and I told him that I’d be willing to try getting back into the habit of paying tithing again if he would consider allowing us to renew our recommends possibly by May so that I can attend my sister’s wedding, and then later in the year attend the temple to do sealings for the dead on my wife and I’s wedding anniversary. He said we’ll see, but that first we should probably talk to his clerk to schedule a time to a time to come talk details with him (This short conversation was 2 Sundays ago, and I’ve yet to schedule such an appointment. I really don’t want to go have the conversation about how my wife and I are unfaithful/bad people because we didn’t pay tithing while trying to pay off a large emergency room bill. But of course there isn’t any guarantee that’s what he would focus on anyway but I digress.). He also insisted that we needed to retake the temple prep classes, which I wasn’t sure I agreed with considering we’ve already been to the temple, and other than tithing we’ve been fairly active now since the start of the year. Even so I was willing to take the classes because I thought he implied that they’d be taught during the Sunday School hour. As it turns out this isn’t the case, and the temple prep classes will instead be taught a few hours sometime after church, which complicates things considerably. Either this means we’ll have to take our 2 young kids with us again after they’ve already sat through the other 2 hours, or we’ll have to ask a family member to watch them while we attend the class. The latter of which isn’t something I’d want to do because our extended family doesn’t know that our recommends have expired. I get the impression for our new bishop that he will only accept us paying tithing through normally used and visible channels, which then makes me filled with anxiety that I’ll be told I’m not paying enough, and honestly if that were to ever happen a second time I’d just be done… I’m already struggling with the idea of paying again. Every other commandment, or principle we’re supposed to follow in the church has brought me the promised peace and happiness. I’m extremely grateful for the concepts of the word of wisdom and even the law of chastity during my youth for helping me become the good responsible husband I am now. I was okay with tithing growing up too, but it’s become a sore point for me as a married father of 2. In fact I’d say I’ve been more relaxed and happy while not paying tithing. I find I don’t have nearly as much stress of whether or not I can make ends meet when I haven’t sacrificed a large portion of the money that helps keep my family afloat.
It’s possible that I’m reading way too much into the situation, and that my expectations of how the bishop might act may be exaggerated. But even so it’s still something I have trouble with moving past.
mom3 wrote:
Just pay something. They don’t know your salary. They also usually don’t ask for support of that statement. They don’t keep a sheet of paper with your donations on it.Well as far as this goes, back with my previous bishop who told me that I wasn’t paying enough, (which then resulted in me later not paying anything for over a year) he went as far as to claim that he didn’t believe we were paying enough because my wife and I have a house/mortgage and at the time he I was working a secondary part time job (due to my primary job cutting hours to about 10 to 15 hours a week for around a 4 month period).
So obviously as a home owner and as someone working 2 jobs I must have had much more money hiding in my bank account.Which wasn’t the case at all. At the time I only had 2 jobs because the job I had done previously had been cutting hours of all non management employees to an unlivable level (because of reasons I won’t get into, poor management is all I’ll say there). It was a very scary time for me as the sole bread winner of the family, after paying tithing and my mortgage I only had around 400-500 dollars for all bills, food and other necessary needs such as gas for the entire rest of the month. I remember being terrified if I’d have enough money at times to get gas to make it to my jobs. It got so bad one month that we ended up receiving food stamps for a month. And yet even though all this was going on, and all of which the bishop had been aware of, the bishop insisted that he didn’t believe the sum of our tithing was enough. He literally pulled out a paper with a donation summary from the clerk and pointed to the number and said that he didn’t believe that was good enough. He then told us that for us to be full tithe payers going forward we’d have to only pay tithing based on our gross pay, and if that ended up meaning that the ward had to pay for our bills, and potentially part of our mortgage payment then that would be something I’d have to willing accept. I thought that was absurd, especially because I believe I church teaches we should be self reliant, and to try to avoid needing others to provide financial aid for our own responsibilities. So as someone who had faithfully paid on my net pay for the majority of my entire life this just struck me as unreasonable and unfair. I stopped paying tithing after that. Since then I’ve paid tithing a few times on some occasions to try to begin anew, and yet each time I start paying, I’ve never lasted more than a month or two at a time because I have such a paranoia that no matter how much or how frequent I pay my bishop will not believe me when I say I feel I’ve paid a full tithe. I’ve never tried to give less than I thought was fair, it’s not like I’m donating just a few dollars, it’s always enough that it was in fact a sacrifice where I had to show faith.
Anyway at this point I’m just rambling sorry….
Edit: I feel it’s worth mentioning that I now only have 1 job again because my main job fixed the problems that were resulting in huge hour cuts.
Tyler Goodman wrote:
So I tried to make the first move towards getting a recommend by approaching my new bishop after church and I told him that I’d be willing to try getting back into the habit of paying tithing again if he would consider allowing us to renew our recommends possibly by May so that I can attend my sister’s wedding, and then later in the year attend the temple to do sealings for the dead on my wife and I’s wedding anniversary. He said we’ll see, but that first we should probably talk to his clerk to schedule a time to a time to come talk details with him (This short conversation was 2 Sundays ago, and I’ve yet to schedule such an appointment. I really don’t want to go have the conversation about how my wife and I are unfaithful/bad people because we didn’t pay tithing while trying to pay off a large emergency room bill. But of course there isn’t any guarantee that’s what he would focus on anyway but I digress.).
I recommend paying tithing on your most recent paycheck (how you calculate that is up to you). Then I would go into the bishop’s office and ask for a TR recommend. Declare that you have been a partial tithe payer due to some financial difficulty but that you are back to paying a full tithe and are committed to doing so moving forward. This seems to take the possibility of someone second guessing your contribution out of the equation. You readily accept that you have not been a full tithe payer but you are now and that is what should matter going forward.
Once you are back on the full tithe payer track, I would not expect anyone to scrutinize your contributions. That was wrong of your previous bishop.
Your bishop was way out of line. Extremely out of line. This is directly from Handbook 1:
Quote:The First Presidency has written: āThe simplest statement we know of is the statement of the Lord himself, namely, that the members of the Church should pay āone-tenth of all their interest annually,ā which is understood to mean income. No one is justified in making any other statement than thisā (First Presidency letter, Mar. 19, 1970; see also D&C 119:4).
“No one is justified in making any other statement than this.” Your bishop made many, many statements that were other than that. Aka unjustified statements.
I get how it’s a losing proposition though. If you try to correct a bishop there’s a chance that they may become defensive, double down, and make things even harder for you. They shouldn’t, but it’s a natural reaction and we’re all human.
Bottom line: tithing and the tithing amount is between you and god. It’s not on gross, it’s not on net, it’s not on discretionary income, it’s entirely between you and god. The bishop is not god.
#1 – I support Roy and Nibbler’s answers. #2 – What I get most from your latest post is this deep desire to be at a family wedding. If that is the case and it is pre-eminent over everything (which I could totally support). Then suck it up for a few months. Pay tithing. Sit through a class. Get that over with. Attend the wedding. Love it. Then move on.
The Bishop will get busy with other bigger crisis, believe me. Just CYA yourself for the short haul. Remember you don’t renew recommends for 2 years. A lot can happen.
Make a reasonable donation. He really still doesn’t see your paycheck.
One final maternal thought – down play your emotions. Even from reading how you asked your Bishop for the interview, you tipped your hand. Much of this is poker. Be kind, respectful. Don’t feel the need to make yourself the center.
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