Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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nibbler
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

Post by nibbler »

Roy wrote: 23 Feb 2023, 13:07 I put forward a few assumptions:

1) Church leaders are trying to be "good stewards" of the "Lord's funds."
2) There is concern that if it were more widely known how much wealth the church has, people would be less likely to pay tithing.
3) Church leaders genuinely believe people need to pay tithing for their own eternal welfare and happiness.
4) There are probably valid additional reasons for the church to want to hide the size of its wealth but I think the biggest one goes back to tithing.
Right. Perhaps the question to ask is whether there's something better that could be done with the tithing that the church doesn't need for operational expenses other than to inflate a rainy day fund.

Figure out what your yearly operating expense are, set aside money to cover some set number of years, then take the excess from that effort and do something.

I've commented before. I think leaders are actually afraid of being bad stewards of the lord's funds so there's only a limited number of things that they see as safe to spend money on. I think that's why we're seeing double-digit temples being announced with each conference. The lord surely won't get upset with us if we use his money on temples. Boom, a policy to dot every corner with temples is born.

Everyone has their opinion but I think another thing the church should "purchase" with the excess is taking in less in tithing. Making up numbers time, if the church is accustomed to taking in $5 billion per year in tithing, "purchase" $1 billion worth of expected tithing revenue. "Purchase" being comfortable with only expecting $4 billion in tithing per year. How?

No more asking or implying that people should pay tithing on gross or even net. Tithing is 10% after living expenses are paid. I agree that I think leaders are concerned that members would be breaking a commandment by not paying tithing but tithing could be interpreted as considerably less. I don't believe the lord would command a family to pay his over-wealthy church before the family has eaten food. I don't believe the lord would command such a thing.

I know the official policy is that tithing is not defined. I don't hear that during general conference but I have heard stories about paying tithing before buying food, which is expressly against current church policy.
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DarkJedi
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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Roy wrote: 23 Feb 2023, 13:07 I put forward a few assumptions:

1) Church leaders are trying to be "good stewards" of the "Lord's funds."
2) There is concern that if it were more widely known how much wealth the church has, people would be less likely to pay tithing.
3) Church leaders genuinely believe people need to pay tithing for their own eternal welfare and happiness.
4) There are probably valid additional reasons for the church to want to hide the size of its wealth but I think the biggest one goes back to tithing.
I agree with this. I think one of the church's biggest fears is that if members knew how much money the church had they would likely stop paying or reduce paying tithing. It is bothersome that, as the SEC says, the church went to great lengths to obscure that information.
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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I've slept on it. Several times. My attitude still hasn't softened.

This year is the first year that wards are expected to purchase their own church manuals. I get that most people are using their phones anyway, maybe the charge is meant to encourage holdouts to go paperless, but when you've got enough money to invest tens of billions of dollars, why? Why do wards now have to use some of their already pathetic budget to purchase church manuals? If you can't afford to provide manuals you can't afford $35 billion in stocks.

I also hear there are plans to upend and redesign downtown SLC. Like several contiguous city blocks.

I can only speak for myself but the local ward experience is anemic. When it comes to the local experience, corporate church is pinching every penny as hard as they possibly that it's left nothing but sun-bleached bones in the desert. There's nothing to the church "community," it's been left derelict, they've stripped out all the copper wiring. It's not dying, it's dead. It's unfunded.

We buy Florida, we buy businesses, we invest, we buy stocks, we buy malls, we buy a new back yard playground for church HQ, we buy palaces for the dead in areas where the living will struggle to staff them, and we go to extraordinary lengths to hide the wealth from starving ward communities.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Congrats for coming out of the seven years of drought when the church was teetering on the edge of solvency. Sorry about the scars. Now you have all the trappings and problems of living the other extreme.

If it's the lord's money and how the money is managed reflects his will, the lord is really coming across as selfish and conniving.
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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The wolf of wall street is miserly with the members.
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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I respect that view, nibbler, and don't reject it. It is part of my both/and. I also would love to see a strict view of tithing de-emphasized - but I also know the leadership truly see it as both a command and a blessing.

My own middle ground is a vast expansion of welfare assistance, especially for those who pay tithing, but also in humanitarian aid. I am seeing areas where that is happening, but I would like to see much more.
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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I will try not to spend too much time on my soapbox.
nibbler wrote: 26 Feb 2023, 06:31 I can only speak for myself but the local ward experience is anemic. When it comes to the local experience, corporate church is pinching every penny as hard as they possibly that it's left nothing but sun-bleached bones in the desert.
I was explaining to 15 year old Roy Jr. why it is that the LDS church seems to have an aversion for spending for youth activities. He attends Wednesdays instead at our local Methodist church that has a youth pastor, feeds the kids every Wednesday, has a fun and well organized activity/game (that often involves purchased supplies), and a good message.

I tell him that I think it goes back to organizational and cultural issues for the LDS church. A youth pastor is an employee dedicated to put on a good program. They will have access to a budget and will know how much money they can spend annually. Contrast this with the LDS church where the youth leaders are conscripted volunteers. When the LDS Youth Leaders want to spend money on the youth program they do so from their own money and then ask for a reimbursement check. They do not know how much money might be allocated in the ward budget for the youth program and would have no idea if they are underspending. I think that organizationally and culturally, nobody sees underspending as a problem.

In summary, it really is nobody's fault that the LDS youth program is lame.
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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I appreciate the recognition of my conundrum about the church preaching lofty values at church and then behaving like any other business when its faced with tradeoffs between such values and business imperatives. The kind of behavior the SEC has exposed is another case in point.

I would like to offer some reflections on comments so far.

First, I agree that if the Church has so much money it feels the need to engage in asset hiding, then it should be using those funds to benefit members and society as a whole. I can think of many uses...expand access to LDS social services, for example. The comment above about expanded ward budgets is another. Lessening the financial burden of paying for a mission for young adult converts is another. The church could use excess funds for helping charitable causes that align with our values...not only to ease human suffering, but to help restore its reputation among mainstream religious observers.

Second, reducing the tithing burden to surplus after expenses makes sense. To address the concerns about hard financial times in the future, the church could always present the tithing on surplus concept as temporary with an unknown end date. It could be part of the revelation that the existing definition of tithing could be reinstated in times of financial need. The church has no compunction about asking members for over and above donations in my past wards to clear off fast offering deficits, or fund temples...why can't we also rely on this method should the church have a rainy day, keeping only a reasonable financial reserve? Why can't the church rely on God to provide in rainy day situations the same way it encourages the members to do so in the payment of tithes when money is tight?

I am sorry but I have a REALLY hard time giving over my own percent of gross or net to an organization that I consider to have been so tight-fisted when members I know seem to have had valid needs (and not just welfare-related) in the past. I have lots of examples.

I also want to add how disappointed I am that the highest church leaders resorted to plausible deniability in this SEC situation. It bothers me how leaders are revered and considered inspired when things go well. But when things don't go well they write it off as simply following legal advice or have other excuses to lessen their own culpability.
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

Post by Roy »

I saw this article by Benjamin Park in Salon. It gives a rather balanced but brief history of the financial past of the church and also how we got to the current situation.

https://www.salon.com/2023/03/29/behind ... s_partner/

The following part was new to me.
By 1907, Snow's successor, Joseph F. Smith, jubilantly announced that tithing income had paid off all the church's loans. He even predicted that if the current rate continued, "we expect to see the day when we will not have to ask you for one dollar of donation for any purpose."
Did this mean that JFS predicted a time when tithing would no longer be a requirement??? That would be interesting but I am not sure if that was what he meant. Maybe he was referring to the building fund for meetinghouses and temples that local congregations used to be responsible to raise funds for.
"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood

“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223

"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13
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nibbler
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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He said they won't have to. They still will, but they won't have to. :angel:
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Re: Church and Investment Fund manager pay fine to SEC

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Roy wrote: 29 Mar 2023, 14:08 I saw this article by Benjamin Park in Salon. It gives a rather balanced but brief history of the financial past of the church and also how we got to the current situation.

https://www.salon.com/2023/03/29/behind ... s_partner/

The following part was new to me.
By 1907, Snow's successor, Joseph F. Smith, jubilantly announced that tithing income had paid off all the church's loans. He even predicted that if the current rate continued, "we expect to see the day when we will not have to ask you for one dollar of donation for any purpose."
Did this mean that JFS predicted a time when tithing would no longer be a requirement??? That would be interesting but I am not sure if that was what he meant. Maybe he was referring to the building fund for meetinghouses and temples that local congregations used to be responsible to raise funds for.
Interesting quote. Perhaps at the time Smith did mean "any purpose" because that is what he said. My interpretation is closer to yours and that he probably meant other than tithing. I was a recent convert in the days when there were building and budget funds in addition to tithing, but I'm not sure when those things came into being. Were they a thing in 1907 or was there only tithing like now? I don't see the church backing off or reducing tithing despite the hundreds of billions in reserve - partly because of how much they have tried and (apparently) still try to keep it so secret.
In the absence of knowledge or faith there is always hope.

Once there was a gentile...who came before Hillel. He said "Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot." Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it."

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