An Alarming Trend with a Costly Outcome for Temple Building

[Guest]

Great insights! If you consider the lost tithing as well as the cafeteria Mormons like WaterDog, who feel justified in only paying tithing on their monthly/yearly excess, the church is going to have to find revenue sources from other spheres of their holdings.

The problem with revenue from their other sources is that it is fixed.

For example, if you build an office building, which has 100 available spaces, once they are leased your income is now fixed. You can't get any increase above market allowance on the units.

Another problem is that Real Estate investments are subject to market demands. These demands are completely out of the control of the owner and can sometimes cause catastrophic financial failure.

Whereas a telemarketing scheme like Marketing Mormonism has endless potential for income, as long as you have a relevant product to sell. It's like this shampoo commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcskckuosxQ but in this case Mormonism sucks! Hence the problem.

[_Maxrep]

Some members have also elected to start paying their tithes directly to Salt Lake. By doing this, local leaders have no information on the dollar amount a member pays.

Sorry but I don't believe this. The whole point of tithing being done at the local level is to require tithing settlement to get a temple recommend. If members pay directly to Salt Lake who handles tithing settlement? And by saying members pay tithes to Salt Lake, who do they actually pay, CPB, or some other entity? I don't even think Salt Lake would accept tithes; they would tell them to pay it to their local unit.

Obviously you have not prayed about this. Paying tithing directly to Salt Lake has been tested by yours truly. By the way, which sock do you puppet for over at madb?

[_Markk]

If the cost increase of $150.00 per convert is only for temples... I wonder what the costs would be for other buildings, welfare, and other church sponsored programs?

I think the amount was for annual membership costs inclusive, though it wasn't explicitly stated as such.

Working backwards from the 10 K number, and we times that by how many members we think to be active, we can come up with some crazy numbers.

What's 10k time 5 or 6 million?

[_Tim]

Didn't this guy just give us the formula for figuring out how many people are leaving the church?

[_DrW]

Working backwards from the 10 K number, and we times that by how many members we think to be active, we can come up with some crazy numbers.

What's 10k time 5 or 6 million?

If $10K is the annual contribution number from a typical family that leaves the Church, then we are either talking about large families, relatively well to do families, or families that give a lot more than 10% to the Church each year.

From the US Census Bureau website :

In Utah (2008 - 2012):
Median Household income = $58,164
Persons per household = 3.09
Number of Households = 880,873

In the US overall (2008 - 2012:)
Median Household income = $53,046
Persons per household = 2.61

Median Household income in California only increases to $61,400

The $10K number could also mean that families with relatively higher incomes are more likely to leave the LDS Church. If this is the reason, it is worth pointing out that higher income is strongly correlated with better education. No surprises there.

[_Markk]

Didn't this guy just give us the formula for figuring out how many people are leaving the church?

He gave us a formula for active membership...I think?

The Times article, LDS INC, said that tithe was about 4 billion a year (if I remember correctly).

$4,000,000,000 divided by $10,000 = 400,000 tithe paying LDS households.

If we multiply 400,000 households by 5 members per household then we have 2 million active members.

If we double this to 800,000 Households then they bring in 8 billion a year in tithes, and have 4 million active members...

I am by no stretch good at math so check my cyphering, and more importantly my logic.

[_Gadianton]

If $10K is the annual contribution number from a typical family that leaves the Church, then we are either talking about large families, relatively well to do families, or families that give a lot more than 10% to the Church each year.

I agree that it is quite possibly the case that wealthy members are skewing this number up a bit. They might have criteria on what counts as a family too, such as temple recommend etc. In the US, let's say a ward house has 20 "main" families, one hundred fluffy sheep total, and a hundred and fifty others also typically attend. Well, the 20 "main" families produce 80% of the revenue, or more, but it costs the same to heat and maintain the chapel from the 100 figure up to chapel capacity.

Also, the Church likely practices mark-to-market accounting, where they count the net present-value of the tithes. If they are counting the present value of tithes compounding moderately above the risk-free rate tax free, then this could prove significant. Heck, they may very well count a percentage of expected tithes from the children within the family dropping out and their children.

[_bcspace]

That the local users are so few and not able to offset the costs associated with a temple management and that the lost of even 1 family in the US, Canada and Europe was creating unexpected shortages in temple funds.

Anecdotal, but in Area meetings the economic realities of Socialist countries like America and those in Europe is the topic on conversation about tithing funds. Everyone's income is being slashed and real unemployment is very high and is a far worse problem than people leaving the Church.

[_The Mighty Builder]

No, there is no formula for calculating income or income loss.

As with most of these meetings, I didn't believe the $10,000.00 loss and the $150.00 to be auditable accounting numbers. Remember the meeting's intent was to emphasize staying on budget, preventing unnecessary losses, personal accountability for the work being done and just general these are sacred funds blah, blah.

Though he was quite sincere about the loss of families and the impact it has on supporting temple operations. I do believe the 1:150 ratio was correct or if not exact a close estimation. I don't think he intended to mention the loss or cost amount as anything more than to use them for affect.

I do think his $10,000.00 was based on family entire and future (within a generation) losses.

[_Maxrep]

That the local users are so few and not able to offset the costs associated with a temple management and that the lost of even 1 family in the US, Canada and Europe was creating unexpected shortages in temple funds.

Anecdotal, but in Area meetings the economic realities of Socialist countries like America and those in Europe is the topic on conversation about tithing funds. Everyone's income is being slashed and real unemployment is very high and is a far worse problem than people leaving the Church.

Growing up in the church, I was always told that the Lord does not need our tithing, but that we need the blessings from tithing. You heard this refrain as well, no? The perspective given here was that the Lord will always provide for the financial requirements the church has, and that we as members, are only given the opportunity to tithe so that we may be worthy of the blessings.

Of course, this line of thinking was prevalent at the time when it was understood that those who tithed during their own personal financial hardships would receive financial gifting from the Lord. This essentially taught members that when you paid tithing before buying food for your family, or paying rent, electricity, or other debts, that in various and creative ways, one would come into just the right amount of money to offset the the payment of tithing.

Recent statements about tithing have nullified the Lords role in this classic teaching of financial gifting from the lord.

So my question to you, BC, does the Lord need our tithing? My take is that the church most definitely does. The church also seems to make this subject a priority topic directly and indirectly by implementing policy that requires full tithe payment outside of Temple attendance.

Additionally, I agree with you that the financial landscape has changed here in the U.S. Do you agree that over the last decade or so, that the number of active members paying on their gross or net may have dropped due to some members choosing to pay on their increase or surplus? Do you also agree that more members who remain active over the last decade or so, have opted out of tithing altogether, resulting in a smaller percentage of full tithe payers who attend church?

It goes without saying that there are no hard numbers to clearly settle the question, but what are your feelings?

I wonder if anyone here could point out that link to an article that discusses tithing on your increase by using the mission presidents handbook as a reference to describe what are considered "reasonable" expenses? I can't seem to remember where I found it.

http://puremormonism.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... 4.html?m=1

That's it! Thanks for the link.