From everything I'm hearing this actually might be a real possibility in the next 5-15 years.

I think the church will invoke the law of consecration if they get that close, which makes me really worried about my TBM parents. My mother would be guilted into doing it.

But, even if the church did go bankrupt, and
it's possible that temples are used for loan collateral, then the church is looking at a fallout of massive proportions.

I could see those that want to still believe in the BOM finding a splinter group to worship at. I can also see millions of members finding new faiths. I can also see several members going down with the ship.

Also, if they started going bankrupt, just think of all the mission presidents and missionaries that would need to fund a way home fast!

Since absolutely no one knows what the church's finances look like, it's hard to see how anyone could make such a prediction based on anything but fear mongering.

They don't have a huge amount of fixed expenses. They can just stop maintaining the chapels, lay everyone off, charge missionaries even more.

The top guys may be terrible theologians and leaders, but there is little evidence that they are less than mediocre businessmen.

Ok, so probably just me hoping for a quick death that this would cause. They do have a lot of expenses though to keep up the show of family history, missionary work, temple building costs, failed projects, marketing materials, television ads...

Yes, they could cut back, and I guess they have real investments that make money regardless of tithing income.

I don't know if the church will go bankrupt. They are a business with other businesses that were started with church money. Those businesses may be run well enough to survive for decades and provide a small amount of money to physically maintain the temples and chapels. The amount of money spent on members is practically nothing, so members won't notice any lack of money being spent at their ward level.

"Likely goes bankrupt?"

I don't know where you're getting your information, but I observe that all of the decisions being made by the church leaders right now have everything to do with creating profit-generating businesses (real estate, ranching, etc) specifically so they'll never go bankrupt, not even when the tithing stops flowing.

They're making themselves tithing-independent and they're doing a great job of it..

They did quit maintaining the church buildings, and temples. The members are now doing that for free. It's an assignment. They laid off all the janitors. They also laid off hundreds of people in the cob. They are looking for ways to charge the mishey's more money. They are trying to get the members to house them for free. I'm sure that in some cases this also includes feeding them. If the mishey has any leftover money they're supposed to give it back to the church. Never mind it's the mishey's money to begin with!

Many people assume that because the church has billions of dollars that they'll never have financial difficulties -- however-- it's not unusual for major companies to tank if things go wrong, and it can happen quickly. The outlook for the cojcolds is not good. Their tithing revenue must be slowly shrinking, and whatever new converts they get don't have a lot of money. The cojcolds is mostly interested in converting people who can boost their coffers. Right now they're being very cautious about building new temples. There are a number of announced temples that will probably never be built. The cojcolds has a number of business enterprises that could prop up the church, but they'll soon get tired of throwing their money away on a failed church. What would be the point of keeping the deception going if all it does is suck up your money? If they have any business sense at all they'll keep the profitable things going (like the cattle ranches) and ditch the thorn in their side. It will be interesting to see what happens a few years down the road.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2013 03:07PM by canadianfriend.

Good grief, the church isn't going bankrupt nor is anywhere close. Do you even comprehend the size of just their real estate holdings? Add in the companies they hold and their financial size and health would easily put them solidly in the Fortune 500 were they a publicly traded company.

As I said in another message, IF there is a problem it is with cash flow, probably due to a relative decrease in tithing receipts (as a proportion of claimed membership) in the recession. I'm sure tithing receipts are still in excess of several tens of billions a year, if not more.

Years ago, one of the GAs who helped run the church missionary financing bragged that the program didn't run a deficit. With 50,000 missionaries, that's over $250 million a year of cash flow with money left over. Since the money isn't disbursed immediately, the interest they make off the float for just this program is enormous.