Spinoff of the tithing/financial topics today. I have yet to get a straight answer from anyone regarding where tithing money goes. I have heard these "official" one-liners:

1. Tithing is used to build temples
2. Tithing is used to maintain the buildings, and
3. Tithing is used to "build the kingdom"

No idea what that last one means. I have inquired of a bishop and was told "I'll have to look into that and get back to you." Spouse doesn't actually know. No one seems to know. People seem surprised when I ask.

That's an awful lot of money that no one seems to care about.

The church could easily maintain its buildings and run its ward-based programs on 1-2% of people's incomes (2% for building maintenance and programs is the average for other churches in the U.S. However those churches also pay about half their incomes in salaries.) Let's assume for the sake of argument that the church rakes in 5% of active members' incomes on average (I saw this figure somewhere on the web, and I find it plausible.) Where does the other 3-4% go? BYU is one obvious answer, with the missionary program and temple building also likely choices. However I'm not certain that those three avenues would completely take up that much money. So where does the rest of the money go? That is the question.

"Follow the money."



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2014 08:36PM by summer.

I didn't think about BYU, I guess all 3 of them would take a significant amount of funding. But aren't the missionaries self-funded? (that was one of the selling points touted in my missionary discussions)

It sounds like none of these given answers have much to do with "charity", although a tax-writeoff as charitable giving. It also sounds like there is a lot of money that is not accounted for.

When cutting that check every week/month/year, I wonder how many people question their 10% going to finance a portion of someone else's college education, or salaries for college professors, etc. I really don't see the connection to the law of tithing from the bible.

Thank you for the link -- I have been searching using the wrong keywords, and hadn't seen this before. This is eye-opening.

Yes, it is worth reading.