A few weeks ago I read a post here (can't find it at the moment) about a person worried about their TBM parents retirement and how they had modest income jobs and put about $5K into tithing each year and if they had saved that money instead they would have a million to retire on, but are instead struggling to make ends meet.

I thought about that and flipped it around, from these two people the church has taken $5K a year and invested it, in essence the church made that million over the years..FROM ONLY TWO PEOPLE. How many members are there? According to the website, "Church membership today is over 14 million" now I know full well not every member actually goes or pays tithing so let's estimate 20% actually do, that's 2.8 million people, if you can make a million dollars from 2 people with modest incomes, that's $14,000,000,000,000. Tell me again what the church is doing with that money?

Building their retirement account!

I absolutely never thought of it that way. They act like any company you might have in your retirement investment portfolio only they don't pay you back. They just take the money you invest and turn around and invest it in themselves, leaving you stranded.

Boggles the mind - literally.

Exactly! Of course we aren't using tithing funds for the mall downtown, we're pulling mass amounts of interest off the money invested from 20 people who paid tithing 30 years ago. The church really is a financial monster you feed and feed..

your 'argument' ignores operating costs.

doesn't ChruchCo Central pay all capitol & operating (utilities, etc) costs?

Id like to know how many missionaries have cars these days; do they still charge the missionaries for them? ('self' insured?)

That is correct it does, and I have no idea how much those are in all honesty. But it seems to me a church with so many volunteers can't be paying to much in operating costs since payroll is the highest expense of any business.