General Conference Predictions

[smokymountainrain]

So I guess I am learning something new here. What people are saying is that fast offerings go primarily to non-members and that when they do go to members that person being asked to pay their tithing is the exception rather than the rule. So maybe they are not a mostly member benefit that could be thought of as being distinct from aid that is available to anyone. I really believed that fast offerings went mostly to members of the church who were asked to do something in exchange. So if it really is that case that fast offerings are about 10% of budget ($600-700 million dollars) and are being spent primarily on non-members in need I really need to revise my thinking on this.

I may need to read again, but I think I am the only one who said FOs went primarily to non members. This is most likely due to 1)unique circumstances in our ward/neighborhood; 2) a bishop who is much more inclusive in terms of neighborhood > ward. He simply didn't give a shit if somebody was a member or not in regard to how he treated them.

[Pheidippides]

Are you sure those folks weren't paying direct to SLC? My understanding is the local units don't see the direct-SLC payments. I only pay direct, so my clerk probably finds it strange to see a 0 for my family.

Yes. They paid to us. It was not a matter of zero balance. I don't want to reveal too many details but I knew the family relatively well and the figures weren't close to adding up. But we (well, I - we never discussed it) figured there could feasibly be something we didn't know about. Highly unlikely, but possible.

FTR, the people with the highest incomes do not live in the biggest houses or drive the nicest cars. At least not in my ward. The most generous fast offering contributors are usually the small house large income people too.

[Moliere]

I suppose a lot of this depends on how you define "the church.". If it is the body of members then FO should benconsidered and I think people give a substantial portion of their own income to that cause. If it is the corporation of the president, then it is harder to answer as not all data is available. But I am satisfied with the church's humanitarian aid. I am not offended by money spent on temples because for a believer they Are that important. Ultimately the second question collapses into how one views the legitimAcy of the leaders ecclesiastical role.

I think it's also safe to say that any level of humanitarian aid will never suffice for some (not saying this is UD). It's an intangible thing and thus difficult to try and figure out how much is enough, which is obvious given the tension that exists in governmental welfare programs and the funding thereof. Church detractors can always say the church isn't doing enough even if the financial records of the church were available.

[Tex]

So I guess I am learning something new here. What people are saying is that fast offerings go primarily to non-members and that when they do go to members that person being asked to pay their tithing is the exception rather than the rule. So maybe they are not a mostly member benefit that could be thought of as being distinct from aid that is available to anyone. I really believed that fast offerings went mostly to members of the church who were asked to do something in exchange. So if it really is that case that fast offerings are about 10% of budget ($600-700 million dollars) and are being spent primarily on non-members in need I really need to revise my thinking on this.

I don't know enough about how fast offerings are spent to say what the percentages are, member vs non-member, and no one else here does either. So that's all rank speculation.

But I can tell you an anecdote I personally was involved with. A non-member woman living in my ward boundaries walked into the church with her children asking to see the leader of the congregation. She met with the bishop in his office and asked for help with her rent. She had been to see the leader of the church to which she belonged (though she was not "active" in any sense), and they had refused. Though a legal resident, her husband was illegal and had been deported to Mexico. She was desperate.

The bishop agreed to make some rent payments while she continued to look for work. He asked her to hear the discussions in the meantime; not as a condition of the funds, but as a request. She agreed. Eventually it became apparent they would have to move back to Mexico, and the ward assisted in the effort. You know where this is going ... before they left, the family was baptized. The bishop and ward mission leader continue to stay in touch with them, and they are active in a ward across the border.

I don't know how common this kind of occurrence is, but it's exactly the kind of thing that fast offerings and humanitarian efforts are designed to do: to alleviate not only the temporal need but to meet the spiritual need too.

[LA Ute]

Yes. They paid to us. It was not a matter of zero balance. I don't want to reveal too many details but I knew the family relatively well and the figures weren't close to adding up. But we (well, I - we never discussed it) figured there could feasibly be something we didn't know about. Highly unlikely, but possible.

FTR, the people with the highest incomes do not live in the biggest houses or drive the nicest cars. At least not in my ward. The most generous fast offering contributors are usually the small house large income people too.

I think the church's attitude is that the member declares his/her status as a tithe-payer, and that is not questioned. It's "between you and the Lord." That's how our bishop explains it to me, but I admit I've never researched it.

UD, I haven't read this thread carefully but the notion that most FO funds go to non-members strikes me as unsupportable. The great majority go to members just because of the structure of the system, but they do go to non-members too.

[Pheidippides]

I think the church's attitude is that the member declares his/her status as a tithe-payer, and that is not questioned. It's "between you and the Lord." That's how our bishop explains it to me, but I admit I've never researched it.

UD, I haven't read this thread carefully but the notion that most FO funds go to non-members strikes me as unsupportable. The great majority go to members just because of the structure of the system, but they do go to non-members too.

This is precisely my understanding as well. Frankly, I think we could ditch tithing settlement altogether - I did mine via text message last year - but nobody questions. If somebody wants to fib about it, no matter how obvious it is, fine. Not my business, even as clerk or bishop, to call the bluff.

What you state re fast offerings is precisely what I saw. People in need were given funds for things they needed - shelter, medicine, etc. Food, as I said before, comes from the storehouse, at least here. Service was often asked for as a quid pro quo where appropriate. Many times it wasn't.

I will say that I was not in a position to see who was denied FO help. Maybe nobody was. I wouldn't know that. I do know there were serial users of it. I also know that our contributions were far more than our need, but on a stake level that may not be true.

Bottom line is, for all my quibbles and issues with the church, the humanitarian aid function is one place I think they get it right. You can argue about more or less dollars but the way the dollars are used, as far as I can tell, is great, and it is one thing that makes me happy to be a member.

[NorthwestUteFan]

I've had the same experience. My wife was so embarrassed that she asked me to go to tithing settlement alone, so the kids wouldn't have to hear that we weren't full tithe payers. After the second year, the bishop asked me to hand over my recommend. I truly felt bad at the time that we didn't pay what we were "supposed" to. But now I get mad thinking about how I was counseled that everyone can pay a full tithe, and I just need more faith, yet we literally couldn't.

I'll try to generalize the sentiment of a few people in this thread. Whatever you think about tithing, there is little argument that it is effectively held as a sword over our activity in the church. Most meaningful occasions in the church are touched by tithing (child confirmation, temple wedding,etc), not to mention the activities it peripherally affects, such as youth temple trips and family tithing settlement. This being the case, I don't think it a sin to question if the church is using our money wisely, or at least for it's intended purposes. A more transparent accounting would go a long way in reassuring people like myself. The fact that they don't see the need for more openness just makes it look more suspicious. I doubt (well, sincerely hope) the church has nothing to hide. Why in the hell does it act like it does?

Ditto. It was incredibly embarrassing. I was treated as though I had cheated on my wife, minus the church court.

I was in the YM presidency in a very small ward so we also ran scouts, went on splits with the missionaries, and carried a large share of home teaching. We had church on Sunday of course, then had a YM Pres meeting for 1 hour afterward, home teaching a few Sundays a month, then scouts on Tuesday, YM/YW activity on Wed, scout campouts 1 weekend a month, church cleanup every fifth Saturday, and in the winter we would rotate snow shovel duty with the Elders Quorum every other week.

And yet I was denied the chance to go to the temple because I couldn't squeeze enough money out of my budget to give to the church.

You are damn right I deserve to see some accountability coming from the other direction!

The bitterness is a natural thing for ALUF's. It would have come one way or another.

That is not the least bit funny and you know it.

My bitterness stemmed from being forced to hand over my temple recommend because I chose to pay my $5000+ heating bill and other mandatory expenses rather than pay a full tithing. The cost of fuel oil rose from $1.34/gallon to $4.97/gallon over the course of 18 months. My boiler burned 1 gallon per hour, heating my house and making hot water. We burned ~1200 gallons every year between November and March, and we were lucky because our house had good windows and insulation. I had to keep my wife, 4 year-old, and newborn twins warm and safe from the icy grip of the wicked cold New England winters, and we didn't have a wood burning stove to supplement heat.

Perhaps I should have looked my bishop (who lived next door to me and had my tithing info in front of him) in the eye, lied, and said, "Yes, I am a full tithe payer. I realize I have only paid a few hundred bucks this year, but I have decided to define 'tithing' differently than most." Would that have been acceptable to you?

After that meeting I drained my bank accounts to make a lump sum payment to get caught up for that portion of the year and was STILL told, "Let's see if you can maintain this level for a few more months before we give your TR back." I ended up bouncing a number of checks and racking up $350 in bank fees in the following weeks while trying to 'show my faith'. A lot of good that did.

God requires us to have faith, but he also prefers that we use the brains and skills he gave us to figure out our problems before begging for help, and I wan't about to go begging for help. So at the time I cut out the middle man and quit paying tithing all together.

We were, however, explicitly instructed to spend as much in fast offering assistance as we took in if possible. And the stake would try to spend any surplus. The instruction was to "seek out" the needy. But the checks came from the same account that we used to pay for the Ward Xmas party.

Note that fast offerings were never spent on food, in my experience - food came from the Bishop's Storehouse, a literal storehouse of food. I suspect most cities of any size in the US have one.

This was my experience working in the EQP and attending all the Sunday morning meetings. Our bishop was very interested in having us help people who needed it, but at the same time he was wary of keeping people 'on the dole' as it were simply to bribe them to come to church.

[creekster]

I don't know how common this kind of occurrence is, but it's exactly the kind of thing that fast offerings and humanitarian efforts are designed to do: to alleviate not only the temporal need but to meet the spiritual need too.

This sort fo thing happens with some regularity in our area (minus the baptism coda).

[creekster]

I may need to read again, but I think I am the only one who said FOs went primarily to non members. This is most likely due to 1)unique circumstances in our ward/neighborhood; 2) a bishop who is much more inclusive in terms of neighborhood > ward. He simply didn't give a shit if somebody was a member or not in regard to how he treated them.

Bishops have stewardship over all persons within their ward boundaries, regardless of membership. How they handle that stewardship varies widely, within my experience.

[LA Ute]

BY the way, there was an earlier discussion here about listening to/watching GC. If you have the Mormon Channel on your PC or smart phone, the audio from GC is now there. If you're a runner or walker, you can knock off a talk a day at about 15 minutes each, and in a couple of weeks you've heard them all. That's how I compensate for missing at least one Saturday session and falling asleep during parts of Sunday afternoon.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Oh. Well I guess some people do look at it that way.

Please stop twisting my words. You know exactly what I meant by that comment.

[NorthwestUteFan]

[qutoe=creekster]
I suppose a lot of this depends on how you define "the church.". If it is the body of members then FO should benconsidered and I think people give a substantial portion of their own income to that cause. If it is the corporation of the president, then it is harder to answer as not all data is available. But I am satisfied with the church's humanitarian aid. I am not offended by money spent on temples because for a believer they Are that important. Ultimately the second question collapses into how one views the legitimAcy of the leaders ecclesiastical role. [/quote]

This is the point I was trying to make yesterday. Well said.

Bishops have stewardship over all persons within their ward boundaries, regardless of membership. How they handle that stewardship varies widely, within my experience.

This makes great sense in the Mountain West where the boundaries of a ward of 500 or more members encompasses a total of 700-1200 or so people. The lines get blurred outside that area where the boundaries of a ward of 200 or fewer members encompasses 30k - 150k+ people.

[DrumNFeather]

I've mentioned this before, but in one of my wards, the bishop would hold a 5th Sunday lesson every year to discuss the ward budget, and where tithing and fast offering funds were going. I always thought that was an interesting approach, particularly because one year during a period of great job loss for members of our ward (including me, but not when he made the request) he asked us to double or triple our FOs if we could to help those who were un or under employed.

[Tex]

Please stop twisting my words. You know exactly what I meant by that comment.

No disrespect, Lebowski, but the idea that this is the Lord's church spending the Lord's money seems to be getting only lip service by some critics here. I can't tell by your contribution here what your stance is.

[Tex]

This sort fo thing happens with some regularity in our area (minus the baptism coda).

It seems a little surreal that it happened that way, like one of those miracle stories in General Conference. But it's 100% true.