Liquor licenses at Church's City Creek Center?

[venkman]

II am convinced the CCC is not an investment project. I believe it is a missionary project and an effort to "take back" downtown SLC from the infidels. I don't have time to post more on that now but I'll post more on it later if people are interested.

I think they're worried about Temple Square becoming a fortress in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah. You get bars and strip clubs on South Temple and are members going to want to drive in from the suburbs? What will visitors think? Things like Main Street Plaza, City Creek, moving BYU SL downtown are attempts to create sort of a buffer between TS and the rest of the city, to retain some of the mormon-ness around TS. Call it image, PR, missionary work, but that's the thinking as far as I'm concerned.

[RobinFinderson]

I just don't see how a church can legitimately justify a for-profit venture. To invest in something like this means that the church literally has more money than it needs for operational costs. I can think of a few legitimate uses of excess funds in such a situaiton:

• Increase operational costs. Make nicer churches/temples. Go back to hiring janitors. Fund more ward and stake social events, and make participation more enjoyable. All of this serves the membership and makes missionary work easier. It is the equivalent of a professional wearing a decent suit, and not some piece of crap from Mr. Mac.
  
• Welfare. If you service makes up a big part of a church's raison d'etre, you can always spend excess funds on service. Specifically, for the LDS, I think there tends to be a serious disconnect between the funds that are used for service outside the ward, and a sense of individual investment in that service. People give the church money knowing that it will be used for good, but they seldom have a sense of what good that money is doing.
  
• Decrease financial contributions. I don't think you can get rid of the 10%, since that is pretty much an immutable doctrine, but the church could stop begging for alms in other places, and use the excess to cover that.
  
• A rainy day account. Naturally, this would need to be a highly liquid account, which is the opposite of the CCC venture.

It is hard for me to pin down what seems so offensive about the church's profit venture, but maybe it just the opportunity cost this real estate venture represents.

And how will the profits from this venture get funneled back to the church? And who would stand to lose from potential losses? And who stands to gain from the profits that are not funneled back to the church? And what advantages does the for-profit side have because of its connection to a church? Can the church hold real estate without paying taxes on it, then sell that land to the for-profit side below market value? There is plenty of ethically questionable territory for the church navigate here, and there is pretty much zero incentive for members to look too closely at how the church is navigating this.

[ERCougar]

I have observed a couple of occasions where the Church had an event that was overly costly to the point of distasteful. In one Stake I attended the High Priest Quorum Social was catered by a well known downtown catering company and had live musicians. It turned out that the funds for the party were entirely donated and that approval for an event funded outside of the budget was made at the Q of 12 level.

The other event was a youth conference involving more than $70,000 worth of cash costs (not counting donated materials and time). Turns out that the funding for that was also entirely from an individual in the Stake and approval had been obtained from the president of the Church.

I am convinced the CCC is not an investment project. I believe it is a missionary project and an effort to "take back" downtown SLC from the infidels. I don't have time to post more on that now but I'll post more on it later if people are interested.

Well, then that invites the question whether there are better places to spend that kind of money. Of course, I'd hate my budget to come under others' scrutiny, so I guess that's none of my business.

[scottie]

I don't have time to post more on that now but I'll post more on it later if people are interested.

I am.

[KillerDog]

I have observed a couple of occasions where the Church had an event that was overly costly to the point of distasteful. In one Stake I attended the High Priest Quorum Social was catered by a well known downtown catering company and had live musicians. It turned out that the funds for the party were entirely donated and that approval for an event funded outside of the budget was made at the Q of 12 level.

The other event was a youth conference involving more than $70,000 worth of cash costs (not counting donated materials and time). Turns out that the funding for that was also entirely from an individual in the Stake and approval had been obtained from the president of the Church.

I am convinced the CCC is not an investment project. I believe it is a missionary project and an effort to "take back" downtown SLC from the infidels. I don't have time to post more on that now but I'll post more on it later if people are interested.

[Sullyute]

Originally Posted by UtahDan
Particularly when so much of the money is basically being stock piled.

Basically we are replacing faith with fiscal conservatism.

There are other things that are being replaced, but I won't go there in this thread.

I taught Elders quorum yesterday on Return and Report. I brought up the fact that we all report from the bottom up, and asked if there should be more reporting from the top down. I specifically asked if the church should disclose more of its finances. I wasn't too surprised that most said no, but one very recently returned missionary said yes. I asked why and he said that it was hard to get people to commit to pay tithing when they couldn't see where the funds were going. I thought that was great insight. So the church might actually increase tithing payment if people knew where the funds were being used...

[Moliere]

Particularly when so much of the money is basically being stock piled.

Basically we are replacing faith with fiscal conservatism.

There are other things that are being replaced, but I won't go there in this thread.

[UtahDan]

Are you talking specifically about Temples here? Or regular meeting houses? Or both?

Those and probably primarily the City Creek Mall which obviously I think is obscene. Not to say that I don't understand the idea of people being spiritually fed, but I am saying that things like homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food closets, etc. for which there is a never ending need glorify the Christian ideal as much if not more than beautiful buildings that are empty most of the time. Particularly when so much of the money is basically being stock piled.

[Sullyute]

Today I read something interesting. According to the church it has spent approximately $1.1 billion on humanitarian aid over the last 25 years (most of that is donated stuff, but a decent chunk is cash). When divided by the number of members of the church that ends up being less than $5 annually per person and less than 1% of the church's annual revenue.

It was pointed out that were the church to simply "tithe" 10% of its revenue to humanitarian aid it would contribute something like $750M per year, as opposed to the @$44M or less than $5 per person it currently does. It would appear that the rest remainder of the budget going to buildings, administrative costs and investment. Apples and oranges I know, but the highly criticized and scandalized Red Cross gets about 91 cents of every dollar donated to humanitarian efforts.

I don't know whether this includes fast offerings or not. If it does include fast offerings then I would guestimate that a very large chunk of the money is probably staying with the wards or stakes to pay electric bills, mortgage payments, phone payments etc. of the members in need.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective or your ward. If this is not what you intend your fast offerings to do then you should specify that they go only to humanitarian causes within the church or pay them directly to a charity that does that.

[SCcoug]

President Smith in regards to giving your tithing money to a charity other than the church:

I was hoping for a grapevine response using that quote.

[ERCougar]

President Smith in regards to giving your tithing money to a charity other than the church:

in a place where I feel He would want it used.

[Sullyute]

This may be beside the point for you (it sort of is, for me) but I'd be curious to see what the total fast offering contributions are for the church. I don't think most members consider tithing monies to be going primarily to humanitarian functions--they see them as going towards support of the infrastructure of the church. In that respect, the Red Cross analogy doesn't quite work, as the chief stated purpose of the Red Cross is humanitarian efforts.

The larger point you're making is whether tithing money should be directed towards infrastructure or humanitarian work. When we lived in Michigan, my wife was in the Stake RS Presidency. The stake was quite large geographically, so for their annual stake meetings, they had to provide meals for 150+ women. I remember watching them struggle to stretch their annual $600 budget to cover 300 meals (2 meals for each woman) plus printing materials and the various other expenses that are incurred in holding large meetings, as well as their expenses for the rest of the year. Contrast this with our catered Christmas dinner in our last Cedar City Ward (which was fairly well-off), which likely ran well over $600 on its own. It was a real eye-opener to see the waste that goes on, particularly in Utah wards (and I haven't touched on youth conferences, scouting, Pioneer Treks, etc). I really struggled as I was writing my tithing check at the end of the year, weighing the value of a catered Christmas meal against providing malaria nets or TB meds in Africa or a simple home in Central America--instead of feeling good about giving a donation, I just felt really empty. For the next year, I decided that I'm taking my half of the tithing and humanitarian budget and distributing to the organizations where I see fit.

President Smith in regards to giving your tithing money to a charity other than the church:

“I think you are a very generous man with someone else’s property. … You have not paid any tithing. You have told me what you have done with the Lord’s money. … You have taken your best partner’s money, and have given it away” (“The Story of a Generous Man,” Improvement Era, June 1947, 357.

[ERCougar]

I have not followed this thread so intend to make no comment here except to note that in our area budgets are typically not that dissimilar across wards. The discrepancy in these sorts of events in our areas occur when members decide to foot the bill themselves. This has been something our SP has tried to corral, but it still happens.

I'll admit that that may have occurred on the Christmas dinner, since I had no part in the planning, although I'm quite sure the Pioneer Trek in this latter ward, where I was involved, was covered by Church funds. And it was not cheap by any stretch.

I can see the argument where training and retaining youth is worth the investment (and hence, the high budgets dedicated to scouting). I just don't agree with it. I think our youth would really benefit from participating in scaled-down activities and pure service and charity. I think my kids could really benefit from seeing 10% of their income going to feed a child in Africa instead of a really nice padded bench.

In the end, I just left that tithing experience with the feeling that I need to know what the money that I'm purportedly giving back to God is really being used for. The Church certainly belongs on the list of recipients (I think there is some societal value to the work they do) but I just don't feel good about them being the primary recipient of my charitable donations at this point. Maybe that's a reflection of my testimony--which is maybe the point of tithing.

[creekster]

This may be beside the point for you (it sort of is, for me) but I'd be curious to see what the total fast offering contributions are for the church. I don't think most members consider tithing monies to be going primarily to humanitarian functions--they see them as going towards support of the infrastructure of the church. In that respect, the Red Cross analogy doesn't quite work, as the chief stated purpose of the Red Cross is humanitarian efforts.

The larger point you're making is whether tithing money should be directed toward infrastructure or humanitarian work. When we lived in Michigan, my wife was in the Stake RS Presidency. The stake was quite large geographically, so for their annual stake meetings, they had to provide meals for 150+ women. I remember watching them struggle to stretch their annual $600 budget to cover 300 meals (2 meals for each woman) plus printing materials and the various other expenses that are incurred in holding large meetings, as well as their expenses for the rest of the year. Contrast this with our catered Christmas dinner in our last Cedar City Ward (which was fairly well-off), which likely ran well over $600 on its own. It was a real eye-opener to see the waste that goes on, particularly in Utah wards (and I haven't touched on youth conferences, scouting, Pioneer Treks, etc). I really struggled as I was writing my tithing check at the end of the year, weighing the value of a catered Christmas meal against providing malaria nets or TB meds in Africa or a simple home in Central America--instead of feeling good about giving a donation, I just felt really empty. For the next year, I decided that I'm taking my half of the tithing and humanitarian budget and distributing to the organizations where I see fit.

I have not followed this thread so intend to make no comment here except to note that in our area budgets are typically not that dissimilar across wards. The discrepancy in these sorts of events in our areas occur when members decide to foot the bill themselves. This has been something our SP has tried to corral, but it still happens.

[DrumNFeather]

I think you are right that the vast majority of great humanitarian work is done by church members locally and on the individual level. My views on this are colored by my work with a local United Way that services 5 counties and distributes about 500K per year to charities. The bang that we get for those bucks is phenomenal. Battered women's shelters, free clinics, hospice care, after school programs, basic nutrition etc., etc. The good Christian service we provide in these counties and the actual impact on human suffering is something I am really proud of.

I then reflect on the idea that the two wards that meet in just one of those counties easily, easily contribute tithing annually that doubles the United Way budget. And pretty much zero of those dollars are spent in my community. Those kinds of funds have the ability to be multipliers of actual benefits, services and relief that individuals simply cannot provide. They are spent on the infrastructure of the church and its ability to proselyte and maintain its imagine. The rest is horded. If that is the mission, so be it. But the pretense that the church has anything other than a nominal humanitarian function is not supported by evidence. I happen to think good people like you could do much more good in this world with your 10% than the church does with it.

Though I have moved away from the institutional church, I still have a very strong belief that the teachings of Jesus, for the most part, represent the best aspirations of humanity. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, helping the beaten man on the road to Damascus. A soup kitchen is a much more powerful testament to these teachings than any massively expensive or richly adorned building.

Are you talking specifically about Temples here? Or regular meeting houses? Or both?