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Church Donating 3 Million to Help Build New Stadium


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15 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

I don't expect a monetary return on investment from my membership in the Church. I want something far more valuable, life with God.

Unfortunate we live in a world that operates on moolah. Without which many valuable things wouldn't exist. The Church paid dearly for not having a business model where it comes to its financial resources, It was dead broke on more than one occasion. Also I remember well when each Ward was responsible for its own operating funds. Just keeping the lights on was a big expense. I prefer the currant business model though I'm sure improvements can/will be made.

If it was dead broke on more than one occasion where did the seed money for all the for-profit entities come from?  Were they originally funded with tithing money?   

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5 hours ago, sjdawg said:

If it was dead broke on more than one occasion where did the seed money for all the for-profit entities come from?  Were they originally funded with tithing money?   

I believe so.

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On 6/19/2016 at 0:29 AM, sjdawg said:

It's the Church's money they can do what they want with it.   I don't think it is a good use of their "sacred" funds but my opinion is irrelevant.  I'm just glad I no longer contribute in any way to the LDS Church

These are not apparently "sacred" funds, but rather secular business funding -- part of the LDS Church's extensive business holdings on which they pay taxes, just as is the case for other churches which have profit-making arms.  It would be very foolish for the LDS Church not to invest funds in ventures which return a profit, along the lines of the parable of the good and bad stewards.

Your LDS contributions in the past were not donations to the LDS Church, but simply paying God his due of at least 10% from what he already owns completely anyhow.  Church leaders attempt to be good stewards in the management of God's money and materiel.  You are likely glad that you no longer contribute your time, talents, and money to the Kingdom of God on Earth only because you no longer believe that entity to be God's Kingdom.  Meantime, I  hope that you will find other ways to aid your neighbors far and wide, for the need is great.  God doesn't really care so much whether you are Mother Teresa doing acts of service in India.  Only that you make an effort somehow to alleviate suffering and pain (if only in your spare time).

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14 hours ago, Pa Pa said:

I am not offended, I have spent more than half my life living or working in the inner city. The first few years of my life in public housing. Never had my own bedroom until I was 12, and only then after leaving the city due to my mother's remarriage to a very good man who adopted myself and my two other siblings. Upon my return from eight years in the Army, and after two years in construction in the same city, I became an police officer and inspector, working in the same neighborhoods I lived in and others. I watched daily as people living on welfare and other charities were robbed of self respect, work ethics and in many cases their lives. So when I speak of these things it is not from so misguided sense of ideal notions of what the word "only means"...ask any who will benefit from this money if they would rather have a "hand out" or a "hand up"? 

Is building a stadium in Utah going to do more for the people living in the slums than a charitable donation would? You seem to be defining charity pretty narrowly as welfare payments (the church itself also gives welfare money out - should it stop doing that?). There are a lot of forms of charity - donating to cancer research, for instance, or providing vaccinations to impoverished children. 

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13 hours ago, Calm said:

Do you feel comfortable calling it community investment as opposed to charity?

Sure. Not normally the province of churches, but I'm not overly fussed about it. The defenses being made are far worse than what the church is actually doing. 

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8 hours ago, The Nehor said:

By the standard proposed here the Church committed a great crime when it had members start cleaning their own buildings. Getting rid of a job is a great crime apparently.

My grandparents cleaned the church for a small fee many years ago to help with their finances..it is  shame.

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20 minutes ago, Gray said:

Is building a stadium in Utah going to do more for the people living in the slums than a charitable donation would? You seem to be defining charity pretty narrowly as welfare payments (the church itself also gives welfare money out - should it stop doing that?). There are a lot of forms of charity - donating to cancer research, for instance, or providing vaccinations to impoverished children. 

Building and providing jobs has done and will do more for the poor than most charities do...habitat for humanity a charity I have been involved with for 30 years is a great example. It provides jobs by building homes, it provides self-respect and self worth by requiring the persons receiving the home to take part and to help with other homes and it provides them with a home. Every time the Church puts back in the the Utah Community and all communities this same model is repeated. Everyone from the workers to venders to patrons put back money into the communities they are a part of...Charity. Charity is the,pure love of Christ, Christ healed the leapers, not just feed them. He gave sight to the blind, not handouts, he raised the dead, not just gave sermons over their dead bodies, he healed the lame and told them to take up they bed, not just make their bed. Charity is not merely the dispensing of money to those in immediate need. "Give a man a fish you will feed him for a day, teach how to fish you will feed him for a lifetime." That is Christlike Charity. 

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1 hour ago, Pa Pa said:

Building and providing jobs has done and will do more for the poor than most charities do...habitat for humanity a charity I have been involved with for 30 years is a great example. It provides jobs by building homes, it provides self-respect and self worth by requiring the persons receiving the home to take part and to help with other homes and it provides them with a home. Every time the Church puts back in the the Utah Community and all communities this same model is repeated. Everyone from the workers to venders to patrons put back money into the communities they are a part of...Charity. Charity is the,pure love of Christ, Christ healed the leapers, not just feed them. He gave sight to the blind, not handouts, he raised the dead, not just gave sermons over their dead bodies, he healed the lame and told them to take up they bed, not just make their bed. Charity is not merely the dispensing of money to those in immediate need. "Give a man a fish you will feed him for a day, teach how to fish you will feed him for a lifetime." That is Christlike Charity. 

Sure, but charity isn't the same thing as commercial investments, right? I mean it's not as if the construction firm that will be working on the stadium is going to recruit their crew from the ranks of the impoverished. 

Habitat for Humanity is great! Again, that's very different from a commercial entity.

Regarding Jesus, I won't argue against your point that it's important to help people to be self sufficient, but Jesus is portrayed in the Bible as advocating giving out handouts. In fact, Jesus specifically tells his disciples to avoid toiling for their food. Christlike charity seems to involve giving out handouts. Jesus didn't teach anything about teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish. Jesus just gave out the fish. Whether or not that is the best model is debatable. 

Edited by Gray
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7 hours ago, sjdawg said:

If it was dead broke on more than one occasion where did the seed money for all the for-profit entities come from?  Were they originally funded with tithing money?   

No. If I could make one criticism about the Church on this front it is that more people don't know about the financial history of Deseret Trust Company. No tithing money, ever.

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21 minutes ago, Gray said:

Sure, but charity isn't the same thing as commercial investments, right? I mean it's not as if the construction firm that will be working on the stadium is going to recruit their crew from the ranks of the impoverished. 

Habitat for Humanity is great! Again, that's very different from a commercial entity.

Regarding Jesus, I won't argue against your point that it's important to help people to be self sufficient, but Jesus is portrayed in the Bible as advocating giving out handouts. In fact, Jesus specifically tells his disciples to avoid toiling for their food. Christlike charity seems to involve giving out handouts. Jesus didn't teach anything about teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish. Jesus just gave out the fish. Whether or not that is the best model is debatable. 

I will say it: commercial investment can be rather charitable. Now, that argument is undercut by the the fact that the motivator for a lot of commercial investments is greed, so not every businessman making a commercial investment is charitable, just like not everyone who donates to "charity" would have any idea what actual charity is. In the Church's case, I have no problem saying their commercial investments are rather charitable.

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3 minutes ago, Mystery Meat said:

I will say it: commercial investment can be rather charitable. Now, that argument is undercut by the the fact that the motivator for a lot of commercial investments is greed, so not every businessman making a commercial investment is charitable, just like not everyone who donates to "charity" would have any idea what actual charity is. In the Church's case, I have no problem saying their commercial investments are rather charitable.

I can't agree with that characterization. I will say that investment is essential to the health of the economy, but it's not charity and not really charitable either, IMO. 

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38 minutes ago, Gray said:

Sure, but charity isn't the same thing as commercial investments, right? I mean it's not as if the construction firm that will be working on the stadium is going to recruit their crew from the ranks of the impoverished. 

Habitat for Humanity is great! Again, that's very different from a commercial entity.

Regarding Jesus, I won't argue against your point that it's important to help people to be self sufficient, but Jesus is portrayed in the Bible as advocating giving out handouts. In fact, Jesus specifically tells his disciples to avoid toiling for their food. Christlike charity seems to involve giving out handouts. Jesus didn't teach anything about teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish. Jesus just gave out the fish. Whether or not that is the best model is debatable. 

Habitat for Humanity is both, it is not for profit, but employees 10,000 of full time workers as well. Everything the Church does commercial or charitable is to the same end, to help fulfill the mission of Christ. They can no more be separated that the left hand from the right, they are both connected by the "heart". 

 

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14 minutes ago, Gray said:

I can't agree with that characterization. I will say that investment is essential to the health of the economy, but it's not charity and not really charitable either, IMO. 

Again..it is an odd definition of charity.  Pure charity is not receiving anything in return.

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4 minutes ago, Pa Pa said:

Habitat for Humanity is both, it is not for profit, but employees 10,000 of full time workers as well. Everything the Church does commercial or charitable is to the same end, to help fulfill the mission of Christ. They can no more be separated that the left hand from the right, they are both connected by the "heart". 

 

Most of the church's commercial ventures seem aimed at turning a profit. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure there's much "heart" in that. 

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4 minutes ago, Jeanne said:

Again..it is an odd definition of charity.  Pure charity is not receiving anything in return.

I find that people come up with very odd new doctrines and new definitions for commonly understood words when they feel motivated to defend the church or church leaders.

I'm not sure a defense is really needed here, though. But we shouldn't have to pretend that business is the same thing as charity, either.

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25 minutes ago, Gray said:

I can't agree with that characterization. I will say that investment is essential to the health of the economy, but it's not charity and not really charitable either, IMO. 

That's because you don't understand charity, as used in its correct, scriptural understanding.

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7 minutes ago, Mystery Meat said:

That's because you don't understand charity, as used in its correct, scriptural understanding.

I think I do understand it, and that's why I don't identify it with business. 

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11 minutes ago, Mystery Meat said:

CFR where the scriptures define charity as not receiving anything in return.

I wish I had one..but this is what I was taught.  Charity in RS and scriptures from the Apostle Paul seems to define it this way.  Seeing as how I cannot give you a CFR.  I will state this as my own opinion. To me, it is not true charity if you plan to make money off of it.  In fact, that sounds tacky.

Edited by Jeanne
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5 minutes ago, Gray said:

I find that people come up with very odd new doctrines and new definitions for commonly understood words when they feel motivated to defend the church or church leaders.

I'm not sure a defense is really needed here, though. But we shouldn't have to pretend that business is the same thing as charity, either.

Business is not the same thing as charity. But you keep confusing charity (pure love of Christ) with how the world misuses the term charity (a non-profit). They are not the same. For profit enterprises can be quite charitable. I, for example, know a guy who made an investment in a start up company, not because he cared about ever seeing a return on his investment, but because he wanted to help out the startup's founders. Knowing the founders like I can do, I can honestly say that nothing in their lives could have ever been more charitable then the investment money they received.  Conversely, there are plenty of people, rich and poor alike, who cut checks and pretend that they have charity. These same people turn around and mock others, use their "charitable" contributions as evidence of their greatness, never give anyone the benefit of the doubt (including the Church and its leaders) and are just not nice. 

So I turn your statement around on you: I find that people come up with very odd new doctrines and intentionally or unintentionally misunderstood the scriptural definition of charity when they feel motivated to attack the church or church leaders.

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11 minutes ago, Jeanne said:

I wish I had one..but this is what I was taught.  Charity in RS and scriptures from the Apostle Paul seems to define it this way.  Seeing as how I cannot give you a CFR.  I will state this as my own opinion. To me, it is not true charity if you plan to make money off of it.  In fact, that sounds tacky.

I don't disagree with you, but is there not a middle ground? Can someone make a financial investment and any profit is a secondary consideration?

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31 minutes ago, Mystery Meat said:

I don't disagree with you, but is there not a middle ground? Can someone make a financial investment and any profit is a secondary consideration?

Oh..every contribution or investment may help..yes!  But I just think the church takes priorities over what will make money.  I will always agree that the Church does help.  The people who need real donations aren't seeing it.  I do love and respect the church's welfare system and its generosity to people and countries dealing with nature crisis and stuff.  But they don't donate near as much as they could.  But I am hoping that there is a middle ground for those who are in need and for those who want to help the needy...not stadiums. This is a people church..with people contributions..for heaven's sakes open up the books and give them a voice as to where they want these contributions to go.

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46 minutes ago, Mystery Meat said:

Business is not the same thing as charity. But you keep confusing charity (pure love of Christ) with how the world misuses the term charity (a non-profit). They are not the same. For profit enterprises can be quite charitable. I, for example, know a guy who made an investment in a start up company, not because he cared about ever seeing a return on his investment, but because he wanted to help out the startup's founders. Knowing the founders like I can do, I can honestly say that nothing in their lives could have ever been more charitable then the investment money they received.  Conversely, there are plenty of people, rich and poor alike, who cut checks and pretend that they have charity. These same people turn around and mock others, use their "charitable" contributions as evidence of their greatness, never give anyone the benefit of the doubt (including the Church and its leaders) and are just not nice. 

So I turn your statement around on you: I find that people come up with very odd new doctrines and intentionally or unintentionally misunderstood the scriptural definition of charity when they feel motivated to attack the church or church leaders.

A charity is not the same thing as a not-for-profit. There are all kinds of NFPs that do not have a philanthropic mission. When I use the word charity, I'm using it to mean "philanthropy". I can use that going forward if it's clearer for you.

By that same token, the scriptural notion of "charity" might better be expressed as the word "love". Indeed, many modern translation's render the word "agape" that way. But arguments can be made that the word charity is preferable. My understanding is that neither word completely gets at the meaning behind the original Greek.

My criticisms are not directed toward the church, really, but toward the outlandish notion that business investments have anything to do with charity (any definition of that word). 

Now if you'll excuse my, I'm off to engage in some charitable work (i.e. buy some gas).

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