SeekingUnderstanding

Seems fair. People seem awfully quick to give God all the credit for every turn of good fortune in their life. If She controls so much, seems like She deserves some of the blame when stuff goes the other way.

Also if the bishop had any type of training or coaching on the issue, they would have known that almost all initial confessions are limited and minimized, and that abuse rarely just stops on its own without significant intervention.

I thought a millstone around the neck and tossed into the sea was the preferred method…

It’s unclear what was in old number, but it does now include food (which per kfisher makes it seem like old number did not include this) fast offerings, di donations and more. I think the current number provides an all inclusive look, but much of it reflects directly on the goodness of its members (through generous offerings) vs decisions made by church leaders on how to spend tithing and earned income from tithing (for those that see a distinction 😜).

A vague prediction with no date and no consequences is meaningless. Put up or shut up? When will this happen by? Care to wager? Loser pays to charity of others choice?

Lol. I’m actually “the second”. Super annoying to have those two “i”’s on the end of my name. I chose not to burden any of my children with that bit of vanity. (No offense dad if you are reading this)

I will note that Smac is only selectively against anonymous posters. In this thread an anonymous poster asserted without evidence something that fits in SMAC’s world view. SMAC accepted this wholesale. On the other hand when it goes against his world view he goes on for pages and pages about evidentiary standards in court and nothing less should be acceptable. For me, I post pseudo anonymously here (my bio lists my location and that’s my real picture that I use in profiles all over the internet - maybe try a reverse image search) because my name is unique. My dad and I are the only two people in the world that have this name. So while I have no problem with people here knowing who I am in real life (dm me), the opposite isn’t true. I don’t want people googling my name to see this site as the highest search result.

I believe you are conflating EPA’s US stock holdings with their total holdings. Per the whistleblower report, 2018 US equity represented 35.7 % of total holdings. These are the only investments at EPA that would show up on SEC filings. The fund targeted 35.1% US equity per the same report.

My name fit for a few years, and then it *really didn’t!

Not to pry (too much!), but why not? Food donations are now included in the church humanitarian number if I understand correctly. Not sure if they were in the old 40 million number.

How much does the church do for food banks around the country every week?

The comparison is impossible. 1 billion accounts for things that were not included in the 40 million. Things like fast offerings for one.

Is there? I feel like there is no good way to quantify this.

What is the total dollar amount of non fast offering humanitarian work done last year? Edited to add - I applaud the church for doing each and every one of these projects. I think they are amazing and great. But this post shows how little you understand the criticism being raised.

It’s just an abusive straw man. Made particularly annoying by the insistence that his straw man is really what his opponents believe despite denials. It’s a demonstration of bad faith.

Many organizations will allow this, but it’s always money shuffling (even with the church). Tithing pays the overhead for fast offerings. Many organizations give me the choice to include money to run the charity or not. But money is fungible so if I’m not paying to run the organization, someone else will be.

I will add for @smac97that this raving critic made generous fast offering donations to my local ward for two years after leaving the church. Right up until the Washington post report. While I have no doubt that fast offerings are used to good effect, the church certainly doesn’t need my money to maintain the program. I took my money elsewhere and the report was also the biggest factor in the timing of my decision to remove my name from the roles (though there were other contributing factors as well). I don’t think that informed consent is too high a bar to expect from any organization especially one that names itself as God’s own church.

Not per my recollection. I would assume that they are used for the purpose stated on the donation slip. Same with fast offerings. It’s all just guess work though 🤷‍♂️

lol. You are nothing if not predictable. Have a great day living in your particular flavor of fantasy land! 😂

According to the report, the church never dipped into the fund except for expenditures on the city creek mall and bailing out beneficial life (speaking from memory). So from the report essentially 100 percent of EPA’s earnings (or the Chruch’s earnings on investment) went back into the fund. Additionally the church (according to the report) invested an additional billion from church tithes - over 10 percent of tithing revenue in EPA. So over 10 percent of new tithing revenue goes in the fund. 100 percent of earned investment income goes into the fund. All per the now dated report. And all quoted from memory so apologies if I have some fine detail wrong, but order of magnitude this is correct.

All we are seeing is a bunch of armchair quarterbacks, anonymously and conveniently ensconced at their laptops, tossing out absurdly simplistic things like we've seen in this thread If the church practiced any kind of informed consent you wouldn’t see threads like this. You see these threads because the church did everything possible including lying on government forms to keep people in the dark.

Long term tension? No. No tension at all. In the short term ramping up spending? Sure. But if the church had been doing all along? No problem.

The whistle blower report. Takes into account earnings on investment which is all put back into growing the fund. If you have better numbers I’m all ears.

If the church is not capable of spending its hoard of money responsibly, it has no business having it in the first place. My two cents. It’s hilarious to me to see the apologetics at work here. Spend 5%!? Impossible to do responsibly. How dare you suggest it! You want the church to spend irresponsibly. Also the church needs all this money for a future unspecified purpose. And when they need it they will magically be able to spend it without waste? If so, why couldn’t they now?

You are one of a kind SMAC! 😂