Recently I read accounts by two LDS ward (local congregation) finance clerks. These are local priesthood holders who process tithing checks from their fellow ward members and then send the money on to the Church headquarters in Salt Lake City.
One, who is presently active as a Mormon, says he will soon leave the LDS Church after seeing that his ward sends about $500,000 every year to Salt Lake, but is only given about $5,000 for its own budget for operational expenses. (Apparently some of the headquarters' frugality is also seen in the “calling” of local members to do janitorial work instead of hiring it done.)
Another former ward finance clerk reported that he left the LDS church after realizing that his tithing alone equalled the entire ward budget; and that by computing the fact that about 70 families in his ward also paid tithing, and estimated that the LDS Church headquarters was taking in about 60 times what he paid.
What's so outrageous about that? I attend a nondemominational church, and our church accounts for every penny it receives in the form of free-will offerings (and nobody “checks on” the members by asking them if they pay a full 10 percent as happens annual in Mormonism), and our church fully accounts for how every penny is spent.
No way would I go back to a multi-billion dollar “church” that won't account for how it spends money and asks its own members to scrub toilets to up its percentages.
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today(Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
