Posts Tagged ‘ tithing ’

There are quite a few people who are very critical of the church’s investment in a high-end retail mail in downtown SLC.  Their reasons differ, but include things like: Mormons, Inc.  The church looks like a corporation, a business not a charity.  Worldly retail makes a strange bedfellow for charitable churches.  You can’t serve both God [...]

Should we clean up the church membership records once and for all?  If so, how?  Roll call?  That could take a while.  Bueller . . . Bueller . . . Discuss.

There has been much ado about the number of years of tax returns Mitt Romney should share as candidate for POTUS.  Critics on both sides of the political spectrum as well as the majority of Americans have called for him to release them, and yet he has refused, resulting in speculation that whatever is in [...]

Being a mormon comes at a cost. As Joseph Smith taught true religion requires sacrifice and implicit in the concept of sacrifice is a personal cost. Those who leave the church talk about the cost of leaving the church, in terms of losing friends, family and emotional upheaval. Others have pointed out to some of [...]

Discuss.

The single hardest thing I had to do as bishop, repeatedly, was deciding who would get fast offering help, and who would not.  So, I’ll let you help me on this one.  You’re the bishop! There is a family in your ward that runs hot and cold with church attendance.  They come for 6 months, [...]

We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don’t know. W. H. Auden For the individual, what is the lesson we are supposed to learn from tithing?  IMO, the blessing of tithing is the blessing of detachment (or maybe non-attachment).  Jesus advocated detachment when he admonished [...]

Today’s guest post is by Jake.  When I first went out onto my mission I was warned that when I saw missionaries all day that it might challenge my testimony. That they would lose the shine they once had when I viewed them as beacons of spirituality when I was a 14 year old youth.  [...]

Being willing to give away what we have is essential.  Christ told us that we need to be willing to impart of our possessions and to have charity towards others.  Zakat (almsgiving) is one of the fundamental Five Pillars of Islam.  Dana (generosity or giving) in Buddhism is essential to purify oneself and is one [...]

I know it seems a bit odd to explain the purpose of a series after the series has already started, but there has been some confusion and I think I perhaps haven’t explained my goal with enough detail.  I’ve described various bits and pieces in the different posts, but here it is all together.  At [...]

We belong to a rich church.  Exact numbers are hard to come by, but the assets are likely worth tens of billions US$.  While there are obviously a lot of assets in things like temples, BYU campuses, institute buildings, Church headquarters and buildings, chapels and other land, there are also a lot for “for-profit” assets. [...]

I was in high school when the original Star Trek television series premiered. As nerdy then as I am now, I watched every episode, and every re-run, and every afternoon syndication for years. I finally stopped — not because I wasn’t interested in the Star Trek universe, which was infinitely expandable (as multiple incarnations have [...]