The Use of Tithe--GC

[Gregory Matthews]

See:

http://atoday.org/at/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/tithe-accountability.pdf

[debbym]

too blurry, but definitely tithe is the source of income for the GC

[Gregory Matthews]

Blurry:  I agree.

http://spectrummagazine.org/article/2017/04/12/financial-reports-top-agenda-spring-meeting

For more on this subject and a bit more, see the above:

 

[debbym]

this was a reply in the discussion option below, the only one i saw after the article, and it held interesting questions to me...

"I can't help but wonder why the church's armory is so intimately connected to financial markets that a "shift" would bring about a $21 million windfall. Is this based on the strength of the U.S. dollar, U.S. stock market, or both? What's going to happen when the markets shift downward? I also have to wonder which budget category includes legal and lawyer fees."

[JoeMo]

A "company" with over $2.5 billion in annual income with cash reserves of only $1 Million?  If the church was a publicly traded entity, I would sell my stock immediately.

[Gregory Matthews]

NOTE:  The following attached document is my attempt to reconstruct page 1 of the GC document.  In a few cases I simply could not read the figure.  I may be slightly off.  But, as I read the GC document, the GC document did contain errors.  In any case, this following is the best that I could do and is generally close, when not exact.

GC Tithe Accountability P 1.xlsx

[Gregory Matthews]

NOTE:  I am attempting to produce a statement that is better able to be read than what it in the OP.  For that reason, I am reserving this space.

Reserved for later use.  What I want to do here is to reproduce page 2 of the GC Document cited in the OP.

I have decided not to attempt to copy this 2nd page of the document as I do not believe that I can accurately copy enough information  to be helpful.

[Gregory Matthews]

Debbym asked in the quote below:

I shall attempt to answer your question with a made-up illustration:

NOTE:  GC Budgets are denominated in U.S. dollars.

1)  The country of Xpat  has a currency that is named the "tic."  

2)  If the conversion rate between tics and dollars is 100 tics to one dollar, one million dollars is worth 100 million tics.

3) If the conversion rate between tics and dollars is 200 tics to one dollar, one million dollars is worth 200 million tics.

4)  If the GC decodes to build a school in Xpat that  costs one hundred million tics, the above conversion rate will make a major difference as to the U.S. dollars that will need to be expended to build that school.

5)  The same would be true is Xpat was sending tithe to the GC.

The bottom is that conversion rates is of major significance when one needs to convert money. 

 

I can't help but wonder why the church's armory is so intimately connected to financial markets that a "shift" would bring about a $21 million windfall. Is this based on the strength of the U.S. dollar, U.S. stock market, or both? What's going to happen when the markets shift downward?

[CoAspen]

We, who pay tithe and offerings, need a better breakdown of how it is spent, detail wise. Is such a document available?

On the face of it, it seems, in my opinion, way too much is spent on 'overhead'. I must have been taught incorrectly or incompletely how tithe and offereings were bein used.

[Gregory Matthews]

As I have posted elsewhere:  It appears that both sides have issues that seemingly can only be settled by litigation.  Both sides appeared to have attempted to settle without going to court, but that failed.

For any side to litigate, the attorneys must be competent and familiar with practice before the judge who will properly hear the case.  It would be foolish to do otherwise.  The practice of law in the U.S. is such that in major litigation a huge number of billable hours are generated in an attempt to cover every reasonable issue.  To do less would be foolish.  In addition, competent lawyers charge large fees.  On some levels one gets what they pay for.