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Comment by buscoquadnary | Hacker News Reader

Just as an FYI, almost all leadership of the Church is lay ministry run by volunteers, the top leaders of the Church receive a small living stipend[0] as they do their work full-time, but beyond that the rest is all volunteers.

0. It is between 95-112k a year, which when you consider the current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a world-renown cardiologist it is less than peanuts.

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Two additional points: the top leaders are working full time (harder than I work tbh) to keep the Church running. There's millions of dollars each year being spent on humanitarian efforts, and that's not counting the non-cash goods that the Church collects/farms/manufactures and distributes.

Second, these stipends come out of some investments or for-profit entities that the Church owns. (E.g. the Church has at least one large cattle ranch.) None of this comes from the donations of the members of the Church.

"None of this comes from the donations of the members of the Church."

So it comes from returns on assets the church bought with past donations?

Seems like a distinction without a difference.

For what purpose does the church have for-profit entities and investments?

So that the whole organization can sustain in the long run. Universities generally do the same, they have endowments and they invest them for profit. For example, Harvard's endowment was valued at $53.2 billion as of June 2021. [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harvard_Universit...

I’m asking specifically about the Mormon church. What is the purpose and what do they do with the money?

From your replies, it seems you may be a Mormon, and I want to ask you a question in good faith. What's the point of keeping all that wealth?

From what I can tell, it's not like the leaders are using it as their piggy bank. Is there a plan to run a state welfare, become an independent country, or what?

So I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that is an excellent question.

It is all being stockpiled to build a giant spaceship called the Nauvoo to take us to the stars! I am totally joking of course, there is a really great article about the Church and it's finances that can be found at this link https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-fina... that explains it a lot better than I can I'd recommend checking it out if you are interested.

I love the church’s http://familysearch.org non profit genealogy site btw. It’s totally unexpected how good it is from a UX perspective for a property built by a religious organization, and it goes toe to toe against for profit sites like Family Tree and Ancestory. Thank you Mormons!

https://www.familysearch.org/en/about/

I have also wondered this question, as I have relatives who always pay their tithe to the church but are middle class and have over $100k in debt at retirement age. It's seams unnecessary to require such a thing of a "saint" given they do a lot of stock piling.

The space ship is outrageous but conception without sperm is totally believable.

Priests and doctors have plummeted in social standing because the of the greed and molestation (or defense of), your guy is a double whammy.

Just as an FYI, a few years ago the Mormon Church spent tens of millions of dollars libeling gays as part of its massive Prop 8 campaign.

So as you can see, they're spending money on their core mission, rather than wasting it on cushy salaried positions.

It's quite disturbing that spreading hate is considered an acceptable core mission for a religious institution with tens of millions of members.

Protecting the children from degeneracy, a most noble cause, serving the Mormon ambition of breeding as many descendants as possible, to become subordinates in Heaven's eternal patriarchy.

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