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Listen, for many Lds leaders on the take, there's no essential difference between, say $50,000 worth of annual "stipends" and a salary.

I come from a corporate background. How do you know it's $50K? Or are you making that up? What is the stipend for? Is it for ecclesiastical work or is it for other things? Do they travel? Are they expected to go on the road on Church business?

If they are doing actual business work, such as building upkeep, grounds maintenance, accounting work, which is out side any ministerial work, then stipend makes sense. That's considered being considerate to those being burdened on your behalf. I see it all the time in the business world.

I followed the link you provided and read the following:

The big problem with this thread is that the leaders in question don't actually get their "stipend" from TITHING. They get it from the Churches business operations.

This doesn't support the argument you're trying to make.

That's beyond the normal

Normal by what standard? Are they some how not free to decide their own benefits?

From everything I've seen so far, I don't see the problem. They are not making a profit. It's a zero-sum-gain. They are getting reimbursed for out of pocket expenses.

So basically....when the Mormons ask someone to serve, they bend over backwards to make sure they are taken care of and not over burden by what's asked of them. That's pretty commendable. Especially when you consider how most organizations seem to treat their people these days.

It brightens me a lot to see this type of thing. Kind of reminds me of Catholic charities; Seventh Day Adventists hospitals, etc... There's still a lot of good going on out there.

I come from a corporate background. How do you know it's $50K? Or are you making that up?

It's actually probably more than 50,000...given the story's Utah-based guestimate of $99,500.

I went with $50,000 as that was the mention by "Jon" in the link I provided. (I also added the word "say" $50,000 to show it wasn't an accurate figure)

Your quote from the other link included this graph: The big problem with this thread is that the leaders in question don't actually get their "stipend" from TITHING. They get it from the Churches business operations.

As the Lindblum article clearly shows, if a Mission President is getting $99,500 in benefits -- which is another way to get that $ tax-free -- and if they don't have to tithe the required 10% on that...then (a) they are getting in effect almost $110,000 worth of benefits because no tithing is required on that; and (b) When you're talking about an entity -- the Mormon church -- that literally owns almost 1% of Florida real estate...where most of their laborers actually pay them to work there...it really doesn't matter what area of the Mormon church is the source of the funding.

'Tis all fungible.