kjones wrote:I was told by someone, who said he knew firsthand, that members of the 1st prez are paid 700k/year and each member of the Twelve gets 400k/year. This, to me, is a credible estimate.
But still, we are left to wonder, since the information is not disclosed. So who really knows? The men themselves, the auditors, and the person writing out the checks.
700k/year is a fair salary for men who manage a corporation as large as the church, and 400k/year is also fair for the Twelve who also manage the corporate behemoth.
Which makes me think that it would be better to separate the entities, i.e., separate the management of the business interests of the church from the management and direction of the ministerial interests. However, in a church that teaches there is no distinction between the temporal and the spiritual, maybe this is not easy to do.
However...I think, for example, that Prez Monson is a consummate businessman, manager, business visionary; he knows how to schmooze and all of his best friends, the people he hangs out with when he has a choice--these are all very rich guys like John Huntsman, Sr., or the NuSkin founders; but I cannot think of him as a prophet, seer and a revelator. On the other hand, I can think of Elders Packer and Holland as spiritual leaders, but I can't really think of them as managers of a 50 billion corporation.
It would seem better to me to separate the two entities, pay the guys who run the biz end of things comparable salaries, or maybe a little less than they'd get in the world; and the spiritual leaders--well, pay them a living allowance, maybe what CES people are paid.
Can you imagine the meeting?
Okay we're going to need 6 of you to be business leaders at 400k a year and 6 of you to be religious leaders at 35k a year.
Hands up for volunteers for the theology jobs...
*cough...shuffle...ahem...tumbleweed...*