Your housing allowance is safe for the forseeable future

SI Filings

“The group that brought the federal lawsuit against the cash version of the clergy housing allowance has decided not to appeal the unanimous Federal Appeals Court ruling that upheld the thing. They have a clever title to this news: Appeals Court Blesses Housing Allowance.” - SBC Voices

Discussion

The IRS needs to audit the Catholic Church

SI Filings

“In the ordinary non-profit world, there are checks and balances on these things. There are boards which hold officers accountable for their actions. There are auditors… But things are very different in a Catholic context.” - Washington Examiner

Discussion

The Church Treasurer: The Transition and Assuming the Role

Jim

Twice I’ve had opportunity to manage the finances of another individual. The first was my son Roger’s deployment to Iraq. He was a student at Saint Cloud State and a reservist in the USMC when he was called up and had to deploy. It happened rather suddenly. He and I took these steps:

Discussion

From the Archives – Standard of Living?

Pastor Dan Miller

One of the most telling characteristics of our culture is how we collectively determine an individual’s standard of living. The concept of a “standard of living” is something like a high-jump bar by which we gauge the quality of our daily lives. Some people cannot clear the bar and we say they experience a “low standard of living.” Others clear the bar with considerable room to spare and we declare that they enjoy a comparatively “high standard of living.” Those who fall between these two sub-sets keep jumping, but never seem quite sure if they clear the bar or not.

Discussion

The Church Treasurer: From Kluge to the Cloud

Jim

Read the series.

Kludge. Also kluge: “’An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole’ (Granholm); esp. in Computing, a machine, system, or program that has been improvised or ‘bodged’ together; a hastily improvised and poorly thought-out solution.”1

Discussion

Is It Morally Okay to Keep Updating My Things?

SI Filings

“I’m not that old, but it seems like a lifetime ago that it was acceptable to keep things until they were broken. Now if my phone is more than a year old or if I haven’t remodeled my kitchen in the past decade, I’m out of date. Is there a moral right or wrong to this consuming of new and updated models of stuff?” - TGC

Discussion

Americans are more likely to find their ‘meaning in life’ in money than in faith

SI Filings

“In the open-ended question, Americans are mostly likely to say family is an important source of meaning (40 percent), and in the closed-ended question they’re most likely to report they find “a great deal” of meaning in spending time with family (69 percent)….almost a fourth (23 percent) find meaning in finances and money.” - Acton

Discussion

Why a ‘Health and Wealth’ Approach to Scripture Leaves Us More Depressed

SI Filings

“Our analyses suggest that reading scripture for insights into attaining health and healing exacerbated the adverse effects of poor self-rated health on depressive symptoms, a finding consistent with an emergent literature on the ‘dark side’ of religious and spiritual coping…” - CToday

Discussion