Charity

A lot of Christians think that when they put their money on the collection plate, it is used by the church to do good works like feeding the poor and helping the sick.

But no.

Money donated to the church stays in the church and nobody else gets any part of it. All of the tithes on the collection plate are used to buy nice things for the preachers and none of it is shared with somebody down on their luck.

Here's how it works:

The church sets up a charity wing that always remains independent and unrelated to the church. The Catholics, for example, have The St Vincent De Paul Society and the Church of England has Anglicare.

These charity wings are staffed by unpaid volunteers who stand on street corners rattling collection tins, or they raise funds with fetes, raffles, amateur concerts etc. They also collect unwanted household items and sell them in their charity stores.

Not a lot of money is raised from those endeavors, but that doesn't really matter because the Government grants tens of millions of dollars per year to those charities and charges them with the task of distributing the cash to the poor.

But none of the charity comes from the church itself!

Don't believe me?

Check out this mission statement that appeared on the St Vincent De Paul website a few years ago. Take particular notice of the last sentence:

And it's almost the same with the Anglican church. For example, in this statement of income from the Anglicare Diocese of Sydney (Australia) in 2012 we find the following cash figures on page nineteen:

Government Revenue $65,110,000
User Charges $10,342,000
ANGLICARE Shops Sales $4,406,000
Donations & Bequests $4,159,000
Investment Income $2,828,000
Aged Care Accommodation Charges and Retentions $2,690,000
Independent Living Unit Deferred Management Charges $960,000
Parish Offertories & Allocations $335,000
Diocesan Grants $80,000
Other Income $2,326,000
Total Revenues From Operational Activities $93,236,000

Link to PDF

Sixty-five million from the Government! Nothing of note from the church itself.


Added three years later:
The link to the 2012 PDF is broken so here are the details from the 2015 PDF (page 19 again).

Anglicare Diocese of Sydney Statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income for the year ended 30 June 2015

Revenue From Operational Activities

Government Revenue $74,846,000
User Charges $11,609,000
Investment Income $6,353,000
Anglicare Shops Sales $5,246,000
Donations & Bequests $4,347,000
Aged Care Accommodation Charges and Retentions $3,183,000
Independent Living Unit Deferred Management Charges $1,052,000
Net Gain on Disposal of Available-for-Sale Financial Assets $1,017,000
Parish Offertories & Allocations $299,000
Diocesan Contribution to Mission Research $80,000
Other Income $1,900,000
Total Revenues From Operational Activities $109,932,000

Link to 2015 PDF

Almost $75 million from the Government and nothing of note from the church.