Saturday, May 20, 2017

Temple Construction Costs

The Church used to report the construction costs for temples around the world prior to 1982 in the Deseret News Church Almanac. See below for a list of temple construction costs as indicated in the Deseret News 1981 Church Almanac. I have also calculated what these previous costs would be for temples build since 1919 in current United States Dollars given inflation using the CPI Inflation Calculator which can be accessed here. For temples built before 1919, I used another inflation calculator website that allows for calculations to be made prior to this time. These data provide insights into current construction costs for temples built by the Church. Click on the table below if you have trouble reading it.

[table]

Financial self-sufficiency of the Church as a whole and in individual countries is an important aspect of church growth. These funds are necessary for meetinghouse construction, temple construction, missionary work, printing and media costs, and so forth. The Church originally requested members to donate or fund raise temple construction costs in order to meet these purposes. However, this practice is infrequent at present for the worldwide Church since tithing funds appear to primarily fund these needs. Unfortunately, the Church appears to lack financial self-sufficiency in most countries of the world due to lower member incomes in comparison to other nations such as the United States. Greater long-term health and growth in the Church, particularly in regards to temple construction, will likely be achieved once the Church develops greater self-sufficiency in meeting its financial needs in individual countries around the world, particularly in developing nations such as in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific.

Posted by Matt at 10:06:00 PM

Labels: Temple Construction Costs