Paying LDS Tithing Online

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. LDS or Mormon) and recently discovered how to pay tithing online automatically. It was no hassle for me, the ward clerks, or anyone else. Looking back on the months since I started, paying tithing electronically and automatically has been the most simplifying and rewarding tithing decision I have ever made.

Setting up automatic online payments for my tithing was far easier than I thought, but took a little bit of research. I started at www.lds.org, eventually found their tech forums tech.lds.org, and found my way to a website designed to help LDS Clerks answer this question: ldsclerks.com/index.php?title=Electronic_Donations

You can pay your tithing online through your regular bill pay with your bank or other service. For example, I use bill pay from Chase bank and it works just fine. Before you set up bill pay, you need to send a "Bill Payment Service Electronic Donation Information" form to church headquarters. You need your member record number to complete the form and to set up bill pay as well. You can find this number on your temple recommend or on an individual ordinance summary. Your clerk can easily get you this, if needed. The form is found on the clerk website I mentioned.

I scanned and emailed it to church headquarters at donations@lds.org . You can also mail or fax it to them at the address/number on the form. Since my goal was to keep things electronically as much as possible, I emailed mine.

Then I set up bill pay just as I would with any regular bill. The church's form emphasizes the importance of using the exact right payee name for each type of donation. You use a different payee name for tithing, for fast offerings, for missionary, for perpetual education fund, and for other. I also made sure to make sure to use my member record number (including the zeros and dashes) as the payee account number in bill pay. The form also emphasizes importance of using your member number for the payee account number so they know each the donation is from you specifically.

Once I added the payee, I had all the options I would with any other bill pay transaction. Since I had one donation that I intended to pay the week before, I did a one-time transaction. Then, since I know the amount of each paycheck I receive, I set up a recurring transaction for every two weeks for tithing. I also set up a recurring monthly transaction for fast offering.

In the months since, I have watched the donations automatically pay just like my bills do. One of the really nice aspects of this service is that headquarters sends you a monthly summary of your donations, so you are sure it was received. I think this is usually mailed, but after I asked in an email to donations@lds.org they started sending mine by email. Apparently, they even send a year end summary for your taxes.

I have learned that when you use this service your local ward does not see your donations. Some people like that; it doesn't really matter much to me. This does mean that at tithing settlement the bishop will have no record of your online donations. If you think about it, the same thing happens to people that move. The new bishop never sees the old ward's donation records. If the situation still bothers you, you can bring your monthly statements from headquarters. However, from what I have read, the bishop does not need it and won't ask for it.

At tithing settlement, when your records show zero or very small amounts, you just tell the bishop that the records are accurate because you have been paying to headquarters. This is not uncommon either for people who have paid tithing in kind (i.e. stocks etc.) to the church. Bishops understand this and can easily determine a full tithe without seeing all the records one by one. Personally, I believe the records are provided to us more for our own benefit.

I have also learned that if I want funds to go to a specific missionary from the ward, I need to do this manually through the ward. If I want my fast offerings to stay locally available to the ward, I need to do this manually through the ward. But since tithing gets transferred by the wards to headquarters anyway, I have never had a need to do tithing manually and locally.

All in all, paying tithing online has been a wonderful discovery for me. I have read in the tech.lds.org forums and other places about some people who believe that you should not pay tithing online because you don't consciously and painfully think about it each time and really feel the depth of the sacrifice. I respect their opinions, and if that works for them then more power to them. That method does not provide any value to me and historically has set me up for problems and regrets.

Personally, I do not believe that obedience and sacrifice in terms of tithing needs to painful or feel difficult. I do not believe we should give tithing grudgingly in any way. If we do, I believe it profits us nothing. I believe that the spirit of giving tithing should be happily, easily, anxiously engaged in a good cause and eager to simply obey what God has asked of us and enjoy the blessings.

When I think of those who I have loved most, like my family, giving has never seemed like a sacrifice. It has almost always been easy and very willingly done. In those cases, the thought that giving was a sacrifice has always seemed more like an insignificant afterthought. I feel the same about paying tithing online.

Reflecting back, I often felt hypocritical before because I was always current on all my bills but rarely on my tithing. Without doubt, the difference was because the bills were automatically paid via bill pay. I struggled to feel like I was really putting or paying God first. Now, my money is where my mouth is. My tithing is the first automatic electronic payment to post after my paycheck. I pay God first and it feels good to me.

I also used to feel slightly guilty when I would forget and fall behind in paying tithing. Whenever I realized I was behind in paying tithing, only then would I feel the crunch and slight resentment at tithing because I had thought that extra money in my account was available as my own. Feeling bad about my poor record of paying it is a thing of the past for me. I find that since it is planned and comes out on schedule, it is far easier to plan everything else financially without the temptation or honest mistake of counting tithing as your own.

I do not miss feeling bad about my tithing habits. The peace of conscience is very real and measurable. When I go to church, or come home afterward, or stop to think how I'm living my life, or if my wife asks, I don't have to stop and wonder if my tithing is current - I know it is!