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All churches I have gone to make their finances very transparent. While some of it goes to the higher ups the vast majority goes to funding day to day operations and mission work. My church regularly will help prepare meals for the homeless and impoverished on Christmas, goes to "third world" countries to help get them clean water, medicine, and food. No church I have gone to ever said this is needed for salvation, they just say that it helps them do good things in the world and spread gods love.
I've definitely had experiences with both. I've seen churches that used the money to feed the poor. I've also been to churches who said you would "suffer" if you didn't tithe at least 10% of your paycheck and that never did any kind of community outreach - they would just spend the money on expansions for the church building and bonuses for the pastor.
So it's definitely a mixed bag
not to mention the food for the poor, the stuff for clean water etc... are all just loss leaders. The goal is to proselytize. either directly to the poor... or, more likely, to brag about how good they are. usually both.