You’re in college. You’re broke. You gotta pay rent.

But they’re forcing you to pledge for the pastor’s gift.

What are you gonna do?

If it were me, I would say, “Hell, no!”

But OP had better plans. Read and be amused!

I need to pay for the Pastor’s gift when i can barely afford rent? fine, then get your own computer

This happened several years ago, back when I was part of a Christian cult church, and in leadership.

Back when I was 22 and a young and impressionable adult, I was part of the media team for this church.

We were responsible for creating videos and flyers, as well as posting on social media and taking pictures.

This was volunteer work.

OP talks about the church pastor.

But the pastor, we’ll call him Pastor Corruption, was an anal, cold-hearted, dictator of the religious institution who would often give us last minute projects that would keep us up all night in order to make a video to play during service the next day.

We averaged 3-5 hours of sleep per night, but this was while I was in school. So during this time, in order to stay on top of my homework and other projects, I would average closer to 2-3 hours per night.

And tbh, I’m not sure how i survived with only having occasional bouts of suicidal ideation and paranoia or delusions.

Here’s more about him…

Pastor Corruption loved money.

He had a giant, six-bedroom house for himself and his wife only, complete with heated driveways and the latest model cadillac which sat atop of said driveway.

The church building itself was overinflated, which sat close to 1000, but maybe had a congregation of only 400 or so.

And some more…

More than Pastor Corruption loved money, he loved other people’s money.

70% of the sermons were regarding how you needed to give the shirt off your back to the church or else you didn’t love God and were going to hell, which is ironic considering that their accountant had been caught embezzling funds in the past.

This went beyond ‘tithes,’ which was 10% of what you make, and included pledges, fundraisers, giving for church events, and going to retreats that made a profit from the attendees.

Pastor Corruption and his pack of goons (aka associate pastors), who also shamed you for not giving money and being poor, would openly brag about how God blessed them after these rounds of extortion.

The pastor’s birthday is coming up.

Well, one day, it is near Pastor Corruption’s birthday, and his pack of goons decided that the pastor’s car from last year’s model was too old, and he needed a brand new car.

They took a pledge from all the ministry departments to pay for said car.

The minimum pledge you were allowed to make was $300, and the media team was no exception.

OP couldn’t pledge for the gift.

I, being a broke college kid with a minimum-wage part-time job, decided that it was impossible, and I just wasn’t going to pledge anything.

This led to several hour-long lectures and shaming sessions about how I was seen as a leader (I wasn’t seen at all since I was always working behind the scenes LOL), and I needed to set an example.

Finally, I got fed up, and worn down to the point that I confessed that I couldn’t pledge because that would be taking all my rent money.

Finally, she gave in unwillingly.

I lived with some other ‘leaders’ from the church at the time, and shared a room with another girl.

$300 doesn’t seem like a lot now, but at the time for not even having my own space or a place for my bed, this was highway robbery, especially for a broke college kid.

A girl who lived with me, who also was lecturing me, told me just pledge the money anyway, and I can pay rent later.

I was coerced into giving the $300 for Pastor Corruption’s stupid car, and now, he had two brand new Cadillacs sitting in his heated driveway.

But then, her roommate was asking for rent payment already.

Three days after rent was due, the girl who lectured me about pledging comes up, and asks me for the rent money. The conversation basically goes like this:

“I don’t have it yet.”

“What do you mean you don’t have it? I gave you three extra days to figure out something.”

“What am i supposed to do? Pull it out of thin air?”

“Maybe you should be more responsible with your spending.”

“I have spent $2.16 on myself in the last three weeks, and it was to get a coffee so I don’t crash my car while driving because of a lack of sleep…”

“I’ll give you until the end of this week, but you can’t expect us to cover you any longer than that. You are being extremely selfish.”

She thought of a plan.

Now, on top of worrying about juggling projects between school and the church, I need to worry about not getting evicted.

Then, I come up with a plan.

I’ll just pawn my laptop.

My laptop was brand new, since it had just come out recently, and I decided to splurge and buy the latest model when my last 6-year-old laptop took a dump on me a few months before.

I used it for schoolwork, but they had labs I could use on campus that would help me get by.

Imagine how ancient the church’s desktop was.

However, the other thing I used it for was media projects for the church.

You know how Pastor Corruption likes money?

Well, he didn’t like spending money, so the media team had a thirteen-year-old desktop that was overloaded with files which severely slowed down its already laggy performance, and caused it to take several hours to render videos, if they didn’t fail or corrupt.

OP’s laptop was clearly very important for the church.

When I had gotten my laptop, it was fairly decent at rendering large video files in under ten minutes, and had amazing clarity and graphics, so they had convinced me to switch to using my laptop for all things media-related, rather than using the decade old desktop.

I didn’t mind because it didn’t interfere with my schoolwork that much, but all the templates for social media and other video and files were on my laptop now.

Meaning, every week, I was responsible for getting everything updated and handing off the final version of the file to the head of the media team.

The girls I lived with would help me edit these files when we were home, and were the leaders of the media team.

This means that all the recent files of projects they needed were on my laptop, and no backups were made on the church-owned desktop.

She finally paid rent. Woohoo!

I pawned my laptop, got the rent money, and paid the leader without saying anything about how I managed to get the money in a single day.

Saturday night rolls around, which is usually when we worked on the video files we needed for the next day, and they ask me where my laptop is so we can get started.

And the conversation went like…

“I don’t have it.”

“Where is it?”

“I pawned it.”

“What?”

“I pawned it.”

“Why?!”

“I needed to pay you rent. I had no other way to get you the money. I couldn’t afford the pledge, but you graciously gave me an extra three days to pay it, and make up for my rent I used to pay for the pledge…

…This is one of the most valuable items I own, so I figured it was the quickest way to repay you.”

They tried salvaging what they could, but…

At this point, they started freaking out.

They wanted to go get the laptop out right then, but the pawnshop was closed.

So, they rushed to the church and fired up the dino desktop, and desperately try to recreate the videos we needed from scratch.

However, they have no backups since mine was being exclusively used, and the programs and versions that I was using vs what the dino had was completely different (think Adobe CC vs Final Cut Pro).

Nothing was shown in church.

In the end, we didn’t have anything ready in time for service that Sunday morning, and the entire media team got yelled at by Pastor Corruption.

I got double yelled at by the leaders on the media team, but it was worth it to see them panic.

OP had to leave, and the others followed.

Several months later, I ended up leaving the church altogether, and was nice enough to give them all the files of stuff I had on my laptop.

My only regret is being so amicable when I left because *** that place and *** Pastor Corruption.

However, last I heard, most of the people I knew there have left and the church has downsized considerably and moved buildings.

I assume they never got a new desktop for the media team after I left.

This is one of the many outrageous aspects of this church, but it made me never want to deal with organized religion again and now I’m mostly agnostic.

Whoa! That was riveting. Let’s see what other people have to say about it.

This user is demanding some answers. LOL.

While this one shares his personal views.

This user wishes OP to heal.

Haha! Some hilarious suggestions here.

Yup, wild ride indeed!

Don’t mess around with somebody’s money.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.