When you are volunteering for a church you sometimes experience things that you would not expect.

What would you do if the leadership team at the church expected you to donate money towards the pastor’s birthday gift, even if you didn’t have the money to pay rent?

That is what happened to the young volunteer in this story, so she ended up selling her laptop to come up with the money, which meant she couldn’t create the media displays for the Sunday service anymore.

Check it out.

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.

Back when i was 22 and a young, impressionable, young 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 etc.

This was volunteer work but the pastor, we’ll call him pastor corruption, was a 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.

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

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.

It is sad how many churches are like this.

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.

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.

Me, being a broke college kid with a minimum wage part time job, decided that 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 i confessed that i couldn’t pledge because that would be taking all my rent money.

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.

Welp, I was coerced into giving the $300 for pastor corruption’s stupid car and now he had two brand new Cadillac’s sitting in his heated driveway.

Three days after rent was due, the girl who lectured me about pledging comes up and asks me for the rent money.

What did they expect?

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”

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.

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

You know how pastor corruption likes money?

Why am I not surprised.

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.

It took several hours to render videos, if they didn’t fail or corrupt.

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.

Apparently the new car was more important than the media files.

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.

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

“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.”

At this point they start freaking out, they want to go get the laptop out right then, but the pawn shop was closed.

They will never get it done on time.

So, they rush to the church and fire 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.

The programs and versions that I was using vs what the dino had was completely different (think adobe cc vs final cut pro).

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.

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 screw that place and screw pastor corruption.

Good to hear they are failing.

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.

Wow, that sounds like an awful place!

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

This commenter makes a good point.

This is so true.

This person would have been much worse.

Most members are good people.

How is this selfish exactly?

I’m so glad she got out of this weird cult.

Nobody should pressure congregants this way.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.