A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 29

This is the eighth year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: Church officers plead guilty in theft case.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — A northeastern Pennsylvania man and woman have pleaded guilty in the theft of more than $174,000 while they were serving as officers of a northeastern Pennsylvania church.

Forty-five-year-old Cherie White pleaded guilty Wednesday in Luzerne County Court to theft and access device fraud involving funds taken from Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Fifty-two-year-old Keith White pleaded guilty to access device fraud and conspiracy to commit theft.

The Rev. Paul Metzloff called Kingston police in August to report that the church was nearly broke. Police said after examining bank records that the Whites had stolen the money since 2010.

Okay, follow me now. The Flippin Church of God located in Flippin, Oregon has a problem: It’s broke. It seems the former pastor had been having an affair with the church treasurer and the congregation woke up one Sunday to discover the couple had fled the country along with several hundred thousand dollars of the church’s money.

All eyes turn toward the young assistant pastor Rev. Sarah Poltine who just recently graduated from seminary. What to do? The church is historic. Families have been ‘hatched (baptism), matched (wedding), and dispatched (funeral)’ for decades.

Pondering the problem one night, Sarah takes a midnight walk through the quiet streets of Flippin, praying to God for guidance. She ends up at the church. Nothing but silence from the heavens.

Then she spies a light inside the church. Odd. She’d made sure to lock the doors when she’d left earlier that day. But the front door is unlocked.

Sarah stealths inside. She sniffs the air. Strange odor. Follows her nose down into the basement where she discovers Laird, the church janitor, smoking a joint! Busted he freaks out. Please don’t fire me! I gotta keep this job! Got a one-eyed three legged dog needs caring for.

Sarah calms him down. If Laird promises never to smoke the evil weed inside the church again, she won’t say or do anything.

They make their way upstairs sitting side-by-side in the pew and Sarah starts to unload her concerns about the church’s financial state to Laird, the pressure on her to figure out what to do to keep the church afloat.

Laird snorts. Maybe we should start selling pot.

In fact, Oregon is one of 8 states where it is legal to sell and consume marijuana, but Flippin is located in the eastern part of the state and in an extremely conservative county. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Cutting to the chase, Sarah makes her pitch to the church elders: In order to keep our church alive and pay off our debt, we should start selling marijuana. Laird will be Chief Agriculturalist. His stoner friends will be Sales Agents. And there’s this. Boom! The doors slam open as Bill Levin, Grand Poobah (actual title) of the First Church of Cannibis will be our Technical Adviser.

Bill’s garrulous, bombastic personality is completely strange to this quiet religious community. Between the emerging pot culture for the church’s sales of Holy Smokes weed and Bill’s evangelical zeal for a spliff lifestyle, the community is transformed per The Deity Dozen:

The Deity Dozen are a set of guidelines put forth by the Church.

1. Don’t be an asshole. Treat everyone with Love as an equal.
2. The day starts with your smile every morning. when you get up, wear it first.
3. Help others when you can. Not for money, but because it’s needed.
4. Treat your body as a temple. Do not poison it with poor quality foods and sodas.
5. Do not take advantage of people. Do not intentionally hurt anything.
6. Never start a fight… only finish them.
7. Grow food, raise animals, get nature into your daily routine.
8. Do not be a “troll” on the internet, respect others without name calling and being vulgarly aggressive.
9. Spend at least 10 minutes a day just contemplating life in a quiet space.
10. Protect those who can not protect themselves.
11. Laugh often, share humor. Have fun in life, be positive.
12. Cannabis, “the Healing Plant” is our sacrament. It brings us closer to ourselves and others. It is our fountain of health, our love, curing us from illness and depression. We embrace it with our whole heart and spirit, individually and as a group.

Of course, local civic figures, religious leaders, and out in out moralists are outraged by the high times at the Flippin Church of God, so there’s your opposition. Plus this wrinkle: The Rev. Sarah and Bill develop a budding (pun intended) romantic relationship.

There you go: My twenty ninth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

For other posts in my A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017) series, go here.