A new Instagram account is going viral, and it’s calling out famous pastors for wearing expensive shoes, some of which cost as much as $4,000.

The Instagram account PreachersNSneakers was just launched recently and only has 31 posts, but it already has over 135,000 followers as of this writing. The account was founded by someone who uses the pseudonym Tyler Jones, and he explained that it began as a joke at first. He added that the account has since raised questions about how the money donated to these pastors’ church is being used.

The account caused Pastor Chad Veach of Zoe Church in Los Angeles to change his Instagram handle after it showed him with a backpack from Gucci that goes for $1,980 and Rhude trackpants that cost $794. Before changing his handle, Chad claimed that he had not paid for any of the things he was wearing in the post’s photo, but he has since deleted his comment.

“That’s when I was like oh, this just got way more real than I ever intended,” Tyler said. “I’m not trying to cause a division; me and him both believe inherently the same things. I just think that if you’re in church you should know how your pastor is spending the money.”

Tyler describes himself as an evangelical Christian who has been buying and reselling sneakers for the past few years. One of his posts shows Pastor John Gray of Relentless Church in Greenville, South Carolina wearing Air Yeezy 2 pure platinum sneakers alongside a post where it is shown that a pair of them sold for $3,721. In another post, North Carolina megachurch Pastor Steve Furtick can be seen wearing Jordan 1’s, which sold for $968 in one auction.

“This does not compute. How is this guy wearing these kicks?” Tyler asked himself.

He went on to say that he has gotten some surprising responses from pastors about the account.

“I’ve had hundreds of pastors and people in ministry message me like ‘Thank you, keep doing what you’re doing. It’s prompting a discussion around what leadership and stewardship look like within the church,'” Tyler said. “I also have this whole other component of the secular, questioning or atheist community that are messaging me like, ‘Dude, this is hilarious. It’s crazy the money that these preachers make.'”

“It’d be one thing if they were to come out and explain, like, ‘this is why I bought this pair of Off-White Chicago 1s, because I feel strongly about how they’re made.’ If you could get a congregation to somehow agree that their money going to those $2,500 pair of kicks was good for the kingdom of God then I can’t have argument with that,” he continued. “I definitely don’t want to say you should fund sweat shops. But I also think there’s got to be a balance between that and wearing Burberry sneakers.”

Tyler concluded by saying that if Jesus was alive today, he would wear “open-toe Birkenstocks on a standard day.”

“Then maybe if he was hanging around the house he’d be wearing some Air Max 1s that he bought from the outlet,” he said.

What are thoughts on these pastors spending thousands of dollars on sneakers? Let us know in the comment section.

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