Joel Osteen: Hey, my reputation is in Gods hands & he can take care of that
As we discussed earlier this week, Pastor Joel Osteen was widely criticized online and around the country for failing to open his church doors to Hurricane Harvey victims. Osteen eventually opened Lakewood Church’s doors… days after Houston had five feet of rain dumped on them in 24 hours. Osteen has spent the last half of this week trying to clean up his PR, giving interviews to the Today Show and Entertainment Tonight. He told Today that he didn’t open Lakewood’s doors earlier because the city didn’t ask him too: “If we needed to be a shelter, we certainly would’ve been a shelter right when they first asked.” Do you know how many churchs and mosques and temples just opened their doors without being asked? A lot.
Osteen also talked to Entertainment Tonight, giving them an exclusive tour of Lakewood Church’s emergency operations and coming close to admitting that yeah, he should have done more in the first days. He said in part:
His reputation: “I really believe that if people were in my shoes, they would have done the same thing. When the building is clear, when it’s safe, we can start taking people. That’s what we have done for 60 years. We love helping people and that’s what our message is all about…I don’t spend any energy on the Twitter universe or social media. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I just don’t put any energy into it. I mean, life is too short to put energy into negative emotion and I feel at peace because we did the right thing. Hey, my reputation is in God’s hands and he can take care of that. We’re going to continue to help people.”
The building had flooded before, in 2001: “You know, it depends on what day that is. I think another thing that people don’t understand — it could flood. That street could flood and in 14 hours it can be down. … So, you can’t go by that. I have video of it flooded on either Saturday night or Sunday night, I can’t remember. But, you know, it can go down in 14, 15 hours.”
He should have prepared earlier: “Knowing what I know now, I would have put staff in here before the storm hit, put beds, do everything we could to be prepared. When it catches us by surprise, even when the cities overflow and, you know, nobody dreams that shelters will overflow. … Hindsight, it’s 20/20, but we got to move forward and do what we’ve done for the last 60 years and take care of these people, help them rebuild their lives, bring hope to their spirits and let them know that they can come out of this stronger than before.”
I understand the idea of not-knowing how the flood was going to pan out ahead of time and wanting to wait to see what the immediate damage was. But as everyone pointed out on Twitter – by Sunday, Osteen knew that Lakewood had sustained minimal damage, and it still took him more than 48 hours to open the church’s doors, and he only did so after being Twitter-shamed AND he had to asked by the city to do so. So Christian, y’all.
Meanwhile, Tyler Perry has made a $1 million donation to relief efforts and he’s allocating $250K of that money in particular to Lakewood Church. Perry said: “I know that there’s been some controversy about Joel Osteen and him not opening the doors of the church. Joel and Victoria are amazing people — there’s no way that they would lock people out of the church or not let people seek shelter. There were some safety concerns, and I spoke to them on the phone, and it all made perfect sense to me. So, before you just run and judge someone real quick, you need to know the whole circumstances.” Perry is also allocating another $250K to Beyonce’s pastor, Rudy Rasmus.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Today.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmbmxoaIF3e8monKWXn6jBprHNmJ%2BesY%2BixqC%2BxKmsrZmknryvq8islqKmj5y8pb%2B%2BoZinnKOUtaarwpqlmKyRoLKgr8CrnJinlpTBqa3TaA%3D%3D