Twitter Floods Millionaire-Megachurch Owner's Inbox Over Harvey Victims

August 29th, 2017 - 1:03 PM EDT by Matt Schimkowitz

40 comments | Contact Newsroom

Joel Osteen wearing a white dress shirt and tie floating above a city smiling.

When you’re worth $40 million, you know a thing or two about wants and needs. On top of that, throw a little dose of Jesus, have a megachurch that used to hold a basketball team, and you’re uniquely equipped to assist the desperate people of Houston, Texas during Hurricane Harvey. Joel Osteen, the millionaire owner of Houston's Lakewood Church and pastor of one of the largest congregations in the world, is one of those people.

But that's not exactly what happened.

On Saturday, August 26th, as Hurricane Harvey made its landfall in Texas, Osteen -- again, the insanely rich owner of a church that used to house the Houston Rockets NBA team and regularly draws about 52,000 attendees a week, -- tweeted his thoughts and prayers to everyone affected by the storm. It seems as though people will just float to safety on his good intentions.


It didn't take long for people online to start taking Osteen to church over this, asking him to do the Christian thing and open the doors to his massive sanctuary. Message after message, people just wanted to know why the millionaire-owner of a house of God that holds more than 16,800 people wasn't offering shelter to the displaced people of Hurricane Harvey.



According to the New York Daily News, Houston officials spent this time attempting to find a space for the 30,000 displaced Texans, which could probably occupy a former-professional basketball stadium.

You’d think that after getting called out for being a pastor that doesn’t help people in need, you’d make some sort of statement about why you weren’t opening your gigantic space to them. Add to that the obviously good press a pastor would receive by showing the type of charity and care that Christianity is known for. But that’s not what happened either.

Later that day, he seemingly tried to address the whole incident in a subtweet, asking his six million followers not to judge people on one season, one mistake. Like, imagine if we judged Jamie Lannister based on one season of Game of Thrones. But the next day, he tweeted again -- though, not about hurricane -- before passing the buck over to the big guy in the sky, God.




Finally, after a surge of criticism that attracted the national media, the Lakewood Church announced it would close its doors because of flooding. “Inaccessible,” the church called it in a Facebook post.

Nearly 17,000 people fill the Lakewood Church in Texas for services.

Of course, the announcement was promptly followed by video clips of the megachurch still standing well above the water line. This leaves one to ask: why wouldn't Joel Osteen open his 17,000-capacity arena to the people he has dedicated his life to helping?




Finally, Osteen and the Church released an official statement on the situation. Two days after this controversy began, Osteen said:

"We have never closed our doors. We will continue to be a distribution center to those in need. We are prepared to house people once shelters reach capacity. Lakewood will be a value to the community in the aftermath of this storm."

Additionally, Lakewood Church spokesman Donald Iloff made a statement, asserting that parts of their massive space were flooded, releasing pictures of flooded areas, explaining why the church didn't open its doors. However, they did say that several hundred people could be housed on the 2nd floor.

Lakewood Church with a few inches of flooding.

It was also around this time that Osteen, his millions of dollars and his ridiculously huge church decided to open its doors to people in need, providing sanctuary to thousands of Houstonians. As it turns out, if Jesus can't talk a pastor into doing the right thing, the Internet can.



Top Comments

Eazy123
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Eazy123

Megachurch pastors make me sick to my stomach. I went to some dumbass leadership seminar that my boss bought tickets to – $200 per person per day and when I get there I realize it's hosted by my local megachurch. Not only that, but the pastor and his "star-studded guests" weren't even there, just televised. So $200 to sit there watching a movie theatre screen for 8 hours and listen to a bunch of "God will give you opportunities to be a better leader/buy my books" crap. If God wanted me to be a better leader, I wouldn't have to pay some con artist $200 for a ticket.

The REAL kicker came near the end of the day when the pastor said something like "It's better to be a poor man financially and rich in spirit than vice versa", THEN had the audacity to claim he was poor financially but rich spiritually. A simple Google search turned up that he makes over $90K a year, and that's not including his book sales, which he won't disclose.

And what really saddens me is that I have not heard a SINGLE bad review of this "experience". I'd love to sit down with them and ask what LEGITIMATE information they pulled from it – not this "God will help you" – I want actual management advice I can use.

I believe in God (for the record), but these followers of this pastor are some of the most brainwashed people I've ever met. It's a racket if there ever was one.

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