Page 8 - Florida Sentinel 9-1-17

Joel Osteen Says Megachurch Didn’t Open Earlier Because Houston ‘Didn’t Ask’
Houston --- The pastor came under fire for not ini- tially opening Lakewood Church to flood victims.
Pastor Joel Osteen can’t seem to get his story straight about why he didn’t offer his 16,800-seat megachurch in Houston as a shelter sooner for those displaced by Hurri- cane Harvey.
During an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday, the head of Lake- wood Church said its doors have “always been open.” Min- utes later, he appeared to re- verse course and admit that the church hadn’t initially en- couraged victims to seek shel- ter there.
“If people were here, they’d
and community centers opened their doors to offer temporary shelter as Harvey pummeled the city earlier this week.
Lakewood Church, how- ever, posted on Sunday that its building was “inaccessible” due to flooding and encour- aged people to seek shelter elsewhere.
After backlash mounted on social media, a spokesman for the church announced Tues- day that it was prepared to shelter displaced people - “once the cities and county shelters reach capacity.”
When asked if he would have done anything differently to avoid the onslaught of criti- cism aimed at him over the last few days, Osteen said he would.
“Yeah, I’m sure we would have done something differ- ently,” Osteen said. But he added, “The fact is I don’t know that we would have opened any sooner, because again there were safety is- sues.”
And he continued to put the onus on city officials, claiming Lakewood Church would have offered shelter had it been asked.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Wow, there’s that building. They’re not using it.’ But we don’t have volunteers,” Osteen said. “We don’t have staff that could get here. We’re all about helping the city whenever we could - if they would have asked us to become a shelter early on, we would have prepared for it.”
PASTOR JOEL OSTEEN
realize there were safety is- sues,” Osteen said.
“We were just being pre- cautious, but the main thing is the city didn’t ask us to be- come a shelter then.”
Dozens of Houston-area churches, mosques, schools
FYI
Middleton High Class Of 1967 Finalizing Plans For 50-Year Reunion
The Middleton High School Class of 1967 will be meeting on Saturday, Sep- tember 9, 2017 at 12 noon. Please be on time.
The class will be finalizing plans for the 50th Reunion. The reunion will be held Sep- tember 15-17, 2017.
The meeting will be held at the Seminole Heights Pub- lic Library, 4711 N. Central Avenue, Tampa, 33603.
If there are questions or concern, please call (813) 514-7357.
Linda Lucia Williams,
is Class President.
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