Celebrity Pastor, Joel Osteen, has received major backlash on social media for not opening up his church earlier as a shelter for Hurricane Harvey victims.
Nice of @JoelOsteen to open his 16,000 seat mega church in Houston to floor victims. Lol jk he’s not doing that.
— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) August 28, 2017
Houston’s Joel Osteen has a net worth over $50m and a church that holds 16,800 but this is all he’s offering. pic.twitter.com/rmhdWK6ZAO
— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) August 28, 2017
Where’s Joel Osteen? His church in Houston holds 16,800, and he has plenty of money. Open the doors and help people! Well, guess not eh!
— philip harris (@pharris830) August 28, 2017
Osteen has since opened up the megachurch, which can hold up to 16,800 people. Osteen appeared on TODAY to make a statement about why it took him two days to open the church, instead of opening it immediately.
Osteen explained “I think if people were here they’d realize there were safety issues, this building had flooded before, and so we were just being precautious”
Osteen also explained that they didn’t open up the church earlier because the city didn’t need him too.“If we needed to be a shelter, we would have certainly been a shelter when [the city] first asked, but once they filled up — never dreamed we’d have this many displaced people — they asked us to become a shelter and we said, ‘Hey, we’d love to be a shelter’.”
The church has now received thousands of donations including medical supplies, baby food, diapers ect. There are currently 300 hurricane victims taking shelter inside the church.
11 people have died since the storm struck southern Texas, affecting mainly the city of Houston. The Weather Channel has said “This may end up being one of the worst flood disasters in U.S. history.”
If you’d like to donate to victims of the hurricane, make sure the money you’re donating is actually making a difference. Click here for a list of worthy organizations to donate to.
