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As Houston struggles to rescue people trapped in unprecedented flood waters, a popular social media narrative has arisen: Joel Osteen, the multimillionaire televangelist, has refused to open the doors of his 16,800-seat megachurch to flood victims.
Osteen, this narrative goes, is the very definition of a hypocrite--preaching love and compassion for the needy yet cruelly turning his back on them in their hour of greatest need.
The only problem? It's not even close to being true.
Though this story has spread like wildfire in both social and mainstream media over the past few days, it has become obvious that Osteen's Lakewood Church was in fact too flood-damaged to initially take in flood victims.
Photos provided to The Houston Chronicle prove this. Lynne Gabriel, a Lakewood member, posted additional pictures inside the church that show the extent of the flooding:
Obviously, no structure with that amount of floodwater inside could possibly take in and provide shelter for thousands of victims, but there is even more to the story: Lakewood was never even asked to host flood victims.
The City of Houston and Harris County Emergency Management have instead been instructing those in need of a place to stay to head to any number of designated shelters. Likely wary of the violence, rape, and other issues at the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina, Houston officials have avoided using massive complexes like Lakewood to house victims. Simply put, as the Superdome demonstrated, it is simply too difficult to manage that many people in one place.
Instead, emergency workers have been pooling supplies at the designated relief areas, which are smaller and easier to manage. Moreover, having multiple relief areas spread around the city makes far more logistical sense than one or two massive sites like a megachurch (which used to be a basketball arena) or a football stadium.
"We were on the phone with the city … they said the shelters are fine at the moment," Lakewood spokesman Don Iloff told FaithWire.com. "We basically said we can put [a few hundred] people on the second level [and the] city said, 'We'll get back with you.' We are prepared to house those people."
In addition, Osteen issued a statement indicating that Lakewood has not turned a single person away who came to the church seeking shelter. However, instead of housing them in the church--which the City of Houston did not request and presumably did not want since Lakewood did not have adequate supplies--church staffers and/or volunteers transported the victims to one of the designated shelters; including one just a few miles away.
"We have never closed our doors," Osteen said. "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."
Photo: Getty Images