Joel Osteen has built a reputation for welcoming all. As he likes to say, “I’m for everybody.” God bless him.
Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church, a megachurch in Houston, has told us he’d attend a gay wedding and told the world on the Larry King Live that it’s not his place to judge who’s going to heaven and who isn’t.
These and other media appearances set off a firestorm of accusations that he’s compromising the Word of God. Now, Osteen is dealing with another controversial issue: Islam.
In an interview with Here and Now radio’s Jeremy Hobson Monday, Osteen shared how much his messages resonate with Muslims.
“I have Muslims (who) attend our church and my books sell a lot in Muslim countries as well. You know, I don’t know, I don’t get too deep in those kinds of things, but our ministry is about reaching out to everybody, and so I do and I do have those conversations,” Osteen said.
Osteen went on to share that Lakewood had about 50 Muslims sitting on the front row of at Lakewood Church two weeks ago and said he has “good, good relations with them.
“And I think it’s again, part of our ministry is, you know, our main theme is Jesus says love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as you love yourself,” Osteen said. “And I don’t try to put people in a box—OK, they’re Jewish or they’re Catholic, they’re this or they’re that. I just say, ‘You know what, they’re somebody that God’s put in our path for us to love,’ and that’s our philosophy.”
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