On Palm Sunday, Fox & Friends invited three Christian leaders—Pastor Jentezen Franklin, Pastor Todd Wagner and Pure Flix’s Billy Hallowell—to discuss recent Barna Group data that found half of pastors worry about offending congregants with their sermons.
“You do feel pressure, but I do think it’s impossible not to speak to issues that are facing our culture that are so strong,” Franklin said. “You know, many of these issues are seen as political, but they’re really biblical. Pro-life is not political; it’s biblical. Pro-Israel is not political; it’s biblical. Justice and equality is biblical. So I can’t be silent on those issues, and I’m not there for the approval of people. I think that’s something that we need in the pulpits again in America.”
Later, Franklin urged pastors not to let America fall into decay because they feared controversy.
“History records that there was an ancient city that was beautiful and powerful, but it was just destroyed because the watchman on the wall felt like that he didn’t need to worry the people or sound false alarms,” Franklin said. “It was controversial if he said something’s coming that’s dangerous. Someone erected a memorial that said, ‘Here stood a great city that was destroyed by silence.’ If America is destroyed, it’ll be destroyed by the pulpits of America being silent.”
