A Right-Wing Nut, A Leftist Mob & an LGBTQ Reporter: What Cities Church Is Teaching Us

Описание: One day, a right-wing nut pastor, a leftist mob, and an LGBTQ reporter all went to church together. Do you hear how lazy that sounds? That's exactly the problem.

When Operation Pull Up—led by Reverend Nakeema Levy Armstrong—showed up at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota to confront Pastor David Easterwood, who also serves as the acting ICE field office director, the American church had an opportunity. Instead, we failed. Pastors, scholars, and Christian journalists on both sides jumped to conclusions, pushed agendas, and slapped labels on everyone involved without taking time to pray, seek God, or search for facts.

This video doesn't pick a side. It examines what really happened, what Scripture actually says, and what it reveals about the deeper fracture running through the American church—the Christ collision between our political identities and our kingdom identities, between our comfort and our calling, between our Sunday declarations and our Monday decisions.

We walk through Pastor Jonathan Parnell's response, the concerns with Operation Pull Up's approach, and the alarming reactions from the congregation—holding each accountable to Scripture while extending grace. We examine biblical precedent for disruption in worship from Jesus clearing the temple to Paul being beaten in synagogues, and ask the harder question: Are we so American in our arrogance that we believe we could never be the misinformed religious culture that needs to be confronted?

This video also includes a public call for Pastor Jonathan Parnell, Pastor David Easterwood, and Reverend Nakeema Levy Armstrong to sit down together—privately and then publicly—to model for the watching church and world what it looks like when Christians disagree passionately but refuse to let the world's tactics of division have the final word.

What does Scripture demand of us regarding the immigrant and the sojourner? How do we hold one another accountable when our vocations conflict with our faith? How do we protest injustice without becoming the injustice we oppose? How do we maintain the sanctity of worship while remaining prophetically responsive to the cries of the oppressed?

These are the questions we should be asking. It's time to refuse lazy labels, prioritize relationship before exposure, become students of Scripture on the issues that divide us, welcome disruption as an invitation to examination, and model reconciliation before a watching world.

Cities Church was a symptom, not the disease. The real crisis is one of spiritual formation—and the reconciliation we keep avoiding.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.