On Sunday morning, Gregg Matte, senior pastor at Houston's First Baptist near Memorial Park, said he returned from sabbatical a week early because he believed the megachurch's "sheep and the shepherd needed to be together" in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl. In Southern Baptist churches across Texas, Matte and other evangelical pastors described how their faith helped them navigate the storm that crashed into Texas last Monday. The congregants prayed for Houston's government and for CenterPoint to bring power back to the more than 400,000 still waiting to come online.
"We want to pray for electricity to be restored. We're not praying for power to be restored. We got power. His name's Jesus." Matte said at the church's main Loop Campus, while two of its four locations remain closed after the storm. "We’ve always got power. But we are praying for electricity to be resorted, for wisdom for our leaders as well. City leaders, CenterPoint leaders, all those folks that are having to make all these decisions."
The SBC leaders statewide also denounced the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at his Saturday rally in western Pennsylvania. Matte thanked God for protecting Trump's life in what many Christians considered a sign of divine intervention, before Matte stressed a seemingly apolitical message of ...
