Multi-millionaire pastor, Joel Osteen has defended his decision not to open the doors of his Lakewood church to Hurricane Harvey evacuees earlier on Tuesday.

Busloads of Texans arrived at his 17,000-seat Houston on Tuesday after he announced that its doors were open following supposed interior flooding that kept stranded people out.


'Our number one priority is safety - this building flooded back in 2001,' he told KHOU. 'There was six to eight feet of water in the main auditorium.'

He told the outlet that over the weekend the church put up new flood gates and the water was just 'one foot from coming over'.


'So it was very close to being another disaster here,' he added. 'We have to have people here - our volunteers, our staff, they have problems too, they have challenges too. It's hard for them to get out.'

Responding to criticism, he said: 'Our goal is to help people and sometimes people try to put out a false narrative - they don't know you, they don't know the situation.'

Osteen said the city had asked his church to be a distribution center.

He explained: 'When the mayor said "we need more shelter", we said "man, let's go, we can do this."

'At the time he told us "let's do a distribution center", you're asking us to be a command center... anything we can do.'