By\u00a0Ian M. Giatti,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police say an overly enthusiastic churchgoer was removed by security during a Sunday morning service at a Texas megachurch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The disruption occurred March 15 at the 11 a.m. worship service in the main sanctuary of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, a suburb north of Dallas. A man, described by one churchgoer as a possible \u201cprotester\u201d and by others as overly excited, began \u201cshouting\u201d during a\u00a0sermon\u00a0by Pastor Jack Graham on \u201cAmerica, Israel and War in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Linda Casey, who told The Christian Post that she has attended Prestonwood since 2000, said at one point during the service Graham began preaching on \u201cIsrael, and the Jews being God’s chosen people,\u201d when an unidentified man disrupted the sermon before he was escorted out by three members of the security team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nMan reportedly shouted, ‘God bless America, God bless Israel’ before being removed from service<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was not sure if he was armed or not, but Pastor Jack Graham was pulled away from the podium momentarily amidst the chaos,\u201d Casey told CP on Monday. \u201cBefore he returned to finish the sermon, I bolted out to find my son, who was in children’s church.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Casey said that uncertainty about the man\u2019s intentions and whether he was acting alone prompted her quick exit from the sanctuary. “At this point, we didn’t know if the man had an accomplice or was alone. I was not waiting around for a potential shootout or bomb threat,\u201d she said. \u201cThe whole ordeal was scary.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A person familiar with the matter told CP on Monday that the incident occurred as Graham was sharing a report on the number of people coming to Christ in Iran. That\u2019s when an \u201cexcited young man [who] looked Persian started to walk down the aisle\u201d towards Graham and \u201casked if he could say something.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The young man \u2014 who was reportedly yelling out \u201cGod Bless America\u201d and \u201cGod Bless Israel\u201d \u2014 was \u201cjust excited to share his faith and didn\u2019t realize that was an inappropriate manner to do such,\u201d the source told CP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Graham declined the man\u2019s request to speak, security \u201cpounced\u201d and removed him from the sanctuary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another churchgoer who attended the 11 a.m. service also confirmed the incident to CP, stating that the man was quickly escorted out as Graham was ordered to stand farther back on the stage until the man was outside the sanctuary. They added that, while they weren’t afraid of anything bad happening, the man hadn’t picked the best timing for that kind of exuberant outburst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While one source downplayed the incident as \u201cnothing,\u201d Casey said that\u2019s not how she saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“When security is pulling the pastor away from the podium for his own safety, alarms went off in my head signaling danger,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not clear whether anyone else left the sanctuary during the incident, but Casey said most congregants remained calm and stayed seated. “The faithful sheep in the audience were waiting on direction from the pulpit,\u201d said Casey, who added the police were already \u201coutside with lights on\u201d when she exited the church with her son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was not going to be a sitting duck,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spokesman for Plano police told CP the unidentified man was a \u201cnon-church member\u201d who was there with his wife and became disruptive by \u201cagreeing loudly with what the pastor was talking about and was animated in doing so, making other churchgoers uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Members of Prestonwood\u2019s security team spoke with the man, and a \u201cdecision was made to have officers respond to issue a criminal trespass warning,\u201d Plano Police Officer J.D. Minton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was no actual disturbance or physical altercation, but his verbal outbursts, even though supporting the pastors\u2019 words, were deemed disruptive to other worshipers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Casey is relieved that no one was hurt in the incident, one thing that alarmed her was that she felt the man “was not going willingly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The incident occurred just days after federal prosecutors\u00a0announced\u00a030 more people had been indicted for their alleged involvement in an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a St. Paul, Minnesota, church service on Jan 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\u00a0official indictment, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, claimed that the protesters engaged in \u201ca coordinated take-over style attack\u201d on Cities Church in St. Paul, including \u201cacts of oppression, intimidation, threats, interference, and physical obstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By\u00a0Ian M. Giatti, Police say an overly enthusiastic churchgoer was removed by security during a Sunday morning service at a Texas megachurch. The disruption occurred March 15 at the 11 a.m. worship service in the main sanctuary of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, a suburb north of Dallas. A man, described by one churchgoer as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[117,179],"coauthors":[475],"class_list":{"0":"post-11163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-faith","8":"tag-church","9":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11165,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11163\/revisions\/11165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11163"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=11163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}