Category: Cities church
When worship is interrupted, neutrality is no longer an option
Something important shifted in this country when a Sunday worship service in Minneapolis was interrupted by protesters. It was a deliberate, premeditated intrusion into a space set apart for worship.
This was not spontaneous. There was planning, agreement, and coordinated action. This sort of strategy requires a different posture.
Churches across the country are already alert. Security teams exist for a reason.
For generations, houses of worship were understood to be off-limits.When that boundary is crossed, we are no longer debating policy. We are testing whether restraint still exists and whether consequences still matter.
The line has been drawn. This is not an issue that can be treated casually or observed with indifference. Anyone who refuses to condemn the coordinated disruption of worship — or, worse, excuses it — has already chosen a side.
Moments like this tempt Christians toward outrage or bravado. But Scripture does not train the church for theatrics. It trains the church for endurance, clarity, and readiness.
This incident likely would not have unfolded the same way where I live in Montana. People here are not especially theatrical about conflict. Responsibility is assumed, and consequences are not abstract. Most folks are armed, and in many churches, that includes the pastors.
The reality beneath that observation is sobering. Churches across the country are already alert. Security teams exist for a reason. In a culture shaped by real church shootings, sudden disruption inside a sanctuary is no longer interpreted as mere protest. Provocation introduced into an environment already conditioned for worst-case scenarios increases the risk of irreversible outcomes.
Every police officer will attest that domestic calls are often the most unpredictable and volatile. Not because violence is inevitable, but because instability compresses time and judgment. When emotions are high and trust is thin, even small disruptions can escalate quickly.
Families who live with addiction or severe mental illness understand this intuitively. They remain vigilant not because they want conflict, but because unpredictability makes it necessary. Boundaries are not set because change is guaranteed, but because safety is required.
A space shaped for reverence, restraint, and peace cannot be treated as if it can absorb chaos without consequence.
In such situations, vigilance and preparedness are not aggression. They are necessary parts of responsible stewardship.
Intimidation rarely seeks hardened targets. Visibility, restraint, and hesitation make certain spaces attractive to disruption. Where ambiguity is denied, intimidation fails.
It is difficult to imagine these kinds of coordinated disruptions taking place in historically black churches. Not because those congregations are hostile, but because intimidation has never been indulged there. Those churches were forged when intrusion and disruption were never theatrical.
This is not a call to intimidation in return. It is a call to clarity.
When tensions rise, someone must lower the temperature. If one side refuses, the other is obligated to establish boundaries for safety.
Anyone who has dealt with addiction understands this principle. Change cannot be forced, but boundaries must still be set. Recovery, incarceration, or death often follow prolonged chaos. These are realities repeatedly observed when destructive behavior is indulged.
RELATED: Don Lemon ARRESTED over apparent involvement in church invasion; Jim Acosta whines
Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
The people setting boundaries are not the cause of the crisis. They are responding to it.
Scripture never promises that moments like this will not come. Jesus warned His followers that hostility would arrive. Paul urged believers not to avenge themselves, but to overcome evil with good.
Scripture states that what can be shaken will be shaken, so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:27).
That truth is carried not only in Scripture, but in the church’s hymns.
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to his foes.
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
There is no clenched fist in that stanza. It shows a relief from strain because vigilance has been transferred to someone stronger. Calm is possible, not because the threat is small but because God is not.
So when worship is interrupted and the lines are clearly drawn, the church does not respond with hysteria or silence. It responds with moral clarity, firm boundaries, and settled confidence grounded in an unshakable kingdom. The path for believers is steadiness shaped by truth, restraint, and trust in God rather than reaction to provocation.
The church has never endured because it intimidated back. It has endured because God does not abandon His people.
Don Lemon ARRESTED over apparent involvement in church invasion; Jim Acosta whines
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon put Don Lemon “on notice” after he allegedly joined other radicals in participating in a so-called “ICE Out Action” by storming Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18.
It appeared, however, that the former CNN talking head might avoid consequence for his alleged involvement in the church invasion when, earlier this month, an activist judge refused to issue a warrant for his arrest.
Evidently, that was a surmountable obstacle.
‘A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest!’
Federal agents arrested Lemon on Thursday night. Sources told CBS News that agents from the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations were reportedly involved in the arrest, which apparently came hours after a grand jury was impaneled.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Friday morning that Lemon was arrested at her direction along with three others involved in the church invasion, namely Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy.
A source told the Washington Examiner’s Christian Datoc that Lemon has been charged with conspiracy to deprive rights and with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.
Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, stated that the arrest took place in Los Angeles, where the radical was supposedly covering this weekend’s Grammy Awards.
“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell said in a statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable. There is no more important time for people like Don to be doing this work.”
RELATED: ‘This is First Amendment activity’: Democrats give church-storming mobs their stamp of approval
Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Lemon — who suggested in October that “black people, brown people” should take up arms against ICE — appeared to join other radicals in disrupting a service at Cities Church, video showed. The church was targeted because of a pastor’s reported role at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The leftist interlopers not only screamed and chanted but castigated the pastor and pressed parishioners individually to answer whether they support ICE.
Lemon, who lost his CNN gig amid accusations of sexist comments, seemingly slipped in and out of character as a journalist during the mob action, stating, “There’s nothing in the Constitution that tells you what time you can protest. You can protest at any time. That’s the whole point of it — is to disrupt, is to make uncomfortable. And that’s what they’re doing, and that’s what I believe when I say everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something. You have to make people uncomfortable in these times.”
The former CNN host also lectured lead Pastor Jonathan Parnell after Parnell said the mob action was “unacceptable” and that it was “shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.”
“There’s a Constitution and the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest,” Lemon told Parnell, excusing the mob’s interference and intimidation tactics.
Dhillon later responded to Lemon’s defense of the mob action, noting, “A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice!”
Lemon is reportedly scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday morning.
Liberals who were silent when Blaze News reporter Steve Baker was arrested for covering the Jan. 6 riot are apoplectic over the arrest.
Jemele Hill, a writer for the Atlantic, called the radical’s arrest “horrifying,” adding that “this absolutely cannot stand.”
Jim Acosta, also formerly of CNN, adhered to a similar script, writing, “This is outrageous and cannot stand. The First Amendment is under attack in America!”
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Activist judge who downplayed Don Lemon’s church antics, summoned ICE director donated to pro-illegal-alien group
The Minnesota-based federal judge who declined to issue arrest warrants for Don Lemon and several of the radicals accused of storming into Cities Church on Jan. 18 demanded on Tuesday that acting ICE Director Todd Lyons “appear personally before the Court and show cause why he should not be held in contempt of Court.”
Despite U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz’s portrayal in the liberal media as a conservative-minded and “mild-mannered George W. Bush appointee,” it appears that Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin’s characterization of Schiltz as “just another activist judge” is more apt.
‘Another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans.’
Bill Melugin of Fox News revealed this week that Schiltz is linked to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, a liberal activist outfit that provides free legal representation to illegal aliens, low-income migrants, and so-called refugees in Minnesota and North Dakota.
The ILCM routinely criticizes the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, accusing them of occupation, racism, “Islamophobi[a],” and engaging in “execution-style murders.”
After Schiltz’s name was found among the donors and volunteers listed in the ILCM’s 2019 annual report, the judge — dubbed the “latest hero to the anti-Trump resistance” by Politico — admitted to Fox News Digital that he has “donated for many years to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.”
“I have also donated for many years to Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. I believe that poor people should be able to get legal representation,” added Schiltz, who has served as a delegate at Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party conventions.
The donor to the illegal alien support group noted in a Monday court filing that his “patience is at an end” and ordered Lyons to explain on Friday why he should not be held in contempt for supposedly violating an earlier order.
Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Schiltz indicated that Juan Hugo Tobay Robles, an Ecuadorian national who illegally entered the U.S. in 1999 and was detained by immigration agents on Jan. 6, should have been provided with a bond hearing or released earlier this month.
The Bush judge indicated in his Tuesday order that if Robles was released before the hearing, Lyons would not be required to appear. A lawyer for the Ecuadorian told the Associated Press that his client was released Tuesday afternoon.
“Judge Patrick J. Schiltz is just another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans,” stated DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Does this judge really think Director Lyons should take time out of his day leading ICE to target the worst of the worst criminal illegals including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists into our country to testify at a hearing for one illegal alien’s removal proceedings?”
While Schiltz evidently figured that swift and decisive action was required in the case of Robles, he took an entirely different approach in the case of the radicals who assembled on Jan. 18 for a so-called “ICE Out Action,” then stormed a Christian church in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
After the church invasion, the Trump Justice Department promptly filed a criminal complaint in the District of Minnesota charging eight of the suspected invaders with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.
The DOJ’s pursuit of accountability was frustrated at the outset when Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko — whose wife reportedly works for Minnesota’s anti-ICE attorney general, Keith Ellison — declined to support all but three of the requested arrest affidavits.
After Micko threw up additional roadblocks, the DOJ turned to Schiltz for a review of the magistrate’s no-probable-cause finding in hopes that he might issue the warrants.
In an angry and sarcastic Jan. 23 letter to the Eighth Circuit’s chief judge, Steven Colloton, Schiltz downplayed the church invasion, glossed over the invaders’ intimidation tactics, cast doubt on whether arresting them would deter copycats, emphasized that “there is no emergency,” and noted that if the petition filed by the government seeks an immediate decision, “the petition is frivolous.”
In a separate letter, he suggested there was “no evidence that [Don Lemon and his producer] engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”
Sure enough, Schiltz indicated that he would not issue arrest warrants until conferring with his colleagues — a meeting that was supposed to happen last week but was delayed.
Over the weekend, a three-judge Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel denied the government’s petition to review the magistrate’s refusal to sign the warrants.
While U.S. Circuit Court Judge Steven Grasz, an appointee of President Donald Trump, recognized that the complaint and affidavit “clearly establish probably cause for all five arrest warrants” and that “there is no discretion to refuse to issue an arrest warrant once probable cause for its issuance has been shown,” the government had “failed to establish that it has no other adequate means of obtaining the requested relief.”
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Gregg Jarrett Explains Why Don Lemon Could Still Face Charges
‘Rejecting the charges against Don Lemon smells fishy’
Anti-ICE radical who took credit for the invasion of Minnesota church ARRESTED by feds
Radicals from Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and BLM Twin Cities assembled on Sunday for a so-called “ICE Out Action,” then stormed a Christian church in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Thursday morning that at her direction, Homeland Security Investigations and FBI agents arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, the founder of the Racial Justice Network and former president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, who claimed responsibility for the disruption.
The AG indicated that Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a radical lesbian who has led BLM Twin Cities and worked for the Saint Paul School Board since 2020, was also arrested.
“Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” wrote Bondi.
‘President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship.’
FBI Director Kash Patel indicated that both Armstrong and Allen were arrested for alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon indicated in the immediate aftermath of the radicals’ incursion into Cities Church, which apparently has a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-affiliated pastor, that her office was looking into potential FACE Act violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
“We don’t want to prejudge, but I think it is fair to say that I saw multiple federal criminal incidents yesterday, and there will be charges,” Dhillon told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck Monday. “It’s only a question of when we can get a judge to sign off on arrest warrants and exactly what the charges would be.”
The law prohibits the use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise their First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.
Violations can result in prison time and hefty fines as well as civil lawsuits.
Footage of the church-storming appears to show the mob led by Armstrong blocking the altar, yelling Renee Good’s name, and pressing parishioners individually to answer whether they support ICE. One pair of visibly upset churchgoers can be seen in the video comforting one another while the radicals angrily condemn members of law enforcement.
In one video of the mob action, Armstrong apparently yells, “Someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents. Think about what we experienced. The murder of Renee Good at the hands of ICE. A Venezuelan national shot by ICE.”
Armstrong references a pair of individuals who were shot while allegedly attacking federal agents, then yells, “How dare you claim to be a pastor of God? … You are involved in evil in our community,” video appears to show.
“President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Sunday. “The Department of Justice has launched a full investigation into the despicable incident that took place earlier today at a church in Minnesota.”
Bondi suggested that there are more arrests to come.
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