Wednesday on NBC’s “Today,” Houston’s Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen responded to critics who claimed his church had not done enough to help with those stranded due to the flooding in the city from Hurricane Harvey.

Osteen explained that that location of his church had been prone to flooding and that the city of Houston had not asked for his help in dealing with the crisis. Without the proper warning, Osteen said his church had been unable to prepare for any assistance efforts.

He suggested that social media had been responsible for the “false narrative” that his church was refusing to help.

“I think sometimes, somehow social media can be very powerful and it can create this false narrative, but if you’re sitting in another state and you’re not here — I mean, my niece was stranded right across the street from this building, nowhere to go,” Osteen said. “This building was one foot from flooding. If we didn’t have our floodgates, it would have flooded. It’s easy to say, ‘Wow, there’s this big building. They’re not using it. But, we don’t have volunteers, and we don’t have staff that could get here. So, we’re all about helping the city whenever we could but — if they would have asked to become a shelter early on, we would have prepared for it all and been ready to help. Thank God we can do it now and help the city do it in this way.”

(h/t The Hill)

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