Within Florida megachurch culture, there are many libertine Southern Baptist Churches that would include Church of the Glades and David Uth’s FBC Orlando. The latter of which has come under fire in the past for supporting homosexuality and this church also received massive PPP funds during Covid.
Recently, it was announced that FBC Orlando would be hosting TPUSA Faith’s Make Heaven Crowded Tour, which is a series of revivals that are taking place all across America at various locations, many of which are churches. Evidently, several at FBC Orlando took umbrage with the church allowing its campus to be used for the revival.
Baptist News Global broke the initial story:
That reportedly is what led to an internal staff conflict at First Baptist, where Chris Ogden, pastor of the Horizon West campus, was put on leave and another staff member reportedly resigned…Ogden appears in a video posted to YouTube Feb. 14 in which he apologizes to the congregation for opposing the leadership of the church’s three senior pastors in a Feb. 3 staff meeting.
The video has since been scrubbed from YouTube. Per BNG, Ogden said the following:
In Ogden’s apology video, he says he “inappropriately spoke out against the decision of the senior pastors and in doing so I caused a lot of hurt and disappointment and confusion.” Although he does not name that “decision,” church insiders have confirmed to BNG that it was about the TPUSA tour stop.
“I want to ask your forgiveness just as I have asked forgiveness from our senior pastors as well,” he says. “What I did was not appropriate and I am submitting to a process now that is designed to build trust and restore relationship both with the senior pastors of our church and also with our personnel committee.”
During the Sunday sermon, David Uth announced the event would be hosted this Sunday. Uth stressed that it was not about politics but about Jesus.
The Orlando date is now TBD on the tour’s website. Online chatter has suggested that the reaction of the congregation to the forced apology of Ogden led to this decision.
Make Heaven Crowded
TPUSA launched its Make Heaven Crowded tour which is a nationwide revival which has a list of speakers and tour dates. As seen above, major churches like Prestonwood Baptist (Jack Graham) and Harvest Church (Greg Laurie) are hosting the event while their lineup has featured a variety of speakers: Lucas Miles of Nfluence Church, Allen Jackson of World Outreach Church and TBN, singer Danny Gokey, Erika Kirk, Riley Gaines, Eric Metaxas, Bryce Crawford, the women from Girls Gone Bible, and Greg Laurie. The speakers vary by location with many of the host churches having their pastors participate.
It should be noted the theological egalitarianism that is self-evident with a revival prominently featuring female speakers and egalitarian pastors like Lucas Miles, who co-pastors with his wife. This also applies to the revival sites themselves. The Awaken Church network, known for Jurgen Matthesius, is rife with husband-wife pastor combos.
The tour is sponsored by Preborn, which is a major Blaze Media sponsor; ACE Scholarships, and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, the Zionist organization that pushed the ADL adjacent “Christ is King” as “hate-speech” study last year during Lent.
Overall, the TPUSA Faith project is perhaps well-intended but is theologically compromised by egalitarianism, much like TPUSA, which hosts women’s leadership conferences, but not anything specifically for men. It is clear that they need better theology, though on the bright side, James Lindsay is uninvolved.
Conclusion
FBC Orlando is a politically squishy SBC megachurch, which after having taken a stand by hosting a TPUSA Faith event, they caved to the pressure of their congregants. FBC Orlando compromised on many of the social issues TPUSA fights against. Their elder, Danny de Armas, celebrated the diversity within their church, which included gays, fornicators, pro-abortion congregants, and illegals. That a theologically shallow church caved under the pressure should be unsurprising since they have had a long history of compromising to the culture.
