06/13/2026
🚨 THE BRUTAL COST OF TENT MINISTRY: When Your Altar Collapses and Pharisees Cheer
Unless you’ve been called to tent ministry, you cannot possibly understand how devastating this is. My heart is shattered.
Yesterday evening in Moneta, Virginia (just outside Roanoke), during EastLake Community Church’s 20th anniversary outdoor service, a large tent collapsed in sudden, violent winds. One precious brother in Christ was killed, and 22 others were injured, some critically.
My prayers and deepest love go out right now to Pastor Troy Keaton, Pastor H.B. Charles Jr., the entire East Lake family, every injured person fighting for healing, and especially the grieving family who lost their loved one. I cannot imagine the pain and trauma of that moment.
I have walked this road. When my own tents were destroyed in the past, I have posted those pictures so you can see it with your own eyes.
Unless the Lord has specifically called you to tent ministry, it is almost impossible to grasp what happens in your soul when the tent goes down. It is not just vinyl and poles. It is an altar. It is where the Gospel goes forth under the open sky. It is where souls get saved, bodies healed, the addicted delivered, abundant miracles and families restored. When it collapses, something inside you breaks.
And just like clockwork, when it happened to us, the Pharisees showed up. Some of the same shallow, cruel, self-righteous comments I’m already seeing online about what happened in VA last night, were said about us back then: “Well, the judgment of God finally caught up with them.” “Maybe they shouldn’t have been out there in the first place.” “God must be trying to tell them something.”
Let me say this how I am feeling it right now. In Luke 13:1-5, people came to Jesus assuming that when tragedy struck others, it must have been because they were worse sinners than everyone else. Some Galileans had been killed by Pilate. Eighteen people died when the tower in Siloam fell on them. The religious crowd immediately concluded, “They must have deserved it. That was God’s judgment.” But Jesus answered: “Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay… Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay…”
Jesus did not say it was targeted judgment for their personal sin. He turned the moment into a call for everyone to repent, because we live in a fallen world where towers fall, tents collapse, and storms come without warning.
Matthew 5:45 reminds us that our Father “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Ecclesiastes 9:11 says “time and chance happeneth to them all.” Romans 11:33 declares His ways are “past finding out.”
Not every storm is a thunderbolt of wrath aimed at specific people. We don’t always understand. We are not God. When my own tents went down, I didn’t understand, but looking back, I can clearly see how God’s hand covered me, my family, and our team. Lives were spared. The ministry was not destroyed. What the enemy meant for evil, God turned for good and for greater dependence on Him.
That same God is with EastLake Community Church right now. To every person tempted to post a shallow, judgmental comment right now, stop. Repent of that spirit. The body of Christ is supposed to be known for compassion, not condemnation. “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged” (Matthew 7:2).
My heart is broken today. Please join me in praying fervently for Pastor Troy Keaton, Pastor H.B. Charles Jr., the EastLake family, the injured, and the precious family who now mourns. The tent may have come down…but Jesus never fails.
Tonight, in Mt. Holly, NC, I will once again stand under a big gospel tent and preach the Word. No matter how much heartbreak has come with tents, when it is your calling, you simply can’t stop going back to where your heart has been from the beginning.
