Joel Osteen keeps attracting parishioners to his megachurch — even when no one is allowed to attend service there in person due to the spreading coronavirus pandemic.
This past weekend, Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen Ministries reached “close to” 4.63 million people online, according to the group’s in-house digital manager. That tally, which is not a final number, marks a new record across social channels for Joel’s giant congregation.
A week earlier, Osteen had set what was then a new internal record, reaching 4.51 million people online. That service marked the first that was online-only due to this whole COVID-19 catastrophe.
We’ll save you some math: This past weekend, the Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen Ministries drew 120,000 more viewers than they did over the previous one.
Hell, we’ve all got a few extra reasons to pray right now.
The March 14/15 service shattered the church’s previous record of 4.17 million viewers, which came in November 2019 when Kanye West’s traveling Sunday service visited Osteen’s house of worship.
Setting Kanye and the coronavirus aside, online viewing for Osteen’s church had been around 2 million people. It rose a bit from there when Lakewood added Roku last summer and Apple TV earlier this year.
In addition to Osteen’s flourishing online presence, his sermons can be found on these linear television channels. Yeah, he (and God, we suppose) is big business. Osteen’s megachurch is located in the Houston, Texas area.