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Sean Feucht and the Let Us Worship team moved their New Year’s Eve party from a baseball field to the sanctuary of City View Assembly of God Church in San Diego due to rainy weather. But the night before the event, “Antifa or somebody, the LGBT community, vandalized the church,” Let Us worship evangelist and co-leader Jay Koopman told Charisma News.
“They tagged windows, the walls, the signs, the whole freaking church.”
The graffiti read, among other things, “[Obscenity] Sean Feucht,” “Queers Bash Back” and “[Obscenity] Christian Nationalists,” Koopman said.
“They tagged everywhere,” he said. “This is a massive campus, one of the most beautiful campuses in San Diego. They hit every wall, every window.”
Troy Singleterry has served as pastor of City View (formerly called San Diego First Assembly of God) for eight years. The century-old church, which sits immediately off the 805 freeway, was birthed out of an Aimee Semple McPherson revival at Balboa Park.
“When I saw it this morning I was like, oh, my gosh, I’ve never had anything like this happen to me or my church before,” Singleterry said. “My phone’s been blowing up from people all over the country. ‘We’re praying for you! Don’t give up. Is there anything we can do to help?’ The overwhelming support, both locally and nationally, has been unbelievable.”
Singleterry’s first reaction was sadness for those who did it.
“I wish I could have ministered the good news of the gospel to them,” he told Charisma News. “My heart was for who they are. What they did can be fixed, but it’s an individual that needs to be delivered and set free by the grace of God.”
When members of the church and other area Christians learned about the vandalism, they came out immediately to clean the graffiti. After a few hours, “It looks better than it did before,” said Singleterry.
A police report was filed and officers planned to be present at the New Year’s Eve rally and at church the following Sunday morning to provide protection.
“It was heartbreaking that people would tag a church building,” said Koopman. “I’ve worked with gangs in the inner city of Los Angeles for over 20 years and even the gang members know not to tag a church building. Church is always neutral ground. So when satanists and Antifa tag a church they’ve crossed a line even gang members won’t cross.”
Feucht and Koopman are now calling for all Southern California pastors to stand with City View Church.
“When the church is persecuted, it’s the greatest time to come together,” Koopman said. “When the enemy attacks, it’s because he’s afraid of the move of God that’s about to hit this church and about to hit America. We are going to rally the body of Christ in all of Southern California. We’re fighters, and I and Sean, on behalf of Let Us Worship, are calling all pastors and leaders to stand with Pastor Troy. When you come against one you come against us all. If you attack one of us, you attack all of us.”
Singleterry agrees.
“We’re not backing down,” he says. “God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. As the capital-C church we’re going forward to possess the harvest God has called us to reach.” {eoa}
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Joel Kilpatrick is a writer living in Southern California who has authored or ghostwritten dozens of books. Kilpatrick, who served as associate editor of the Pentecostal Evangel in the 1990s, is also a credentialed Assemblies of God minister.
