‘[They] Serve Their Neighbors,’ Says ‘The Sin of Empathy’ Author and Cities Church Cofounder Joe Rigney

Rigney added, “Now, these demonstrators are not content to harass him at work, but they’re going to follow family. They’re going to attack his friends.”

“And the government officials in Minnesota are standing behind it,” said Rigney, “are acting as though this is a normal tactic, just a part of the normal political give and take. And I just think that’s absolutely shameful.”

Rigney said Cities Church was targeted because one of its pastors serves as a law enforcement agent.

“You have no idea the political beliefs of that congregation, they’re Bible-believing evangelicals. But beyond that, you know nothing about them, and yet they were targeted simply because one of their fellow members, one of their fellow pastors, is a law enforcement agent,” Rigney said. “That’s absolutely shameful. And I think that in this day and age, we ought to want our government officials to enforce the laws, not promote this kind of lawlessness.”

RELATED: Anti-ICE Protesters Disrupt Sunday Worship at SBC Church in Minnesota, Prompting DOJ Investigation

Rigney described the incident as a “real opportunity” for the government to uphold the law and bring “charges” against those responsible.

“I think it is a real opportunity, grateful,” he said. “It sounds like the Trump administration is working with them and hopefully will bring charges against those demonstrators and the media outlets that were with them and embedded with them and enabling them in order to livestream.”

“This was a planned and coordinated event. It was not an accident, it was deliberate, and it’s an escalation,” Rigney said.

“And unless the local authorities do something about it,” said Rigney, “then these sorts of people will think this is in bounds—now, we can harass churches wherever we go, as long as if we don’t like their politics, or if we don’t like where their members go to work.”

“And that would be a tragic thing for this nation,” he concluded.

‘It’s Christ or Chaos,’ Joe Rigney Says During an Appearance on ‘The Tucker Carlson Show’

Rigney appeared on “The Tucker Carlson Show” on Wednesday night, where he provided a more detailed account of how the anti-ICE protesters disrupted the service. He said:

That’s my former church. I was a planting pastor at the church. I’m no longer there. I live in Idaho now for the last three years, but I was in Minnesota for 18 years, including through 2020 and all of the the riots during that year. What happened was is during a normal Christian worship service of a normal evangelical church, an organized, planned, and coordinated group of people entered the church during its second service. It was the first Sunday they’d had a second service, the church was growing, so they had a second service. They’d already had one the preacher [who] had preached a message from the Gospel of John Chapter 13 called “Love One Another” and, as they were in the middle of the second service, a number of people who had been there for the first half of the service stood up and began moving towards the front, chanting various slogans: “Renee Good,” “Get out ICE” [and] all of those sort of things and eventually basically commandeered the building [by] yelling and screaming at the parishioners—a number of whom fled very quickly because in this day and age you don’t know if this is going to be an active shooting situation. Like, this is the sort of thing that happens these days. So people were trying to get the kids, you know, get the kids out, get the kids safe. And you saw my friend Pastor Jonathan Parnell standing there saying, “Shame on you,” to these activists, these agitators and then being accosted by Don Lemon who is embedded with the group and coordinating with them and being harangued: “Isn’t this a great example of constitutional liberty?,” “Don’t these people have a right to assemble,” and “free speech?” as they are disrupting a Christian worship service on a Sunday morning. So, it was shocking watching my friends and former congregants be attacked in this way.