January 18, 2026 was not an ordinary Lord’s Day at Cities Church in Minneapolis-St. Paul. What began as a typical morning of gathered worship was abruptly disrupted when a group of protestors forced their way into the sanctuary during the service. Witness accounts and recorded footage show demonstrators chanting loudly, including “ICE out!” and “Justice for Renee Good,” drowning out portions of the service and creating an atmosphere of agitation, fear, and confusion.
Among those present was media personality Don Lemon, who livestreamed portions of the confrontation from inside the building. According to public reporting, prosecutors later alleged that the disruption “forced the worship service to end early and caused most congregants to flee the building out of fear for their safety.” Families with children were present. Those who had gathered to pray, sing, hear the preaching of the Word, and partake of the Lord’s table instead found themselves navigating shouting voices, raised phones, and escalating tension, a mirror to the tactics employed by agitators on the streets but a few miles away. But pastors don’t carry tear gas.
Church leadership described the scene as one marked by intimidation, stating that protestors “accosted members of our congregation, frightened children, and created a scene marked by intimidation and threat.” What could have remained a lawful demonstration outside crossed a threshold when the assembled body of Christ was interrupted mid-worship. The house of the Lord, set apart for prayer and the preaching of the Word, was treated as a platform for public spectacle.
It is in the wake of this charged and rattling incursion that I had the pleasure of worshipping with my fellow saints at Cities Church today, one month later. In fact, this was the first service I have attended since January 18th where the Call to Worship was not first prefaced by a charge for those present for anything other than the purpose of worshipping Jesus to respectfully leave. No one got up, a semblance of peace restored.
The preaching from Pastor Jonathan Parnell which followed was a continuation through John’s Gospel:
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.”
—John 14:15-31
During the exposition of this pivotal moment in the life of Jesus there was one thing among many which Pastor Parnell spoke that struck me:
“Jesus doesn’t need us to make Him appear more impressive to the world.”
Expanding on v.15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”, he went on to explain that the world has its own set of commandments—acknowledging other’s pronouns, succumbing to political capitulation, and the myriad of other deviations of truth characteristic of this fallen world. We don’t need their commandments. We don’t worship their god, and we certainly don’t love him to obey him.
The simplicity and purity of the uninterrupted worship this Lord’s Day was as tangibly beautiful as the building which houses the Twin Cities congregation, originally constructed by an Episcopal body in 1912. Unlike the gothic edifice which has now served four generations of believers that will one day lie in ruin, our worship holds an eternally enduring value by virtue of it’s object, the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. No one can take that from us; not protestors, not Don Lemon, not the left, nor the right, not tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword.
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
Romans 8:37
Though my time has been short lived with this embassy of Christ’s kingdom, it will not be one I soon forget, both for being a blessing while away from my home church and for what it represents within the current state of our society—and the world, just as all faithful churches do, as a light within the darkness.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John 1:5
Particularly Modern 