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Tim Tebow Won’t Be Speaking At That Megachurch With The Controversial Pastor After All

Well, it didn’t take the world’s most amazing foresight to see this coming: a while back, word got out that Tim Tebow was scheduled to speak at the First Baptist Church in Dallas. While the scheduled appearance was reportedly to “share his story” (i.e. remain as uncontroversial as possible) and was probably going to be very similar to Tebow’s previous megachurch addresses, the difference this time was that Robert Jeffress, the pastor at First Baptist Dallas, has a history of not remaining as uncontroversial as possible. And as soon as people started talking about that, this was probably inevitable:

While I was looking forward to sharing a message of hope and Christ’s unconditional love with the faithful members of the historic…

— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

… First Baptist Church of Dallas in April, due to new information that has been brought to my attention, I have decided to cancel my…

— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

…upcoming appearance. I will continue to use the platform God has blessed me with to bring Faith, Hope and Love to all those…

— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

…needing a brighter day. Thank you for all of your love and support. God Bless!

— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

First things first: from a PR standpoint, this was the smart move. Second: “new information that has been brought to my attention.” That’s the new phrase ripe for debate here. Tebow is an extremely media-savvy guy. It’s possible he didn’t know about Jeffress’ past remarks when he agreed to speak at the church. But: this is a prominent church with thousands of members, and Jeffress goes on TV all the time. If this was an oversight by Team Tebow, it was a glaring one.

Again, though, this was ultimately the right call. As much as some might try to downplay Jeffress’ past remarks, he is on video saying all of this. Tebow’s smart enough to know tat, regardless of whether he believes any of what Jeffress says or not, he doesn’t want his name associated with Jeffress, even if it took him a while to figure it out. Maybe there aren’t any fancier megachurches in the land for him to deliver his story, but there are plenty of others. And you can be sure that next time he schedules an appearance at one of them, he’ll know more about the personnel there.

Getty photo, by Matthew Stockman