While many of his followers appreciated his rousing sermon on faith Sunday, Michael Todd, the lead pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is facing criticism online for the outfit he wore that some say distracted from his message.
Todd’s sermon on Sunday was the beginning of a new series called “MUSTARD: The Seed That Can Change Everything.” The message aims to teach his followers about five things on which they shouldn’t waste their faith.
“If you downgrade or devalue what faith can produce, you’ll never use it right. One of the biggest epidemics in the body of Christ right now is people use their faith wrong,” Todd said, while donning an outfit that some have likened to something an “auntie” or an “English teacher” might wear.
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Wearing wide-leg black slacks, a form-fitting black tank or T-shirt with a mustard-colored leather short-sleeve button-up shirt over it and mustard and black-colored snakeskin boots that some viewers described as “high heels,” Todd advised the congregation: “Don’t waste your faith on things discipline can delete.”
He then offered an example of wasted faith: “I’m believing God that when I go take this test, I don’t have diabetes,” he said before telling his followers that if they had the discipline to eat less, they wouldn’t have to waste their faith believing God for outcomes they can influence.
“That’s a fork problem, and now we’re in a huddle praying for you, believing God by faith to do what putting down the fork would do,” he said.
For those distracted by his outfit, however, that message might have been devalued.
“When you teach against biblical headship, ‘you can do bad all by yourself,’ ‘women can be pastors,’ ‘divine feminine,’ ‘I’m momma and daddy,’ you get Mike Todd,” wrote Christian YouTuber and founder of Every Knee Shall Bow Ministries Alton T. Johnson in a post on X Wednesday with a screenshot of Todd in the outfit.
The screenshot also included a message stating, “’Pastors’ out here dressing like aunties now.”
Conservative media host Jason Whitlock called Todd an “abomination.”
“Mike Todd is an abomination. This is sad,” Whitlock wrote in a post to his nearly 850,000 followers on X Wednesday, highlighting a screenshot of his attire.
Former NFL player and outspoken pro-life Christian Benjamin Watson replied, “Yikes!” While many other Christians weighed in.
It’s unclear what inspired Todd’s Sunday attire, but when asked Thursday, church officials did not immediately respond to questions from The Christian Post.
While some felt how the megachurch pastor was dressed created a distraction from his message, others raised concerns that his “feminine” attire wasn’t a good example for young boys watching him.
Todd is no stranger to distracting behavior in his sermons.
In 2022, he apologized to his more than 1.8 million fans across social media after receiving public backlash for wiping globs of spit on the face of a man he has identified as his younger brother during a sermon.
“It’s never my intention to distract others from God’s Word and the message of Jesus … even with illustrations! I apologize for my example being too extreme and disgusting!” Todd said in a statement on Twitter at the time.
During that sermon, Todd referenced the Bible verse Mark 8:23, which highlights the story of Jesus healing a blind man at Bethsaida by spitting into his eyes privately.
Todd highlighted how Jesus chose not to spit in the blind man’s face publicly. But Todd’s actions during the service seemed contrary to how Jesus handled the situation with the man in Bethsaida. He hawked loogies from his throat into his hand three times before wiping them over his brother’s eyes in front of the congregation.
“I watched it back, and it was disgusting. Like, that was gross,” he said. “I want to validate everybody’s feelings. That was a distraction from what I was really trying to do — trying to make the word come alive and make people see the story.”
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