Megachurch Pastor Ed Young Tortures Goldfish for ‘Edgy’ Sermon Illustration
Pastor Ed Young Jr., the senior pastor of Fellowship Church, a 30,000-member multisite megachurch spread across Texas and Florida, has done some terrible and goofy things in his time.
Three years ago, in a horrifying chain of events that treats the body of Christ like a commodity, congregants of Fellowship Church in Miami, a satellite campus of Ed Young’s church, had the shock of their lives when they were told at the end of a sermon that their building had been sold to a new megachurch looking to expand in the area, and that service would be their last. Ever. The church closed its doors and shut down its social media pages and website that day, leaving up to 200 members scrambling over where to go next; the pastor recalled back to the main campus without even saying goodbye.
Young released a music video featuring him dancing around wearing gold chains, fake tattoos on his arms, neck, knuckles, and under his eye, baggy clothes, and beanie, all the while mimicking pointing to a mouth grill and last year, he was still preaching on the 20-year-old bible-twisting fad “Prayer of Jabez.”
Lastly, he released a video on Instagram berating and characterizing believers who want to be fed God’s word from the pulpit as a bunch of ‘dirty-diaper’-wearing babies.
In a recently unearthed sermon illustration from his 2017 series ‘Hooked,’ Young can be seen doing his interpretation of the Tony Campolo/ Perry Noble schtick where they curse from the pulpit and then pronounce, “You’re more upset that I said the word “s***’ than you are at the thought of your neighbors going to hell.”
Unlike those amateurs, however, Young came to play.
For the illustration, Young removes a goldfish from a fish tank and places it on the pulpit, watching it as it chokes and gasps. After a short time, he picks it up and places it back in the water, admonishing his congregants:
You’re fishing with the power of God, by the power of God, make the cast, make the cast! Look at our goldfish. Wow, they’re having a good day aren’t they? Well, a goldfish is dying, flopping, floundering around. Sorry buddy, you’re a couple of dollars but today is your last day.
I mean, I don’t want to be bad but the thing’s dying.
I’ll rescue him.
Some of you were more worried about that goldfish out of water and dying than you are people in your lives dying without Jesus.
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Hey, fish are people, too! I’m calling PETA.