Ed Young Jr. Says ‘Anti-Megachurch’ Folk are Hypocrites Because They Attend Mega-Concerts
Pastor Ed Young Jr., the senior pastor of Fellowship Church, a 30,000-member multi-site megachurch spread across Texas and Florida, has released a new video taking a shot at people complaining about the size of megachurches, saying they’re being hypocrites because they don’t say the same thing about attending massive concerts or going to football games.
What are his historical acts of theological mischief? 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. He engaged in a “sexperiment” with his wife, where he and his spouse spent 24 hours on the rooftop of their church, cuddled up in bed, after advocating for 30-day sex challenges to promote his new book. Last year, he was still preaching on the 20-year-old bible-twisting fad “Prayer of Jabez.”
He tortured a goldfish for an “edgy” sermon illustration, 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.
It is unsurprising that Young doesn’t see a difference or differentiation between attending a church and a concert; it’s all commoditization. This is especially true when we consider that in the same way fans form parasocial relationships with their favorite singers, congregants also form parasocial relationships with their megachurch pastor.
The parallels are stark. This is an individual you can never interact with in person, who remains oblivious to your existence and wouldn’t notice if you stopped attending their performances.
Like celebrity musicians, these megachurch pastors make millions of dollars shilling their wares, hang out in the green room before and after the service, and frequently have bodyguards and security to prevent people from getting too close.
An example of commoditization from Ed Young’s own church is that 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.
We digress. Young Jr. shared on Facebook:
“‘The church is just too big.’ I’ve heard people tell me that a lot. ‘It’s too big. It’s a mega church.’
Well, that’s gotta be one of the most hypocritical statements someone can make because the person making the statement goes to massive concerts. They would go to a game, a football game. They would go to a massive mall and they never really say that about those entities.
But, but they always say ‘the church is too big.’
Hey, if you think the church is too big, then you’re not going to like heaven because heaven is going to be a big place. If a church is around a lot of people, it should be big in the context of being big.
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It’s interesting the comparisons Ed uses to make his point are entertainment venues and events; football games, rock concerts. Because that’s how he views the church; not as what God has accomplished in the church through His Son as the end-time eschatological fulfillment of the Old Covenant temple – the place where His presence dwells with His people in this age (“where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in your midst”).
No, to Young, it’s just another production, an event, an entertainment-driven performance. This is the complaint people are making Ed, and the point you are missing; people rightly conclude the reason your church is so big is because it’s built on corporate world growth strategies and Hollywood/Las Vegas style entertainment techniques, and not on the Word of God. If you actually preached the Word of God and followed the commandments of God in regard to the Lord’s Day local assembly of the saints (public reading of Scripture, preaching the Word, observance of the Lord’s Table, prayer, singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs), your church would shrink rapidly, and you would have to sell the Beamer.