No Booze For a Month? Megachurch Pastor Ed Young Challenges Congregation to Commit to a ‘Dry April’
Pastor Ed Young Jr., the senior pastor of Fellowship Church, a 30,000-member multisite megachurch spread across Texas and Florida, has challenged his congregation to commit to abstaining from alcohol for 30 days in a quest to have a ‘Dry April’ according to a recent story in Church Leaders.
Young has done some terrible and goofy things in his time, (see endnotes) but this 30-day abstinence challenge is not one them.
During his recent sermon, Young sought to offer a biblical perspective on alcohol, which he described as the “most dangerous drug and the number one drug in America.”
Bringing out a six-pack of Budweiser and pouring the contents of a beer into a mug, he taught through both sides of the issue while congregants sat transfixed, wondering whether or not he would take a swig from the stage.
Young ultimately concluded that while it would be a sin to get drunk or drink to excess, giving multiple reasons why it’s unwise and not a good idea, “the Bible does give us liberty—freedom—regarding consuming beverage alcohol.”
There are some parameters for healthy drinking habits, however, with CL summarizing:
- “It should be a prayerful decision. “Have you prayed about it?” asked Young. He also quoted 1 Corinthians 8:9, which speaks against any action that could “become a stumbling block to the weak.”
- It’s a personal decision. Young encouraged those who choose not to drink not to look down upon or judge those who do. In the same way, Young asked that those who drink do not make assumptions about those who abstain from alcohol.
- It’s a periodic decision. Rather than drinking every day, consuming alcohol is best on an occasional basis.”
Young closed the sermon with a prayer from the Quakers before challenging his congregation to embark on a Dry April to see if, for some of them, it wouldn’t change their life.
Endnotes:
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.”
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 and recently tortured a goldfish for an ‘edgy’ sermon illustration.
In termed of timed events, he’s known for once spending 24 hours in bed with his wife on the roof of their church, in order to promoted a 30-day sex challenge, a “sexperiment.”
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There are so many poorly thought out Ed Young sermons to add to the end notes. The first to come to mind, for me, is a sermon called “10”, done on October 10th of some year, in which he admonished the attendees to tithe, manipulated the audience with far flung Old Testament verses (Malachi, if I remember?), and sent out bank direct withdrawal forms to be filled out during the sermon.