"Thinking Eternally, Acting Locally." - Neal August
Do you use sermon illustrations? Are they designed to draw people
in to flesh out the biblical material, making it comprehensible? Do you ever
use real world examples or illustrations drawn from culture?
I
thought of these questions the other day while witnessing the latest round of
criticisms aimed at Ed Young, senior pastor of Fellowship Church (FC), in
Grapevine, TX. Fellowship started in 1989 as a mission of FBC Irving with 150
members. Today it is a multi-campus church with around 24,000 in weekly attendance.
It is a highly contemporary church, known for its innovation, excellence in
ministry, and creativity. Young himself has the reputation of being a “showman”
– well-known for his onstage antics and what people refer to as publicity
stunts. This week, he and FC posted pics and video on social media from the
beginning of last week’s sermon series. In those posts, FC had constructed a
full-sized basketball court in the sanctuary and had the mascots of the Dallas
Mavericks performing trick slam-dunk stunts during the worship service.
Traditionalists, discernment bloggers, and many Christian pastors and ministers
stood aghast at the posted evidence of the spectacle, criticizing Young once
again for his antics, and saying, “You’re supposed to go to church to worship
God, not be entertained.”
In
2006, I was finishing up my education at Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Fort Worth, TX, when my wife and I moved to Euless, just a few
minutes away from FC. We had been visiting several churches in the immediate
area when our new apartment manager invited us to attend Fellowship. We hadn’t
considered a megachurch, but I knew of Young by reputation and the criticisms
he received from seminary professors and students for the size of his church
and his on-stage stunts. Nevertheless, we gave it a try and were thoroughly impressed.
As a minister I was awed by the excellence and professionalism I witnessed. The
worship was perfect, the sermons were engaging, the staff were tremendous, the
volunteers were competent and well-organized. Everything was superb. Granted,
my wife and I continued to explore other options, preferring to be where God
wanted us to be. Nevertheless, we ultimately, strongly believed that this was
Fellowship. So, we joined the church, took the best new members class ever,
toured the facilities, and immediately volunteered to serve wherever they
needed us. I served in the junior high ministry and, because of my seminary education,
was asked to help write some of their in-house bible study materials. I served for
a few years there, making friends with the staff and members, and learning all
I could about effective ministry. I wanted to learn what they did, how they did
it, and why. Most importantly, I really wanted to figure Ed Young out and uncover
the underlining principles of his methodology.
In
fact, understanding Young’s methodology was not difficult because he was so
frequent in explaining it and because its evidence was everywhere: creativity
and art. Creative art is everywhere at FC and in Young’s ministry. He himself has
mentioned his artistic background and once painted a portrait of Jesus on stage
as a sermon illustration. Note the titles of some of Young’s books:
The Creative Leader: Unleashing the
Power of Your Creative Potential
Can We Do That?: 24 Innovative
Practices That Will Change the Way You Do Church
The Creative Marriage - The Art of
Keeping Your Love Alive
I
own the first two books and have used them as ministerial resources for years.
Every
year Fellowship Church holds the C3 Conference: Creative Church Culture. Early
in the church’s existence, they met in an arts center. Furthermore, Young refers
to his sermon preparation team as Team Creativity.
Here
are some choice quotes from Young on creativity:
Here
two more revealing quotes about the creative principles of Young’s methodology:
This
last quote is of particular note for the purposes of this article. There is a
very long biblical tradition of preachers throughout the Old and New Testaments
performing stunning, sometimes provocative acts to seize audience attention and
then hit them with the Word of God based on the acts underlining meaning. These
are often referred to as sign-acts or symbolic actions, forms of communication
in which a message was delivered by performing symbolic actions. As one person
noted, “Sign acts are nonverbal actions and objects intentionally employed by
the prophets so that message content was communicated through them to the
audience” (Friebel, Dictionary of the Old
Testament Prophets). Therefore …
The
prophet Ezekiel lays siege to a brick, tied with ropes (4:1-8), bakes bread over
dung (4:12-17), shaves his head and strikes some of the hair with a sword
(5:1-2), covers his face and digs through a wall (12:3-7), and performs several
other shocking acts. The prophet Jeremiah shuns marriage (16:1-9), buys a clay
jug and breaks it (19:1-13), wears an ox yoke (27-28), purchases a field (32:6–15),
and offers wine to those forbidden to drink it (35:1–19). The prophet Isaiah gave
his children odd, symbolic names (9-12) and preached naked (20:1-2). All these acts
were performance-artist acts used as symbolic sermon illustrations. The act was
followed by explanations of what they meant. Similarly, Jesus himself performed
many symbolic acts designed to illustrate a deeper meaning: feeding 5000
people, withering a fig tree, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, washing feet,
and clearing the Temple. All these acts were provocative, creative illustrations
designed to draw in and audience and then drive home a particular biblical
point. Again, this method of communication has a long biblical history, even in
the church. Therefore ...
Ed
Young does a bed-in with his wife on the roof of the church and uses a Big Bed
vs Little Bed on stage to talk about sex issues. He brings a sheep on stage
while preaching on the 23rd Psalm. He brings in WWE wrestlers to talk about “wrestling
with God”. He brings a real lion and a real lamb on stage, he drives a car on
stage, he brings on a door, he chops up cantaloupes, he paints a portrait of Jesus
on stage … and then there was the week of “congregational copulation”. On
another occasion, a crew filmed him ordering a meal at McDonald’s. Young compared
that to “drive-through Christians” who cruise through church for a quick
serving of grace but who never commit to serve. Such creative acts are part and
parcel to Young’s methodology. He draws people’s attention in with an entertaining,
bizarre stunt, which turns out to be an object lesson. It is an object lesson –
a visual, learning aid – to address the congregation’s current needs by
challenging their faulty assumptions based on the biblical teaching. He aims to
use these performance acts so that people’s minds can be renewed. Therefore …
Young gets with his creative sermon team. They note the up-coming
March Madness season. So, they decide to use their resources to build a basket
ball court in their worship center, bring in a few basketball-trick artists,
have them perform stunts, then use “the game of basketball as a powerful
metaphor … to help full court followers of Christ win over trials in the game
of life.” He uses the book of James to get people off the seats and onto the
court to be more effective Christians. Here Young is using his using artistic background,
his theological education, and his experience playing basketball (1979-1981) at
Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he received a
basketball scholarship. See here for the first part of Young’s sermon series.
Ed Young’s preaching methodology is a profoundly biblical and
effective methodology that was used by Jesus himself. This is what Young does,
this is why he does it, and this is where he got it from. And the results are
over 2,000 baptisms a year and thousands more discipled. Indeed, his and
Fellowship’s Kingdom success is the kind that every Christian – let alone every
pastor! – should be celebrating. Ministers should be stumbling over themselves
to read his books, attend the C3 Conferences, and visit FC to understand how
they can be more effective in ministry. At the very least, let’s not allow our
ignorance, envy, and old methodologies to cause us to criticize those who actually
are making a large, positive impact on the Kingdom of God.
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