{"id":3179,"date":"2012-03-02T04:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=3179"},"modified":"2012-03-01T22:42:52","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T05:42:52","slug":"mega-fridays-ed-young-jr-fish-barrels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=3179","title":{"rendered":"Mega Fridays: Ed Young, Jr., Fish & Barrels"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to\u00a0last week’s\u00a0introductory Mega Friday post<\/a>, one astute commenter said:<\/p>\n

This looks like an interesting series. I\u2019m guessing pastorfashion.com will make an appearance in the weeks ahead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who am I to argue with those who take the time to read and comment here at From Law to Grace? I do hope that this series will be both interesting and informative. Along the way, I hope that my readers will benefit from these posts on today’s megachurch. Not every Mega Friday will be devoted to the wild, wacky and increasingly bizarre\u00a0world of some\u00a0within the celebrity-driven, megachurch\u00a0culture. From time to time, I’ll share\u00a0encouraging words about some of our nation’s non-celebrity-driven pastors and megachurches who have been a blessing\u00a0to me and others. Matt Chandler and the church he\u00a0pastors,\u00a0The Village Church — a place where\u00a0my son\u00a0and I worshipped during\u00a0our recent\u00a0journey to Dallas <\/a>— come to mind. The churches of\u00a0the two Johns — MacArthur and Piper —\u00a0would certainly rank high on any list of faithful, Christ-centered ministries that\u00a0have been positive influences on countless pastors.\u00a0There are others to be\u00a0sure.<\/p>\n

But, today’s Mega Friday is one that cannot be avoided, particularly if you want to view the world through the lens\u00a0of one of the\u00a0biggest megas\u00a0—\u00a0Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX.\u00a0When discussing some of the more recent and interesting developments at\u00a0the megachurch\u00a0led by Ed Young, Jr., one must always avoid the\u00a0temptation to start shooting at fish in the barrel.\u00a0The\u00a0Pastor Fashion\u00a0website is just one of those fish — much too easy to shoot. Therefore, I’ll avoid the\u00a0temptation, mainly because I’m really not sure if http:\/\/pastorfashion.com\/<\/a>\u00a0is supposed to be a serious site or rather just a mock site designed to amuse. If it’s the latter, it would appear that the now 50 year-old pastor of Fellowship Church is easily amused. Since my Student Pastor and I disagree as to whether the site is mock (him) or real (me), I’ll leave it to others to decide. I guess time will tell.<\/p>\n

What time has already told us is that Ed Young, Jr. — and Fellowship Church — continue to influence other pastors and leaders, both within Evangelicalism and the Southern Baptist Convention. Just how are others being influence? One area where the Youngs\u00a0— both Ed and his wife, Lisa —\u00a0seem to have prolific influence\u00a0is talking and writing about\u00a0sex. The Youngs (yes, both of them) recently released a new series and book by the same name,\u00a0“SEXPERIMENT: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse,”<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0in which<\/p>\n

couples will discover what lies at the intersection of God and sex. And they will see how sex done God\u2019s way can lead to a life punctuated by exclamation marks\u2014a life full of passion, purpose, and pleasure!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is certainly not a dearth of Christian “sex books”<\/em> on the market today — Mark and Grace Driscoll’s “Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together”<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>seems to be the other popular\u00a0“marriage”<\/em>\u00a0book competing for the hearts, minds, and libidos of Christian couples everywhere. However, Ed and Lisa Young take\u00a0“SEXPERIMENT”\u00a0<\/em>to a\u00a0whole “notha”<\/em> level. That level just happens to be on the roof of their church.\u00a0I wish I were making this up, but Ed and Lisa Young spent 24 hours in bed on the top of Fellowship\u00a0Church to promote a book. Now, if the book they were promoting was the Bible, I might be inclined to give them a pass for this\u00a0foolishness. But, to be allowed to build a “bedroom”<\/em> on top of a church — a church where you\u00a0are supposed to serve as CEO<\/del>\u00a0undershepherd —\u00a0speaks volumes about the state of the Evangelical Church in America, particularly many of the megachurches that seem to influence — for good and for bad — many other churches and church leaders.<\/p>\n

Is there not one leader at Fellowship Church\u00a0who believes that building a bedroom on top of the church for a 24-hour “bed-in”<\/em>\u00a0(shades of John and Yoko) to promote a new series —\u00a0that just also happens to be a new book\u00a0that\u00a0Ed and Lisa Young are promoting\u00a0— is highly inappropriate (not to mention creepy)? Do we really need the Youngs to “shout it from the rooftop that God is ‘pro-sex’?” <\/em>Who believes that it\u00a0was necessary for Ed and Lisa to put a bed on top of Fellowship Church\u00a0to “make a statement that\u00a0God is ‘pro-sex’ and He wants us to do it His way?” <\/em><\/p>\n

I would really love to hear your thoughts on this, especially my from my faithful\u00a0readers in Texas (the state with the most readers of From Law to Grace — thanks). Is this a Texas thing, a megachurch thing, an Ed Young, Jr. thing, a combination of all three, or much ado about nothing? Just remember — bigger isn’t always better and more doesn’t always signify God’s blessings. I’m pretty sure there is a\u00a0megachurch in Houston that proves that principle.\u00a0What say you on this Mega Friday?<\/p>\n

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In response to\u00a0last week’s\u00a0introductory Mega Friday post, one astute commenter said: This looks like an interesting series. I\u2019m guessing pastorfashion.com will make an appearance in the weeks ahead. Who am I to argue with those who take the time to read and comment here at From Law to Grace? I do hope that this series…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,1627,1628,35],"tags":[1689,276,1684,1676,1674,1678,1679,1682,1690,1675,3404,636,646,1688,1686,1685,1683,1680,1677,1687,965],"class_list":["post-3179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-mega-fridays","category-megachurch","category-religion","tag-bed-in","tag-dallas","tag-driscolls-real-marriage","tag-ed-and-lisa-young","tag-ed-young-jr","tag-fellowship-church","tag-fellowship-church-grapevine-texas","tag-grace-driscoll","tag-john-and-yoko","tag-lisa-young","tag-mark-driscoll","tag-marriage","tag-mega-church","tag-megachurches","tag-pastor-fashion","tag-pastorfashion-com","tag-real-marriage","tag-sex","tag-sexsperiment","tag-shooting-fish-in-a-barrel","tag-texas"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-Ph","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3179"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3194,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions\/3194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}