When Ed Young became pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston, Jimmy Carter was president of the United States.
Forty-six years later, at age 87, the high-profile pastor is stepping down and has named his 60-year-old son as his successor.
Pastors of Southern Baptist churches naming their successors is extraordinarily rare. And sons following their fathers in the same pulpit is ever rarer. But Second Baptist Houston is not a typical Southern Baptist church.
The Young family in the 1970s. (Facebook)
In 1976, Ed Young was 42 years old and the pastor of First Baptist Church of Columbia, S.C. He had been educated at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, considered one of the most progressive of the six Southern Baptist Convention seminaries. He was not considered a fundamentalist when called to serve Second Baptist Church. Those were different times in the nation and in the SBC.
After Young and his wife and three boys picked up and moved to Texas, they made history in the state’s two largest cities and helped change the direction of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
Second Baptist already was a large church by most standards, with about 500 people in Sunday attendance. Over the next five decades, it grew into a multi-campus congregation with reported attendance of 18,000. Outreach magazine listed Second Baptist as the 17th largest church in the nation last year. Four years ago, it ranked sixth in the nation.
Meanwhile, Young’s eldest son, also named Ed Young, started a new church in the northern suburbs of Dallas in 1989 and immediately drew attention with his creative outreach and preaching, making Fellowship Church today the 10th largest church in the nation with weekly attendance of 24,000.
The elder Ed Young has remained at the helm of the Houston church two decades beyond a traditional retirement age, still traveling by helicopter between campuses to give Sunday sermons. Always a staunch conservative, his sermons in recent years have made headlines for their political content — such as claiming immigrants are “undesirables” and “garbage.”
Now, a third Young will become pastor of one of the largest churches in America.
Ben Young preaching recently at Second Baptist Houston. (Screencap)
Ben Young, the middle child, is lesser known outside Houston. He’s the author or co-author of six books, serves as a chaplain to the Houston Astros, previously had a radio talk show and is listed as an associate pastor at Second Baptist.
His official bio says he was “educated” at Baylor University, Southwestern Theological Seminary and Bethel Theological Seminary in San Diego but does not list degrees earned. He is listed as a faculty member and director of the Second Baptist campus of Houston Theological Seminary — a satellite of Houston Christian University’s seminary. The most recent course listing shows Young teaching a class on “The Rise of Neo-Marxism.”
The elder Ed Young and his first wife, who died in 2017, raised three boys. The third and youngest is Cliff, who sings with the contemporary Christian music group Caedmon’s Call.
Joel Osteen
In American religious life, there are few examples of children following famous fathers as pastors of large churches. Some of those are not success stories — Robert Schuller’s son Robert following him at the Crystal Cathedral, for example. But one of the notable success stories also is in Houston: Joel Osteen assumed the pulpit at Lakewood Church after his father, John Osteen, died of a heart attack in 1999. Lakewood is now the third largest church in America, with an estimated 45,000 worshipers.
Another notable example in Southern Baptist life is First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., where Homer Lindsay Jr. followed his father, Homer Lindsay Sr. in 1975, launching one of the earliest megachurches in the nation. Lindsay Jr. eventually brought on a co-pastor, Jerry Vines.
Lindsay, Vines and Ed Young were among the early leaders of a call for more conservatism in the Southern Baptist Convention that became known as the “conservative resurgence.” Both Young and Vines were elected president of the SBC in those years of political maneuvering.
Ed Young and Second Baptist Houston also played another notable role in the conservative movement in the SBC. It was there that Paul Pressler and John Baugh met and took opposite sides in the battle to come. Pressler, an appeals court judge, was co-architect of the “conservative resurgence” while Baugh, a successful businessman, became a proponent and funder of the “moderate” opposition to what Pressler was doing.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Paul Pressler and John Baugh were Sunday school leaders together at Second Baptist. John Baugh and his wife, Eula Mae, were among the very earliest Southern Baptist lay leaders to sound an alarm about what was coming. Eula Mae Baugh had served on the pastor search committee that called Ed Young to Houston.
Texas Lt. Gov . Dan Patrick preaching at Second Baptist Houston May 12. (Screencap)
The Houston Chronicle and other local media outlets reported on Ed Young’s retirement announcement, which came at the end of last Sunday’s service at the Woodway campus, the main campus of the church.
“We’re not stepping down, we’re stepping up to use our primary spiritual gifts,” the Chronicle quoted Young as saying through tears. “I’m stepping up to maximize what God has given me and what God has given to my great wife, Lisa.”
One of Second Baptist’s most notable members today is Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a former Houston radio talk show host.
The Chronicle reported: “Young also hosted a private luncheon in April organized by the American Renewal Project, a group aiming to recruit and train clergy and congregants to win seats on Texas school boards, city councils, county commissions and on the state legislature. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a longtime member of Second Baptist, attended the gathering, in which he told far-right Christians that ‘we lose this nation’ if conservatives don’t win the presidential election in November.”
Patrick also reportedly told the crowd political conservatives as fighting “a battle of darkness and light,” adding, “There are people who pray to God, believe in God, raise their families in God’s work and there are people over here who don’t believe in God and want to kick God out. They hate God. That’s the battle we’re in.”
Young invited Patrick to give a similar message on Mother’s Day, May 12, at Second Baptist. Two Sundays later, May 26, Young announced his retirement.
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