Second Baptist Church of Houston is the subject of a lawsuit alleging that the church wrongfully terminated the voting rights of church members in order to consolidate power around the senior pastor.
Second Baptist Church is a near-century old Southern Baptist Church that had long been pastored by Dr. Ed Young. According to the lawsuit, the church has approximately 94,000 members across its five campuses.
In 2024, Dr. Ben Young, son of Ed Young, took over as the church’s senior pastor, something that is a point of contention in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit has been filed by Jeremiah Counsel Corporation, a nonprofit organization whose “purpose is to promote, develop, and restore integrity, accountable governance and donor protection for churches.”
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The suit alleges that Ed Young “very much wanted Ben Young to succeed him as the Senior Pastor at Second Baptist—without being anxious about whether his son would be selected if Church members were to follow the traditional method” of appointing a new pastor via a democratic process.
The suit mentions Dr. Ed Young’s other son, who is also named Ed Young and who pastors Fellowship Church, a multisite megachurch headquartered in Grapevine, Texas. The suit refers to the younger Ed Young’s church as “entertainment ministry” and insinuates the members of the extended Young family often confer to strategize about maximizing profit and control in their “religion-as-a-business model” of ministry.
To that end, the suit alleges that leaders of Second Baptist Church surreptitiously presented changes to the church’s bylaws in order to allow the elder Ed Young to appoint his own successor.
The suit alleges that the bylaws were pushed through under the guise that they were aimed at protecting the church from “the woke agenda” and that while the members meeting had technically been publicized, it was only briefly referenced at the bottom of an email to members and announced from the stage once during Memorial Day weekend.
The suit claims that only 200 people were at the members meeting to vote on the changes and that many of those present were staff members who had been instructed how to vote. The suit alleges that the vast majority of members did not realize that the changes revoked their voting rights until after the changes had already been approved.
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In addition to the removal of members’ voting rights, the new bylaws also revoke member access to the church’s financial records, and members are no longer able to give input about church policies or financial decisions.
