On a Sunday morning, the pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, took the stage with his wife to reassure their congregation.
“Lisa is the only woman I’ve ever been with, and I’m the only man she’s ever been with — and I say ‘been with’ in a biblical sense,” said Ed Young, who founded the church in the late 1980s.
About 4,000 people were in the room, with thousands more watching online. The pastor added, “We don’t have to worry about any sexual skeletons in our closet coming from the past.”
In normal circumstances, it was the kind of claim that many churchgoers would hope went without saying. But in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this year, a pastor with a clean reputation is not to be taken for granted.
The Youngs’ joint sermon came in late June, days after Robert Morris, founder of the nearby Gateway Church, resigned as senior pastor after being accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1980s.
The week before, another local pastor with a national profile, Tony Evans, shocked many evangelicals by stepping away from the pulpit over an undisclosed “sin.”