How Ed Young Sr. Preaches: A Hook, Plain Handles and Grace at the Turn

Ed Young Sr. led Second Baptist Church Houston for 46 years and carried his teaching worldwide through The Winning Walk broadcast. We studied seven of his sermons and chapel messages, from a 1982 seminary chapel to recent sermons at the Woodway campus. He teaches the Bible like a beloved schoolteacher who also reads the morning paper: a hook, the verses walked with plain handles, and a late landing on what Christ has done.

Who Ed Young Sr. is

Edwin Young was born in Laurel, Mississippi. He left an engineering major at the University of Alabama to preach, pastored in the Carolinas, and came to Second Baptist Church Houston in 1978. When he arrived, the church averaged about 400 a week. By his retirement in 2024, it was a multi-campus church averaging close to 18,000.

Second Baptist became one church in two locations in 1999, grew to six Houston-area campuses, and added an online campus in 2017. He served two terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention (elected 1992 and 1993), and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary endowed the Ed Young Sr. Chair of Preaching in his honor in 2013. He has written dozens of books, among them The 10 Commandments of Marriage.

The shape of a Young Sr sermon

He opens with a hook before the text: a science fact, a show of hands, a definition or a headline. In Psalm 23 and Me, it’s chromosomes and DNA, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Then he recaps the series or tells the Bible character’s backstory before he reads.

He often calls the room to open their Bibles (“You can’t follow the team without the program”) and walks the verses one by one. Each section gets a plain counted handle: three ifs, three seasons, two tests.

Along the way he opens Hebrew names and ancient customs, like Jehovah and Elohim or the shepherd’s rod, and retells the stories with dry, self-deprecating humor. Most sermons also spend a long stretch on what the text means for current events and public life.

Late in the hour he lands on grace: what Christ has done. Many sermons end on one image, story, verse or hymn rather than a recap, sometimes a hymn from his mother’s kitchen.

What made his preaching different

What others said

“They have never gotten away from preaching the word of God. … And I think that is the secret.”

— Jo Beth Young, his wife, 2004 (Associated Press)

“What’s been interesting is to watch Dad use more and more visuals.”

— Ed Young Jr., pastor, Fellowship Church, 2004 (Associated Press)

What to take into your own pulpit

Those are the ideas. The guide turns them into ten steps you can follow this week, plus the sermons we studied and a fill-in outline in his shape.

Common questions