So the church should be consistently inconsistent because the higher the predictability the lower the connectivity. And most of us are so predictable. We all kind of lend ourselves towards predictability but if we can be consistently inconsistent — consistent in our theology, consistent in rightly dividing the word but inconsistent in our approaches to it . . .
I want people at Fellowship Church saying, "What is coming next? I'm not sure what's going to happen next." I don't want them saying, "Wow, I know what they're going to do."
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Preaching: Obviously now you are in a large facility where you're drawing 18,000 people on a weekend. But you started 14 years ago with 30 people. Obviously you can do things now that you couldn't do then. What are some ways that you introduced the whole idea of creativity in the smaller setting that enabled you to move to where you are today?
Young: I would say this — I would say that the smaller church has the creative advantage over the bigger church.
Preaching: Why's that?
Young: Because in the smaller church — I have missed this about Fellowship — I mean let's face it the only people who like huge churches are pastors! A smaller church has the advantage because you can make decisions about creativity quicker and you can also use more stuff and smaller stuff and you can read people and feed off people more. The bigger the venue — now we have to think in advance.
One time we did this talk called "Life Savers" and it was on evangelism so what we said was that too many Christians are on the spiritual yacht and were just worrying about ourselves, we're working on our spiritual tan, we're playing around on the deck, yet our friends and the people in our community are drowning and they're facing a Christ-less eternity. Its time to get up off our lounge chairs and throw life savers — throw the life preserver. I said, "Who has God placed in your path in your life that does not know Christ and what are you doing about that are you throwing a life line?" So then we handed out thousands of life savers to everybody in little individual packages, and we said, "Hold that in your hand, apply a name to it, and don't eat that lifesaver until that person steps across the line and becomes a Christ follower." Very creative idea but the execution of that with thousands of people is tough.