Young: We did a series recently that was very controversial. The topic was phenomenal. The topic was on forgiveness and I did a bunch of research on it — looked at some old messages, read some stuff, listened to a tape series of a friend of mine. Then I had something kind of wild happen to me. I was filling my car up with gas and I saw a jogger with a Doberman on a leash run past me, and I saw the guy tie the Doberman up to the park bench outside the convenience store, then the guy went in to get something to drink. The Doberman got scared and ran towards the freeway, jerked the park bench out of its supports, drug it across the lot — sparks flying — and he was headed towards the freeway. I thought, "Man, we're going to have a horrible accident!" He ran into the freeway dragging the bench and cars came to a screeching halt, and he had such torque on the bench that the bench slammed into an SUV and a Volkswagen and messed it up. Then the owner chased him down and untied him and led him to safety.
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When I saw that I just knew it was a story that God wanted me to tell. I was thinking about forgiveness and I thought: you know, I'm like that Doberman because I'm leashed up to unforgiveness. I'm dragging around a park bench that's causing all of this collateral damage here and there. I started thinking about unleashing unforgiveness and starting thinking about who's sitting on your park bench — maybe a parent, coach, an ex-spouse, whatever — and I framed that series around that story. I said "unleashing unforgivness is unnatural." I said I don't like to do it. I talked about someone that I held a grudge against for years and years and years. Then the next week I talked about "unleashing unforgivenss is unending." It should be something that we do as believers regularly. And then I talked about "unleashing unforgiveness is unbelievable" — the benefits.
God just gave me that story but I try to always ask myself this question, "Ed, what can you create? When you're talking to someone — who ever it is — and when you're observing life, what idea, what illustration, what slant do you want me to use to bring form for that into the pulpit.
That was one of those series we've done and we give it a very controversial title. We called it "Forgiveness — the real 'F' word." Before we did that title, I probably emailed over a hundred pastors and talked to them plus people here, and over 90 percent said go for it. A few said maybe not but we had forgiveness with it. So sometimes with creativity I think there's a line there that you need to be very, very careful with. For example I would not use an R-rated movie in a clip or even refer to one. You have to be very careful.