Photo—Facebook: On May 26th 2024 Ed Young (right) announces his son,
Ben Young as the next senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas
On Monday, April 15th, 2025, Jeremiah Counsel Corporation (also “Jeremiah” in this article), a non profit formed by a group of concerned members and past members of Second Baptist Church, filed an unusual court petition in Judge Latosha Lewis Paynes’s District Court 55 against the current leadership of Second Baptist Church Houston requesting church governance reforms and restoration of members’ voting rights taken away in secret.
Defendents named in the 123 page petition are Ben Young, Homer Edwin Young, Lee Maxcy, Dennis Brewer Jr., and the Second Baptist Church Corporation, collectively called the “Young Group” throughout the filing.
Yesterday, Jeremiah Counsel Corporation issued a press release and an open letter to Second Baptist’s “90,000 +” members at large from its new website.
What Happened? A Radical Change in church governance…
At a sparsely attended May 31, 2023 church business meeting, members in attendance either “unknowingly or unwittingly” rubber-stamped the church’s new regulations (its bylaws) without having the opportunity to inspect or read what they were being asked to approve, according to two letters signed by dozens of concerned members and sent directly to Pastor Ben Young months before the filing of this petition.
Section (H) of Jeremiah’s lawsuit gives examples of the “deliberately inconspicuous, legally insufficient, and intentionally vague” purported notices advising recipients of the May 31 membership meeting. According to the petition, “These statements were part of an intentional plan to alert as few members as possible to the other purpose for this church meeting and to mislead those who did see the notices.”
Section (M) of the petition states, “only about 200 of Second Baptist’s 94,000 members attended on May 31” and that those at the meeting represented less than “one quarter of one percent” of Second Baptist’s members.
What does Plaintiff Jeremiah Counsel Corporation want?
Typical lawsuits request pecuniary relief, often in the millions. However, apart from legal fees, Jeremiah’s petition doesn’t ask for monetary damages to its members but rather requests a return to the Church’s 2005 bylaws and does request money damages for Second Baptist Church from the Young Group and injunctive relief to cease and desist all conduct or actions stemming from the May 31 bylaws “updates”.
Section (I) of the lawsuit details how Second Baptist trustees, who had met for church business only a few weeks prior to the meeting, were completely unaware of the severity of the bylaw’s changes, before, during, and even after the scantly attended May 31 meeting—changes that eliminated and replaced their own positions.
According to the lawsuit, the Young Group permanently abolished: “(1) church members’ rights to vote and elect, e.g., Second Baptists Pastor and officers, to the governing body of the church, (2) church members’ rights to inspect Second Baptist’s books, financial records, and governing documents, and to provide input on its financial direction and obligations, and (3) church members’ rights to provide input on church policies.” (wording bolded in the lawsuit, p. 15)