In 2024, Pastor Ed Young announced his retirement from Second Baptist Church in Houston after serving nearly 50 years as pastor.
Ed Young / Video screenshot via The Winning Walk
However, like many American megachurch pastors, he has not retired completely. His ongoing outreach ministry at The Winning Walk draws on his decades of sermons, teaching and writing, and brings in about $5 million per year.
The Internal Revenue Service granted the ministry nonprofit status in 2025, and it has filed only one Form 990 to date.
According to that filing, only $24,760 of the ministry’s contributions go to salaries or employee expenses. More than $3 million goes to advertising and promotion.
The ministry has a three-member board of directors — one of whom is Young himself. The Form 990 lists him as spending about 25 hours per week on the ministry.
It is not unusual for retired pastors of large churches to operate media ministries built around their years of teaching. Some examples in the MinistryWatch 1000 database include Desiring God Ministries with John Piper, In Touch Ministries with the late Charles Stanley, Chuck Swindoll’s Insight for Living, and Michael Youssef’s Leading the Way.
Access to MinistryWatch content is free. However, we hope you will support our work with your prayers and financial gifts. To make a donation, click here.
What has raised concerns among some Second Baptist members is how the decision to spin off The Winning Walk was made. According to the Houston Chronicle, the move was decided by a six-member governing board with no notification requirement to the church’s 94,000 members.
Some of those concerned members also are part of a group that filed a lawsuit last year alleging that church leadership stripped rank-and-file members of their voting rights — including the right to weigh in on how to use the church’s nearly $1 billion in assets.
The lawsuit was filed under the corporate name Jeremiah Counsel. The plaintiffs claim that new bylaws passed in 2023 “eliminated the voting rights” of the church’s thousands of members, dissolved the member-elected Board of Trustees and replaced it with a Ministry Leadership Team allegedly “hand-picked” by Senior Pastor Ben Young.
The group is seeking restoration of members’ voting rights, an independent member-elected Board of Trustees, and member access to the church’s bylaws and audited financials.
Doug Bech, a longtime church member and part of Jeremiah Counsel, said of The Winning Walk, “I suspect that a governing board might have determined — since he didn’t profit from The Winning Walk while he was senior pastor — that that might have been a good retirement benefit for him.”
Bech said his deeper concern is that if leadership could make this decision unilaterally, it could also make other consequential financial decisions the same way.
The lawsuit is currently set for trial on July 27.
In the MinistryWatch 1000 database, The Winning Walk receives a Transparency Grade of D, 5-star Financial Efficiency Rating, and a Donor Confidence Score of 45 — a “withhold giving” designation.
MAIN PHOTO: TO OUR READERS: The mission of MinistryWatch is to help Christian donors become more faithful stewards of the resources God has entrusted to them. Do you know of a story that will help us fulfill our mission, or do you want to give us feedback about this or any other story? If so, please email us at info@ministrywatch.com.