A Jackson County church is tackling the issue of pornography by "confronting the elephant in the pew"...literally.
The Evangel Worship Assembly of God Church in Marianna has a 25-foot tall blue "Porn Sunday" elephant on the front lawn, to promote an upcoming series of sermons on relevant community issues.
The elephant and the planned pornography sermon has created quite a buzz.

It's hard not to notice this blue elephant that sits on display on Pebble Hill Road.
At 25-feet tall with the words "Porn Sunday" written in the middle, it's become quite an eye-catcher in the Marianna community.

For the last few Sundays, Evangel Worship Pastor LaVon Pettis has been preparing his congregation for their upcoming series the "Real Project."
"Dealing with a series of messages, talking about Relevance, Everyone Matters, Attitude, Life Balance and we said this ties in with everything that's going on."
The elephant was rented from XXX-Church, which is well known for helping people get out of the porn industry.
Pettis admits he had concerns about approaching the subject, but soon realized it needed to be done.
"Not only was it affecting people in our church, but we found out it was affecting people in their job situations, people losing jobs because of pulling up sites on company time."
He says the church, as a whole, has a responsibility to voice an opinion.
"When you start talking about an industry that has a revenue that is larger than professional baseball, basketball and football combined then you are talking about a large issue."
According to xxxchurch.com, "U.S. Porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS and NBC at $6.2 billion dollars and child pornography generates $3 billion dollars annually."
"Pettis says their goal is to provide awareness and accountability about the damaging effects of pornography. But Evangel Worship has received some criticism for what they're doing, not only from people in the community but also members of other churches."
"We've even heard people say 'yeah, they probably got some swingers in the church so they're having to deal with this' so...it's amazing."
But he has no regrets and the majority of his church supports it.
"110% behind it. The pornography issue leads to many different things other than just somebody looking at them with crime and everything else" says Trent Hatcher.
"I'm applauding our pastor for taking the stand even though it may seem kind of a taboo subject but it will be one that people from all walks of life will benefit from," says Karen Reiff.
Evangel Worship members say they want to equip people with practical ways to deal with the problem, not condemn them.
"Who are we Evangel? We are real people, serving a real God in a real world!"

The "Real Project" event will kick off Saturday at 5pm.