AUBURN – Like ripping away a plain, brown wrapper to expose the photos beneath, Josh Cousineau knows that labeling a church event Porn Sunday is startling.

It’s meant to be.

“It’s shock and awe,” said Cousineau, youth pastor of East Auburn Baptist Church. “If we labeled it, ‘Morality Sunday’ people would breeze over it.”

At the very least, folks want to know more.

The title, Porn Sunday, actually comes from a nationwide church initiative aimed at dealing with the multibillion-dollar industry’s hold on families.

“I know of people in this church who have been divorced, in part, because of pornography,” Cousineau said.

And he believes there are many other families who are being hurt by addiction to pornography.

If it seems weird to be talking about it in church, then that’s the church’s failure, he said.

“For all too long churches have said, ‘If we don’t talk about it, it’s not going to become a problem,” he said.

“We’ve allowed it to grow into the big elephant that it is,” he said.

Not that it’s a new issue here.

The Auburn church, which has more than 1,000 weekly churchgoers and plans to open a new, bigger church in December, has been talking about the problem for years.

The Rev. Roger Cousineau, Josh’s father, warns new couples not to be seduced by pornography.

In 2005, the pastor talked about the problem with the Sun Journal as part of his ministry’s effort to stay relevant to the challenges folks face in their everyday lives.

It became a more explicit plea after Josh discovered Porn Sunday’s creators, an online group called XXXChurch.com.

The group bills itself as the “#1 Christian Porn Site.”

The Grand Rapids, Mich.-based organization is in its third year of its Porn Sunday program. This week’s event includes 64 churches across the country. The Auburn church is one of three in New England. The others are in Groton and Old Saybrook, Conn.

The local church joined the effort last year, erecting an inflatable blue elephant (Porn Sunday’s logo) on the front lawn of the church.

“I saw people pull over and take pictures of the elephant with their cell phones,” Josh Cousineau said.

He worried that people might take away the wrong message, that somehow the church was supporting pornography.

Cousineau also worried that about reactions within the church.

“I was ready for a battle in the church,” he said.

When he pitched Porn Sunday to the staff, most people were enthusiastic about it, he said. And though some parishioners grumbled, most were supportive, he said.

“People said, ‘It’s about time because I could have used this 10 years ago,’ he said.

This Sunday morning, the church plans to hold a special 11:15 a.m. service on the issue, featuring a video message and a live discussion.

The church rented the cafeteria of nearby St. Dominic Regional High School to handle an expected crowd.

Folks will be given advice on keeping pornography from their home computers and they will talk about the effects of pornography on families.

Men will also be invited to join a small group aimed at helping folks kick the habit. The leaders are former addicts, Cousineau said.

“We’re trying to give resources for people who want to get over these things, not to slam people and say, ‘You’re a horrible sinner and you’re going to hell because you look at porn,'” Cousineau said.

“It’s about showing you a way out if that’s what you want,” he said. “There is help for it and restoration.