Visit to Elevation Church

I believe God is doing amazing things in Charlotte, NC. Check out this website before I get into all this. www.elevationchurch.org
Elevation church has a mission. A mission to captivate a whole city for Christ, in bunches. Transforming and leading them to a passionate relationship with Jesus, and stripping all the excess to allow a person to know Him personally. The music is dynamic, the vision is obvious and contagious, the marketing is excellent and the power of the Gospel is present. I certainly believe the latter is making this church grow. No watered down Gospel here. They say that it's all about Jesus and if you don't like it, get up from your seat and let someone else have it.

Elevation has grown very quickly. It started 18 months ago with 19 people; now it's a mega church with 2400 attending last weekend! But they don't care that they're a "mega church". They're growing; that's obvious. They're growing because they're a living organism; there is no time to take breathers. They grow because they are always making room for more. This church's biggest worry is having someone get back in their car and drive away because there were no open seats.

Three key things a church plant needs to succeed, according to lead pastor, Steven Furtick:

1. the power of the Gospel
2. empty seats
3. to have both 1 and 2 provided at an optimal time

It's all about the numbers.
What? Did I just say that? If you think about it, it really should be about the numbers. As it says in Acts 2, "3000 were added by the Lord and others were added daily." We're not talking about numbers showing how well a program succeeds. We are about the number of marriages being saved, the number of drunks finding Christ and the number of people being transformed daily by the Gospel of Christ.

Church planting is great, but we ought to let the power of Christ overshadow all of the things that we as humans can do. It's not about how well we market, how great (or how loud) our music is, or how cool the Pastor dresses and speaks. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE POWER OF CHRIST EXPOSED IN A RELEVANT WAY TO SEE LIVES TRANSFORMED by THE LORD. The gospel is God giving His spotless Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins so that we can rise again as He did and live with Him forever. Let's get the Word out there.

May God continue blessing Elevation church!