How a pastor built a multi-million dollar home

[Mark]

Megachurch Revival Reignites Discipleship vs. Evangelism Debate


Elevation Church, a seeker-friendly church in Charlotte, N.C., hosted a 12-night "old-school revival," that ended Sunday night, featuring presentations from well-known pastors like Ed Young, Perry Noble and T.D. Jakes. The event drew thousands of attendees but it also attracted critics, who raised important questions for the evangelical church.

Steven Furtick, lead pastor of Elevation, has made it clear that his church's main goal is about reaching out to unbelievers. In fact, his church's list of core values called "The Code" states: "We Need Your Seat. We are more concerned with the people we are trying to reach than the people we are trying to keep."

He told those attending the Code Orange Revival on night seven, "We're all about the numbers." Elevation has grown to six campuses in just six years and claims to have more than 10,000 people attending their services on any given Sunday.

full article: http://www.christianpost.com/news/megachurch-revival-reignites-discipleship-vs-evangelism-debate-67731/?utm

[Psalm 51:17]

http://www.wcnc.com/news/iteam/I-Team-How-a-pastor-paid-for-his-multi-million-dollar-home-228870731.html
10/22/13
How a pastor built a multi-million dollar home

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – In the beginning, Steven Furtick created Elevation Church. He started with 14 members. Eight years later, his congregation on a given weekend can top 14,000 members. In sermons, Furtick said he hopes to top 100,000 members in the future.

“He's a rock 'n roll star,” said Chris Rosebrough, who runs Pirate Christian Radio, a podcast. “He’s not a club band anymore. He’s a stadium band.”

Elevation Church has given more than $10 million to charity, and hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer work. Furtick himself is one part preacher, one part celebrity. He’s also his own brand, profiting from book sales and paid personal appearances around the world. The man who calls himself Pastor Steven has become more popular than the church he built, with four times as many followers on Twitter as Elevation Church itself.

Now, Steven Furtick is spending a lot of that money on a 16,000 square foot house in Weddington. It has 7 ½ bathrooms, according to building permits, which put the contract value of the house alone just shy of $1.4 million. The land cost another $325,000, for a total cost of more than $1.7 million.

You can’t see the house from the street. It’s out of sight, behind a no trespassing sign off Providence Road in Weddington, in the midst of 19 ¼ acres of dense woods. Furtick’s name is not on the deed. Instead, it’s under the name of the Jumper Drive Trust. The trustee: James “Chunks” Corbett, Elevation Church’s executive pastor and Furtick’s right hand man.

“The pastor should be the servant of his people. He should be the one that is most transparent,” said Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation. “It saddens me to see what the church is becoming.”

Anthony belongs to a small church in Dallas, Texas, and believes preachers should give up their big houses and get back to the Christian church’s humble beginnings. “There, the pastors lived as the poorest of the poor, not the richest of the rich,” he said.

NBC Charlotte wanted to ask Furtick about his multi-million dollar home. For weeks, we sent emails, made phone calls, sent letters, and even met with Furtick face-to-face. He refused to speak publicly until Saturday, September 29, when he responded in his sermon.

“I've been feeling sorry for myself because they tell me there's this news reporter trying to do this story where he wants to make our church look bad,” Furtick said in his sermon. “Now me and [my wife] Holly, this year, we're building a house. We've been looking for a piece of land to build a house for our family for a long time. I'm real excited about it, but then I find out, this is crazy, the news is trying to fly this chopper over our house. I'm thinking to myself, first of all, it's not that great of a house. I'm sure there's better houses, if you've got to fly a chopper over somebody's house.

“It started to mess with me a little bit because I thought this ain't right. I didn't even build that house with money from the church. I built it with money from my books and I gave money to the church from the books and you start getting real defensive and being like this ain't right. This ain't right,” Furtick said.

“I’m sorry, but there’s something wrong with that,” said Rosebrough, who runs a protest podcast against preacher profiteers from his home in suburban Indianapolis. “There's no distinction between Elevation Church and Steven's books. The two get mashed together in a way that creates a real conflict because the job of the pastor is not to preach his book.”

Elevation Church paid for full page ads promoting the book, and paid to air sermons featuring the book on TV, including on NBC Charlotte. In a webcast, Furtick also gave away a backpack to a poor child for every sale of his book “Greater.”

Corbett told NBC Charlotte that “the books help the church tremendously” in three ways:
•First, Furtick arranges for the publisher to sell the books by the thousands to Elevation Church at his author’s discount. So, Elevation Church makes money on the book, but no one will say how much.
•Second, Furtick donates some of his own advance money to Elevation Church. Corbett says Furtick “is very generous,” although he won’t say much Furtick donates.
•Third, the publisher pays the church outright to produce slick videos marketing the book, although the church won’t say how much, all of which makes the church sound like a business.

“Is he not doing the exact same thing that the money changers were doing in the temple? Using God's house to make a profit?” says Rosebrough. “Do you know what Jesus did? He made a cord of whips and drove those damn people out of God's house. The church does not exist for this.”

How much did Furtick make from his books? No one will say how much. But he says the book of Steven paid for the house of Steven.

"I would also argue that it’s not exactly suffering for Jesus,” said Warren Cole Smith, an author from Charlotte and editor at The World, a Christian magazine. “That’s sort of the dirty little secret of these mega church pastors. They use this church as a platform and make a lot of money on the side.”

Yet, Elevation Church has asked volunteers and employees alike to sign a confidentiality agreement, which threatens to sue if volunteers and members disclose church finances. “If Steven Furtick's followers in the congregation at Elevation want to pay him these outlandish salaries and want to allow him to live in multi-million dollar homes, that's up to them," said Smith. "They're the ones contributing the money. But they should know that.”

Many churches believe at least elders or deacons should set the pastor's salary. But at Elevation, it’s a closely guarded secret. Wednesday night at 6 p.m., the I-Team reports on the men who set Steven Furtick's salary. None of them are members of Elevation Church.

[Psalm 51:17]

Pastor's salary set by board, not congregation
10/23/13
http://www.wcnc.com/home/I-Team-Pastors-salary-set-by-board-not-congregation-229010291.html

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Pastor Steven Furtick made generous giving a cornerstone at Elevation Church, recently passing $10 million in giving to outside groups since the church’s founding eight years ago. But Furtick will not talk about his own compensation.

When NBC Charlotte started asking about it, he mentioned me in one of his sermons. “There’s an investigative reporter,” Furtick said during a sermon September 29. “He’s been calling around and people have been calling us.”
 
Furtick and his lieutenants refuse to tell the people who pay his salary, the congregation at Elevation Church, just how much he makes.
 
“We don’t know,” said Warren Cole Smith, who writes books about the evangelical church from his home in Charlotte, “and the reason we don’t know is because they won’t say. The real problem is there’s a lack of transparency.”
 
Furtick recruited a so-called “board of overseers” to set his salary. The board is made up entirely of other megachurch pastors, just like him. Smith said to him, the board looks like a paper tiger. “The financial well being of those guys are intimately intertwined.”
 
That means Furtick agrees to pay them to preach at Elevation, and they pay him to preach at their conferences or megachurches. “They attend each other’s conferences and are compensation for that regularly,” said Smith. When Furtick held his Code Orange Revival last year, three of the headliners, pastors Stovall Weems of Jacksonville, Fla., Perry Noble of Anderson, S.C., and Kevin Gerald of Seattle, were all board members at Elevation. Those are three of the five votes that set Furtick’s salary.
 
Executive pastor James “Chunks” Corbett told NBC Charlotte that pastors get paid for appearances at Elevation Church, but said the pay is “small in scope,” and he won’t disclose the amounts.
 
“These guys scratch each others’ backs. That’s not accountability.” said Chris Rosebrough, who runs a podcast called Pirate Christian Radio from his home near Indianapolis and is a critic of Furtick. “All of the accountability in Steven Furtick’s church goes from the top down.”
 
Elevation Church was founded by, got loans through, and gives missionary money through Southern Baptists. But unlike many Baptist churches, there are no elected deacons or elders here overseeing the church.
 
There is one man living in the Charlotte area who runs Elevation: Chunks Corbett.  If you want to understand Elevation you have to understand his role. As executive pastor, Corbett is at the center of Furtick's organization. In 2005  he incorporated Elevation Church. In 2007, he incorporated Corban Properties Southeast - a for-profit company. In 2008, he signed on as trustee for the Jumper Drive Trust that owns the Furtick's home. And in 2009, he incorporated Sun Stand Still Ministries - another non-profit. All four list the same principal address: 11416 East Independence, Suite N, the location of the Matthews church.
 
Corbett declined to speak on camera to NBC Charlotte, but spent 90 minutes with me.  He praises Furtick for his generosity with the church, but he refuses to release the church's audited financial statement or its bylaws.
 
That's in stark contrast to another local megachurch, Forest Hill, which spells out how it's elders are elected right on its website. “We then screen them, we interview them, look at their experience here in the church and their commitment to Christ,” said Steve Brown, the church’s financial committee chairman, who also releases the church’s audited financial statement. “We want people to see exactly what this congregation is giving.”
 
Many other evangelical groups, like the Billy Graham Evangelical Association and Samaritan's Purse, release their tax returns by law. So if you give, you might not completely approve of what Franklin Graham gets paid, but at least you know, and you get a say. The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina puts a salary chart right on its website. You can look up what Baptist preachers get paid depending on the size of their congregations.
 
The highest pay here for churches over a thousand members is $231,000 per year. But megachurches like Elevation are in a category all their own. They hire compensation consultants to look at other megachurches. And no one is releasing those numbers.

[Psalm 51:17]

[Mark]

Steven Furtick Says House Is From God, Apologizes for Controversy

Amid controversy surrounding his 16,000-square-foot home and questions about his salary, pastor Steven Furtick apologized to his congregation Sunday—not for the house, but for any uncomfortable conversations they may have had as a result.

“My wife and I made a decision, and we built a house,” the founder and pastor of the 12,000-member Elevation Church in Charlotte, N.C., said at a service in Blakeney, N.C. “It’s a big house, and it's a beautiful house, and we thank God for it. … We understand everything we have comes from God.”

Furtick was open about the house—which he described as 8,400 square feet of heated living area, with the rest consisting of basement, attic, garage and porch space, according to an Associated Press report.

Critics say the $1.7 million home does not reflect the heart of a servant.

“The pastor should be the servant of his people. He should be the one that is most transparent,” said Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation, a nonprofit that monitors and investigates religious fraud, in an investigative report from NBC Charlotte. “It saddens me to see what the church is becoming.”

The Elevation Church pastor told his congregation he was most worried about how the attention from the media affected them.

“I’m sorry for the uncomfortable conversations you had to have this week,” he said, according to the Charlotte Observer. “I have always tried to make this a church where you could be proud of your church.” The congregation responded with a standing ovation.

Furtick, author of best-sellers Greater and Sun Stand Still, insists that he paid for the house with money from book sales—though he has not revealed how much he makes from his books and speaking engagements. He has also not divulged his salary from the church, which has been determined by an appointed “board of overseers” rather than the congregation.

The megachurch pastor thanked his members on Sunday for “what you’ve prayed, what you’ve said and what you haven’t said. … We appreciate knowing that you have our back.”

Furtick also added that the media is not an enemy, noting that news outlets can report what they want. “I do not call this an attack,” he said. “This is a news story, and the media is not our enemy.”

In his 10-minute address preceding the sermon, Furtick concluded that he looked forward to continuing his ministry in Charlotte “for the next 50 years,” adding that “the best is yet to come.”

http://www.charismanews.com/us/41539-steven-furtick-says-house-is-from-god-apologizes-for-controversy

[Psalm 51:17]

Furtick, author of best-sellers Greater and Sun Stand Still, insists that he paid for the house with money from book sales—though he has not revealed how much he makes from his books and speaking engagements. He has also not divulged his salary from the church, which has been determined by an appointed “board of overseers” rather than the congregation.

It's as if the modern-day church system is runned like a CIA organization - SO secretive. The previous church I was at a few years ago was like that(ie-they were runned like a hierarchy corporation, and they never showed their monthly budgets).

Churches that are yoked up with the Emergents, from what I understand, is like this now(ie-pastors and deacons have secret meetings, never show their monthly financials, etc). Even those non-Emergent churches that show their monthly financials seem to not show everything.

[Psalm 51:17]

http://www.christianpost.com/news/elevation-church-emotionally-manipulating-thousands-into-spontaneous-baptisms-say-critics-114957/
Elevation Church 'Emotionally Manipulating' Thousands Into 'Spontaneous' Baptisms, Say Critics
2/20/14

A baptism manual produced by Pastor Steven Furtick's popular Elevation Church in North Carolina, which teaches people how to produce "spontaneous" baptisms among the repentant, is being criticized as "emotional manipulation."

The manual, Spontaneous Baptism How-To Guide, was produced by Elevation Church in 2011 and received its first critique in November from James Duncan, a Christian blogger and associate professor of communication at Anderson University who lives in South Carolina.

"As a church we pray Sun Stand Still prayers all the time. We are constantly asking God to do something that seems impossible and then believing that He is going to pull through," explains the introduction to the guide.

"Most recently we prayed and asked God to lead thousands of people to take a public stand in their faith in Christ through baptism. God blew our minds and in two weekends we saw 2,158 respond and be baptized," it continued.

It then explains in very detailed and strategic terms how the church was able to get "this amazing, Sun Stand Still, only-God-can-get-the-glory miracle."

Among the strategies, according to the manual, is to strategically place people in the worship service who will pretend to respond when pastor Furtick gives the call for baptism approximately one hour into the service.

"Fifteen people will sit in the worship experience and be the first ones to move when pastor gives the call. Sit in the auditorium and begin moving forward when pastor Steven says go. Move intentionally through the highest visibility areas and the longest walk," the manual advises.

In a WCNC report on Tuesday Duncan claims that the tactic as dishonest.

"They had people in the crowd stand up who never intended to be baptized," said Duncan. "They were shilling for Steven and the intent was these shills stand up and everybody else follows."

Duncan highlights one of Furtick's baptism calls in his November critique in which Furtick dismisses the notion that his tactics are "emotional manipulation."

"You know God is calling you, and if you feel that in your heart, let me assure you that is the Holy Spirit of God calling you. It is not emotional manipulation. It's the presence of God drawing you and calling you. So in just a moment, I'm going to count to three. When I say 'three,' at every campus I want you to move into the aisles and go to the exit where the ushers are stationed at your campus," said Furtick.

Duncan, however, argued that it is emotional manipulation.

"Perhaps you could classify this as encouragement for a decision already made, not manipulation. You could, though if this were a decision made with confidence and determination, there would be no need to constantly reinforce that decision. Why I classify these as manipulative comes from the very first action, performed just seconds after Furtick's assurance that he wasn't manipulating them," said Duncan, who claims that people are being used as "shills" to start moving toward the front of the church.

Blogger Christopher Smith noted in his recent critique that the tactics being employed in the manual are a reflection of the McDonaldized Christianity many churches are now driving toward.

"Elevation has almost gone so far as to make themselves a caricature of McDonaldized faith, but I hope that – like all good caricatures – we don't just dismiss them as extreme, but rather, see through their story the desires in our own hearts and congregations that are driving us in a similar direction, even if we are not so ridiculous and extreme," said Smith.

The Christian Post reached out to Elevation Church for further comment on this story Thursday but a response was not provided at the time of publication.