Larry Stevens Furtick Jr.

1980 – present

Founding pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and one of the most-streamed preachers of his generation.

Biography

Steven Furtick planted Elevation Church in Charlotte in 2006 with a small core group and grew it into a multi-site congregation with locations across the Carolinas and beyond. He trained at North Greenville University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his preaching is marked by a distinctive rhetorical style — tight repeated phrases, sudden shifts in volume and pace, and a single memorable line that the whole message drives toward. Elevation Worship, the church's music ministry, has become at least as widely known as its preaching, with songs in regular rotation in congregations that would not otherwise identify with Furtick's ministry. He draws sustained criticism on several fronts: for platform-sharing with prosperity teachers, for statements about the Trinity that critics have read as modalist, and for a preaching method that some argue treats the biblical text as a launching point rather than the subject. His defenders point to consistent gospel content and to a body of teaching aimed squarely at people with no church background.

Legacy

Furtick is the most-imitated preacher among church planters under forty, and Elevation Worship has shaped the sound of contemporary congregational singing more broadly than almost any other single church. Both the imitation and the criticism make his sermons among the most-searched of any living preacher.

Notable Sermons

Copyright & Usage

Steven Furtick's messages remain copyrighted by Elevation Church. The sermon archive is freely accessible for personal study but not for redistribution.

Where to Read More

• Elevation Church
• Elevation Church Sermon Archive

Where to Find the Full Steven Furtick Archive

Other Famous Preachers