Steven Furtick sermon notes: where to find them (+ how to make your own)
Steven Furtick is the founding pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, which began in 2006 and now meets across multiple locations. The church is also known internationally for Elevation Worship, and Furtick's messages reach a large audience through the church's broadcast and online channels.
His preaching has a distinctive signature: a short, repeatable phrase that the whole message hangs on, and a familiar passage approached from an angle you did not expect. He often works from a single verse or a small detail inside a story, restates the phrase many times, and delivers with a spontaneity that makes the structure hard to see while it is happening.
That is precisely the note-taking problem, and it explains the searches for Steven Furtick sermon notes. The phrase is impossible to forget and the reasoning that produced it is easy to lose. A week later you can quote the line and cannot reconstruct how the text got you there. The method below is built to capture the reasoning while the phrase takes care of itself.
Where to find official Steven Furtick sermon notes
The messages are published by the church and its media channels:
Elevation Church
The church publishes its weekend messages online and archives them by series. This is the source for the full message rather than a short clip. Check the site for small group discussion guides, which churches of this size commonly produce for current series.
The Elevation podcast and app
Messages release as podcast episodes trimmed to the teaching, which is the most convenient audio for transcription.
His books
Several of his recurring themes have been developed into books, which are a more settled and better organised statement of an idea than a single message can be.
A note on copyright: Steven Furtick's sermons and any official notes remain the intellectual property of Elevation Church. Everything below is about making notes for your own study, not about republishing the ministry's content.
How to create your own sermon notes from any Steven Furtick sermon
Short clips circulate widely and are the worst possible study source, because the phrase survives the edit and the argument does not. Work from the full message instead:
Get the full message audio
Save the podcast episode or the archived message. Deliberately avoid the social clips for study purposes. A ninety second excerpt of a phrase-driven sermon contains the phrase and none of the support.
Transcribe it
Upload the audio for a complete transcript in minutes, first sermon free. Spontaneous, fast delivery is exactly the case where handwriting fails and a transcript earns its keep.
Transcribe the messageCount the phrase
Search the transcript for the repeated line and count the occurrences. Where it clusters tells you which section of the message the phrase was actually built out of, which is rarely where you remember hearing it.
Generate the outline
Run the transcript through the free outline generator. For preaching that never announces its points, this step usually recovers more structure than you perceived live.
Generate sermon notes freeReconstruct the move from the text
Write out the verse or detail the message started from, then the steps by which it reached the phrase. If a step is missing you will feel it immediately, and that is a useful thing to notice.
The One-Phrase Method
Phrase, Verse, Angle, Support, Response
Build the page around the phrase, then force yourself to justify it from the text. Five short rows, one page:
The repeated line, verbatim. This costs you nothing to record because you will remember it anyway, but writing it exactly stops it drifting in your memory.
The specific verse or textual detail the message started from. Often a single clause inside a well known story rather than a whole passage. Write the reference.
The unexpected reading. State in one sentence what he saw in the text that a normal reading of it misses. This row is the actual content of the sermon.
The steps between the verse and the phrase. Two or three lines. If you cannot fill this row from the transcript, that is worth knowing before you repeat the phrase to someone else.
What the message asks of you, stated as an action rather than a mood. Phrase-driven preaching is memorable and can still leave nothing to do, so write the step yourself if the message did not give one.
Tip: Read the Verse row and then the Phrase row with the middle covered. If the jump feels large, go back to the Support row and fill it in properly. Sermons you can only quote are sermons you have not actually studied.
Study tips for Steven Furtick's preaching
Always read the surrounding chapter
A message built on one clause inside a story is more interesting, and more testable, when you have read the whole story. This is ordinary Bible study and it is what turns a striking angle into something you can hold with confidence.
Do not study from clips
Short clips are engineered for sharing rather than for understanding, and they strip out the very support your notes need. Always go back to the full message before you write anything down.
Keep a phrase index
One line per message: the phrase and the verse it came from. Over a series this shows you the theme the whole series was building, which no single week reveals.
Frequently asked questions
How do you take sermon notes?+
What is the best sermon note format?+
Should I write during the sermon?+
Do I need a sermon notes template?+
Does Elevation Church publish official sermon notes?+
Why is it hard to reconstruct a Furtick message afterwards?+
Can I share my notes from an Elevation message?+
Transcribe any sermon free
You will remember the phrase. Transcribe the message and you will also keep the reasoning behind it. Your first sermon is free, no credit card to start, then $19/month for unlimited sermons.
Start transcribing freeThen turn the transcript into notes with the free sermon outline generator.
Want the bigger picture on Steven Furtick's ministry and most notable messages? See our Steven Furtick sermon archive guide in the Famous Sermons library.
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