Lesson in Giving Gains $6 million for Elevation Church

Orginally published on Wednesday, January 09, 2008 at 8:45 AM
by Todd Rhoades

When Elevation Church doled out envelopes with $5, $20, even $1,000 to its members this past fall, pastors hoped the gesture would inspire generosity and add spark to a two-year, $3 million capital campaign. It turned into a windfall for the church, which is less than two years old. In just a month, members spurred by the lesson in charitable giving have pledged $6.4 million toward a permanent home for Elevation, more than double the south Charlotte church's goal.

“We’re blown away by how many families donated,” said Larry Brey, Elevation’s leadership development pastor. He said he didn’t know the number of contributions, but “there wasn’t a fat cat who wrote a big check. It was a lot of people looking at how they could sacrifice.”

Such a response is unusual for churches, which often collect the majority of their capital funds from a handful of wealthy donors, said the Rev. Gaston Warner, director of university and community relations for the Duke (University) Chapel.

“If it was spread out evenly, that would be something very special,” he said.

The amount of money itself is also impressive, though not unheard of, Warner said.

Church leaders and members say the campaign illustrates Elevation’s rise from 120 members as a new church in February 2006 to more than 2,600 now.

The church meets at Providence and Butler high schools in nontraditional services, with Pastor Steven Furtick, 27, in jeans and T-shirts, and a rock band playing praise music.

All the talk about money started in October when Furtick launched the Bless Back Project. He gave away $40,000, the equivalent of a typical Sunday collection, and instructed the recipients to do something nice for the community.

Church members gave to the homeless, bought flowers for friends, helped neighbors pay for costly prescription drugs and chipped in their own money to add to the gifts.

“We are a church that’s here to bless the city, and it was putting our money where our mouth was,” Brey said. “We wanted our people to start seeing themselves as being generous.”

Then, the capital campaign, called Dominate, began Nov. 11. Elevation’s leaders set a goal of $3 million, which they plan to collect over two years, to buy land, renovate warehouses as permanent space or continue to set up campuses at high schools in south Charlotte.

They also plan to donate 10 percent of the money raised to five local charities, Brey said.

You can read more here at Charlotte.com... (unfortunately, it looks like they’ve taken down this article)

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