Talk:Elevation Church

Church plant?
Can somebody explain what a church plant is? Corvus cornix talk  20:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Never mind, found an article. :)   Corvus cornix  talk  20:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Locations in the infobox
I think we should keep all 4 locations out of the infobox. It's too long and clunky looking. Saying "Charlotee, NC," should be enough, IMHO. Ltwin (talk) 20:54, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Here we are, nine years later, and the article is now showing numerous locations within the article itself and 20+ pastors in the infobox. Is this really necessary? Just curious. Cof fee sweet  (talk) 19:46, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Merge Proposal
It has been proposed at Talk:Steven Furtick to merge that article into this one. Please comment. Ltwin (talk) 01:47, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I think there is no reason this should be merged with Elevation Church. Steve Furtick is apparently a controversial figure and that's why their is a discussion. But he is a well-known pastor and author which according to Wikipedia qualifies for a page. In that, I mean he is not just a local guy with no following. He pastors a 5,000+ church and has many youtube videos, and a book. I see no reason to merge him. This page is fine.Joshua Evans (talk) 03:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

"Discrimination" section
Ebgraham, since you are intent on maintaining the POV version of this paragraph you need to give reasons why? Your version is clearly POV.

1) You write that the church "removed" the child. This however is disputed. The church claims it escorted the child to another section of the church. Your edits do not take this into account. 2)You write that the pastor canceled a meeting with the parent, but do not mention the reason: she went to the media before she met with the church. 3)You use weasel words when discussing the church's outreach to the ARC. In fact, you don't even get that right. They don't claim to have received training. They claim to have reached out to the ARC for training. 4)To label the section "Discrimination" is clearly POV. A section heading is not even needed. It is one paragraph of a small article.

I'm gonna try to compromise, but if all you do is revert then I will be forced to seek outside comments. Ltwin (talk) 23:59, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Ltwin, while my edits may take the mother's POV more into account, yours solely take the church's into account. A compromise would have both in. If you wish to compromise, add in statements by the church, do not delete the mother's POV. That way both sides are accounted for. If you look at my original post, I have compromised a lot. You have compromised a little. I'm not going to compromise away the mother's story.Ebgraham (talk) 20:36, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * My edits have not deleted any of the mother's story. If I've removed anything, it has been to keep the article on focus and present on the most essential facts of the controversy. An abundance of quotes and details is not necessary, and this paragraph is already the largest paragraph in the entire article. In fact, I kept her designation of being in the lobby, I just placed it where it would be less awkward. I only have a problem with two sentences you keep adding in: "A church employee explained the behavior by stating that the church focuses on worship not ministry. The church later denied this priority." An employee made a comment that was refuted by the church. There is nothing to see or read here. An employee misspoke and the church corrected what was said. This has very little to do with the controversy. We are not in the business of quoting and paraphrasing news reports. This is not integral to understanding the controversy. Ltwin (talk) 05:53, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That absolutely has to do with the church's handling of the situation. Both that the employee said it and that the church later refuted it are in the story, reflecting an accurate portrayal of the events. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ebgraham (talk • contribs) 16:32, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

No it does not have anything to do with the incident. Once again, you seem to be confusing the role of an encyclopedia with an newspaper. This information, an employee made an off the cuff remark which was corrected by the church, is not encyclopedic and not necessary to understand the controversy. Ltwin (talk) 17:05, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * So you have decided the employee mispoke based off of your own educated guess, I presume? I have presentated both that it was said and that it was refuted. I think that's important; you think it's not. If you leave it out, people are missing an important detail. If I leave it in and people don't think it's important, they skim over it and ignore it.Ebgraham (talk) 00:32, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes its obvious that the employee misspoke or was misquoted because the church he or she works for said that was wrong. Anyway the point is that the church said it was wrong. It wasn't their position. Thus, there is no value in reporting it unless you want to score points. The controversy is over the removal of the child. This does not relate to that controversy. That is what you seem to not understand. It makes no difference what an employee said about the ministry focus of a church when that church said the statement was not true. The church said it did focus on ministry. This is a useless detail that serves no purpose. How does it relate to the wider story? It has no bearing on the story since the statement was not made to the mother, but to the news media. Ltwin (talk) 00:51, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Controversy section
Based on the guidance from CRITICISM to avoid sections "focusing on criticisms or controversies", I'm going to move the paragraph in the current Controversy section into the History section. Solongagothegarden (talk) 21:12, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Good call. I'm adding some depth to the History section as it has some old info and adding some new references as well. Additionally, due to WP:NPOV I'm going to edit the phrase "voiced his own kind of "Amen."" because although that language is in the source, it is not displaying a neutral POV. Eventhewise (talk) 02:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

“ An unknown gay individual who claims to be a former attendee said in a blog post...” This source does not meet our standards. Plus the quote from “unknown” is just a POV post on a blog. I recommend the sentence be removed. Harpervi (talk) 16:52, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Disputed Content Tag
I removed the disputed content tag. The edits seem to have been settled and tag is 10 months old. Edits since then have been minimal and controversy section has been appropriately integrated into article. Good resolution folks, glad to have dedicated and passionate editors working on smaller articles like this with diligence and poise. Eventhewise (talk) 23:07, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Southern Baptist
A user or users have been consistently removing information relating this church's affiliation as Southern Baptist church. This has been removed from the sidebar information under the denomination listing and in the first paragraph. I have added it back twice now. There is a proper independent reference to support this. Certainly suspicious. Jwebsterbillings (talk) 19:55, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Bias in Opening Paragraph
Does anyone else think that the closing sentence of the opening paragraph is unnecessary? While not incorrect, I think that the "Controversies" section calls the appropriate amount of attention to the public's issues with the church, but since this sentence isn't citing any sources or providing new information, I'd like to see it removed.

"Elevation has faced criticism over its financial and other practices, and the personal wealth of its senior pastor."

Ldgoals (talk) 18:02, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 one external links on Elevation Church. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.outreachmagazine.com/Library/webexclusives/Out100NoteFromEditor.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081203192123/http://ncmo.bpstudios.com/eng/stories/elevation.aspx to http://ncmo.bpstudios.com/eng/stories/elevation.aspx
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130628113653/http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/19/3987499/elevation-church-eyes-old-palace.html to http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/19/3987499/elevation-church-eyes-old-palace.html

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Controversy section information re-added
, which removed a paragraph from the controversy section, has now been readded. The editor's reasons for removing the text, per the edit summary, are as follows: "The source “Religion News Service” claims an NBC news link details spontaneous baptisms, and the link is broken, possibly never existing. “Religion News Service” also posts a link to Furtick’s website, but the link is a book ad, rather than a guide of a church can perform spontaneous baptisms. The Religion News Link is found to be falsified." The following information suggests the section may have been removed incorrectly. The majority of the RNS article, therefore appears to be both verifiable and reliable through other sources and archives. The according text in this article is also directly lifted from the above mentioned archives (specifically "We are confident that those who attend Elevation Church know and understand our mission and vision for reaching people for Jesus Christ. As attendees, they are provided, through weekly teachings, biblical context for everything we do and practice, such as baptism, giving, serving and inviting friends to church.", quoted from here.)
 * claims an NBC news link details spontaneous baptisms, and the link is broken, possibly never existing. - The link, indeed broken, which the Religious News Service source is referencing, is this one; it in fact does exist, and is archived here.
 * link is a book ad, rather than a guide of a church can perform spontaneous baptisms - The referenced guide, while not found at the link on the RNS source (which is a book ad), does appear to be archived here, which is itself a link from this page, and available here, and referenced additionally here (although this does not necessarily provide a reliable source, the additional link and quoting from the guide appear to verify its legitimacy). The church's response to the controversy is archived here.

With this information in mind, I believe Wikihow6754's edit was possibly in error, and have restored the removed content.

That said, I know nothing about any of the subject matter beyond what sources claim, and I am only here having noticed the removal of much of the controversy section content.

Thank you! Mxtt.prior (talk) 19:05, 12 May 2021 (UTC)