Elevation Church

Elevation Church is a non-denominational multisite church based in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, with its broadcast campus in Ballantyne and headquarters in Matthews. Steven Furtick planted the church in February 2006 with seven families from Shelby, North Carolina, and 121 people showed up to the first service in a rented high school. Twenty years later, Elevation runs roughly 19 campuses across the Carolinas and into Canada, and its worship arm, Elevation Worship, launched in 2007 and became one of the most-streamed names in modern worship music.

No church in this index has a bigger combined audience. Elevation's brand family reaches 28.97 million followers across four platforms. YouTube leads with 12.63 million subscribers split across three channels: Elevation Worship at 8.41 million, the main church channel at 3.82 million, and Elevation Rhythm at 396,000. Instagram adds 7.86 million followers across four verified-family accounts, with Elevation Worship again the largest at 5.18 million. Facebook contributes another 7.15 million, and TikTok adds 1.33 million. The mix is the model: Furtick's sermon content and the worship catalog feed each other across every feed.

What stands out in 2026 is that the machine is still accelerating. Elevation posted a perfect 100 on both reach and breadth, and its YouTube subscriber base grew 13.04 percent in the past year. At this scale, that is well over a million new subscribers in twelve months. A velocity score of 60.8 would be ordinary for a mid-size church. For a brand starting at 29 million followers, it is remarkable. Most legacy church brands plateau at the top. Elevation has not, and the gap between number one and everyone else keeps widening.