“Where calling meets college.” That’s the pitch of Elevation College, an offshoot of Matthews-based Elevation Church opening for students this fall.
The college will offer eight four-year bachelor’s degree programs in majors like pastoral care and counseling, production, biblical studies and digital media and design, as well as two-year associate degrees in general education and ministerial leadership.
Elevation is the largest church in North Carolina by number of campuses and by average weekly attendance, around 17,000 as of 2025, firmly cementing it as a megachurch — congregations of 2,000 or more weekly attendees.
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But even with Elevation’s colossal size, as the book of Ecclesiastes says, two are better than one.
Elevation College will partner with Southeastern University, a Florida-based private Christian school affiliated with the Assemblies of God, one of the fastest-growing denominations today, in providing academic classes. Elevation’s 10 programs listed on its site link to existing degree programs at SEU, with all but two of them housed in the Barnett College of Ministry and Theology.
A match made in heaven
All academic instruction and degree conferral will be provided by SEU, while Elevation College will serve “as a local community site providing mentorship and practicum experiences,” its website says. A practicum is an introductory, supervised internship experience that is often required for degree programs like social work, education and counseling. According to the college, the practicums will be completed within Elevation Church.
“Through our Practicum Experience, students step into meaningful, hands-on opportunities each week, serving alongside Elevation Church staff and leaders while developing as servant leaders who love God and people,” the website states.
“Students can gain practical experience tailored to their degree program in areas like worship, production, youth ministry, creative, and campus ministry. Under the guidance of mentors, students are placed on ministry teams where they’ll receive coaching, weekly development, and real responsibility.”
Elevation students are fully enrolled at SEU, but their courses are delivered in a hybrid format designed around their chosen degree path, SEU Chief of Staff Patrick Fitzgerald told CPP in an email.
“Depending heavily on a particular student's major, some online courses will be offered exclusively for Elevation College students to foster local community building and focused peer collaboration and even contextual learning,” he wrote.
“Other online courses will combine Elevation students with the broader SEU student body to diversify their academic discussions, provide access to particular professors, and maximize course availability.”
Though Elevation College itself will not operate as an accredited institution, SEU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the same organization that provides accreditation to hundreds of North Carolina universities and community colleges.
A spokesperson for Elevation, College and Leadership Pastor Matthew Drew, said Elevation chose to partner with SEU because “they already have a strong, accredited academic framework and shared our heart for raising up the next generation of leaders.” Drew did not respond to further detailed questions from Carolina Public Press at the time of publication.
Perry Glanzer, an expert on Christian higher education and educational leadership professor at Baylor University, said it’s not unusual for churches to start colleges. Many Historically Black Colleges and Universities started as seminaries or have deep connections to the church, like Shaw University in Raleigh.
Having just a handful of degree pathways in the beginning, most of them ministry-focused, is also common.
Christian universities tend to get started in two ways, Glanzer said. One way is to begin as a Bible college, such as Carolina University in Winston-Salem, previously the Piedmont Bible Institute. Another approach, which Glanzer said is happening more in countries outside of the United States, is to offer a few practical majors like business technology and healthcare degrees. In both instances, Glanzer has seen such institutions expand over time.
What is unique about SEU is its emphasis on branch campuses, like Elevation College, Glanzer said. Some of the largest Christian colleges, such as Liberty University and Grand Canyon University, have their online programs to thank for their high enrollment numbers. But instead of taking the beaten path, SEU is instead growing its enrollment through its 200 site locations at churches across the country, including nine others in North Carolina.
“Southeastern is taking a different model in that they hire local professors to teach classes within the church, so it’s face-to-face but with the support of a local community as well, and they’re doing that in multiple church locations, actually all around the world, not just the United States,” Glanzer said.
“That’s really unique, and as a result Southeastern is actually seeing tremendous growth. (...) State universities have declined by about 4% in the last decade. Secular private universities have declined 7%. Protestant universities have grown 11%, but Southeastern has grown even more than that. They’ve grown 200% in the past decade, from 2014 to 2024, largely using this creative model.”
Elevation will charge a little over $8,000 for tuition and $6,800 for housing per year, as well as a $5,000 site fee that Elevation says will support ministry training, leadership development, classroom space, spiritual formation and student programming. At roughly $20,000 per year, Elevation College will be cheaper than most of the state’s largest private universities and many of the public University of North Carolina System schools’ cost of attendance for in-state residents.
Tuition goes directly to their university to support instruction and degree conferral, whereas the site fee goes to Elevation. The two will also engage in a revenue sharing model that “supports the ongoing sustainability and growth of the program for both entities,” Fitzpatrick said.
Elevation plans to have between 30 and 50 students its first year based on its capacity for student housing, Drew said. According to its website, students are required to live in newly built townhouses, located in Charlotte.
Church history lesson
Elevation was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, until it left in 2023. While the church didn’t provide a reason, it came after the SBC had voted to remove several churches for having women pastors. Married duo Steven Furtick and Holly Furtick co-founded Elevation, and Holly occasionally delivers sermons.
“You will find that our Statement of Beliefs on our website is very much in line with the Baptist Faith and Message — we have no intention of changing those core beliefs,” Elevation said in its letter.
“(...) We pray that we will continue to be able to work alongside many SBC churches in the coming years. We know there is much we can do more effectively in partnership than we can do alone.”
Elevation now operates as a nondenominational church but, as promised, its beliefs and practices are still largely aligned with Southern Baptist teachings, so it might seem odd to partner with SEU. But Warren Bird, one of the United States’ leading researchers of large and growing churches, said the SBC and Assemblies of God think similarly about core issues.
“The Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God denominations are fully aligned on core evangelical doctrines, such as: Who is Jesus? Is the Bible the inspired Word of God? And how does someone get forgiven by God and spend eternity in heaven?” Bird told CPP in an email.
“They differ primarily on issues of local church autonomy, the role of spiritual gifts today such as speaking in tongues, and level of emphasis on the Holy Spirit.”
SEU partnering with churches, many outside of their own denomination, is unusual but attractive, Glanzer said. It allows students to have an in-person element while still offering the benefits of an online education that so many are seeking out today.
Elevation is particularly well-known thanks to its in-house music group that has released 17 albums since 2010 and is considered one of the “big four” contemporary Christian music worship bands. Churches across the country sing Elevation’s original songs every Sunday, which has led to the church having a lot of pull within the Christian community.
While high-visibility churches like Elevation draw in members from their region most heavily, Bird said, their influence is undoubtedly national. So although students will be expected to live and practice in the Charlotte area, Bird expects Elevation’s recognizability will attract students from across the country.
Theological stances
SEU has a number of statements regarding its theological beliefs and admission to the university, including a “community covenant” of 15 standards that it says students are obligated to follow as voluntary members of a faith-based community.
One instructs students to respect and value the “diversity of the body of Christ,” while another states they should refrain from “all sexually immoral behavior including: premarital sex; adultery; lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender behavior; and involvement with pornography in any form.”
In a separate statement, SEU says it affirms human sexuality as a gift from God, as it is designed to serve as a mirror of one’s relationship with God — but that doesn’t extend to the LGBTQ+ community.
“We believe that God’s intention for human sexuality is between one genetic male and one genetic female within the covenant of marriage (Genesis 2:18, 21–24; Hebrews 13:4),” its website states.
“In addition, Southeastern University supports the dignity of individual persons affirming their biological sex — understanding that any attempts to change one’s God-given sexuality through elective sex-reassignment or transvestite, transgender or nonbinary ‘genderqueer’ acts or conduct is at odds with our biblical standards, denominational affiliation and subsequently our code of conduct.”
While Elevation College students are not subject to the same policies, SEU partners with churches with similar beliefs, Fitzpatrick said.
“As a partner site, Elevation College operates within an alignment of shared organizational values,” he wrote.
“Southeastern University (SEU) does not impose its specific university-wide lifestyle policies, scriptural standards, or community covenants onto Elevation College students, nor do we ‘police’ their student body. Instead, we purposefully partner with churches like Elevation that already possess like-minded theological stances, strong institutional integrity, and a shared spiritual vision. Elevation College maintains its own environment and culture appropriate to its local church context.”
Elevation Church’s public accounts and websites do not address whether it approves of same-sex marriage. But since a former musician for Elevation came forward in 2018 about being asked to step down from his role because of his sexuality, there’s been a widely held notion that it is not supportive of the LGBTQ+ community.
Church Clarity, a nonprofit that scores churches on their transparency of their LGBTQ+ and women in leadership policies, lists Elevation policies as unclear, though the entry hasn’t been updated since 2018. Church Clarity cites an Elevation page that is no longer active but previously stated marriage is intended to be between a man and a woman.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.