Exclusive: High-Tech Sheep-Stealing? Elevation Church Accused of Using Location-Based Ads to Geofence Other Churches, Steal Their Congregants

Elevation Church in North Carolina has been accused by one pastor of high-tech “sheep stealing,” claiming the popular megachurch is using geofencing technology to intentionally target smaller churches with location-based ads, ensuring that as soon as congregants step foot onto their own church property- they are pushed advertisements intended to draw them away.

Dr. Michael Kelly is the lead pastor of Central Triad Church, a growing congregation nestled on the outskirts of Winston-Salem, NC. In a recent sermon he revealed to his congregation that a few years ago, in 2018, he was looking for ways to help grow and promote the church and “invited someone who worked at ABC (News) to come to our church and give me some ideas on what we could do for advertising.”

…and so she sits in my office and we’re talking and she says, ‘well, you could always geofence.’

I went, ‘what is a geofence?’

And so she begins to explain to me how they would do it. You pick an area and everybody with a smartphone that walks in that area starts getting notified of your ads.

According to Techtarget, geofencing is a type of location-based marketing and advertising that uses GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi, or cellular data to “define a virtual geographical boundary and trigger a targeted marketing action when a device enters or exits that boundary.”

The marketer explained to Kelly that before working at ABC, she used to work at Elevation Church and was “in charge of all the geofencing” for them (Linked video does not include name of the church group, but it was confirmed to Protestia by Kelly).

Elevation Church is a 17,000-member multisite campus with 20 locations led by pastor Steven Furtick. Along with being a popular speaker, author, and Grammy-winning musician, Furtick is known for having the term “narcegesis” (narcissistic exegesis) named after him based on his inability to exegete scripture in a way that doesn’t make every story revolve around the reader. He’s also known for wearing expensive luxury clothing and having a generally poor grasp of theology (see endnotes). Kelly continues alleging:

‘See, I was in charge of it, and we would geofence all the churches.’

I said, ‘I’m sorry, what?’

She said, ‘yeah, when we launch a new campus somewhere, we would go in and geofence all the church locations in that city so whoever would go to church would find out about this new church.’

And I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite getting what you’re saying.’

She said, ‘it’s a built-in tithing base. (Kelly says he misspoke slightly here, and what she actually said was ‘it’s a customer base that already tithes’)

So I said, ‘help me understand something. You’re telling me that you are literally advertising in other people’s churches so you can take their members and not reach the lost?’

That is to say, rather than set up geofencing around schools, clubs, or community centers, they intentionally set it up around other churches, drawing digital lines around the parking lots, knowing that any congregants they could lure or draw away with promises of a better kids program or better music would be “customers” with a track record of giving, making them uniquely positioned and primed to feed the beast.

Kelly recounts how, after this phone call, he called up a local Elevation church campus pastor, whose building sits a few miles away, and the two met in person, surprising him with a grilling about their shady practices.

And he just paused. And I explained it to him. He goes, ‘oh, we wouldn’t do something like that.’ I said, ‘OK. Why don’t you ask your people?’ He sent a text off. At the table, the message comes back. He starts reading it out loud. He didn’t read it before speaking to me.

Reading it out loud…he reads, ‘we don’t geofence by the name of the church, just by the church itself.’

In other words, Elevation wasn’t explicitly targeting his church as an individual locale but as part of a group of churches. It wasn’t personal, it was just business. Torqued at the intentional targeting of his sheep, Kelly concluded by telling the Elevation pastor:

‘I would rather you bring signs and come stand in the parking lot and let everybody know you’re here, than to do what you’re doing right now. It’s unethical and it’s wrong.’ And then I said, ‘you go ahead and call the powers that be and get Central Triad Church out of your list.’

And then to his own congregation:

I tell you that because there are people building churches whose purpose is not the lost..it’s to get. It’s to gain. It’s to get. It’s to create. It’s to pull. It’s to destroy. It’s to destroy churches.”

Reflecting on the situation six years later, Kelly had this admonition and encouragement for pastors toiling and laboring under the shadow of megachurches that frequently suffocate small congregations and suck all the oxygen out of the room, writing on Instagram:

To every church that has been destroyed by the juggernauts and to every Minister and Pastor who has asked the question why and how is this happening after years of work and labor, to see people run to a bigger thing because it walked through doors and announced itself secretly.
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To all the pastors out there who have given all you have through prayer, blood, sweat and tears, working unthinkable hours to see souls saved and the church discipled, THANK YOU! Thank you for being Honorable, Ethical and Godly. KEEP WORKING PASTOR!
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Keep giving and don’t quit now. Keep trusting God.
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Keep believing. God knows and He has seen. Stay humble No matter what and keep reaching the LOST.
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We are not perfect but we are NOT thieves and robbers.
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God will provide and we will see the mighty revival that God has promised. I did not share this as an attack but I believe this will encourage many that have wondered how and thought perhaps it’s because they weren’t good enough or loud enough or bright enough.
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Comparison is the thief of Joy. Now go be Joyful about the field God has called you to harvest.

We reached out to Elevation Church for comment but they have not responded to us at the time of this publication.

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