Happy Sweet 16 | Holly Furtick

All right.

You know what this one is?

Are we reading books to kids?

We're wrapping books. For kids.

For kids. She's always been a big book guy. Big book guy.

Big guy. Hi, everyone. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I've got a special guest here with me today, Elijah Furtick in the building. And we've got a special cake because we're celebrating something special. You're gonna light the candles?

Yeah, Might as well get it over with.

Is it your birthday?

It's not my birthday, but I am 16.

Okay.

So that kind of segues us nicely into our topic of conversation.

Whose birthday is it?

It is. Drumroll, please.

Elevation Church. Happy birthday. Elevation Church. 16 years old. I'm gonna take this lighter from you. Okay, so It's Elevation Church's 16th birthday, February 5th. Elijah and I have had many great memories over the 16 years of our church. You were technically about six months old on February 5th. Born in July. When you were seven weeks old, we moved to Charlotte.

Yes.

Is that boring you?

No, I'm just. Sorry.

In February, we had our very first official Sunday morning worship service.

Let's go.

All right, so I have got a stack of pictures from the history of our church. And so I thought I would just share, show you a couple and see what you remember. Okay, so this is a picture of you. You probably don't remember it. You and me and dad.

Me and dad kind of have the same fit on.

You and dad are matching on purpose. It was Father's Day. So there's you and dad in matching shirts on Father's Day. You like his lapel mic, too?

Yes. Yes.

All right. I know you don't remember this.

I've heard a lot about it.

Okay, this is the egg drop.

I don't know. Why was I trying to eat the egg?

You were a baby.

Did I think it was edible?

Like you were 9 months old. Babies e. Eat, eat. Put everything in their mouth. You were a very fussy baby, so you probably would have cried if I had taken that egg away from you. All right, next picture. Do you remember this?

I do not.

Do you remember going to the early morning rehearsals with me?

No.

Yeah, you wouldn't because you're, like, 18 months old. Fun fact about me is I was one of the original. I'm an OG Elevation worship.

Oh, yeah. She used to lead worship.

All right, next picture. This, you have always loved the microphone. You're gonna see that as a theme in the next couple of pictures. But this was.

Graham does not look like he loved the microphone.

You know, Graham's was when he was a baby. He was more of like a mean mugger.

Yeah.

This was Christmas at Belk Theater. One of our first, like, really big gatherings where we gathered everybody together in one place and it's like that really pretty theater uptown, so. So we had an elevation worship experience there.

That's hype.

All right, next picture.

Ooh, again with the mask.

Look at that jacket.

Look at those toes.

What the. Oh, you've got.

Oh, see, that was a thing. Wear flip flops with jeans. Oh, you guys have flip flops.

Oh, I won't bring that trend back.

Flip flops with jeans.

Don't bring that back.

Little plaid jackets. Matching jackets. This is Easter at Time Warner, and we gathered all of our campuses together and we filled up Time Warner arena. And it was like I was so worried and stressed.

Did we really fill it up, though?

Yeah, I think we filled it up.

That's hype. The candle fell off.

Oh, shoot. Our candle.

Happy birthday.

All right, so this picture was, I think, Halloween. And you, we had the kids wear their pajamas to church for some reason. So there's you and Graham.

I love the boots. Like, uh huh.

Graham. Those are his fireman boots. And what we all really need to notice is the band aid on Graham's forehead.

Not to say. What is that?

He had stitches caused by you.

I've given Graham a lot of stitches, unintentionally over the years.

All right, do you remember this?

Getting baptized? Yes.

Yeah. Do you know where we were or what was going on?

Matthews campus. Nope. Blakeney campus. Blakeney campus.

There's something big going on, and we finished off the night with you. Code, code. Revival code. Why are you so bored with this conversation?

I'm sorry.

I remember dad was like, hey, I think we should have a revival in January and we should do it for 12 nights. And let's bring in, like, all the best preachers.

Yeah.

And it was just a really special time. It was really a cool time. Look how happy me and Graham are for you.

Aww. Even Graham is not. He's not even mean.

Graham is smiling.

That's a rare thing.

Graham is smiling. Alright, let's see what else we got. Oh, my gosh. This was a video shoot that me and the kids did for Easter, and you guys were just so naughty. Let's do this. Okay.

Oh, okay.

Okay, okay. Okay. Now we love every opportunity that we get to meet new people in our. Abby, can you sit down? All right, here we go. Ready? All right. Okay. Sorry, but it turned out super cute.

Hi.

I'm Holly. I'm Pastor Steven's wife, and I'm here with our three kids today. Elijah, Graham, and Abby. Guys, can you say hi? Hi. Hi. Can you say Happy Easter? Happy Easter. A couple years later, Daddy used this as an illustration for his thing that he says, you know, don't compare your.

Behind the scenes to somebody else's highlight reel. Right.

All right. You know what this is?

Offering?

Yeah, it was the favorite offering. Favorite offering. Yeah.

I've always been a generous man at heart. I think I get it from my father.

You have. You've always given in the offering from, like, a percentage of your birthday cash.

You can actually set up giving online to give every month.

All right, you know what this one is?

Are we reading books to kids?

We're wrapping books for kids.

For kids. She's always been a big book, book guy. Big book guy.

Big guy. I love books.

She loves books is the point.

And so this particular organization we partnered with, a organization that gives books to kids. One of the really cool things that I think it's been amazing to see over the years is how Love Week has evolved.

Right?

And it started out, you know, as this vision that dad had for us to reach the city of Charlotte. And we really made that happen. And every year, Love Week grew and grew, and as our church grew, it went from being a local thing to a global thing. A global thing. Let's see what else we got. This is just a picture of you in church worshiping with us. How does this picture make you feel? What does it make you think about?

You know, we're still in the. Still in the church, doing the same thing as a family.

All right, so here we have our whole family. What are your memories of sitting in church when the room was empty, like, during the pandemic?

It was weird. Yeah, it was really weird. Like, but then I feel like I got used to it. I don't know.

I also think when I look at this picture and I see the empty seats and I see the camera, like, directly behind us. It's also really cool to see the progression of our church. You know, we talk about, like, how our church has grown and how our church has changed and the way that.

God set us up beforehand, building our online ministry, every decision we made. I remember even dad tell me about early in the church, he told him, like, hey, I want to put our sermons on YouTube, right? I said, no, Vimeo. Vimeo is the way to go. All the creatives are on Vimeo. All the church people are on Vimeo. He's like, nah, there's this new thing, YouTube. I want y' all to put it on there. And now we got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people watching on YouTube.

And there's so many decisions like that that he's made over the years. But that one is really cool.

It's really cool to see. And then how God has used it.

And how many people during the pandemic and still. How many people were still reaching because of that? All right, so, you know, we've talked about how we started off. You were a baby at the church, then you were a kid and you were, you know, would occasionally come on stage and say, welcome to Elevation or whatever. And now you're 16 years old and you actually work at the church.

Yes.

And I feel like I need to clarify. Elijah really liked online school during the pandemic. And you came to us and you're like, please, I want to keep doing this.

Yeah.

And so we did. One of the really cool opportunities by doing school online is you get to come here and work here. And so tell us about this particular picture.

This is from Youthex 2021. We were doing a segment called Mic Check that we did before every experience at youthex. I'd never done anything like that before and it was super, like, nerve wracking. I remember the first night, like when we went live, I was like, bro, like, I can't do this. Like, I've never done this before. Like, I'm gonna sound like dumb. And I remember, like, I literally said probably like two words for the first Mic Check segment and they were like, bro, like, what happened? Like, you were good and run through and everything. And so I remember I called you and I was like, I can't do this. I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna tell him I can't do it. And you were like, no, just stick it out one more time. And I told myself, I was like, I'm not gonna quit. I'm gonna just make the best of it. And by the end, we were really having a good time chopping it up.

You get to do some really cool things. And you also. We had all those. We had pictures of you playing the drums. This is you. You were the.

I was doing a DJ set.

The DJ set before the rhythm.

Live recording, Live recording. Just to get everyone in a good energy, get em excited to worship. And yeah, I remember, like, I had my E group. If you're not in an E group, that's another thing.

We haven't talked about E groups.

It's all about having a community of people around you that have the same values of you are moving in the same direction as you. It was really cool to see how my E group came out to support me on this night. Yeah. And it was like, my, like, music stage name is do the dash. My egroup just starts chanting do the dash. Do the DA was so hype and, like, it brought my energy out and I started, like, screaming because everyone else was going crazy. So it's really cool to just be able to set up the night like that. That was, like, one of the best nights of my life.

I'm really glad that you get to do that. And I was there, and I'm very proud of you.

Thank you.

Are this the last picture we have? What were you thinking in that moment?

This is one of those ones. Sometimes he'll tell me about the illustration before. This is one of those ones where I actually did not even know that I was going to be a part of the sermon.

Come here, boy. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here, son. Come here, Come here, come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here, Come here, come here, come here.

You didn't think you had it, but right up before I came to preach, I handed him my wallet, and I didn't tell him why. I said, just hold this for me until I'm done. I'm about to be done. When I get to the end of my message, I'm going to put something in my boy. When I ask you for it, the fact that I ask is the proof that you have it. If I ask, you have it. If I ask, I gave it. It's in you. It's more than enough. Count that money. Open that wallet. What's in that wallet? What's in that wallet? I need 260. But I will never ask you for what I didn't give.

I've always loved, like, getting to be a part of his sermons. And he's just. He's the goat, like, who wouldn't want to be a part of his sermons?

This is true.

Yeah. Well, that kind of wraps it up.

Happy birthday, elevation.

Happy 16th.

I'm like a proud mom, but I'm also really, really grateful that I've gotten to be along for this journey. And I'm really excited about what's to come.

I love you.

I love you, too. So what do we tell the people?

Happy birthday.

Thanks for joining us. Yeah. And if you like this video, you know what to do. Like, subscribe.

Hit the bell.

Turn the notifications on if you want to see more content like this, leave us a comment. This would be cool. Leave us a comment and let us.

Know your favorite moment from the 16 years of the church for however many you've been there.

How long have you been a part of the church? And what's one of your favorite moments? And we love to. Yeah, we'd love to read through them. You'll go through and respond to people. That would be awesome.

I'll do it.

All right, we'll see you back here next time.