You may or may not have heard of Hillsong before but most people know them through their music and there wildly popular worship song, “Shout to the Lord!”. That one song was the kind of worship song that transcended denomonational lines between church boundaries and whatever they believed: Nondenominationl, Catholic, Baptist, and Presbyterian all could be heard at some point or another singing this song or some version of it.
Hillsong wasn’t just a form of worship music, it was seen on the surface as a very modernized, progressive church. It was a charismastic megachurch based in Australia that stemmed out of a church in New South Wales called Hills Christian Life Center. First run by Frank Houston who was years later found to be a serial pedophile, it was taken over by his son Brian Houston and his wife Bobbie Houston in 1983. Hillsong was a member of the Australian Christian Churches – the Australian branch of the US-based Assemblies of God. This was all the way until 2018, when it separated to form a new denomination. It developed multiple branches like Hillsong Worship, Hillsong United and Hillsong Young & Free, Hillsong College, Hillsong CityCare just to name a few. At it’s height, Hillsong Church had 80 churches with 30 of those in other countries, and Hillsong had 150,000 members.
The scandals (plural) is most clearly laid out in Hulu’s 4 part documentary which hopefully will be updated at some point with what I will share today (SEE UPDATE at bottom). The problem with Hillsong began with Brian’s father, Frank Houston, and if I was a betting man, he probably molested Brian too since Frank was clearly a serial pedophile. Brian Houston doesn’t have the capacity to face or to tell the truth about his father. Frank Houston was clearly an abusive man that “everybody feared” and “no one wanted to be alone with” just because of his shere temper alone, nevermind that he was aa pedophile. Brian Houston himself radiated this anger of his father. However, if you watch the early days of his ministry, he is a goofy, unassuming preacher with real no ego about him. He was doing right and good.
The big change occurs when Brian goes to America and learns how TV preachers are doing ” the business” of prosperity ministry. He comes back a changed man. Thanks America. Way to go. Now, there is a severe, severe problem with Brian’s father abusing children but all of what Brian chose to know or not look at, we will never know. We know he knew some of it as shown from the documentary recorded testimony, and even his own highly respected mother knew. We also know that church docouments show that the Assemblies of God knew and chose to ignore it. Those are the crimes of his father and the church. However, when people do come forward and Brian pays the hush money and the whole city is entrenched in the system of Hillsong that Brian has charmed them with, the crimes now extend to Brian. But, by this time, Brian has let the machine of a church god take over him. It’s not Jesus–like when he was that unassuming goofball of a preacher with a mustache in the early days. It’s money and a numbers game and the vision in his head that is no longer connected to a reality. He lost touch with the humaness, compassion and love behind ministry. They say on this documentary that he hires a consultant for $50,000 to change his image from goofball to modern musclebound daddy, and soon everyone must wear the most expensive clothing like Armani suits, just as an example. How is that Christ like?
Brian Houston throughout this documentary denies, denies and denies–even for this documentary, he mocked the claims despite the findings of the investigation when reached out for comment, despite that there are multitude of witnesses and paperwork to prove it. Probably the most scariest and powerful thing of this machine called Hillsong is that they worked on getting people in inside the police, politics and the like so they could have protections. You have to wonder why they thought they needed that in the first place. It is such an insidious thought. Nevertheless, in their high crimes down to their misdeameanors, things rarely get investigated unless there is due pressure and the justice laid out doesn’t fit the crime.
What stands there is the only man I was introduced into back in the late 90’s into the 2000’s on television and radio. A man who unnerved me. I have a sixth sense about dangerous people. I had it about Cosby and I had it about him. I didn’t get the sense that he was a very geninunely loving man behind closed doors. I remember someone saying that if you can’t picture a minister sitting down with you and being fully present, and compassionate with you in your moment of grief, they likely are more of salesmen than a real minister. Brian was hiding something that kept an inner rage afloat inside him. I can’t say what is behind that rage but I suspect living under a father like that, I’m sure it is tied to abuse.
I loved Hillsong music though it wasn’t the center of my life. It was definitely life changing for me. Megachurches were the rage in the 90’s and they really were the only one’s attempting anything progressive. However, it was all deceptive. Hillsong was no exception. Behind the scenes at the megachurches I went to and later as things came out about Hillsong, I slowly over time learned the leaders were broadcasting hard a message “come as you are, we accept you here!”. It is a powerful message because we all want to be seen and accepted for who we are especially someonee like myself who suffered a lot of bullying and struggled with my sexuality. However, the crushing blow in many cases, including my own, and even more tragically inside Hillsong abuse cases, was a different message. “You can come as you are but you will need become like us to stay.”
Many of us lost a home, got fired or felt too uncomfortable to remain or even start a volunteer position. Within Hillsong, people got fired, physically handled, private details exposed, police called to escort them out when they made allegations of abuse. Cover ups ensued. As Brian peddaled this machine faster and faster and insisted everyone keep up with him, ministers like Carl Lenz who had gained notary for baptizing people like Justin Beiber, fell to scandals of their own. They were overcome with the pressure and Brian’s response was to disown them. He and other members of the leadership of Hillsong did not take into account their own fralities as human beings and trying to operate an inhuman corporation. In the end, the very machine Brain created disowned him for his own scandals when women came forward of allegations of inappropiate communications from him and a hotel stay with a woman. The culture he had created now chewed him up and spit him out. He first lashed back at Hillsong, and now like all preachers scorned who can’t face the truth, he and his wife are starting their own online ministry.
The thing about Hillsong is, for lack of a better word, the idea around their messaging, concept is a wonderful idea ruined right at the point that Brian went to America and took on the Prosperty Gospel and decided to make his ministry a money making machine. Probably even more so, with the father he had, Brian probably wasn’t the person who should have done this in the first place. His own wounds were never addressed. And isn’t this the problem we have? People who step into leadership who are corrupted? Would if someone were to do Hillsong (not the worldwide version necessarily) and what it truly said it was about and be about that, wouldn’t that be something?
Hillsong, just in the pretending of it’s messaging, made such a huge impact on the unchurched and swept people onboard before they knew what they were really about. Imagine a ministry like that was really what Hillsong said it was about, true to it’s word but even more progressive? See, what saddens me most as I watch the documentary is the 100,000’s of people who never graced a church. People who spent hours, their life savings and worked there. They dived in and were shafted. I can so relate. I dived into a few places to hit my head at the bottom of a shallow pool. The consequences are now some of these new Christians are straight up bitter atheists. Others don’t know what they believe but they are happy with that. I prefer that than bitterness and tears. Carl Lentz’s wife goes with Carl to a church but now sees so much wrong with the Church and it grieves her that she can’t sing or speak there because she is so hurt inside. I know all those feelings. I almost lost faith too. There are hours in some days that I am almost there again. Church still seems irrevelant to me because they are bereft by scandals and old ways they refuse to change. I go because I still love God and at times God speaks to me through something at Church and the small one I attend has loving people. I go because I don’t want to give up on it all because I still see God moving in my life. I’m just not sure where the Church or the Bible fits in. It grieves me that I am just like one of these people at the end of this documentary because the scandal I went through was Exodus International and Reparative Therapy. Some of this was housed in Church ministries.
I too am devasted by religion. My faith now isn’t what I want it to be. It’s really impossible to have a faith without a body of believers to walk it out with and yet that has practically killed it for me. So it’s a tight rope walk. While there is that devestation, I have a vision. I was reminded of it today when I read about how Andy Stanley (son of the famous TV preacher Charles Stanely who often didn’t get along with his son) has stood against his own church and denomination to say Jesus would be inclusive then we often allow–including of LGBT people. This very brave person in pastoral leadership took a position and reminded of what Hillsong originally offered people and a Church I envision… the one in NYC where people lined the streets for… a HOME. Where you are welcome as you are and NO ONE is out to change you. No one is there to judge you. No, you can’t be a leader of youth group if you are pedophile like Frank Houston, you can’t volunteer to run the books if you are a serial embezzler. Healthy boundaries, of course. But who you love, what you do with your body, what you sttruggle with is your journey. No church body should be judging that or white washing you.
And so, I want to start a Church. A real progressive Church like that. Heck, if you don’t believe in Jesus, then come worship God with us. Maybe one day you will see value of the great love of Jesus but if you believe in some kind of higher power and want to worship, why would I stop that? I really want something open and progressive with great dynamic worship like Hillsong had but with good leadership. That’s what I see. Maybe it will happen? Nothing I envision seems to come to be. Teaching has but my writing hasn’t really taken off or any of my side businesses. So if this is a vision God wants to work through me for, God will have to show me and do it. I see it. I can see how it would be beneficial. I’ve had it for sometime but I don’t know what to do with it. We will see!
UPDATE: If you watched the HULU documentary, the last episode leaves off with the upcoming trial of Brian Houston on failing to disclose information he knew about his Fathers sexual indescretions with children set in June 2023: Brian Houston was found NOT GUILTT for hiding information regarding his father’s abuses. Brian tried to get money back from legal fees since he was aquitted but this request was DENIED. I personally can’t imagine how he was found not guilty because when I watched the documentary, he is shown testifying before the commission of Australia that his father confessed to him at least once, if not more, incidents of molestation that Brian never reported. Plus, I believe there were other Church records of other reported cases that the church itself had to know of. So, what this says to me is that Australia is still in the hands of either Hillsong or Brian Houtson. That is scary stuff when he pretends that he cares what happened to the abused.
There should be a case still on the financial crimes Hillsong committed and I don’t see any update anywhere but I will keep looking. There was an investigation started but I don’t see any court ruling yet.
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