Hillsong: Inside the mega church after leader Brian Houston’s shock exit
The dramatic fall of Hillsong’s charismatic leader has left its congregation on a precipice as trusted leaders and allies walk away. Read the latest.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
When a 20-something year-old married couple from Auckland set out across the Tasman to plant a church in a northwest Sydney public school hall they probably could not have imagined in their wildest dreams what would happen next.
Brian Houston was a pastor’s son. He married his wife Bobbie in 1977 when he was 23 and by 1983 the pair had rented the Baulkham Hills Public School hall to found what was then called the Hills Christian Life Centre.
Fast-forward almost four decades and what began with the faithful few in classroom chairs has exploded into Hillsong – a global megachurch with 150,000 members, campuses in 30 countries on six continents, two tertiary colleges, a TV channel and a music ministry whose songs are sung by an estimated 50 million people around the world.
But almost overnight, the charismatic leader who built it from the ground up has been toppled and other criticisms have begun to threaten to derail the church’s seemingly unstoppable growth as even trusted leaders and allies start to walk away.
Whether the congregation will keep the faith is the question being asked by those inside and out of Hillsong.
It was once the church of global pop superstar Justin Bieber, and in the country he has called home since 1978 Houston has more recently been regarded as a mentor to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Now, with drama engulfing Houston and Hillsong, Morrison – once proud to stand alongside his spiritual adviser – has seemingly distanced himself, saying on Thursday he was “disappointed and shocked” at the revelations about his long-time confidante.
Every week the congregants gathered – in the church’s own buildings, in theatres, in warehouses — to partake in Hillsong’s signature style of worship where younger members mosh in the praise pit, laser lights flash and hands stretch emphatically to the heavens.
In a poignant sign of just how deeply the church is embedded in its community, when one northwest Sydney family publicly farewelled four of its children killed by a drug-affected driver in 2020, it was two of Hillsong’s most enduring musicians who led worship at their funeral.
But in a handful of days the church as the world once knew it has irrevocably changed.
The first portent came in 2015 when Houston appeared in a Royal Commission to address allegations concerning his late father, Pastor Frank Houston, who founded the Christian Life Centre in Waterloo before his son would transform it into a Hillsong campus.
The next sign came in August 2021 when NSW Police charged Houston with concealing his father’s alleged child abuse.
Houston has strenuously denied the charge and pleaded not guilty. He is expected to face a local court hearing later this year.
But the final straw for Houston’s leadership came on March 18, when senior leaders announced their founding pastor had admitted to inappropriately texting a female colleague in 2013, and to entering a hotel room occupied by a woman who was not his wife for some 40 minutes while affected by alcohol after a Hillsong conference in 2019.
Five days later he resigned from the church he had built up from that humble school hall, the church with which his identity was widely synonymous for much of the world outside and within it.
The situation has been cataclysmic for those inside the church who looked up to their pastor, who trusted the integrity and accountability of its leaders, some of whom are now facing allegations concerning the handling of Brian Houston’s past misconduct.
“The board has always endeavoured to act biblically and in accordance with good governance,” the church board said in a statement on March 18.
“However, we understand that there has been a significant breach of trust.”
In the Christian faith it is acknowledged that we all sin and fall short of God.
Church leaders are no exception but few could claim the name recognition, notoriety, or headlines of Brian Houston in recent days.
In a world where some 2.38 billion people profess the Christian faith, how did a church with a comparatively measly 150,000 members and its pastor command so much attention?
What was the moment for Hillsong Church, and for Brian Houston?
Was it the substantial music ministry’s songs, used by church communities well beyond Hillsong itself, that propelled it irrevocably into the limelight?
Was it the 2015 GQ article detailing how Bieber was urgently baptised by Hillsong New York lead pastor Carl Lentz in an NBA star’s bathtub in New York City at 2am – so unable was he to bear another moment without being reconciled to God?
“People say we cater to celebrities,” Lentz told GQ at the time. “And I say, yes, we do. Celebrities deserve a relationship with God. Celebrities deserve a place to pray.”
Lentz was later terminated by the church when it was revealed he had been unfaithful to his wife. As a result Houston issued a blistering assessment of Lentz’s character.
In another profile with GQ in 2021, Bieber might have had the most prophetic word of all for what was to come for Hillsong though he did not name names.
“I think so many pastors put themselves on this pedestal,” Bieber told GQ, months after his one-time spiritual mentor’s fall from grace.
“And it’s basically, church can be surrounded around the man, the pastor, the guy, and it’s like, ‘This guy has this ultimate relationship with God that we all want but we can’t get because we’re not this guy’. That’s not the reality, though. The reality is, every human being has the same access to God.”
For those closer to home, was it when Scott Morrison came through the 2018 power struggle between Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton, Steven Bradbury-style, to win Australia’s prime ministership?
In his 2008 maiden parliamentary speech, the Morrison acknowledged he had been “greatly assisted by … many dedicated church leaders”, including Brian Houston.
This close relationship, in which the Prime Minister was invited on stage to pray at a 2019 Hillsong conference, and in which the Prime Minister angled unsuccessfully for an invite for Houston to a White House dinner under the Trump administration, only served to elevate Houston’s profile. In some circles – largely left-leaning, politically engaged Twitter users – easily debunked conspiracies about Hillsong abound.
A massive Hillsong event at Qudos Bank Arena sparked a huge Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020 (False: the photo circulated on Twitter as so-called evidence was from an event in 2019);
A Christmas light display at Hillsong’s main campus popular with Instagrammers sparked a Covid-19 outbreak in December 2020 (False: The lights were off at the time, the church was closed, and the person with Covid-19 was walking through the car park which is also a shortcut for metro commuters); Half the federal cabinet are Hillsong members (False: Noting that Hillsong is not synonymous with Christianity or even Pentecostalism at large).
Whatever the moment was, Brian Houston was at the forefront of it.
There was no Hillsong without Pastor Brian. There was no Pastor Brian without Hillsong.
“Like many other churches of its size, Hillsong’s governance model has historically placed significant control in the hands of the senior pastor, but we recognise that the way we do things needs to be reviewed,” the church board conceded in its statement last week.
“We know there are areas on which we can improve, and we will work honestly and transparently to that end.”
Hillsong has a diverse collection of detractors – those who think the music is too loud, the clothes are too cool, the teaching not traditional enough, and those outside with long-running questions about accountability and transparency within the church’s leadership.
But while the sternest critics of Hillsong’s style and leadership might land somewhere between vindication and glee at the catastrophic downfall of its leader and the somewhat more sympathetic might feel disappointment and dismay – there remain some 150,000 people around the world for whom Houston’s failure will be devastating.
There will be people inside Hillsong Church who have known the intense and acute grief provoked by unfaithful spouses, who now see their pastor accused of placing himself in a compromising position with women who were not his wife.
There will be people who remember how Houston dismissed New York’s Lentz in a forceful public statement that dishonesty and unfaithfulness would not be tolerated at Hillsong Church.
There will be people who now have to reckon with allegations that some of the church’s most trusted leaders did not hold Houston to public account, but instead consigned him to “seek professional help”, without disclosing it even from many of the church’s other senior leaders and elders.
There will be people who came to the Christian faith inside Hillsong’s churches, who met their closest friends, who married their spouses, who baptised their loved ones within its walls, and for whom the foundation has now been shaken.
For those on the outside Hillsong might have been the party church of roving lasers, upbeat worship music, and the beaming leader who sometimes gave the energy of a motivational speaker and had the Prime Minister on speed dial.
But for those inside it was a safe place where they could worship outside the conventions of traditional church environments, where they could dance if they wanted to, where they could wear sneakers to church, where they could come exactly as they are.
For many, that safe place has been shattered and it will now be a question of if, and how, the congregation’s trust can be rebuilt along with a different future for the church apart from the man who built it, and the woman who built it with him.
Some of Hillsong’s pastors have already begun to publicly express their dismay with the way in which Houston’s conduct was handled, including one in America who told his congregation that Houston denied to his face he had committed any misconduct only days before the meeting in which further details were revealed.
Hillsong Atlanta’s pastors Sam and Toni Collier have now announced they will depart Hillsong and plant a new church in the city called Story Church next month.
“I have appreciated the Hillsong family and want to thank the Houstons for the love they have shown Toni and me,” Sam Collier wrote on Instagram.
“My greatest reason for stepping down is probably not a secret to any of you – with all of the documentaries, scandals, articles, accusations and the church’s subsequent management of these attacks it’s become too difficult to lead and grow a young church in this environment. I have no shame in admitting I cried like a baby moments after I informed the Hillsong global pastor of my departure.”
In a subsequent video on Collier’s Instagram which hints at more hopes for the future, interim global pastor Phil Dooley said the Colliers had Hillsong’s full love and support in departing the church in its hour of crisis.
“As Hillsong church we are committed to continuing to build a church that will make a difference all over the Earth, will celebrate Jesus, and draw people, we pray, to Jesus and see lives change,” Dooley said.
The church’s bands and most prominent musicians, including celebrated New Zealand export Brooke Fraser, known within Hillsong by her married name Brooke Ligertwood, have continued to promote their new music and upcoming tours without directly addressing the crisis at hand.
For her part, Houston’s wife Bobbie made a relatively subtle dispatch in the comments of a days-old Instagram post with perhaps more compassion than anyone else within the church or outside of it can currently manage for her husband.
“I’m okay. It’s been a very cruel week, but I will forever stand alongside the man I have loved and walked with for 45 years. I know his nature and character and integrity more than anyone.”
While speaking to Hillsong’s senior leaders about the resignation of Brian Houston, Dooley referenced a verse from Job – a book of the Bible about trials of faith.
“At least, there is hope for a tree. If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.”
In layman’s terms, you get knocked down, you get up again, with God’s help.
It was not clear whether this message of hope was intended for Hillsong or for Brian Houston.
Hundreds of sandstone blocks to protect critically endangered birds
Never mind the bollards: Hundreds of sandstone blocks have been left on a Coffs Coast foreshore to protect critically endangered shorebirds increasingly at risk of extinction.
‘Embarrassing’: Red faces as Lib candidate ’dossier’ posted online
Personal details such as the relationship status and home addresses of Liberal Party representatives and candidates have been made available online on leaked nomination forms.