C3 Church: Hillsong rival raking in big bucks from 61,000 believers

Built on a model of getting its 61,000-strong flock to pay and pray for miracles, the C3 Church has now grown into a $112,240,892 tax-free empire. Read our investigation.

As a devoted member of Sydney’s fastest-growing megachurch, Alex Carlyle believed the harder she prayed and the more she paid would cure her younger brother of muscular dystrophy.

She tithed an average of $3000 every six months as a student to C3 Church over 10 years but left disillusioned when, despite expecting a miracle, her brother Tom Oliver still suffered MD.

The 31-year-old was one of the 61,000 Australians who attended one of the church’s services every week, her donations helping build its tax-free empire which is now worth at least $112,240,892 in this country alone.

Former C3 worshipper Alex Carlyle.

The newest evangelical hipster church is quickly catching up to its rival, the better-known Hillsong. In its 2019 annual report, Hillsong said it had 35 church locations in Australia and Bali and 131 campuses around the world.

C3 Church, formerly known as Christian City Church, says it has 500 churches in 64 countries and 1 million worshippers praying every week online.

C3’s head pastor, former garbo and hippy Phil Pringle, 69, who founded the church in 1980 with his wife Christine - known as Mama Chris — signalled its ambitions to be even bigger.

“No it‘s not becoming bigger and better than Hillsong, well, not yet …,” Mr Pringle told The Daily Telegraph outside his $6 million clifftop Mona Vale home last week.

Financial comparisons between the two churches are difficult because they each report differently.

C3 Church’s spiritual home is at Oxford Falls on Sydney’s northern beaches where one of its main money spinners is Oxford Falls Grammar School, founded in 1984, which is also a charity and charges students up to over $18,000 a year.

C3 Church Sydney listed its assets as $45,246,241 including land and buildings worth $35,889,322. Its Oxford Falls neighbour, the grammar school, listed its assets as worth $44,354,074 in its latest financial report.

C3 Church founder Phil Pringle at his home in Mona Vale

Ms Carlye was 16 when she started studying at C3’s grammar school and 26 when she finally left the church.

“The church culture teaches you that the more you pray and donate the bigger the miracle — I felt an enormous pressure to confirm to help my brother who was sick,” she said.

“Over 10 years I was effectively indoctrinated, the anxiety I suffered was enormous and when I was 24, I became bed ridden for three months with acute anxiety.”

Paying for miracles, tithing 10 per cent of your income, offering direct debit, donation apps and ATM machines at churches, C3 Church has been gifted at least $37,780,000 from its devotees since 2018, according to financial reports filed with the Australian Charities and Not For Profits Commission.

C3 Church uses the Bible to attract donations including the passage from Matthew 6:21 ‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ and exhorts its congregation that ‘You have to build the house of the Lord before you can build your own house’.

They also highlight Corinthians 9:6: “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will reap generously.”

There are mass exorcisms, on-stage healings and rock music to rouse the congregation.

Among its devotees is the father of double murderer Richard Leonard, who said the church had given him the spiritual strength to support his son who is serving a life sentence.

“The singing at the church is wonderful, it attracts like-minded people, it’s a stimulating and spiritual life. It got me through what happened to Richard. He’s my cross to bear,” Mr Leonard, who asked for his Christian name to be withheld, said.

Killer Richard Leonard, whose father is a C3 devotee.

Mr Leonard joined the Oxford Falls church in 1989, five years before his son, then 22 an abattoir worker, fatally shot Stephen Dempsey with a compound bow, cut up his body and kept it in his kitchen freezer.

Three months later he stabbed to death taxi driver an father-of-six Ezzedine Bahmad.

“I still love him,” Mr Leonard said.

From Port Hedland in the far north west of Australia to Sydney, the church also includes many of its physical churches on its real estate ledger.

Among its wealthiest congregations in NSW is Ryde which in 2019 and 2020 received ‘offerings and donations’ of $5,059,662, according to its financial returns.

Mount Annan C3 Church, which covers the Blue Mountain, Campbelltown, Kiama Oran Park and Wilton, received $1,959,662 from members in 2019 and 2018 while Lane Cove C3 church received $1,263,788 and Cronulla received $1,116,632 in the same two years.

Its charity tax-free status comes from advancing religion and advancing education and the church said over the past eight years it had given over $4 million of goods, furniture, clothing and assistance, including cooking and serving over 125,000 meals to people in need, distributing 55,000 food hampers and 30,000 items of clothing and facilitated 250 work placements.

The C3 Church in Oxford Falls. Picture: Tim Hunter.

It has also donated more than $500,000 to local community groups in broader Sydney.

The church said in a statement that at no time would they have advised Ms Carlyle or anyone that ‘church attendance, giving or spirituality are linked to the healing of a loved one’.

It said that the Pringles had made good property investments after buying their first home in Sydney 40 years ago for $135,000. Records show they bought their present home in Mona Vale for $3.4 million in 2012 after selling their Bayview home for $1.7 million

The church did not say how much Pastor Pringle gets paid but said all remuneration was set by an independent board of directors benchmarked to comparable education sector organisations.

“C3 Church Australia is a healthy, vibrant Christian Community,’ John Pearce, C3 Global Executive Director, said.

“As a faith-based organisation we aspire to live all the values and build the type of community that the gospel inspires.

“While the overwhelming majority of our members have a deep and rich experience through their association with C3, we are of course aware that for some people their expectations of being part of this community are not realised. As a community deeply committed to caring for individuals, we regret any situation where anyone has felt wounded or offended as a result of their experience.”

The Pringles recently announced they would take a back seat and in November this year will hand over the reins of the church to Alex and Jessen Lee, currently pastors at C3 Silverwater, Sydney.

CHURCH LIFE ‘SCARRING’ FOR YOUNG GAY MAN

Andrew Barnard, 33, claims he tried to commit suicide on two separate occasions after undergoing what he says was conversion therapy at C3 Church.

Former C3 churchgoer Andrew Barnard attempted suicide twice after undergoing what he maintains were two years of “extremely traumatic” conversion therapy to turn him straight.

The 33-year-old had been a devout worshipper at the Oxford Falls branch for four years when his family discovered he was gay at the age of 14. They ordered him to undergo therapy while at Oxford Falls Grammar school.

Mr Barnard said a C3 staff therapist told him he needed to play more sport, watch lesbian porn and wear a rubber band on his wrist that he needed to flick whenever he entertained homosexual desires.

“When I still felt attracted to men despite the therapy two years on, I tried to take my life again,” he said.

“My therapist told me I needed to watch lesbian porn which didn’t feature any men, that I didn’t love God enough and that he himself was a converted homosexual and happily married with children and I, too, could be happily married to a woman.”

The church maintains the treatment of Mr Barnard was “completely at odds” with the treatment he outlines.

Mr Barnard said the C3 college dean encouraged him to leave when he learned he had a boyfriend because it he was breaking guidelines that only pre-existing college relationships were permitted to continue. His father Scott Barnard — who earned just $42,000 a year as a C3 pastor raising three children — mother, and younger brother have since left the church and are supportive of his sexuality.

A C3 spokesman said the church was “loving” of all sexual orientations.

‘WE WERE CAST OUT AFTER MY DAD DIED’

Bridget Harris claims the C3 church turned its back on her family financially when her successful businessman father hit bankruptcy.

Nigel Allen — a pastor, motivational speaker and car salesman — had donated ten per cent of his $200,000-a-year salary in tithes to the church for almost two decades, until he became sick with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and could not work.

Bridget Harris claims the C3 church shunned her family after her fater went bankrupt and was unable to give any more money. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Mrs Harris maintains that after the family home in Warriewood was repossessed in 2000, and when her father became progressively ill and was unable to tithe, the church refused financial support to the family. Instead they offered prayer and visits from family friends.

Mrs Harris said her father asked the church if they would agree to a payment plan for the $11,000-a-year Oxford Falls Grammar School fees, so her younger sister could continue at the private school, but received no response.

Mr Allen committed suicide at his housing commission home in Dee Why while his wife and younger daughter were home in December 2014.

Mrs Harris said the final insult came when the family was invited to hold the funeral service at the chapel for which they were billed.

C3 executives maintain the church kept in regular contact with the family and offered “extensive” prayer support.

They say the funeral service was conducted without charge.

“Dad had a double lung transplant and couldn’t work as much, he was missing mortgage repayments yet he was still tithing,” Mrs Harris said.

“Dad paid hundreds of dollars each week to the church, to him, his faith was his life.”