Hillsong Church has been one of the most popular Christian churches for over two decades, and the Hillsong network of churches now spans 30 countries since it was founded in Australia in 1983. Its size is estimated at 150,000 members worldwide. However, a string of scandals stretching back two years has shaken the movement, prompting founder Brian Houston to resign from his position as senior pastor last week. The reason for the resignation was accusations of sexual misconduct and their alleged cover-up.
Hillsong’s series of scandals began two years ago, at the height of the pandemic, when Carl Lentz — pastor of Hillsong Church in New York — was dismissed in November 2020 after it came to light that he had engaged in an extramarital affair. Also due to numerous leadership and management failures within the Hillsong structure, the married couple Zhenya and Vera Kasevich resigned from the pastorate of the large Hillsong Kiev church in Ukraine back in 2014. They had also helped in the making of a documentary film about Hillsong Church.

Last week, Discovery Plus officially released a three-part documentary titled “Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed.” To watch the documentary on Discovery Plus you need a payment card valid in the USA or another country where the service operates. It is not available in Poland. However, I’ve included a link at the bottom to watch the whole thing in English. In this three-part documentary, we learn that the church not only mishandled accusations of sexual misconduct, but also exploited the service of young people as cheap labor. In the film, former Hillsong members share stories of feeling deceived, controlled and manipulated, and of other abuses by church leaders, and the word “cult” is used at times to describe the Pentecostal church in general.

Brian Houston (68) resigned on March 23, a day before the documentary was released on the streaming service mentioned above. He was accused of sending inappropriate text messages to a staff member and of being in a woman’s hotel room while under the influence of alcohol.

In legal proceedings in Australia, Houston denied covering up allegations of sexual abuse by his father, Frank Houston, who for many years served as a pastor in the Australian “Assemblies of God” network of churches. Frank Houston allegedly abused boys between 1965 and 1977, and Hillsong’s leaders reportedly removed any reports related to this.

The release of the documentary, together with Houston’s resignation and Lentz’s downfall, led some Hillsong leaders to pull their churches out of the network, including pastors Terry Crist of Hillsong Phoenix and Sam Collier of Hillsong Atlanta. Hillsong Dallas, Texas, was shut down a year earlier following allegations that its pastors, Reed and Jess Bogard, had misused church funds.

It is always tragic when a church leader falls, but the consequences are far more serious and far-reaching when it happens in a church as large and influential as Hillsong. How should we respond to such situations? Here are some pointers:

Let us walk in truth

Every scandal and every evil thing should be brought into the light, exposed, cleansed, and resolved. We cannot allow anything dark to remain hidden. People often tend to condemn an entire church because of the sins of a few, but this is not the fault of the whole church — it is the fault of a particular group of people. We need to distinguish between what is good and what is evil. The prophet Jeremiah wrote an entire book lamenting the sins of Israel. He said in Lamentations 5:16, “The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!” But then he said in verse 21, “Turn us back to You, O LORD, and we will be restored; renew our days as of old.” Repentance and renewal should lead us to a place of hope for change. Truth is needed so that no darkness can develop in hiding.

Don’t throw out all the good Hillsong has done

When we think of Hillsong, we usually picture the huge mother church in Sydney, Australia, but this network has dozens of smaller churches across Australia and around the world. For nearly 40 years, Hillsong churches have preached the gospel in many countries to carry the message of Jesus to every continent. Beyond that, Hillsong’s influence on Christian music has been, and still is, phenomenal. Hillsong’s worship songs are sung by around 50 million Christians in 60 languages. We don’t need to shut down the entire church or delete these remarkable songs just because some leaders have made serious mistakes. Paul told the Thessalonians:

“Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” – 1 Thess 5:21-22

Solomon, too, sinned and went astray toward the end of his life, but we still have his books in the Bible, and they remain a great help and blessing to us.

Let us learn from the mistakes made and draw the right conclusions

We have many mentors, leaders, and ministries from whom we can learn a great deal about God. We can also learn a lot by observing the mistakes made by leaders and ministries. If you feel hurt and betrayed, this is also an opportunity to become someone who acts in a different spirit, in a different way. You can say, “I don’t want to treat people this way — I will act differently!” You can truly turn your disappointments into a lesson, into guidance on how not to act. This scandal teaches us to seek a place of humility rather than fame and self-exaltation.

Pray for those who have been hurt

Whenever I hear about a church’s failure, I begin to pray for the people who were closest to the scandal, who were hurt and wounded. Some undoubtedly feel deceived and are tempted to walk away from God or give up on church altogether. Let us pray that their faith will not fail, that they will find grace to forgive those who mistreated them, exploited the innocent, committed financial fraud, or were simply dishonest. I pray that God will bring healing to the whole Hillsong family and keep them close to Him in this time of testing, and that they will be able to make the appropriate and necessary changes.

The collapse of denominational church structures

Around the world, we can observe the collapse of denominational church structures. People are leaving poorly managed and poorly led structures in droves, forming simple house communities again, much like the example we see in the New Testament. Nowhere does the New Testament give us examples of huge megachurches — instead, we find many small, family-like communities that grew in a home atmosphere. We wrote about this earlier in connection with the visions and dreams we received on this subject, though there is far more of this kind of revelation than what we shared. God is calling the church today to be cleansed and to return to a place of repentance and humility.

Many churches, even in larger denominations, have already changed how they are governed and run. Hillsong’s own board admitted that this situation forced them to change how the church is managed. One of the mistakes they cite is too much power and authority concentrated in the hands of a single person — the pastor.

Phil Dooley, who is now acting as Hillsong’s global senior pastor, noted how important it is to have “apostolic leaders” “who are called by God to lead and build the church, ultimately under the headship of God’s Holy Spirit — and whose character must line up with the biblical requirements of leadership.”

Video online

You can now watch, dubbed in Polish, all four parts of the documentary “Hillsong — The Dark Side of the Australian Church” on HBO MAX and on PLAYER.PL.

Another four-part documentary has also appeared, containing even more details and interviews. It can be found on the Disney Channel as “The Secrets of Hillsong Church.”