East Point I Fall at Your Feet Again Worship
The family backside Hillsong Church had been mapping out its form to "take over the world" for decades, an insider explained in the discovery+ docuseries Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed, but its reign didn't last long.
Hillsong finally found a place in the global zeitgeist in 2017, cheers in large part to celebrity pastor Carl Lentz's bond with Justin Bieber. Just three years later, Bieber had moved on, Lentz had left the church in disgrace, and Hillsong'southward leadership was on the cusp of a dramatic shakeup in the wake of criminal sex abuse concealment charges.
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The three-part docuseries — out now — has examined this trajectory and more. Below, read some of the bombshell claims made past one-time Hillsong churchgoers and employees, not only against the organization only also specifically founder Brian Houston, in the docuseries.
BUILDING HILLSONG
Episode 1 traced the roots of the modern Hillsong Church building to New Zealand, where Frank Houston began his ministry. But information technology was Frank's son Brian who borrowed from American Pentecostal church building practices and resolved to scale up the church, so known as the Sydney Christian Life Center, on a global level.
Brian found a winning formula when he tapped one-time Australian child performer Darlene Zschech to be the church's second worship leader. Zschech penned the 1993 vocal "Shout to the Lord" for the church'due south Hillsong ring, and information technology was such a hitting that in that same decade, co-ordinate to the docuseries, "Hillsong began licensing its music to Christian organizations around the world, creating an exponential source of acquirement and exposure."
Indeed, the notoriety became then great for Hillsong'due south musical offerings, which were and continue to be consciously modeled later on contemporary hits, that Houston officially renamed the church building Hillsong in 2001.
"The goal of Hillsong is to stay current," said Kelsey McKinney, author of God Spare the Girls. "Instead of refurbishing your grandma's old hymns, it'due south something new and shiny. These kind of swells of emotion and huge, momentous chord progressions. It'due south made the make y'all feel something."
Former Hillsong Sydney member Tanya Levin affirmed, "Music is a actually huge section because it's so critical to [the church's ability of] hypnosis. The music is completely weaponized for whatsoever the church's needs are, also as financial, which is the aim of the game — is to become the coin out of the people."
Flush with royalties totaling a reported $100 million per year, Brian pursued aggressive expansion for Hillsong throughout the '90s and early 2000s while also cultivating its growing network of colleges, almanac conferences and more.
Credit: AF archive / Alamy Stock Photograph
CARL LENTZ HEARS THE Phone call
Hillsong had another exponential outburst when they opened their New York Urban center location in 2008 and brought on pastor Carl Lentz, a rising star who had received training from Hillsong Higher.
Lentz's rock star looks (half dozen pack, swooped hair, designer wardrobe and all) and his passionate preaching complemented the Coldplay-for-Christ-way music, creating a nightclub-like vibe at Hillsong'due south services. Soon the queue of worshipers stretched effectually the block to get into Hillsong's weekly booking at the Irving Plaza concert infinite.
Recalled former Hillsong L.A. volunteer Craig Carson, "Y'all should see that line on a Sun morning. Simply, let'south face it, they're not coming there for sound doctrine, they're not coming there to exist fed the Word, they're coming there to meet the cool Carl Lentz."
Janice Lagata, a former Hillsong NYC stage manager, had frequent interactions with Lentz and acknowledged it was easy to succumb to his charm: "The way he looks at you, I was similar, 'Oh, okay, I'd follow this guy anywhere.'"
This magnetism especially appealed to Brian Houston, who'd had "upfront, explicit intentions to take over the globe with his church building ... for 30 years now," said Levin, "and I think when he saw Carl Lentz, he realized he'd hitting the jackpot."
Carl Lentz
| Credit: Toby Zerna/Newspix/Getty Images
THE BIEBER EFFECT
Soon Hillsong'south flock was growing merely because people attended services in hopes of crossing paths with Bieber and his then-girlfriend Selena Gomez, plus a slew of Lentz's famous pals (at least co-ordinate to his Instagram and the church volunteers in the docuseries), including Kendall Jenner, Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey, Kevin Durant, Hugh Jackman and his family, Bono, and Lenny Kravitz, just to proper noun a few.
But Bieber was the most prominent Hillsong devotee, and his commitment to a path of religion and atonement came at a time when Bieber was navigating several unflattering outbursts, including a 2014 arrest, an egging incident (also in 2014) and an incident involving a confiscated capuchin in 2013.
"Was information technology a lucky coincidence that Bieber got involved with Hillsong?" asked Page Half dozen senior reporter Oli Coleman. "I'm going to have to exist a bit of a cynic, given that I experience very sure that information technology was part of the Hillsong strategy to attract celebrities and to make them sort of forepart and heart of their branding."
Calling Lentz's intentions "inherently duplicitous or hypocritical," Coleman continued, "The motivation seems to accept been to use celebrity, to apply glamor, to amass a following, to aggregate power, to amass fame. Someone similar Carl Lentz, who has these goals in mind, saw an opportunity to bring Bieber on board."
PreachersNSneakers Instagram account creator Ben Kirby said, "For a lot of people, it looked like it was just a tool to build his own personal network."
Justin Bieber and Carl Lentz
| Credit: Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images
Soon, volunteers began to question the celebrity-focused nature of services, including a VIP section that everyday worshipers were forbidden to enter.
But more than that, many were concerned about the growing cult of personality forming around Lentz — and how Brian Houston would respond to Lentz'due south perceived power eclipsing his ain.
"If the church's whole matter is based on that one guy or girl ... [they are e'er] one misstep away from literally imploding the unabridged affair. Your ministry is now eroded, information technology's congenital on sand in a lot of ways," said Kirby.
"It was always like, 'Be careful, human being,'" remembered Lagata. "Considering the but thing anybody likes more than a rise star is a falling star, right? Somewhen this stuff is gonna catch upwardly with y'all."
'I PRAY YOU CAN FORGIVE ME'
Episode ii focused, in part, on the downfall of Lentz due to "moral failures."
"When nosotros talk about Carl and purity, wolf in sheep's clothing is honestly the mental flick I get," said Jaclyn Hayes, a quondam fellow member of Wave Church building, the Virginia church where Lentz preached before joining Hillsong.
Lentz was allegedly known at Wave as being violent about abstinence and purity — even though some claim information technology was an open secret that he was a womanizer.
I docuseries participant (known but as Doreen to protect her identity) said, "This was a very, very known thing about Carl. I think people like him are just very intuitive of where they tin go to casualty."
Ultimately Lentz's undoing at Hillsong came considering he was "unfaithful" to his wife of 17 years, Laura, which he publicly best-selling in 2020. A woman named Ranin Karim came forward as his alleged mistress and participated in the docuseries.
Ranin Karim
| Credit: Discovery+
The pair undertook a five-month affair after meeting in a park one Friday in May 2019, she claimed. By Sunday, they'd shared their osculation over tequila.
"He kept proverb a lot that nosotros were so similar, me and him, that we found each other because we were both broken," said Karim.
Soon, though, she realized, she was "but an add-on" for Lentz and that "his persona ... brought chaos into my life," she explained.
"The more than you say no to him, the more than he kept coming back," she continued. "So you started to sympathise this person cannot lose a boxing. But then he said something that triggered me. He said, 'You know, at the end of the day, I go to my family, and you go to nothing.' And I was like, Wow, that's a slap in the face. … It was the most toxic thing I ever had to deal with."
The relationship ended, but the repercussions of it — a digital paper trail allegedly left by Lentz on his piece of work computer — would be professionally, and personally, devastating.
Lentz announced his departure from Hillsong via an Instagram postal service on Nov. 5, 2020.
"I call up thinking when I was reading Carl Lentz'southward mail service that he had really screwed up," said New York Post reporter Hannah Frishberg. "I mean, it's such, like, a PR-ified Instagram explanation on a sweet photo of his family, trying to play it down equally much as possible, but it's pretty bad."
Said Karim, "He just doesn't know how to take compassion [for] others because he thinks he's the only one who suffers."
HE SAID, HE SAID
When leaked audio of Hillsong leadership's conversations most Lentz's "narcissistic behavior" and his firing striking YouTube, it raised eyebrows amongst some members of the church and media, according to the docuseries.
"This is the devil calling the devil the devil," said Carson. "If we unravel or commencement to peel back layers of Brian Houston, he'southward no better."
Brian Houston
| Credit: Marcus Ingram/Getty Images
Vera and Zhenya Kasevich, and then the leaders of Hillsong Kiev, believe the sound was intentionally leaked and merits they had previously told Houston of other issues with Lentz (such every bit "behaving in an unpastorly style, including smoking and drinking").
The docuseries then provided a statement: "Producers of this series spoke with ii one-time volunteers who brought multiple reports of sexual impropriety against Carl Lentz to Hillsong leadership in 2017. The sources allege that they were accused of fabricating the accusations and were dismissed from their positions in the church."
The statement continued, "Brian Houston claims that leadership looked into the allegations confronting Carl at the time and plant no evidence to substantiate them. Both sources have since left the church. After initial phone calls, they declined to participate in this series, citing a desire to motion on from the stress of their experiences."
Only Zhenya believes that "church leadership needs to take responsibility for their decisions and for their mistakes. Covering up and dealing in secrecy, it'due south a design for Hillsong Church, and that'southward why we've got so many scandals."
Carl Lentz
| Credit: AP Photo/Tina Fineberg
(According to producers, Carl Lentz and Brian Houston have non responded to requests for comment regarding allegations in the docuseries. Lentz, Houston, and Hillsong did not immediately return PEOPLE's requests for annotate.)
'A CONVENIENT EXCUSE'
Ed and Anna Crenshaw found the timing of Lentz's ultra-public resignation and the subsequent pile-on rather coincidental. According to Ed, a senior pastor at Victory Church in Philadelphia, it helped the church "get off the claw a petty bit from some cultural issues, culture within the church."
Ed'south daughter Anna said she had had her ain feel with sexual abuse at Hillsong, albeit not at the hands of Carl Lentz. Simply Anna gleaned no satisfaction from seeing Lentz get publicly crucified because, she claimed, her own victimization had been minimized and and so weaponized against her.
Anna was a student at Hillsong College in the fall of 2018 when she alleges that Jason Mays — a married Hillsong staff administrator and the son of homo resource head John Mays — sexually assaulted her, drunkenly groping and kissing her without her consent at a political party.
She said she reported the accusation that December to Margaret Aghajanian, Hillsong'due south head of Pastoral Care, past reading a statement she had written out. After she was called in for two additional interviews and saw that Jason had faced no public consequences for the incident, Anna said she realized, "Okay, they are not on my side." (Aghajanian did not return PEOPLE'southward request for comment.)
Anna believed a double standard was at play: "If a student does something wrong, whether that is go drunk … or they sleep with their partner, they're sent domicile. It is serious. It is something they accept actually seriously. Yet if a person on staff assaults a student, it's looked at differently? That does not line upwardly."
Anna Crenshaw
| Credit: Discovery+
Months passed, only co-ordinate to Anna, the situation simply escalated in April 2019 in one case she asked her father to advocate for her. At that signal, the college told Anna she would need to file a report with local law, she claimed in the docuseries. They further disputed the appointment Anna reported the incident to them, placing it several months afterward when she claimed she read her statement, Anna claimed.
"They know that they were sitting on information technology, hoping that the problem would just go away, minimizing the problem, continuing to question her, continuing to make her tell her story over and over once more," said Ed. "It exacerbated the trauma, and they want to encompass that up at present. So it becomes absolutely essential now for them to ignominy her before account. She did not get care, she got handled."
One time Anna's study was lodged in May 2019, Jason was charged with assault with an act of indecency, the docuseries explained. He pleaded guilty in January 2020 and was sentenced to two years' probation and mandatory counseling. He was also suspended without pay for a year past Hillsong.
The Crenshaws took the extra step of telling their story to the Christian Post, prompting Houston to reply with a tweet referencing a previous sexual assault Anna had experienced at her male parent's church.
Anna chosen the tweet "victim-shaming," and Ed thought it was "atrocious to refer to a previous victimization as a mode of diminishing the impact of her electric current situation." (Houston deleted the tweet and apologized to Ed, who accounted it disingenuous.)
Ed drew a parallel between his daughter's experience and what happened with Lentz, calling them "closely connected" because "when [church leaders] apparently have desire to protect themselves more than assist the victim, then that becomes problematic."
Afterwards several years covering Lentz, Frishberg said, "I don't feel bad for Carl, but I recall he was too clean-cut in his own way past Hillsong and and then used, and then the moment that he no longer could serve them, they totally kicked him to the curb for everything. When it's like, 'Alright, apparently some of these things are a little flake bigger than simply i pastor in New York who had an affair.' The recent series of scandals have really damaged whatever trust in the church."
She continued, "The toxicity at Hillsong seems to conspicuously come from the top downwardly. I think so many of my sources have placed the arraign squarely on Brian Houston for just creating this poisonous civilisation."
If y'all or someone you lot know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org .
Credit: AP Photo/Andres Kudacki
'A BRAINWASHING Procedure'
Episode 3 dug into some facets of that "poisonous culture," including the code of secrecy and the extreme expectations of both students and volunteers.
Trinity Foundation private investigator Barry Bowen, who specializes in investigating religious organizations, said Hillsong's organization raises many ruby flags, including its use of express liability companies to shield its assets from litigation. (According to the docuseries, Hillsong has an estimated 44 express liability companies registered in the United States alone.)
As well concerning for the participants in the series were mandatory non-disclosure agreements students had to sign before matriculating to Hillsong Higher.
"If you were a church that is open and trusting, why would yous get your members to sign an NDA?" asked student Yolandi Bosch. "Unless you're hiding something, of course."
But students claimed they didn't have the option of hiding anything when it came to their personal lives.
Bailey Krawczyk, who attended Hillsong Higher from 2017–21, detailed how incoming students were required to provide personal information and so they could be "reddish-lighted" or "light-green-lighted" to work with children in the customs.
A survivor of sexual set on, Krawczyk felt victim-blamed: "They never brought it up to me that information technology wasn't my mistake. Everybody just told me that I did a bad thing, only I'm now forgiven."
Hillsong addressed the program, telling the docuseries it was intended "to gauge suitability and preparedness to undertake a vocation with loftier moral and professional person standards. 'Consequently, nosotros seek to estimate whether an applicant is probable to be a safe member of our student body.'"
"I exercise believe that is also a command thing," said Krawczyk. "It's always [hanging] over your head. Looking back on this experience, I exercise believe that it is the beginning of a brainwashing procedure. Information technology's simply very, very messed up."
Said Levin, "The bullying, the intimidation, the fear — it's very, very real."
Noemi Uribe, former Hillsong Boston volunteer, spoke to the demands on unpaid workers responsible for putting together Hillsong'south services, conferences and other events.
"You'd be exhausted, you lot'd be tired, people would have panic attacks in the break rooms, and everyone would just look at each other and [repeat Brian Houston's mantra du jour:] 'Wow, do you believe we get to practice this?' And it was repeatedly said, and y'all start to believe it," she recalled.
"They want you to believe Brian Houston is doing this all for God and the Kingdom. He's not," said L.A. volunteer Carson. "He'due south doing it to brand himself very wealthy. Brian Houston [and his married woman Bobbie] are absolute millionaires many times over, and they live a very luxurious life at the behest of their congregation."
Said Uribe, "Now that I look dorsum, I'm similar, 'Damn.' They're trying to manipulate y'all into receiving and accepting the abuse that they're causing. That all stems from the top."
Frank Houston
| Credit: hr Australia/Youtube
ROTTEN ROOTS
The docuseries concluded by drawing a directly line to Frank Houston, who died in 2004.
David Shoebridge, a member of the New South Wales Parliament's Legislative Quango, spoke to Frank'south "securely, securely troubling background," including allegations of abuse going dorsum to his days with the Assemblies of God (a precursor to Hillsong) in his native New Zealand.
According to the series, at to the lowest degree eight men take come up forward with accusations of abuse past Frank Houston betwixt 1965 and 1977.
One of those men was Brett Sengstock, who declined to participate in the serial due to ongoing legal proceedings, but whose story prompted a 2014 investigation by the Australian Royal Commission into Institution Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The Commission was the first fourth dimension Brian publicly addressed the allegations against his begetter.
"For a good many years, Brian Houston has proven to exist successful in terms of systemic cover-up," said Shoebridge, "but then thankfully we had the Royal Commission, and they really lifted the lid on exactly what went on in Hillsong."
Sengstock's victim statement (which was beginning submitted anonymously before he self-identified in 2018) claimed years of abuse at the hands of Frank Houston in the belatedly 1960s from the time he was roughly 7 or viii years quondam, both at the Assemblies of God and on grouping family unit vacations. Sengstock took years to come forward, he said, considering when he told his female parent, she warned him, "You don't want to be responsible for turning people from the church and sending them to hell."
Years later, Brian Houston get-go heard of the accusations in 1999. Co-ordinate to Levin, he and several other "peak men in the inner circle ... had a meeting in the Qantas Businessmen's Lounge. There are minutes, and it very explicitly says, it's very clear, 'We're not going to say a thing, we're going to focus on Frank's restoration [as a religious leader], getting him back into ministry after two years, making certain he'south looked after.' And that was the meeting, and they signed off on information technology. They signed off on the cover-up."
Shoebridge added, "The records of Hillsong show that [Brian Houston] and the governing council of Hillsong were very much aware and indeed discussed and debated the fact that Brett Sengstock had come forward and disclosed the corruption past Frank Houston. They wanted to protect the founder of Hillsong."
Though Frank officially stepped away from the church building in 2002 (with Brian calling his offense "a serious moral failure"), the docuseries obtained audio of him preaching in 2004, including an unsettling exchange with an 8-yr-old boy Frank described every bit "practiced-looking," adding, "and it's not your mistake your good-looking, so thank God you are."
In the years before his decease, Frank sought to make financial reparations with Sengstock, co-ordinate to the docuseries. They wrote out the terms of the deal on a newspaper napkin at McDonald's, a motion Shoebridge said demonstrated "the contempt that Hillsong showed to this victim."
Brett Sengstock
| Credit: lx Minutes Australia/Youtube
Sengstock was to be paid $10,000 AUD (about $11,500 in U.Southward. dollars today) — only he had to follow up with Brian to receive his payment, the series stated. According to Sengstock's testimony, when Sengstock reached Brian, he said, "You know, it's all of your fault that this happened — you tempted my father." (Brian "absolutely 100%" denied that during his testimony before the Royal Committee.)
In 2015, the Majestic Commission found Brian guilty of failing to report his knowledge of the corruption.
Though the example was sent to the New South Wales Police to investigate, activeness was not taken for years. Shoebridge cited close "connections" betwixt Hillsong and the onetime police commissioner in New South Wales, as well equally the state's former premiere (governor) and prime government minister.
For their office, Hillsong released a statement on Nov. 23, 2015, listing various "indisputable" facts supporting Brian Houston'southward actions, including the fact that Sengstock waited until he was 36 years former to written report the abuse.
"It's just this whole method of minimizing a criminal, traumatic act. Information technology's part of a strategy," said Boz Tchividjian, an attorney advocate for abuse survivors.
"People have reached out for 40 years to ask this man for assistance, to ask him to be the bones Christian leader that he pretends he is," said Levin. "And for 40 years, people have been cast bated."
Co-ordinate to Loxie Gant, founder of the Coalition for Institutional Child Abuse Prevention, "Brian Houston was integral in the cover-up and the victim-shaming and the compulsion of the ministry building. He kept the brand above board, he kept moving forwards, he kept planting churches in new countries and new spaces — coming to the U.S., having colleges."
Shoebridge observed, "Their reputation has taken a hit … [so] they are hoping to spread their wings into foreign markets, get away from some of this history and accomplish into the United States. And yous can't assistance just reflect on the history of Frank Houston in that regard. He stepped abroad from what happened in New Zealand to expand the market in Commonwealth of australia. … History has a horrible, horrible, horrible addiction of repeating."
In episode 2, journalist and Beyond Conventionalities writer Elle Hardy noted that Brian "built [Hillsong] up from 45 people in a school hall in western Sydney. [Now] he's got churches in 130 countries and 150,000 a week, and he will protect the brand at all costs."
She continued, "Ultimately information technology is about conquering territories chip past bit and any it takes to reach that. They're in a battle for everything. They really do believe that they need to conquer Earth in order to make Heaven on Earth."
Said Hardy, "Hillsong and Brian Houston's endgame is really nearly transforming society. And when you desire to transform society, you desire to transform information technology in your own prototype."
Hillsong
| Credit: AP Photo/Andres Kudacki
On Oct. five, 2021, Brian Houston was charged with concealing child sexual abuse. If convicted he faces up to five years in prison. He pleaded not guilty on all charges.
On Jan. 30, 2022, Brian Houston appear that he would temporarily stride down from Hillsong leadership to "vigorously defend the charges against him." His hearing regarding his declared cover-up of his father's abuse has been slated to brainstorm on Dec. two, per the Daily Mail.
In late February, acting senior pastor Phil Dooley claimed the documentary's "purpose is not the healing of people but just to hurt the church" — merely weeks before Dooley, according the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, addressed the church to acknowledge that Houston is personally facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
On Wednesday, only 1 day before the premiere of the docuseries, information technology was announced that Houston had resigned following complaints that he behaved inappropriately towards ii women in two separate incidents.
All three hours of Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed can at present be streamed on discovery+.
If yous or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis advisor.
Source: https://people.com/human-interest/hillsong-a-megachurch-exposed-recap/
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