Matt Stewart.

New Zealand-raised Brian Houston is a powerful preacher presiding over the global Hillsong megachurch empire but outside the evangelical world he’s more wellknown for raking in millions and covering up his father’s paedophilia. Report by

Pastor Brian Houston is on his way back home, touching down in the capital next weekend to preach the gospel of prosperity he’s built on the back of Hillsong Church’s runaway global success.

Houston, the 62-year-old leader of the Sydney-based evangelical empire, headlines the youthfocused ARISE Church conference at TSB Arena on the Wellington waterfront on a bill that includes New Zealand’s own prime-time pastor, Paul de Jong of Life Church, as well as preacher Jentezen Franklin, recently anointed as a member of US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board.

ARISE expects nearly 7000 delegates, including hundreds of senior pastors from local churches throughout the country.

The Sunday Star-Times approached Houston for an interview ahead of the big Pentecostal pow-wow but Hillsong’s Australian media handler, Lyall Mercer, declined, instead referring to previous articles penned about Houston and suggesting a look back through the pastor’s string of best-selling books.

Before turning down the interview, Mercer expressed concern Hillsong and Houston would fall victim to another media ‘‘attack piece’’.

It’s perhaps little surprise the church is paranoid about its image, eternally tarnished after Houston was found to have failed church protocols when he omitted to tell police his father – Hillsong cofounder Frank Houston – had confessed in 1999 to abusing a seven-year-old boy over a six-year period. Other allegations involving at least six boys in New Zealand surfaced later.

Houston’s Whanganui-born, exSalvation Army father was a charismatic preacher who founded a church in Sydney in the 1970s after honing his evangelical trade in Auckland and Lower Hutt during the 1960s.

Houston confronts his father’s offending in his 2015 book Live, Love, Lead in which he looks back on his early years on the road with a man who had been his hero.

‘‘My earliest memories are of tent revival meetings with him in New Zealand. Entire villages of beautiful Maori people were being saved as he preached the good news of the gospel, night after night.

‘‘My childhood was filled with memories of waving good-bye to my dad as he took off on yet another ministry trip; I remember believing that I, too, would do the same one day.

‘‘The thought that my father, who was then in his late 70s, would commit such a heinous act as sexual abuse was crippling . . . There’s not too much worse than finding out your father is a paedophile.’’

In 1999 Houston confronted his father and suspended him, but at an executive meeting the church kept the allegations under wraps and intended to let Houston senior retire under the radar without giving a public reason.

Houston gave evidence to the Australian Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in October 2014.

It later emerged Houston failed to tell police his father was a selfconfessed child abuser and had a clear conflict of interest in dealing with the sex claims himself, the inquiry found. Frank Houston died in 2004 aged 82.

When Frank was 78, he told his son that his own father had once abused him after coming home drunk.

‘‘I think my father was homosexual, a closet homosexual. I’m no psychiatrist . . . but I think whatever frustrations he had, he took out on children,’’ Houston told the Sydney Morning Herald last year.

Dealing with the turmoil of his father’s sickening revelations took a toll on Houston and he was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder but with unwavering faith he has bounced back and the church – and its coffers – are going from strength to strength.

Houston married his wife Bobbie – also a Kiwi and head of Hillsong’s women’s branch the Sisterhood – when she was 19 and he 22 in 1977. The couple’s three adult children – Joel, Ben, and Laura – are all part of the family business.

Joel is Hillsong’s creative director and since 2010 has co-pastored the church’s New York chapter with pastor Carl Lentz, who counts pop The thought that my father, who was then in his late 70s, would commit such a heinous act as sexual abuse was crippling. star Justin Bieber amongst his celebrity devotees.

While Houston grew up with the church, his born-again bride-to-be got saved and ‘‘met Jesus’’ at the Auckland Town Hall at the age of 15. The couple met at a Papamoa Christian church camp when she bought him an ice-cream.

By 1983, the Houstons had ventured out to Baulkham Hills in Sydney’s north-west to set up an offshoot of Frank’s original inner city church, calling it the Hills Christian Life Centre. The two churches merged in 1999 as Frank’s sexual offending emerged.

Houston is also the author of You Need More Money: Discovering God’s Amazing Financial Plan for Your Life, and his teachings urge the flock that getting closer to God involves digging deep, into their wallets, to ensure spiritual wealth on Earth and in Heaven.

Critics have argued Hillsong’s doctrine of prosperity is unChristian – to be poor is sinful, to be saved is salvation.

The business is built on a feelgood foundation – an earnest take on pop culture featuring allsinging, all-dancing, faith-healing, tongue-speaking, baptismal Sunday sermons that suck in millions in tax-free donations from the church’s 100,000 worldwide weekly worshippers.

Pentecostal Churches like Hillsong are streamlined marketing beasts with pastors such as Houston taking on the aura of a maverick corporate CEO. But they don’t pay tax and most workers are volunteers, so the wage bill is low.

The Houstons have myriad revenue streams and product lines – from music festivals to self-help books – pitched at an army of faithful followers, soul searchers, the spiritually gullible and the plain curious.

In 2014 the empire raked in taxfree revenues of nearly A$80m (NZ$83m) in Australia and more than A$100m internationally. Tithing is encouraged and the Houstons also generate cash through ‘‘love offerings’’ (speaking engagements).

The Hillsong empire includes a successful music label, which boasts a 2004 Australian charttopping album as well as the world’s Number 1 worship band, Hillsong United, which features Wellington singer Brooke Fraser amongst its revolving cast.

Hillsong also claims to have 10 million viewers in 180 countries around the world glued to Houston’s televised sermons.

Hillsong’s globe-straddling success has drawn the green ire of other evangelists including American Lutheran pastor Chris Rosebrough, who labels it an ‘‘evangelical/industrial complex’’.

Although Houston no longer supports gay conversion therapy, the church’s stance on homosexuality is clear: gays are welcome in the flock but not into positions of leadership, abortion is opposed and Houston has previously advocated for the teaching of creationism in schools.

The church says it adheres literally to the word of the Bible. Hillsong’s stance is conservative, fundamental while remaining – in theory – open to the ever-changing whims of secular social mores, human rights and identity politics.

But spiritual semantics aside, the show must go on and the megachurch that grew from humble beginnings continues to ride a global wave of evangelical religious revival that shows no sign of breaking any time soon.