Church of big bucks hits town
Kiwi-raised Brian Houston presides over a megachurch empire. Matt Stewart reports.
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. ARISE are expecting nearly 7000 delegates to attend including hundreds of senior pastors from local churches throughout the country.
It’s perhaps little surprise the church declined an interview request. Its image was eternally tarnished after Houston was found to have failed church protocols when he omitted to tell police his father – Hillsong cofounder Frank Houston, a former Salvation Army officer from Whanganui – 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 confronts his father’s offending in his 2015 book Live, Love, Lead.
‘‘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.
‘‘The thought that my father, who was then in his late 70s, would commit such a heinous act as sexual abuse was crippling.’’
In 1999 Houston confronted his father and suspended him, but at an executive meeting the church kept the allegations under wraps.
Frank Houston died in 2004 aged 82.
Dealing with the turmoil 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.
Pentecostal churches like Hillsong are streamlined marketing beasts. But they don’t pay tax and most workers are volunteers, so the wage bill is low. Other sources of income are tithing, self-help books and a successful music label, featuring the world’s Number 1 worship band, Hillsong United (Wellington singer Brooke Fraser is among its revolving cast). In 2014 the empire raked in taxfree revenues of nearly A$80m (NZ$83m) in Australia and more than A$100m internationally. It boasts 100,000 worldwide weekly worshippers, and claims to have 10 million viewers in 180 countries 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’’. ● The ARISE conference runs from July 21-23 at TSB Bank Arena, Wellington