You can see how the church was able to cultivate a very public image and infiltrate the pop culture world.” Every week there’s a plethora of Instagram worthy moments that you can document. Lee, who was born in New Zealand and is in her 30s, explains: “This was a church that was perfect Instagram fodder: a pastor in a leather jacket hangs out with Justin Bieber churches in a nightclub. They were a perfect match for each other and for millennials. On 6 October that year, the photo and video sharing social networking service Instagram was born on 17 October, HillsongNYC in New York was launched. The turning point for its ambitions in America came in 2010.
Hillsong expanded its reach by establishing campuses and affiliate churches overseas, starting in London in 1992. In the 1990s Hillsong Music, the church’s music ministry, began producing and releasing worship albums such as Shout to the Lord and The Power of Your Love that took off in churches worldwide, fuelling the growth of the brand. When Houston founded Hillsong with his wife, Bobbie, it shook up staid old ways of worship with vibrant services and creative sermons. Lentz’s scandal was just the first layer of an onion of allegations of child abuse, sexual assault, racial discrimination and labour exploitation that left Hillsong’s reputation in tatters.Īt the centre is Brian Houston, a New Zealand-born pastor and evangelist who prayed for Donald Trump during a visit to the White House, the culmination of a journey that had begun in a small church in Sydney back in 1983. The fact that he has now broken his silence in a frank, expansive interview with Lee has made headlines this week.īut Lee’s four-part documentary series, The Secrets of Hillsong, based on original reporting by the Vanity Fair magazine journalists Alex French and Dan Adler, is about more than one turbulent priest. But to paraphrase John Milton, Lentz dropped from the zenith like a falling star when an extramarital affair came to light and he was fired from Hillsong.
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