Disgraced Hillsong founder Brian Houston has sent an email to Hillsong Church members apologising for his actions amid extraordinary revelations of the church’s ruthless business practices in the United States — including imposing non-disclosure agreements on pastors as it enforces secrecy around its operations.
Houston resigned from the church last week after revelations of his behaviour with two women, and said he was “deeply sorry” for the pain he had caused.
He praised his wife, Bobbie, who he said was “the most Christ-like, beautiful, loyal and faithful person alive today”.
“As hollow as it may sound, I believe I am the person and pastor you believed me to be,” he wrote. “Imperfect and flawed, but genuinely passionate about God, people, calling and life. I am determined that my mistakes will not define me.”
He lamented that this was “not the way I imagined it to end” and at the same time he suggested it might not be over after all.
“Bobbie and I are unified and we are believing together that this year will be a year of respite and restoration to our souls as I continue to prepare to fight for my innocence in the legal proceedings ahead of me,” he wrote.
“I still have a sense of bright hope for the future and I know God is not finished with me yet. We have no intention of retiring. As Bobbie would say: ‘The final chapters of our lives are not yet written.’ ”
NDAs and non-compete clauses
Houston’s message of contrition and hope is at odds with revelations coming from the US which outline for the first time the cold tactics Hillsong deploys in building and controlling its empire.
Influential Phoenix pastor Terry Crist, who broke ranks with Hillsong this week, has effectively blown the whistle on Hillsong’s business model which has seen hundreds of millions of dollars slosh through a multinational network of churches that enjoy tax-exempt status in jurisdictions such as Australia, the US and the UK.
He has also detailed the lengths Hillsong went to to exert control over individual churches in the face of moral and financial scandals.
Crist revealed that senior Hillsong pastors were “suddenly asked” recently to sign non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements. The “non-competes” would forbid pastors from setting up a rival church in the same community for at least 12 months.
“Some of us couldn’t do that in good conscience,” he said.
Crist said Hillsong had refused to allow his church to set up a local board of governance which included one or two non-Hillsong pastors “for the sake of accountability by non-vested pastors who have nothing to lose by speaking truth to power”. This was to protect his church against “scandals and lawsuits”.
He had been told Hillsong had an “all or nothing” position on the negotiations: “We had to allow the global board to govern our church and to own our properties or we had to leave.”
Reacting to the scandals that had engulfed Hillsong, Crist called on the church to conduct an investigation into its board and to dismiss any board members “who had protected the institution and not the people”.
“We have to get it right and when secular corporations are more transparent than the church and when secular boards hold their employees and boards to a higher standard of accountability, we have failed,” Crist said.
The tax exempt status of religions needs to be revoked.
Religions are businesses selling nonsense to the gullible. Whilst in a liberal democracy people should be free to believe whatever they like, nonsense should not be subsidised.
We subsidise sporting clubs, as another example of nonsense according to some, via tax exemptions. Should that also cease?
Given the obesity issue in Australia and the health benefits of sport, even health insurance will subsidise gym memberships etc. I don’t think you are thinking clearly, say, compare the money Hillsong acquired in donations/tithes for Australia’s bushfires and possibly recent floods and Hillsong refused to say how much was donated, gave out a few nice baskets of ladies bathroom and personal items and I think that was how far it went. I did not see them suppling water tanks to families buying in water. So I agree with tax the churches, unless they want to be way more accountable for funds.
People are free to be as stupid as they wish so long as I don’t have to pay for their failings.
Isn’t someone meant to walk in with a whip about now, turning over tables etc.
great analogy -is all they are Tax free Temple Money Changers -great call Tony P
Religious discrimination bill. Hmmmm, Scumo protecting his right to backslap who he wants
The use of a non-compete clause should be all the evidence needed that the church even sees itself as a business.
Yes, the tax exemptions are inexcusable. As well as the reasons you give, the exemptions also penalise all those who run honest decent tax-paying businesses in competition.
Another urgent area for reform is the outrageous use of non-disclosure agreements by all sorts of well-resourced malefactors. These can be used legitimately so they should not be banned completely, but the law should make any such agreement unenforceable when it is used to suppress allegations of serious misconduct, malfeasance or crimes.
There are not too many situations where can be used legitimately. The overwhelming majority are to protect the powerful and guilty from their just desserts.
It is common and perfectly acceptable for such agreements to be used when some commercial secrets, for example a product under development or a proposed bid for a contract, are going to be discussed with an external party and it would be very costly to the owner of that information if it was revealed to others by the external party.
In 1966 the Privy Council, when it was this country’s ultimate judicial appeal body, ruled that it was a fundamental principle of the Common Law, as enunciated by Lord Denning, the Master of the Queen’s Rolls, in the old curmudgeon’s delightfully laden language, that “A Servant cannot be required to conceal the malfeasance of his Master.”(INITIAL SERVICES vs BROWN).
Shamefully, in 2014 legislation introduced into Federal parliament and passed with the complicity of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition which does not simply abolish this protection of the individual, it does to the exact opposite, and imposes, on pain of punishment, the obligation to conceal.
Without wanting to go all Godwin’s Law, this is not only a total repudiation of the Nuremberg Tribunal principle – ‘no official order can exonerate the commission of a crime”.
It goes further – it demands ALSO that one be silent about such orders & their baleful effect, in which the crimes are even specified as ‘not reportable’.
Wouldn’t it go back further than that … The Seal of the Confessional.
The relationship of a priest to anyone making confession is wholly different. There is also the obligation of a lawyer or doctor to respect confidentiality, which is again wholly different. The point Epimenides is making concerns those who are under an obligation to do what they are told (soldiers, servants, employees) and the limits of that duty.
Let there be light. Can we pin RICO charges on them?
We don’t have RICO laws – they exist in the Benighted States, home of the megamoney religious carpetbaggers.
The US is a Taliban operation.?
Not far wrong, but more like a front for the Saudis.
In the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack, Shrub’s Attorney General John Ashcroft (a member of the Assemblies of God church) warned the inmates of the Benighted States that “..they should be very careful of their thoughts and not criticise the attack on Afghanistan…”.
Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists.”
As with Shrub’s “if’n you ain’t for us, you is agin us and with the terrorists” it suggests that, yes they are very similar to the Taliban in many ways so as total intolerance of other views.
Of which Hillsong is and always has been a copy.
Yes, and if the crime is committed on US soil, the RICO laws should apply.
As an anagram, ‘should’ would need to lose 4 letters.
So you are prepared to pay for all unseen social agency work carried out by volunteers in local church charities?
I can understand how you tax commercial operations like the Seventh Day Adventists in the Sanitarium cereal business, but how do you tax a multitude of small gifts? Does that extent to birthday gifts as well?
Like any business, legitimate business expenses are deducted from the income. There, that wasn’t so hard was it? If you need an example you could look at any other business that has tax exempt status for its good works, like say Medicine Sans Frontiere. Living like a king of the profits needs to be taxed to the hilt, fringe benefits tax would be a good start.
The hierarchy are not called Princes of the Church without reason.
“a multitude of small gifts” adds up.. stop by the Vatican on your next holiday to see the sum of those “small gifts”.
The Vatican and St Peter’s was paid for by the selling of “indulgences” by the pope of the time.
This led to Luther nailing his demands to a church door and the Reformation.
Such as buying huge properties to compete tax free in the commercial rental market. You don’t tax small gifts.
you tax the total receipts.
Even easier would be the application of property taxes.
Strangely enough, private hospital operators buy the company which owns the hospital property and so avoid tax too.
You do realise that is exactly the same argument the poor hard pressed pokie dependent clubs industry used to fend of Andrew Wilkie’s reform proposals?
Gillard et al welcomed the distraction, even agreeing about all the wonderful charity work they did with the ill gotten gains taken from poor families of the addicted.
What sort of volunteers would stop volunteering over a tax issue.
You may be missing the point about charitable purposes. These are:
Obviously taking out ‘advancing religion’ from the list would make no difference at all to ‘unseen social agency work carried out by volunteers’.
Agreed about the tax exempt status. It is coming to light these “businesses” are merely “legit”: arms of US organised crime. I recall a giveaway back in the 1960’s was the exhortation by the prophet Sammy Davis Jr to “hit the road daddy…spread the religion of the rhythm of life….there are millions of pigeons ready to be hooked on new religion”..etc. Well he was right and many crooks have had a free run for over 50 years and although we can never get rid of organised crime (or help the pigeons) surely its past time to make them at least pay taxes like the rest of us .
Churches are just like any other business these days. They sell a product (salvation) and take your hard earned cash for the enrichment of the clergy. It’s ironic because that’s exactly what spurred Luther to post his 96 These up on his church’s door.
What do you mean “these days”? Its always been that way.
“As hollow as it may sound, I believe I am the person and pastor you believed me to be,” he wrote. “Imperfect and flawed, but genuinely passionate about God, people, calling and life. I am determined that my mistakes will not define me.”
Genuine hubris to go with all the other aspects of his sense of entitlement.
“I’m not gay” Ted Haggard while gagging.
“Me, me, me, me…” It’s obvious who is at the centre of his life, and it ain’t Jesus.
Sounds more like a pyramid scheme to me. Interesting that Scotty and Brian are mates – Con men of the same feather.
Really? It does not look anything like a pyramid scheme to me. There are many ways of parting fools and their money, a pyramid scheme is only one, and this is substantially different.
Agree, pyramid schemes only reward the top players, whereas with religions everybody gets a ticket to heaven for their blessed CA$H.
‘He praised his wife, Bobbie, who he said was “the most Christ-like, beautiful, loyal and faithful person alive today” ‘
Is she a myth too?
Better ask Jen.
No help there fully on board as the as the subservient little wifey, second class helper!
Might there be a synopsis/script in this story for a movie?
Tammy & Jim Bakker got one!
Shouldn’t that be “Tammy Faye”?