Hillsong Church Charges Child-Sponsor Group ‘Compassion’ $1,000,000 To Be At Their Events
According to the 42 Page Hillsong whistleblower document, Hillsong Church charged Compassion International $1,000,000 for the privilege of being at their events.
Like World Vision, Compassion is a “child-advocacy ministry pairing compassionate people with children living in extreme poverty to release the children from spiritual, economic, social, and physical poverty.” The idea is that people can ‘sponsor’ a child in a third-world country living in crushing poverty for around 30 or 40$ a month, helping fund them and their community and writing letters back and forth. These children will be actively involved in churches and will be ministered to and receive the gospel.
Rather than allowing Compassion to attend their events for free to do this good work, or even for a small nominal fee to cover any expenses, Compassion pays them $1,00,000, along with their own costs to attend these events and partner with them. The report states:
Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of all of the above excessive spending and private benefit is that Hillsong promotes child sponsorship organisation Compassion International at its conferences and worship tours via on-stage presentations and permitting Compassion to have a display ‘stand’ at the event.
However, Hillsong does not promote Compassion out of the *goodness of their heart’. Instead, Hillsong charges Compassion $1,000,000 per year for the privilege of being their child sponsorship partner (TAB 83).
Hillsong’s travel, green room, gift and honorarium expenditure is so extreme that even with the $1M contribution from Compassion, they still make a loss in their church operations and conference budgets. This contribution from Compassion could otherwise be directly used to provide more assistance to children living in extreme poverty – rather than contributing to Hillsong’s excessive spending on luxury lifestyles.
It also must be noted that Kent Medwin and Amanda Viviers are two people who have leadership roles at both Hillsong Church and Compassion Australia. Medwin is a Hillsong pastor and also the Chair of the Finance Comittee Board at Compassion, Viviers is a leader at Hillsong and servs as Compassion’s Executive Director of the Neighbour Agency.
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Absolutely unbelievable. We sponsor several children through Compassion and the possibility that any of our funds are going to Hillsong makes me livid.
My mouth is still on the floor. This is sadly why I don’t give money to these organizations. The money either goes in the pockets of the government or to crap like this while the people continue to live in such poverty that those who want to hide in a corner wearing a mask from a virus can’t even comprehend.