In a move that has the marketing team at Bethel Church stewing with envy, a company has come up with a novel way of blaspheming, creating a Christianized Ouija board called ‘Holy Spirit Board’ which lets you “communicate directly with Jesus Christ.”
Released by Holy Spirit Games, the promo material assures prospective buyers that it is “Perfect for churches, prayer groups or just getting together with friends.” and that “Unlike other spirit boards, this one will NEVER contact evil ghosts or demons, so you can ask your questions with an assured sense of safety. They even have released some advertisements for it, claiming that even though he’s a Christian, he’s found that the bible’s message wasn’t always clear, but that he gained wisdom and insight through this board.
Given the rest of the marketing of this game, it’s evident that whoever makes this game actually hates Jesus, mocks Christians, and just wants to make a buck. But the desire for extrabiblical insight and revelation is all too common among believers today, and this sort of game is the logical end of that ungodly desire.
Disgraced Hillsong Church’s former Global Senior Pastor has come out swinging at his former church Board in a Facebook video posted today, blaming them for his resignation and insisting he did nothing wrong.
Houston left the church he founded after being accused by the leadership of committing indiscretions with two women and having a drinking problem, including getting drunk and spending nearly an hour in a woman’s hotel room in 2019, and has not spoken up publicly about the incident other than in veiled references, until now.
He reveals that he’s disappointed the Board did not fight for him to remain on staff and weather the storm.
On March the 21st 2022, in unison with Bobby, I made the hardest decision of my life. And that was to offer my resignation to the Hillsong Church board after pioneering the church in 1983 and giving 39 years of service. I guess a big part of me hope that the Board, knowing the pressure I was under, would reject my offer and continue to fight for me, but that was not to be.
Houston denies resigning because of any mistakes he made but rather because after the Board threw him under the bus with their accusations, it poisoned the well too much to recover.
I want to be clear. The media and others incorrectly say I resigned because I breached the Hillsong code of conduct, but that’s just not true. I didn’t resign because of my mistakes. I resigned because of the announcements and statements that had been made, which Bobbie and I felt made my position untenable. And I spelled out my reasons for my resignation in my resignation letter to the Hillsong Church Board.
He’s super torqued about it as well.
In direct quotes from my resignation letter, I said, the Board statement to the church has made my position untenable. the Board gave enough detail to allow people’s imaginations to run wild and draw their own conclusions… there was enough detail to pour ultimate shame and humiliation on me, but enough ambiguity to lead people to make their own conclusions about what did or didn’t happen. Frankly, in many cases, those conclusions are wrong.
He concludes by giving more details about the Board’s claim that he abused alcohol and these women.
I spoke about alcohol has having not proven itself to be my friend. But sadly, that has built a narrative out there that I’m an alcoholic, and the stories about my alcoholism that are the result of gossip and whispering and innuendo.
The narrative that I’m an alcoholic is false. In fact, I’ve been told by an expert therapist that I do not display the behaviors that are typical of an alcoholic. My apology was about the specific incidents of which the Board are aware; incidents which were unbecoming for a minister of the gospel, and for which I’m deeply sorry.
And then prescription medication. It was in the early 2000s, with my constant global travel and the stress I was under, I became dependent on sleeping tablets, which I’ve spoken about openly many times, including in my book, Live, Love Lead. Let me be clear. The last time I took a single sleeping tablet was over 10 years ago. And even though I’ve continued to travel widely, I haven’t taken even one sleeping tablet for a decade. It’s not an ongoing problem.
And the notorious night in 2019 where I mixed a double dose of anti-anxiety tablets with alcohol was a one-off occasion. It happened once. It hadn’t happened before, and it hasn’t happened since. So I don’t have an ongoing problem with anti-anxiety tablets or any other prescription medication. And I respectfully ask you to please not label me that way or blindly accept that narrative.
Hillsong's Brian Houston slams church board for his resignation, denies any wrongdoing. "They poured ultimate shame and humiliation on me." See the story at https://t.co/l42EBJdFWFpic.twitter.com/j4LJnmExn8
Houston did not directly address the flirtatious text messaging he was caught having with a staffer, which has been previously described by interim Hillsong leader Phil Dooley who at the time explained: “It was along the line of, ‘If I was with you, I’d like to kiss and cuddle you,’ words of that nature.”
Dooley said the staff felt upset and awkward by the encounter and reported the incident to Hillsong general manager George Aghajanian, and then quit her job. The woman was given several months’ salary as severance, with Dooley explaining, “Pastor Brian said, ‘I want to pay that personally because it was my fault,’ because it was a personal indiscretion.”
Telling congregants that “this will not necessarily be an inspiration night,” Hillsong Church held a special meeting to discuss the state of their organization and share recommendations from an independent review of their governance structure. It was a move forced by necessity after terminating Brian Houston following a series of scandals hidden from the church and later emerged, including several instances of sexual impropriety concealed from congregants by the board.
Interim Global Senior Pastor Phil Dooley explains that they partnered with former Assistant Commissioner of the ACNC, Murray Baird, to examine the organization’s ins and outs, releasing two separate reviews.
The Board Review
Dr. Steven Crouch, the new chairman of the Global Board, explains, “some of the questions we addressed were, what should the board look like moving forward and who should be on it? How should it operate, especially in terms of relationship with the church’s global senior pastor and health check? Where are we at right now with strategy, risk management, and reporting? Are there areas that we can improve?”
They came up with five recommendations, which were all adopted.
The first two are of note. Right now, Phil and Lucinda Dooley are only the interim pastors, and the recommendation insists that Hillsong appoints someone in the role permanently and as soon as possible, either the Dooleys or someone else.
The second: update the board appointment and renewal process. Previously, because Global Senior Pastor Brian Houston was also the board chairman, he could appoint whoever he wished to join him, including “yes men.” This has now changed, with the Global Senior Pastor no longer able to fill dual roles and therefore have that control.
They pledge to develop a system that will “include more people in the selection and appointment of director” so that members can have the freedom to vote against their boss if needed and “include a greater diversity of gender, age, geography, and racial background” and set term limits. As a result of these changes, six members have either resigned or have been transitioned off the team, leaving only five members left, with a goal of getting back to ten in total.
The Complaint Review
This is an assessment of Hillsong’s process for complaints against their pastors, including a high-level review of the complaint process, to “meet with an interview board members and staff members involved in the complaint handling, to look into conflicts of interest, to review and support the support provided to complainants and respondents, and assess the skills required to undertake the complaint handling process.”
Hillsong asked an outside organization for recommendations to improve the pastor’s code of conduct and establish “fitness for ministry processes to work through complaints against pastors.” They likewise emerged with five recommendations, all which were adopted.
The first: Hillsong says they want to move away from being a “discipline and restoration process for pastors, to actually being an inquiry into the fitness of a person to be credentialed.” They want to have less of a “disciplinary approach” and focus instead on “providing the church with a safe environment. “
The second: “form a new body within the church to handle complaints relating to credential pastors. This new body will have functional independence within the church. This means that no person within our church will be able to influence the outcome of any complaint.” Some of the practices to implement include:
Have a single point of contact. Ensuring notifications to authorities are done when required. Provide support options for the complainant, such as pastoral support, counselling and psychological support. Ensuring investigators clarify the complaint, identify evidence, and witnesses support the complaint. Ensure pastors are invited to respond to the complaint and ensure pastors are provided with procedural fairness. Obtaining a written report from the investigator identifying a range of possible outcomes for pastors when complaints are upheld, including counselling, placing conditions on, or suspending or revoking credentials.
The third: complaints about the Global Senior Pastor should be outsourced to an external and independent investigator rather than handled internally.
The fourth: have an “overall approach to credentialing to a single credentialing body and implement a program of psychological assessment for future candidates for ministry.”
Lastly: develop a program to provide ongoing accountability and support for their credentialed pastors.
Explaining that “In so many ways, our system failed in 2019” Hillsong says that the review highlights a “shift away from language which focuses on a discipline and restoration processes” and instead on “making an assessment of a pastor’s fitness for ministry. That is evaluating whether or not they should be ministering to others.”
Disappointingly, Crouch says that despite all the bad behavior by the board over the last decade, they are not going to investigate members or instances of scandal and error, but rather want to move forward, content that acknowledging their failures ought to be sufficient and put things to rest, but perhaps they will relent and grant it, despite being completely disincentivized from doing so:
As current chair of the board, I want to sincerely apologize to you, the church, Hillsong Church. For us having failed to develop systems that you can trust. We must do better moving forward. And we intend to.
Some of you may have come tonight expecting to hear the details of a forensic review of the past actions of individual board members. We know that our systems were inadequate. We know that in the past, the board makeup had too many executive members who were forced to try and balance the conflict of being both staff member and board member. We know that until changes were made to the constitution earlier this year, only a few had power to control the makeup of the board.
A forensic examination of the individual board members actions will only provide us with evidence of the inadequacy of our systems. That said, it’s my commitment to you that when our new board is in place, I will ask the board to examine all the evidence and consider whether they believe a forensic examination of past board members actions is warranted, if they decided is, I will not stand in their way from commissioning an independent investigation and responding to the findings as they see fit
A longtime employee of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) has released an Op-ed in the Christian Post detailing how the Board of Trustees and Senior leadership obfuscated, covered up, and/or swept under the rug accusations and information about the late apologist’s perverse appetites.
Carson Weitnauer, who has worked at RZIM for the last seven years and functions as their their “Innovation and Ministry Partner Specialist” describes a history of close ties and a sense of honor he felt by interacting with Zacharias and other apologists, and now the sick feeling of betrayal he has after the team investigating the allegations confirmed that the rumors were true.
In August 2017, the ministry team at RZIM was informed that a greedy couple in Canada had identified Ravi as a target for extortion – and felt no scruples in falsely accusing Ravi. Taking advantage of his friendly, even naïve, approach to people, they had conspired together to defraud him of millions of dollars. Through prayer meetings and regular updates on these “Satanic attacks,” we managed to get through this trial with renewed unity and commitment to our mission.
As we sometimes heard troubling details that suggested Ravi was guilty of what he had been accused of, it was a relief to hear that his incriminating emails were taken out of context, that exculpatory material had been reviewed by the board, and that his courageous RICO lawsuit had put an end to their falsehoods with a non-disclosure agreement.
We gave thanks that Ravi’s bold leadership had freed us to focus once more on the ministry God had called us to. Convinced of this narrative, I served at RZIM with great passion and joy, and then wept and grieved for weeks when Ravi’s health unexpectedly declined, followed by his death in May of 2020.
Though Weitnauer says he was relieved to hear the emails were taken out of context, we wonder what “proper context” would possibly justify Ravi threatening to kill himself if Lori Ann Thompson told her husband about their relationship?
Weitnauer states that he became convinced in Sept 2020 that “Ravi had personally and repeatedly lied to me and others in the ministry about his relationship with her” and confesses that like others, his “longing for the approval of others” kept him from “asking hard questions and accepting the painful truth much sooner.”
As he was coming to the understanding, the bombshell report that we first published exploded in the public. These were new allegations that Ravi was importing masseuses into his spas and was sexually molesting them, a story uncovered by Steve Baughman.
Weitnauer continues:
As I discussed these revelations with colleagues at the ministry this fall, I have often felt discouraged. A senior leader took the initiative to email me, saying, “While I agree that we should remain transparent with the truth, I don’t think repeating potential lies or passing on judgment are qualities we want to embody at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.”
And despite an obvious conflict of interest, members of the family have actively spoken out in Ravi’s defense, while Ravi’s daughter has guided us through this crisis with the unwavering support of the board and senior leadership. Yet the day after I asked her a series of questions about the non-disclosure agreement between the Thompsons and the Zacharias estate, two senior leaders challenged me on the propriety of my questions. Unfortunately, I have heard similar stories from other colleagues within the ministry. It is only a matter of time before their voices are heard.
While I believe most of my colleagues are not only talented but earnestly committed to serving God, we have been badly misled by our secretive board and senior leaders. If the damage to our witness can be repaired at all, it will take a humiliating acknowledgment of our complicity and shame, as well as an earnest and sacrificial repentance. We will need to implement new processes and learn how to build a culture that cherishes accountability, transparency, and humility.
We could not agree more that the board acts in secrecy and has no transparency whatsoever, being a major part of the problem. What have they done to this point, other than hide cover-up, and lie?
After we broke the story about the allegations, RZIM sent us a statement saying that it was virtually impossible to investigate the claims. This was strange, given that his accusers were still alive, including his business partner who has made the accusation, and in fact still lived in the same city as RZIM headquarters.
Consequently, the ability to investigate was not “virtually impossible” but rather “imminently doable.” They just didn’t want to, and it was only when a larger news source like Christianity Today picked up the story three weeks later that they were forced to do so.
One of the challenges with this organization is that the Senior Leadership of RZIM and the Board are staffed with several of Ravi’s family members, but we have no idea which ones or how many, as RZIM does not make this public, recommending a drastic overhaul of the apologetic organization. This is why it’s not sufficient to investigate just Ravi but rather the board that helped hide and conceal his potentially criminal misdeeds.
Weitnauer agrees.
…RZIM must change its name, remove Ravi’s material, repent for its many failures, and provide a restorative response to the harm that Ravi’s victims experienced. The depth of complicity by the board and senior leadership in this cover-up must be clearly established. Finally, an organization with credibility in the survivor community must be hired to do a thorough assessment of the organization and its culture, and their proposals for reform will need to be implemented.
