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The Knives Come out for Bobbie Houston, as Brian laments ‘Our Beautiful Church is Losing its Soul’

Disgraced pastor Brian Houston has released and then deleted an Instagram post showing text messages that purportedly showed and were widely interpreted Hillsong firing wife and church co- founder Bobbie Houston, raging against their former home as she decries the cold and calloused way she has been let go.

Bobbie, who has been the co-global senior pastor of Hillsong for 39 years, led the women’s ministry and oversaw Hillsong’s annual women’s gathering, Colour Conference and the Colour Sisterhood, a “global movement of women united around a mandate to make the world a better place.”

After 39 years of exemplary service and extraordinary faithfulness and fruitfulness, this is the communication Bobbie received from the Hillsong Church board as she is made redundant (effective immediately) through no choice of her own.

This just 3 weeks after she hosted her 26th year of Colour Conferences. (A total of 118 conferences around the world.) She has relentlessly served God and served people as she stood side by side with me for four decades leading Hillsong Church, faithful in the good times and the tough times alike.

And we are supposed to act like this is all ok. It’s not! Our beautiful church is losing its soul.

Given that the church has already removed sermons and videos of Houston, it looks like they are cleaning house.

In an email sent to members, Hillsong’s senior leadership says that it’s not what they’ve been led to believe. Rather than firing her by text, they say they previously discussed her being let go, and the email and text were designed to support her in her termination, something Bobbie clearly did not feel was communicated. They explain:

Dear Church,

You may have heard news of Bobbie Houston departing from her role at Hillsong Church. We wish to provide you with some information that will help you better understand what has led to this.

As you are aware, on Monday 21st March 2022, Brian resigned from all roles and duties at Hillsong Church. This required the Board to initiate difficult and challenging conversations with Bobbie regarding the transition in her role as Co-Global Senior Pastor, given that Brian had resigned and was no longer working for Hillsong Church.

Bobbie has served God and Hillsong Church faithfully over several decades and we thank her and honour her for this. The impact of Colour Conference on women across the world will be felt forever and into eternity, and she is and always will be loved.

Board members from the Hillsong Global and Australian Boards met with Brian and Bobbie on Monday 28th March 2022 to begin discussions regarding separation of their key roles and responsibilities. This process has continued and there is more work still to be done. Our desire has been to treat them with grace, love and honour, and at this meeting, we acknowledged the importance of publicly recognising Bobbie’s dedicated service to our church and the cause of Christ globally. We then committed to work with her to communicate this to the church.

After this meeting, Brian emailed the Church – to apologise, take responsibility and thank the people of Hillsong Church. He also indicated a strong desire to continue in ministry with Bobbie in the years ahead.

Yesterday, a follow-up email was sent to Bobbie from a member of the Australian board outlining the redundancy plan which was part of our discussions at the prior meeting. Before the email was sent, the board member sent her a text message to offer the opportunity for a phone call after she received the email. The desire was to show genuine care and open the opportunity for further discussion. Brian responded by making his feelings public on social media. This has been interpreted and reported that the Hillsong board “made her role redundant by text”, which is not correct.

As we are in a season of transition within our church, this is always difficult and complex as well as being emotionally strenuous for all. We are mindful of the deep sense of loss and grief that will be experienced at this time, and the challenges in planning a way forward for our church.

This is a very heart-breaking situation for all of us at Hillsong Church who are so honoured to have ministered alongside Brian and Bobbie. We know that God has their future in His hands and at the same time, we are relying on God’s guidance as we plan a way forward for our church. We are saddened by Brian’s public response and hope that he and Bobbie will understand the heart behind the decisions that are being made. The goal was to work together with them and keep the church safe in the process, not to hurt anyone.

Our focus is on health in this season, and to allow our church the opportunity to enter a new season while acknowledging and honouring the past, and all that our church family has been built on.

Please continue to pray for Brian and Bobbie and also for our church. As always, our pastoral team is available to anyone who would like support.

Hillsong Church Global and Australian Boards.

The church is currently being led by the former lead pastors of Hillsong Africa, Phil and Lucinda Dooley, who were named Interim Global Senior Pastors in January.

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Breaking! Brian Houston Formally Ousted From Hillsong, Resigns!

Interim Global Senior Pastor Phil Dooley held an emergency all-staff meeting Wednesday afternoon to announce that Brian Houston, the founder and face of Hillsong has been officially resigned from Hillsong, a day after we broke the story that Brian Houston’s teaching and sermons have all been purged and scrubbed from the Hillsong’s website.

Hillsong was founded by Houston and wife Bobbie in 1983 and has grown to over 30 campuses and 150,000 members. Rocked by sex financial scandals in America over the last two years, with Carl Lentz in NYC and later shutting down Hillsong Dallas after it was revealed Pastors Reed and Jess Bogard were spending money like drunken pirates.

All throughout the turmoil, Houston appeared as the apologetic face, expressing his dismay at sadness at the way his organization let people down and promising to do better, being seen as a steady hand that could guide them through though this present crisis.

But then it was revealed that he was embroiled in his own sex scandals, with at least two instances that we we know about. One of these involved sending a staff member flirtatious messages about a decade ago. “It was along the line of, ‘If I was with you, I’d like to kiss and cuddle you,’ words of that nature.” The second one was more recent, and it involved a visibly intoxicated Houston spending almost an hour in a woman’s hotel room alone with her, after a Hillsong conference at Qudos Bank Arena in 2019, with Dooley explaining that Houston violated Hillsong Pastor’s Code of Conduct.

During the meeting with Hillsong pastors and members, Dooley revealed that Houston handed in his letter of resignation at 4:00am this morning, ending nearly 40 years as the face of the church. Dooley reiterated that “we honor them for what they have done” and told members:

“Irrespective of the circumstances around this we can all agree that Brian and Bobbie served God faithfully over many decades and that their ministry has resulted in millions of people across the world being impacted by the power and grace and love of Jesus Christ. We are extremely grateful for all that Brian and Bobbie have given to build His house.

…We acknowledge that change is needed. We have committed to an independent review of our governance structure and processes.”

Furthermore, a letter posted to their website reads:

This is a breaking story….

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Leaked Audio! Hillsong Founder Brian Houston Rips Carl Lentz, Claims he Had Many Affairs

An audio recording between Hillsong founder Brian Houston and Church executives has leaked, revealing that disgraced Pastor Carl Lentz, who cheated on his wife with model Ranin Karim, had engaged in multiple sexual affairs and committed adultery with many women, and not just with the one that was known, with Brian Houston saying “It was more than one affair, they were significant. And at least some bad moral behavior had gone back historically”

The meeting, which was recorded around November 19, took place between founder Houston, church executives, and top donors. During the meeting, Houston rips Lentz six ways to Sunday, describing him as possessing:

general narcissistic behavior, manipulating, mistreating people, I think sometimes other hurtful things, the breaches of trust… constantly lying.

In fact, Houston describes how Lentz was spiraling and that he likely would have been terminated even before the adulterous affair came about.

[Carl was a] difficult man to have any kind of direct conversation with, because it was always defensive, it would always be put back on the other person, as though they’re the ones with the problem. And so they were not easy meetings, and I was already at the point at the end of summer that I felt like (unintelligible) Carl and Laura’s time in New York was coming to an end.

And then of course what actually happened was Tolu [Hillsong East Coast Chief Operating Officer Tolu Badders] had a conversation with one of the staff members, and that staff member had found a very compromising chain of text messages on Carl’s laptop or computer. And so that person went straight to Tolu. And Tolu, to her credit, the first thing she did was call me. I knew it was an urgent call because it was very late at night, and you know she needed to talk, and we did talk, and then the next day Tolu spoke to John.

In what would have been an extremely difficult thing to do, John and Tolu drove straight across town to talk to Carl and confronted him, and that was the beginning of the process where we’re at the point where we are now…

It was more than one affair, they were significant. And at least some bad moral behavior had gone back historically, but not necessarily those affairs. I can honestly say before God the first time I heard any moral complaint against Carl was when Tolu contacted me, and so if anyone’s wondering whether this was something we knew about, no it’s not.

In the meeting, members also discuss that Lentz will likely be getting a very hefty severance package, though it appears in part to help out Laura and the kids:

We’re working on a severance package which we’re negotiating with them on…

They haven’t accepted that at this point in time.

We are trying to care for them as far as they are letting us care for them. And certainly our heart is to look after the children, to look after [Lentz’s wife] Laura, and even Carl who needs a lot of help.

And the purpose of that is really to get them the help they need, and to help them through this difficult process, to work on their marriage.

We’re doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, it’s not anything we’re going to promote publicly.


The Lentz’s, however, don’t seem to be hurting for money after recently their home for $1.5 million dollars and moving into a $16,000 a month beachfront home.


This is breaking news and we will update this post accordingly as we transcribe more of the audio to get the most clarity and context possible.