memo – Protestia

Four days before Brian Houston resigned from Hillsong church, John Mays, the church’s Head of People and Development, sent a scathing internal memo to the church’s senior board, blasting Houston’s leadership and insisting he must be fired, writing that Houston “considered himself beyond disciplinary boundaries.”

Mays also wrote “We have been led by a leader who considers himself above normal societal expectations in a range of areas including many which might be considered mandatory in nature,” according to a report from the Guardian.

In the internal documents, Mays pointed out that Houston defied them “without further recourse from those responsible for his discipline” and that “unfortunately, I believe this typifies the leadership that is foundational to many unhealthy people practices employed within our Church based on my observations over many years.”

At the time, it was revealed by Hillsong leadership that Houston was accused 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. Houston would say he mixed alcohol with sleeping tablets and had no memory of the hotel room encounter, but that he just fell asleep and didn’t do anything improper.

Following this incident, Hillsong leaders commented “It was decided Brian should take three months off from ministry but unfortunately, he didn’t abide by that. He did conduct some ministry, I believe on three separate occasions… and he also did, as he would say, consume some alcohol.”

Mays considered the story of what happened in the hotel improbable at best, saying that his behavior was heaping stresses upon the board that were becoming more and more difficult to deal with, and that “these challenges would have been intensified on account of Brian’s strong, immovable, leadership disposition together with a distinct lack of personal accountability which has been allowed over many years”.

Mays recognized that their explanation to staff members of happened in that hotel room contained “obvious information gaps and anomalies.” He noted their story to staff was greeted with “skepticism and mistrust despite urgings to avoid gossip and talk to leadership about any concerns.”

I do not believe our employees have bought the narrative within the statement made in the staff meeting.
…One insulting example (of many) is that Brian lost his room key so knocked on the lady’s door, a detail he no doubt recalls despite memory loss during the following 40 minutes. Are we really asking our staff to accept such dribble and defend our Church with such?”

Mays also took aim at wife Bobbie Houston, who many felt was mistreated by the whole situation, saying that she was not innocent in this.

“I believe Bobbie in her capacity as Global Senior Pastor, paid accordingly, should also be accountable for her willingness to tolerate such behaviour and defiance on the part of her co-leader. I do not see her as a victim in this situation, she has a biblical, professional and corporate responsibility to ensure accountability.”

Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church, a California-based megachurch that has been defying state and local laws and ordinances by having indoor, fully packed, non-socially distanced, non-masked services, announced that he received an internal memo from the Los Angeles Police Department reassuring his congregation that officers would not be showing up to enforce any health department or court ordered mandates that threatened to shut them down.

The good news comes in the midst of a week of high drama for GCC. They initially received threats of fines of $1000 if they did not shut down, then retained high profile legal counsel, then received a court injunction allowing them to remain open, which was then overturned in an appeals court late Saturday night just hours before their services were to commence.

In an interview with conservative commentator Todd Starnes, posted below, John MacArthur begins by explaining part of their rationale for re-opening their Sunday morning services and deciding to join with hundreds of other California Churches that either never shut down or had been reopened for months:

If the constitution didn’t allow us to meet, the bible would still command us to meet. But we have that support for the biblical right in our constitution, which really doubles down on the legitimacy of doing exactly what we did. We’re not violating the law – the people who are trying to keep us out of Church, they’re violating it [the law] by violating the constitution.

After commenting on how wonderful it was to have the children back in services, along with explaining their reaction to the various court hearings and appeals and why they have chosen to respond as they did, Pastor MacArthur divulged this information:

One footnote, Todd. I got an internal memo from the Police Department, and what it said was it went through the police department, the LAPD, and it said, ‘for the health department and the county, any decisions that you make with regard to sanctions on any church, don’t call us. We will not be involved.’ The chief of police told me there’s no scenario the police will ever come and close down Grace Church.

Macarthur later released another short video where he reiterated the same thing, emphasizing the church’s close ties to the police and that they will never be shut down:

“The police love Grace church. I’ll tell you that. All last week we had them here for training. I talked to the Chief of the police in LA, he said this to me: ‘There’s no scenario that I can imagine, in which the police would ever come against Grace Community Church. We are concerned with the law, not health ordinances.’ They’re our friends, we’ve been their friends for years. I just received another plaque from the LAPD for the service we rendered to them and have for many years.
So they feel like they’re under attack by the politicians who are supposed to be the fathers of the society, but they’re murderous. They’re killing babies at 364 a day in California, in the womb, which is the most obvious case of premeditated murder there is, and they’re turning over every righteous standard in this society they can.

So they have forfeited the right to call themselves a government that protects the good and is a terror to the evil. They flipped that. The police for us are the last agency of that. We’re standing with them as they’re being attacked and with the churches right to continue to meet to be salt and light in the word.