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.
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.”
