Hillsong Atlanta Dissolves, 'Story Church' Will Take Its Place

Nine months after launching Hillsong Atlanta, the church is shutting down and dissolving, with lead pastor Sam Collier taking the reigns of a new church called ‘Story Church.‘ It is the third Hillsong church to shut down in the last week.

Collier made the announcement during Sunday’s service. Where it was initially believed that he would be starting his own church and drawing the congregation with him, leaving whoever wanted to remain at Hillsong Atlanta to eke out a living, instead that church is shutting down completely, with Collier renaming the church and launching it Easter Sunday, free from the baggage that the Hillsong name brings. He explained:

I hear the Spirit of the Lord saying, ‘This isn’t a step back.’ God is saying, ‘This is the birthing. This is the birthing of something new.’ I hear the Lord saying, ‘At this month, it’s exactly nine months.’ It’s exactly nine months. And what the Spirit of the Lord is saying in this moment is, ‘I’ve been preparing you.’ Hillsong has been the ground in which the seed was planted, because He does nothing on accident. And He used the incubation period to birth something new.

…Transitioning into Story Church, so many people have questioned, ‘Well, we hear what happened over here, but what’s going to make you different? What policies are you putting in place? We’re imperfect; somebody is going to make a mistake. But when somebody makes a mistake, what are we going to do to reassure members and congregants that they can trust us with their lives and their investment?”

Collier plans on bringing in ‘culture experts’ and other pastors to audit the congregation and his church in order to “really go deep on how we can guarantee that safety” and ensure that what happened with Houston and many other Hillsong churches doesn’t happen with them. Instead, they plan on focusing on racial reconciliation as a founding principle for the new-not-new church.

“Racial reconciliation is our number one reason for existing besides salvation. There are so many churches within Atlanta; Atlanta doesn’t need another church. But what we believe is that Atlanta needs a church that is focused on uniting our world.”

His bio on the new story church website says “Collier was previously in ministry at North Point Ministries, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Newbirth Church, Orange Leaders and most recently Hillsong Atlanta where he was the former Lead Pastor.”

These are not good things.

Collier has a wild theologcial past, including spending years as Youth Choir Director in a church where the Senior Pastor was the openly pro-choice, openly pro-LGBT, heresy-spewing, Planned-Parenthood-endorsed Democrat Senator, Dr. Raphael Warnock, and then several years at Bishop Eddie Long’s megachurch – a prosperity gospel heretic who preaches wretched blasphemies about name-it-and-claim-it, speaking realities into existence, little god theology, and multiple sex scandals. Later he joined up with Andy Stanley for several years until he was tapped by Hillsong head honcho Brian Houston to lead the new plant, even though Collier has no seminary training and a horrific Christian pedigree.

The core pillars of the new church are ‘Salvation, Multi-Culturalism, Spirit-Filled, Excellent in Presentation, Women Empowerment and Post-Christian’ and it’s tagline is “When your story connects to God’s story, it leads to A Greater Story“