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

The full video can be seen here

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