A Defiant Brian Houston Posts Then Deletes Video (We Saved It) Saying He did Nothing Wrong, Wouldn’t Change a Thing, and Has Nothing to Apologize For
Brian Houston, former Global Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church, is simply delusional. There is no way to explain it after the disgraced impastor went live on Instagram and defended himself of all wrongdoing, saying he wouldn’t change a thing and has nothing to apologize for. Following his screed, he deleted the video and put up another in its place, but not before we got our hands on it.
Houston, who was forced out of Hillsog after allegations of sexual misconduct, alchohol abuse, and a dysfunctional leadership style, begins by complaining that the current iteration of Hillsong under the leadership of Phil Dooley keeps on saying, “We’re a different church” now, with Houston observing that “there seems to be a real intent (on) separating from the past.” The delineation of good Hillsong/ bad Hillsong clearly upsets him, as it challenges the legacy he is desperate to protect.
Hillsong, as we knew it for 39 years, was a wonderful church. It was a fantastic church…we knew tremendous unity for 39 years. We had incredible God-ordained influence. The worship, of course, impacted the entire globe; Hillsong College trained thousands of students from all across the globe. Through the leadership, so many churches have leaped into Hillsong over many, many years.
Speaking about the glory days, Houston reminiscences about the “incredible atmosphere” and the “sense of God’s presence in the services” that was so “faith-filled” and “exciting,” stressing that services were always packed.
“It’s interesting to me that Hillsong is consistently saying, ‘we’re a different church now.’ The church we knew was unified, had momentum, it was joyful, and there was a spirit of ‘we love God, we love people, we love life,’ and it was a missional church…and visionary church…literally millions of people saved (through us).”
Houston praises Hillsong for how generous they were, giving millions and millions of dollars, but doesn’t mention that he billed his church $150k for a three-day luxury vacation+ other crazy expenses or that we clocked him in our Top 10 most expensive meals Brian and Bobbie Houston expensed to the church (Number 4 is $2433.38). He doesn’t mention that Hillsong leaders were routinely expensing luxury good and services to the church, especially luxury hotels like the Ritz Carlton where $8k a night, or $15k a night, or $23K a night stay was not unheaded of. He doesn’t mention that some months, Bobbie Houston was expensing $60K in gift cards or was dropping $15k in a day in designer clothes, or the pastors were expensing thousands of dollars flights from Australia to the USA where they spent $1500 on Coldplay tickets.
Then, he goes into full-on defense mode.
It’s true in the sense there’s new senior pastors and again, in public statements, a refreshed board, and there’s differences and of course. The narrative…talks about past shortcomings. And so I think about that as well,and specifically, governmental shortcomings.
…And so that’s interesting, because no one was saying that then. Not one soul. No one on the board ever was saying that, not one single person. But now all of a sudden, there were governmental shortcomings. We had a properly functioning board, we had a properly functioning constitution. We had properly functioning expenditure budgets…All expenditure was according to budget. We had properly audited books by Ernst and Young, one of the largest international accountancy firms, one of the big ones, and annual reports transparence, in the sense that we’re one of the only churches I know that published detailed annual reports. And then I think, like a risk committee, minimizing risk, and there was a salaries committee, of which I wasn’t part, to determine everybody’s salaries. And so I just don’t believe there was that many shortcomings.
So they have people who want to do it differently now, that I still don’t think there needs to be shade thrown on the past.
Houston complains again about the documents “They are out there in public with no context, absolutely no context and with, you know, no, no real explanation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
He quotes 1 Titus 15 “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but even their mind and conscience are defiled” and then claims that the negative responses from the critics of Hillsong and the documentaries are happening because they’re the result of people that are impure and defiled.
“The Scripture says, to the pure all things are pure, but to the unbelieving, nothing is pure.’ So they’re going to look for something bad or something nasty, in absolutely everything. Sadly, that’s the way the world works.
But can I just say this, that our church is built on principles, biblical principles like generosity and honor. And I have no regrets whatsoever about the fact we’re generous church, and we’re a church that lovesd to honor. So If I was just to give one example, I’m glad that we were generous to our guest speakers. I’m glad that we had the opportunity to honor them in that way, and to be generous in that way. Because that’s what the Scripture teaches us to do.
Famously, they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for ‘honorariums’, and in fact, they gave T.D. Jakes, and Joyce Meyer $150K for one sermon. Their generosity involved them spending $40,000-$60,000 on conference airfare for just one person, and they gave Ann Voskamp $107,000 in honorariums for one appearance. All this was coming out of the church tithes.
But they also were not so generous with their charities. According to the report: Hillsong Foundation raised $21M for charities but only gave them 1% of the money Or how about, despite raising $21M for charity, Hillsong gave their anti-female genital mutilation Org. Only $42. They also weren’t being generous when they charged child-sponsor group’ Compassion’ $1,000,000 to be at their events.
And so yeah, I wouldn’t change, I wouldn’t change the way that the church was run in the past. I wouldn’t. Other people may have a different reflection. Some people may feel like they have to apologize for something. But really, I don’t feel like we need to apologize for anything….I don’t think for one moment that in the big picture of life Hillsong Church has been excessive. Generous? Yes. Honoring? Yes. To have the opportunity to take a guest to a nice restaurant- I don’t regret that. To be able to take business meetings, I’ll say business meetings but we know it’s church, with very key people on my team, and go somewhere nearby, one of the venues to have lunch to talk about church related matters, or college related matters. I don’t regret that. (Editor’s Note. He’s likely referring to Nobu restaurant, a favorite that frequently showed up on his charge card)
And you know, it is what it is. But don’t know regrets. Not really. I mean, I didn’t directly oversee the finances. That was other people’s jobs, the General Manager, and the Chief Financial Officer. So I can’t answer for every single expenditure that that ever was, because I wouldn’t know.
…I thank God, we had the opportunity to lead our church in a very generous way. And I would do it exactly the same way again.
He concludes by reiterating that to the defiled all things are defiled, and so when people consider all the negative things said about Hillsong: “Don’t be rocked by it. My advice would be, just don’t listen to the noise. Don’t listen to the noise.“
h/t to The Megachurch Must Die. To see his extended commentary on Houston’s video, click here. To see the full video without commentary:
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Just a niggly thing where you refer to his spending at the ritz you wrote “unheaded of” should it be “unheard of” I know it’s nit-picky and irrelevant to the point of the article 😬🤔
There’s absolutely no way to excuse those ridiculously opulent expenditures. If I were tithing to that church I would have felt taken advantage of and would have found another church that took stewardship of God’s money seriously.