Hillsong Church is a Pentecostal and evangelical Christian church. The primary location is Australia and is headquartered north-west of Sydney, in Baulkham Hills' Norwest Business Park, near Castle Hill). It has a smaller site at Waterloo, near the central business district. Its off-shoots include Hillsong London and Hillsong Leatherhead, in the United Kingdom, Hillsong Kiev in Ukraine, and Hillsong Paris in France. Established by Pastors Brian Houston and Bobbie Houston, it is a member of the Assemblies of God movement. A new 3500-seat convention centre at its main site was opened on October 19, 2002, by John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia.

History

Brian and Bobbie Houston moved from New Zealand in 1978 and joined the Sydney Christian Life Centre at Darlinghurst, pastored by Frank Houston, Brian's father. They started Hillsong Church, which was then known as Hills Christian Life Centre, in August 1983 with an initial congregation of 45. Within four years this had grown to 900 people.

As the music ministry of the church developed, an annual conference called The Hillsong Conference was created to teach and train Christian musicians.

In the early 1990s, Praise and Worship CDs from Hills Christian Life Centre released by the record company arm of the church were released in Australia and internationally. This raised the profile of the church.

Eventually the church realised that the name "Hillsong" was more well-known than Hills Christian Life Centre. The church was then renamed Hillsong Church in the late 1990s. In about 2000 the mother church, Sydney CLC, was merged into Hillsong Church.

In 2005 Hillsong was claiming 18,000 parishioners at their Sunday meetings.

Current operations

The Hillsong

• the annual Hillsong Conference, which 28,000 people attended at the Sydney Superdome on 4-8 July in 2005;

• the Colour Your World Women's Conference;

• the Hillsong Men's Conference;

• the Hillsong International Leadership College which trains aspiring Assembly of God ministers and lay leaders from around the world.

Hillsong Church provides many other services, descriptions of which are available in an .

The Hillsong Church has developed congregations in London, Kiev, Paris and in 27 locations in Africa. An example of such congregations is Hillsong London.

Political influence

The Hillsong Church has attracted support from high profile politicians especially in the Liberal Party of Australia. Prime Minister John Howard opened its Baulkham Hills campus and Treasurer Peter Costello spoke at its annual conference in July 2004 and 2005. Opposition Leader Mark Latham declined Hillsong's invitation to the annual 2004 conference, although Bob Carr, the Premier of New South Wales, (from the Australian Labor Party), did attend the 2005 conference.

This access to high level Federal politicians may be, in part, due to the fact that the former New South Wales Liberal Party state director Scott Morrison (to November 2004) and now chief executive of Tourism Australia is a prominent member of Hillsong Church.

The Church also attracts a large number of aspirational voters from marginal seats in the west of Sydney such as Lindsay, Macquarie and Greenway. Louise Markus who ran the Hillsong Church's drug and alcohol outreach service in Blacktown was preselected as the Liberal Party candidate for Greenway in the 2004 federal election and was elected to the House of Representatives. Labor had held the seat since it was proclaimed in 1984 until she beat the ALP candidate Ed Husic, as well as twelve other candidates, with a two party preferred swing of 3.7%.

Subsequent to

Liberal MP for Mitchell, Alan Cadman, and two Family First Senate candidates, Joan Woods and Ivan Herald, who failed to win Senate seats, were featured in a Hillsong circular during the election, with members being asked to pray for them.

The candidates for both the Christian Democrat and Family First parties in Greenway recorded lower percentages of votes than their parties' candidates in comparable seats.

Publicly, however, the church has distanced itself from advocating certain political groups and parties, including the fledgling Family First party:

One thing we are not is a political movement.. The Assemblies of God in Australia does not have a political vision and we don't have a political agenda. I think people need to understand the difference between the church being very involved in politics and individual Christians being involved in politics. There is a big difference. (Brian Houston)

Music

See main articles: Hillsong Music and List of Hillsong songs.

Hillsong's music has become well-known internationally amongst Christian groups. Songs such as "Power of Your Love" by Geoff Bullock and "Shout to the Lord" by Darlene Zschech have become popular and are sung throughout churches world-wide. Hillsong have released over 40 albums since 1992, many of them achieving gold status in Australia. Although the music is not well known amongst the mainstream, their 2004 live praise and worship album For All You've Done reached #1 in the mainstream Australian album charts (ARIA) when many copies were sold during Hillsong's annual conference.

Controversies

Over its twenty year history Hillsong has come under scrutiny and a number of controversies have arisen.

Prosperity Teaching, as outlined in Houston's book You Need More Money, teaches that God wants his people to be wealthy and prosperous, so they have more money to help others, and has given them the ability to "unleash" this power from within. Many Christians, including Tim Costello, the brother of Hillsong conference addressee and Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, as well as those from the Assemblies of God in Australia, oppose this teaching as being unbiblical and heterodox. Hillsong has on their website claiming it has been misrepresented.

Perceived compromise of Christian moral values of some of the church's high-profile staff over its twenty five year history have caused embarrassment to the church, including:

• Pat Mesiti was a pastor and Youth Alive creator who admitted to adultery in 2002 and was stood down temporarily by Houston until he could be "restored". At the time he was also the National Director of Australian Christian Churches, a loose grouping of Australian Pentecostal and Charismatic churches but was stood down.
• Geoff Bullock - The church's former Worship Pastor who was the "poster boy" of the church's influential worship music. After leaving the church his marriage fell apart and he married an "old friend" soon after. Allegations of adultery were made but Bullock has explicitly denied these.
• Frank Houston - Brian's father. Soon after his retirement, Frank Houston had his Assemblies of God ministerial credentials removed after sexual misconduct was revealed dating back to the 1970s in New Zealand. This includes substantiated allegations of sexual abuse against a teenage boy, although no charges were ever pressed. Frank Houston died on November 8, 2004, aged 82.

Leadership Ministries Incorporated - On 3 August, 2005, The Australian reported that both Brian and Bobbie Houston were under investigation by the Office of Fair Trading for failing to file financial statements. Since then, LMI's financial statements have been made public and the issue has been laid to rest, with no evidence of any wrongdoing.

See also

• Charismatic Movement
• Criticisms of Pentecostal and Charismatic belief
• Megachurch
• Transformationalism

• Hillsong church