Hillsong allegedly commits fraud, evades tax, and pays Life Church $10,000 along the way.

With governments increasingly breathing down their backs, there's no surprise the megachurches don't want to talk to me.

Hi,

Thanks for all the feedback to yesterday’s newsletter ‘Thou Shalt Not Blog’ (141 comments and counting), in which I responded to a series of questions from Life church’s Corporate Communications Manager Phil Irons.

After emailing my response to Phil yesterday morning (which included: “Considering I am carefully addressing all your questions very specifically, I look forward to hearing more about how you will address your culture, processes and treatment of current interns, staff and church members”) I hadn’t heard back — so sent him another email enquiring if he’d received it.

I got this response back from Phil this morning (8.31am LA time, 5.31am in New Zealand):

My email to Phil had been very long.

Phil’s reply was very short — and used his favourite word “blog”. He added an “etc” as a cute flourish at the end:

“Thanks for responding to our questions & appreciated having it from you prior to seeing it on the blog etc”.

Phil didn’t indicate if he planned to respond further to Webworm’s original allegations.

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Meanwhile, in Australia, MP Andrew Wilkie has revealed an assortment of internal Hillsong documents that he says reveal Hillsong (the blue-print megachurch founded by Brian Houston) breaking numerous laws in Australia and internationally.

As you’ll recall, prior to founding Life, Paul de Jong had been a pastor on Frank Houston’s staff in the 80s.

And as reported in The Australian yesterday, Paul’s friend Brian Houston (Frank Houston’s son) continues to be in hot water in Australia:

Hillsong founder Brian Houston and his family went on wild shopping sprees at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York and enjoyed lavish overseas holidays, including a $150,000 three-day trip to Cancun in Mexico while Australia was in lockdown during the pandemic, federal parliament has been told.

Hillsong hid more than $80m a year from the Australian Tax Office, according to independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who on Thursday tabled a trove of thousands of documents exposing what he described as fraud and criminality by the church.

The documents provide an insight into the extravagant lifestyles of those running the church and complex financial structures that sustain it.

More information about the documents leaked to Wilkie can be found over at Crikey. I’ve highlighted an interesting bit found in Crikey’s reporting:

Andrew Wilkie says the documents show Life’s Paul de Jong was paid $10,000 by Hillsong.

Now from what I can tell, these megachurch leaders all love paying other megachurch leaders in their wheelhouse exorbitant “honorariums” — often just for showing up to each other’s churches.

What makes this particularly troubling is that in this case, the allegation in Australian parliament is that $10,000 was given to a man who was not only friends with Brian Houston, but had earlier been tasked by Hillsong to help investigate allegations of Brian Houston’s 2019 sexual misconduct allegations.

As you may recall, Houston resigned as senior pastor of Hillsong after it was discovered two women had made serious complaints of misconduct against him over the last 10 years.

As to Hillsong’s subsequent watertight investigation into all that? Well, they ended up explaining his most recent transgressions like this:

Following an in-depth investigation, it was found that Pastor Brian became disoriented after a session at the Hillsong Conference, following the consumption of anti-anxiety medication beyond the prescribed dose, mixed with alcohol.

This resulted in him knocking on the door of a hotel room that was not his, entering this room and spending time with the female occupant.

It strikes me that randomly handing over $10,000 to the friend tasked with helping to investigate you is in stark contrast to how another megachurch — Arise — treated the person who investigated them.

Charlotte Cummings was never paid her final bill, and had to crowdfund to pay the $20,000 she incurred in legal fees.

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Reading about the behaviour of megachurches always ends up being pretty horrific.

For me, it also feels so strange.

The first thing Life church did this week when responding to allegations was to question my ethics and accountability. I was lectured about who I answered to, and who was keeping me in line.

As someone asked in the comments section:

Are the ministers “real” ministers? What theology training do they have? What accreditation? What professional code of ethics do they follow? Is there one for ministers? What Independent organisation are they accountable to if people have issues?

I think the key answer is that accountability barely exists. It seems to come almost entirely from “spiritual advisors” who are all a group of megachurch pastors who are friends, and sometimes pay each other $10,000.

How does Life feel about my reporting? It’s hard to say, but their current senior pastor Luke de Jong — Paul de Jong’s son — posted this cheerfully-formatted text to his Instagram story:

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

Patient in affliction, I have reached back out to New Zealand’s Life corporate comms person for more comment:

Hi Phil,

Thanks for getting back. Webworm would still appreciate more specific comment on the original questions asked.

I also wanted to query the most recent reporting out of Australia in regards to Hillsong, and Paul de Jong.

As reported in The Australian and Crikey, MP Andrew Wilkie has tabled an assortment of internal Hillsong documents that he says reveal Hillsong breaking numerous laws in Australia and internationally.

In Crikey's story it mentions this occurring:

“Payments of $10,000 each to international pastors Paul de Jong and Chris Hodges, who also investigated allegations of Brian Houston’s 2019 sexual misconduct in a Sydney hotel room involving a female parishioner.”

I wanted to seek comment from Life about this particular payment, with the specific question:

Did this payment of $10,000 occur?
What was the payment of $10,000 for?
Is a payment of $10,000 appropriate to receive when it's being paid by the entity you have been tasked to investigate?

Any clarity is appreciated.

Best,

David Farrier.
Webworm.

I’ll report back what happens.

David.

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