Three days on, the tears are still flowing at Hillsong Church.
Interim global pastor Phil Dooley has not been able to stop since last Friday morning when he tearfully told an all-Hillsong staff meeting of pastor Brian Houston’s errant ways with two women. Yesterday was the church’s first service since Friday’s revelations. And still Pastor Phil was unable to keep it all inside.
“I thought I was over my tears because I’ve cried a lot of them,” he told the uncharacteristically subdued Hillsong crowd. “But it’s not out yet. Maybe you feel the same.”
Pastor Phil is a parable in himself. Hillsong to his Gucci bootstraps, he hails from the church’s heartland in north-west Sydney. He began with the church 30 years ago. The very image of the hip pastor, with black beanie pulled down over blond hair that tumbles nearly to his shoulders, Pastor Phil spoke of the dash he had made back to Sydney last week from the United States where he had spoken with church leaders, presumably on the Brian situation.
Watching an inflight movie about the poignant story of the tennis-playing Williams sisters had triggered yet more tears for the already overwrought pastor. Meanwhile, Phil’s wife Lucinda was stuck in South Africa and couldn’t be by his side for this day.
It seemed truly that in Hillsong world, the meek with the most frequent flyer points would inherit the earth.
Pastor Phil’s tragic inheritance was now to front the church barely 72 hours after the savaging of Brian Houston — in the very church Houston had built. The trademark energy and bounce were missing as he addressed the doleful task of shepherding Hillsong through its darkest days.
“This has possibly been one of the hardest weeks of my life,” said Pastor Phil of the recent convulsions which have seen Houston sidelined, perhaps for good.
It fell to Hillsong’s head of creative, the normally effervescent Cassandra Langton, to grasp the nettle and reframe the day for the despairing believers. Cassie, as Pastor Phil referred to her, has one of the most important jobs at a Hillsong service: urging the flock to part with their money for the glory of the church. Today it was a task she hadn’t really wanted to do.
“(People) are asking me: ‘How can you stand up there and ask (for donations)?'” Cassie said, perhaps reading the minds of anyone who has watched the hypocrisy of the mighty moralist, Brian Houston, laid bare of the mighty moralist, Brian Houston.
But Cassie had woken up with a story to tell — a story about lost sheep and the Lord — which of course led directly to Psalm 23, and before long a new reality was taking shape.
“The Lord is my Shepherd,” Cassie declared — placing emphasis on the Lord, in seeming distinction to Pastor Brian, now cooling his heels far away in the USA, the purgatory of a man whose secret life has suddenly been prised open.
Now Cassie was tearful as she fought through the morass of doubt and angst to emerge clarified and clear of purpose.
“We will give out of everything that we have (sic),” she declared, before firing off a volley of ways the faithful could show their devotion.”We will offer our finances, our lives, our families, our homes, and everything to Jesus, because he is the Good Shepherd and he cares for his sheep.
“I have no worries in inviting you to share everything that you have with the Good Shepherd again this morning, because it is always him, and it will always be him. I’m going to pray for us. I’m going to invite you to continue to give your lives to the Shepherd. Jesus Christ, you are the Good Shepherd.”
The surge of optimism was catching. The Houston problem addressed, Pastor Phil too caught the wave. Wiping away the tears, he was soon promising that a better day was on the way.
“In this season, health and healing are our focus,” Pastor Phil said. “We will continue to build a beautiful, unified church. Continue to build, because that’s what we have been part of, so that here generations can come and stand strong and build together.”
And yet, not all were on board.
As Cassie and Phil saw a new vision, there were serpents slithering in the weeds of social media, via a live online chat which accompanied the YouTube video of the church service, allowing the faithful — and increasingly the not-so-faithful — to heckle from the bleachers.
“Is Brian in cuffs yet?” a member of the disenchanted threw in.
“How are we so happy with what’s going on?” asked another, incredulous at the hope now emerging.
“I am at one with you and Pastor Brian,” one supporter offered, only to be met with a question from a sceptic: “Yes, but are they at one with you?”
“Please let the truth come out,” one pleaded.
It was at this point, as Pastor Phil elaborated on a vision of togetherness and a new way for the church, that Hillsong’s invisible monitors swooped on the live chat and began to delete any message that questioned the new narrative.
“Why do you keep silencing us? Deleting our messages and not answering emails?” one dissident asked.
“Keep the focus on the Service,” ordered a Hillsong monitor.
Shutting down questions while promising a better day. It seemed at that moment to capture the hopelessness of where Hillsong has ended up.
And most particularly the social media revolt captured the new reality: there’s a younger brigade of believers who won’t have any more of the deceptions and the old authoritarian ways of the church which has delivered prosperity for an inner circle clustered around Brian Houston.
