Ex-members of Hillsong Church expose megachurchs toxic cover-ups

Former Hillsong members have spoken exclusively to news.com.au about a culture of cover-ups, fearmongering, unpaid labour and denials as pressure mounts on the evangelical megachurch to adopt systemic change.

In March, Hillsong’s co-founder Brian Houston resigned following sexual misconduct allegations and it was announced that the Hillsong Board would conduct an independent review of the Church’s governance and structural processes.

But an Australian grassroots advocacy group says for the review to have any real meaning, Hillsong must listen to the stories of its former members.

“An independent review is only as good as they’re willing to make it. For the review to truly be a tool of change, Hillsong has to be willing to consult with and listen to those they failed and harmed along the way,” said Religion Shouldn’t Hurt Australia co-founder Michael Bones.

“If not, we’ll invariably just see history repeating itself in the future.”

Religion Shouldn’t Hurt has now launched a petition calling on Hillsong Church to formally agree to consult with former members as part of its investigation, which has received more than 11,000 signatures.

When allegations against Houston broke – something one former Hillsong member tells news.com.au “wasn’t a shock to anybody” – Religion Shouldn’t Hurt (RSH) was inundated with chilling stories from current and former Pentecostal church members.

‘Whatever it takes was our mantra’

Dave Lillo-Trynes worked at Youth Alive NSW, a parachurch organisation funded by Hillsong and based on the Sydney campus between 2010 and 2014.

“I worked myself to the bone because I truly thought we were doing good in the world. But I wasn’t looking after myself, we weren’t taught to,” Lillo-Trynes revealed to news.com.au.

“We were regularly told ‘never question authority’ by members of Hillsong’s senior leadership team.”

As part of his role, Lillo-Trynes regularly reported to Hillsong pastors before leaving the Church in 2016.

“I remember one staff meeting where a pastor told us we should never ask for a pay rise and instead always look to God for our finances. We were instructed repeatedly to tithe 10 per cent of our income to the church,” he said.

“I earned little more than $30,000 a year at that point while trying to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and had to hold down additional work just to make ends meet. Working multiple services on the weekend and putting in unpaid overtime during the week was considered absolutely normal. ‘Whatever it takes’ was our mantra.”

Eventually, the burden took a toll, with Mr Lillo-Trynes being hospitalised over his declining mental health and being diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Following the hospital stay, he made the difficult decision to resign from his position and step away from the church.

In the rare instances when people did dare to speak out, he says, “they are labelled as bad apples and discredited”.

“People are too scared. They know they’ll have to recount and relive serious trauma and be victim-blamed at every step of the way,” he said.

“Looking back, that whole environment was so toxic.”

In 2021, an independent review by law firm HWL Ebsworth found that former Hillsong students raised concerns about “an expectation to volunteer” and “alleged preferential treatment on the basis of students’ wealth, family connections within Hillsong”.

At the time, Hillsong released a statement saying: “When we heard from former and current students that some of their experiences were not as they expected we took this very seriously and immediately reached out to as many as we could for their feedback.”

The church said it had undertaken “positive reforms” and that “changes focus on student wellbeing”.

‘They go after you’

Another woman who spoke to news.com.au on the condition of anonymity backed up Mr Lillo-Trynes’ claims, saying, “I’ve seen businesses fail, I’ve seen marriages crumble, people who can’t get jobs anymore after they’ve spoken out. People are scared, I’m scared,” she said. “They [Hillsong] will go after you.”

The woman was a student at the Sydney Hillsong College for four years, where she claims to have attended female-only classes in which Brian’s wife Bobbie Houston discussed weight management and gave students advice on how to be a good wife.

The woman claims she was once told by a male teacher discussing sex that women “are like crockpots” and men “are like microwaves”, asked by another pastor why, at 25, she wasn’t married, and frequently quizzed on her decision to not wear makeup.

On April 9, Hillsong announced that Bobbie Houston was departing the church after Brian Houston’s resignation and the Board having to “initiate difficult and challenging conversations with Bobbie regarding the transition in her role as Co-Global Senior Pastor, given that Brian had resigned and was no longer working for Hillsong Church.” They added “she is and always will be loved.”

In addition to working a full-time job within the healthcare sector, the woman says she was expected to undertake between 20 to 30 hours of unpaid volunteer work for the church every week.

“It was a full-time job on a full-time job,” she said. “It was expected of everybody.”

According to the woman, who is now in her 30s, the unpaid labour included cleaning toilets, catering, driving staff and famous attendees around, co-ordinating Sunday services, and attending different group events multiple evenings a week.

During major events and conferences, she says “It was very normal for us to stay back and clean until 2am. None of us could get on the bus until it was finished.”

Eventually, the amount of unpaid volunteer work led to burnout and triggered her decision to leave Hillsong Church.

“Within 24 hours of telling two people about my decision everybody knew and I was shunned,” she says. “This included being deleted from message groups, ignored by fellow parishioners in the supermarket, and her housemate moving out to avoid what they called a ‘damaging’ way of life.

“They said to me ‘our world is in Hillsong, and if you’re not a part of that we don’t have anything in common anymore’.”

She also says allegations of Brian Houston’s bad behaviour have been “rife” within the Hillsong community for over a decade.

“Those stories were not surprising to any of us. It was the worst kept secret, everybody knew about it,” she says. “I saw so many stories of extramarital affairs, behaviour similar to Brian’s … it was all swept under the carpet and covered up.”

Within the Church, she says, Brian and Bobbie Houston were referred to as “the eagle and the mother dove”.

Despite departing two years ago, she says she still struggles to trust people and understand their motivations.

“I just wish I had known more before I got in,” she says. “Looking back, I can’t believe I lived through that.”

‘It was just free labour’

One former member, who joined the church at 18 and attended Hillsong College for two years, says students were required to undertake unpaid volunteering – known as “practicum” – as part of their study program.

“They sold it to us as if we would be learning practical skills, kind of like an internship or placement, but the jobs were never anything that would actually further our careers, it was just free labour,” they told news.com.au.

Working for one of the Church’s major annual conferences during their time at College, they were required to spend weeks in the lead-up to the event making gift baskets for visiting VIP guests.

“They were worth hundreds of dollars. There were prepaid cards and designer accessories in there as gifts for people being paid to attend and speak, and being put up in hotels like the Intercontinental and Shangri-La. Meanwhile, we’re doing it all for free.”

During annual conferences, students were required to act as personal drivers for the VIP guests, which they said involved being on-call 24 hours a day for a total of 10 days, including days outside of the conference itself.

“Drivers were expected to chauffeur not just the VIP guests, but any family, children, and members of their entourage that had travelled with them. Sometimes we’d just drive them from their hotel to the stadium, but other times we might take the family to a beach or to the zoo.

“Weirdly, we also weren’t allowed to use google maps when we were driving them somewhere. They were worried it would make the guest uncomfortable so you either had to know where you were going or learn the route before you left,” they said.

They described conference hours as “brutal”, with most students experiencing exhaustion by the end of the 10 days.

“Depending on who your VIP was you might finish at midnight, but if they wanted to go into the city and party you’d just have to wait on the street until they were done. Some people didn’t finish until 4am some mornings, and we were expected to be back on site by 6am every day. It didn’t matter how far away we lived or how tired you were, we just had to get it done.”

During the decade they attended the Church, they said they never saw a VIP or senior church member use a taxi or an Uber during the annual conference period.

“Having a driver was a status thing, it showed others within the church how important you were and where you sat in the hierarchy.”

Outside of major conferences, students were also expected to act as drivers for senior church members and use their own cars without any fuel or mileage compensation.

“When conference was on you got a fleet car and a fuel card, but outside of that, you used your own car. If you had a really bad or old car they might give you one from the fleet, but the expectation was that you should have a new enough car to be up to the standard,” they said.

Another former member backed up the claims, telling news.com.au he routinely drove senior members of the church around outside of the conference period over several years in his personal vehicle.

One pastor routinely asked him to take toll roads to reduce the trip time by what the man said was “two minutes, max. When I told him I was avoiding tolls because I was broke he said I was costing him time with his wife because I couldn’t organise my finances.”

‘Everywhere you went you had to pay’

Mr Lillo-Trynes says finances were a constant source of worry and contention within the Hillsong environment for younger members of the Church.

“Everywhere you went you had to pay. Even during college when you’re already paying upfront annual school fees and a student unable to work full-time, the expectation was always that you could be giving more.”

Where church members were employed full-time, the expectation was a 10 per cent income tithe to the Church, as well as regular additional bonus “offerings” on top of that. Members employed within the Church were given the option to have their tithe removed from their pay before it hit their bank accounts via a salary sacrificing option, something he says he did not choose to use.

“The requests for more money were relentless, it was just non-stop,” he says.

When people struggled to keep up with tithe and offering commitments, alternative solutions were found.

“I saw people offer up their mobile phones in lieu of cash offerings more than once,” he says.

Countless stories with eerily similar patterns are also being shared via the Religion Shouldn’t Hurt website, which Mr Bones says will continue to publish testimonies over the coming weeks.

“While these stories are hard to read and even harder to tell, I’m pleased that people are feeling able to finally speak up. The more people that come forward, the more it will help to expose the toxic elements of churches like Hillsong and force them to change for the better,” Bones says.

News.com.au has also seen a letter sent from Mr Bones to Hillsong’s general manager and director George Aghajanian requesting the consultation. At the time of publishing, Mr Bones had not received a response from Mr Aghajanian or any other Hillsong representatives.

While not speaking specifically about any of the examples cited by Religion Shouldn’t Hurt, newly-installed Hillsong global senior pastor Phil Dooley recently apologised to anyone hurt by their involvement with the church.

“That people have been hurt by their association with our church breaks my heart,” Dooley said during a service on March 27. “And again I say we’re sorry.”

RSH was founded by Troy Moore-Heart, a queer ex-Baptist church member from the US, and was started by survivors of religious harm to share their stories. Now, RSH and similar support groups are slowly expanding around the globe.

“It’s not about bashing any one person or any one kind of faith. We just want people in positions of power to understand and acknowledge the power they wield, and for there to be accountability where it has been misused,” Bones says.

“We saw through the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse what happens when power is corrupted and when there’s no sunlight or real accountability within these institutions. We believe it’s time to open the curtains on Hillsong.”

Others have also shared their stories via the petition. “As an ex-member and victim, the only way this church will change is by listening to those of us who have been hurt by Hillsong,” one petitioner wrote.

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“I am a victim of Hillsong and know of other victims. Shame SHAME SHAME!” another wrote.

Hillsong was approached for comment on this story but hasn’t responded.

Katy Hall is a freelance writer.

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