Come on, Jesus is about to come and fill us once again!
The worship at Hillsong is unparalleled.
Have you ever been told that you’re part of a cult?
Yep!
The music's amazing. It's frickin' phenomenal.
It’s not cool to be a Christian, or to be religious at all.
The number of Australians who call themselves Christian is falling, and fast.
There are almost a million fewer Christians than there were just five years ago.
But there is one Christian denomination that is bucking that trend.
Each week, nearly 40,000 Australians flock to 27 locations around Australia
for what is surely the most iconic evangelical church in Australia: Hillsong.
Who's ready to praise God today? Come on, let's put our hands together.
Pentecostal churches like Hillsong are on the rise. Membership has grown by about 18% in the past decade
and almost half of those are under the age of 30.
Now I should admit at this point that I have some history with Hillsong.
I was raised in a series of evangelical churches including Hillsong
and much to my mother’s chagrin I have had nothing to do with the church in years, because sinning is great.
But we are here to talk to young Hillsongers to find out what it is about the church that is attractive to them.
And also to ask some of the big questions facing Australia right now
like how did they vote in the same sex marriage survey?
Melissa was brought up in a Christian household, but only went to church occasionally.
I've been to Catholic churches all my life and it was the most boring thing, and it was not inviting.
But Hillsong was a different story.
So what were your first impressions, you walk in here, what goes through your head?
I walked in and there were so many people. Everyone was smiling and laughing. There's music playing.
I thought it was like a party. I wasn't going really to get a connection with God or anything.
I just wanted to go cause it was fun.
You left school at the age of 15 and I understand you went through fairly dark period.
I definitely did. I actually stopped going to church. I was really mentally unstable, hurting myself quite badly.
Cutting myself. I literally hated myself.
Eventually Melissa’s family encouraged her to go back to church.
My life didn't turn around in a moment but that was kind of my epiphany of like, okay.
“You've got to do this, you've got to change”. And it just gave me some hope.
What gave you hope?
I would walk into the church and I would just feel this sensation of happiness, really, and just belonging.
It was kind of like someone was looking down on me and touching me or giving me a hug.
I just knew within myself that it was definitely God.
It’s here in Sydney’s Hills District that Hillsong has its roots
established by young Pentecostal pastors Brian and Bobbie Houston in the mid-1980s
Hillsong now has churches in 19 countries, and boasts weekly attendance globally of 100,000 people.
And of course, there's the celebrity members.
I just enjoy seeing people worship, praising God.
I grew up, I had no friends. I had no one growing up. I actually wanted to kill myself before I came to Australia.
Eric’s family moved to Australia from the Philippines when he was a teenager.
Like Melissa, the church he’d grown up in didn’t really resonate with him.
That was until a friend invited him to Hillsong.
I was just gobsmacked. The preacher just asked, “If you want God in your life, I just want you to run to the front”.
I just ran. I felt like this was my turning point in my life. God was like “I'm here, I'm actually real."
What does God feel like?
The warm comfort, like basically love.
Two months after Eric joined Hillsong, his world was completely shaken up.
My mum actually got cancer, stage three. Like 50% chance of living. I basically lost hope.
Did you feel betrayed?
I felt backstabbed. I felt like “I thought you were with me, God? Like what the heck?”
One night I had a nightmare that like mum just died. I was just crying on my bed
and I felt someone just hugging me so warmly just so tight, like “I'm here. Don't worry don't be afraid.”
Then one month later, mum was better. You wouldn't realise she had cancer like a year ago.
So we've just met Eric. I think it's a very common story
when a parent is sick or you're facing a life or death struggle in your life
those are the moments in your life when Pentecostal Christianity is really effective.
Because it's high emotion, a deeply ingrained community.
Do you know it's funny because for me, I was a very angsty, lonely kid.
And the reason Hillsong appealed to me, it was big, and it was enveloping and people really did care and invest
and people really did provide the family and provide the warmth that I wasn't getting in school
and I definitely wasn't getting at home.
The church is failing to adapt to contemporary culture, and Hillsong has done the complete opposite.
Tim was a regular Hillsonger for a while
but dropped back because of what he describes as theological differences.
I'll go occasionally with friends and family, but I think Hillsong is like Maccas
it's good every now and then but you couldn't live off it.
What do you reckon is the most misunderstood thing about Hillsong?
Money.
Why money?
The perceived attitude is that Hillsong's all about money, it's a business
it's all about making and maximizing profits. But I think the intention is a lot more pure.
Hillsong’s revenue in 2016 was $161 million, that is 16% up from the previous year.
Over half of that came from donations, and like all churches in Australia, Hillsong’s earnings are tax free.
If you use your phone to the App Store, Google Play, you can download the Hillsong Giving app.
I think that's what makes people uncomfortable. It's like well -
Why are you telling me, a single mother of three living on $24,000 a year, telling me to give 10% of my income?
It's almost manipulative to tell people, 'give money to me or give money to the church, and you'll be blessed for it.'
Is that enhanced by the sheer production value of the event?
Yes, definitely, 100% because the church obviously doesn't need it.
If we're going to grow we need spread, if we're going to spread we have to grow.
You can see it in natural ways. If someone is involved in financial investment, maybe building a property portfolio
what has to happen? They have to grow their capital, they have to grow their finances
and if they can grow their finances, they can spread their portfolio.
But then they also spend so much of their money on community outreach programs.
Like every Christmas they just fill a bus with Christmas presents, and they go around disadvantaged families
and they give these families Christmas presents.
Hillsong turned down multiple opportunities from The Feed to be interviewed.
But we do know how much they spend on those charitable missions.
Of Hillsong’s $161 million revenue last year, 15% was spent on charitable missions
just above spending on corporate services.
Almost 40% of revenue went to church services, including paying pastors.
The perception is that you give 10% of your wage. I think that's what I've heard?
I've probably given about $4 to Hillsong. If you wanna give, you can give. If you don't then it's all cool.
The other thing that has come up, there is a perception out there is that Hillsong is something of a cult.
It makes me really angry.
Why does it make you angry?
Oh, because it's just ridiculous!
If I was to meet someone and be like, "Oh I go to Hillsong." You get that look like, really?
Do you really go to Hillsong? Like, are you weird?'
The end of my Christianity does not go out with a bang, it goes out with a whimper.
It goes out with slowly going less and less and less.
And when secular friends make jokes about Hillsong being a cult
you just quietly shrink into the background and hope nobody asks you what you think.
What do you want to do?
I want to be a pastor now, that's basically what I want to do.
Eric already gives much of his time to Hillsong as a youth leader working with year 8 boys.
Right now, Australia has a very big survey on, about same-sex marriage.
If one of your boys came up to you and said, "I think I'm gay." What would your response be to him?
I would just say, dude no matter what happens I'll still love you no matter what.
If I start treating him differently because he was gay then I’d feel like I failed.
Should he then also have the right to get married?
Um, can we skip this question? I don't want to go through this.
I believe homosexuality to be wrong, personally.
And I think that what's right is right, regardless of whether or not our culture believes it to be right.
So I think that everyone can agree killing a baby is wrong, regardless of the culture that you're in.
What you just argued then was that there is a moral equivalence between
two gay people wanting to get married, and killing a baby.
Oh well, I never compared killing a baby with -
I didn't say you compared them, I said there's a moral equivalence.
Yeah. There is - yeah I agree. Um, look they're different types of wrong and they're very different consequences.
What are the consequences in being gay?
Well. You can look throughout history and see that STDs, AIDS come about largely due to homosexual behaviour.
Right now Australia is having a very big conversation about same-sex marriage
and Brian Houston put out a statement-y thing which basically came down on he's voting 'no'.
Yep.
Where do you stand on that topic?
I'm totally all for it.
Same-sex marriage?
Yes definitely, all for same-sex marriage.
It has a bit more meaning for you than it does for a lot of people, doesn't it?
Why is that?
It definitely does. Well, I'm bisexual. I have had a couple of girlfriends and I've had boyfriends.
I feel like I was born like this.
So I can't imagine that God would have made me with my sexuality if it wasn't natural or it wasn't normal.
Does it feel good to say it out loud?
It feels really good to say it out loud.
Imagine I'm Brian Houston.
How would you go about convincing him that you deserve marriage as much as I do, as much as he does?
I would just let him know like this is how I feel it's not affecting him.
If I was to get married to a female, how is that possibly affecting his life?
And those handful of passages in the Bible that say things like
“A man shall not lie with a man,” and stuff like that -
When you see those things there, how do you think about those?
I kind of just look over them. I would just read it and be like “Alright, cool.” Just flip the page.
It's like, the world's evolved.
Hillsong is sold as young, hip and modern but at the end of the day
it's still a community that's ostensibly based on the knowledge of a 2,000 year old book.
They've picked and chosen which elements of this modern age that they are willing to adopt.
The bright lights, the four chords, and which parts they're still choosing to ignore: same-sex marriage.
As Heaven and Earth sing, Holy is the name.
There's a tension at the heart of Hillsong between the ancient and the modern.
And as Australian society at least, changes and evolves
there's a very big question as to whether Hillsong can change with it.