Top of the Week: Hillsong Pastor, Co-Founder Brian Houston Resigns After Revelations of Indiscretions With Women
Less than a week after the Hillsong board released a statement revealing its cofounder, Brian Houston, had sent inappropriate text messages to a staff member and spent time in a woman’s hotel room, the board of the global megachurch has announced the longtime global senior pastor has resigned.
In a statement posted on its website Wednesday (March 23), the board said it had accepted Houston’s resignation and acknowledged “there will be much emotion at this news.”
Houston, 68, a New Zealand native, founded Hillsong Church with his wife Bobbie in the suburbs of Sydney in 1983. The Pentecostal powerhouse now boasts 30 locations around the world, with an average global attendance of 150,000 weekly. Hillsong’s music program has produced some of the most popular worship songs used in evangelical churches around the world, including “Oceans,” “What a Beautiful Name,” and “Shout to the Lord.”
Amid the shock of Hillsong Church’s co-founder Brian Houston’s resignation over allegations of indiscretions with women, another Hillsong senior pastor has resigned—but with no similar claims against him. Pastor Sam Collier, 33, who launched Hillsong Atlanta less than a year ago as the global megachurch’s first Black senior pastor, announced his resignation via an Instagram post.
Collier, the founder of A Greater Story Ministries, notes, “with all of the documentaries, scandals, articles, accusations and the church’s subsequent management of these attacks it’s become too difficult to lead and grow a young Church in this environment.”
More Accusations Surface Against Hillsong Co-Founder Brian Houston
The board of directors of Hillsong, the global megachurch and music empire co-founded by Australian pastor Brian Houston, released a statement Friday (March 18) addressing two complaints about Houston, including an accusation that the married pastor had spent time alone in a hotel room with a woman in 2019.
In the statement, which came as the story was breaking in the Australian press, said the Hillsong board has been “dealing with two complaints made against Pastor Brian over the last 10 years,” and said each was investigated by a board member, or “a body appointed by the global board,” and dealt with confidentially.
The other complaint related to an accusation that Houston had flirted with a staff member over text message a decade ago.
Prophetic alarm bells are ringing, according to a recent episode of The Watchman on Trinity Broadcasting Network.
All Israel News Editor-in-Chief Joel C. Rosenberg and CBN’s Middle East Bureau Chief and host of Jerusalem Dateline, Chris Mitchell, met with Watchman host Erick Stakelbeck to analyze the prophetic implications of Russia’s Ukrainian invasion for the Jewish state.
Mitchell and Rosenberg agreed there are prophetic implications to Russia’s presence in the Middle East and the coming war of Gog and Magog, the end-times battle laid out in Ezekiel Chapters 38 and 39. The Scripture says that Magog and its allies will threaten “the restored Israel” but will be destroyed.
A well-known Pentecostal pastor announced on Ukrainian national television that his adopted daughter was killed in her apartment by a Russian tank. Pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko opened his interview by saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not very able to say something intelligible today because a few hours ago I was informed that one of my daughters was shot in Mariupol [Ukraine].”
Mokhnenko continued through his tears, “I have 35 [children]. I managed to bring out the younger children, but I could not return [to] Mariupol. We ran into the front line [of the war].”
Sources confirmed that the pastor transported his younger children to safety while planning to return to Mariupol for his older children. He could not take all of the children and their families on the first trip because he has 38 children, 3 biological and 35 adopted. {eoa}
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