Dark Hollywood: Hillsong Church, Or As You May Also Know Them As Hillsong Cult; A Cash Cow Business Disguised As A Chruch To Lure Money And BlackMail Celebrities
Ah, It’s been a while old friend aka Hillsong Church. We haven’t really spoken in detail about Hillsong ever since our last major exposé on them in 2018.
Before getting into this post which talks about all the crazy behind the scenes things Hillsong Church participates in, you should read the post linked below which goes into detail about all the public things that have been exposed about them.
Trigger warning: This post will mention pedophilia, sexual abuse, and more.
Despite the tittle, that post goes into grave detail about all the horrible public things that have gotten exposed on the church as FACTS.
Including how they started, pastors being accused of molestation and sexual abuse against children & vulnerable members, other churches questioning them for their lack of Biblical teachings, being extremely money hungry, tricking and dabbling into the lives of A list celebrities and…. so much more.
all photos are for visualization purposes only
Church Clarity Profile
You might think to yourself, “well with all of this what else are you gonna expose?!” and the answer to that is we are going to have a deep dive on the very scandalous things Hillsong participates in behind closed doors. Things that the public hasn’t reported on yet. Make sure you read till the end because the last few stories are insane.
Disclaimer: Everything that will be stated in this post will be either directly coming from a reliable source or research done that has been public and will be linked if used. Our personal opinions based on our facts, may be included. Any non-public information written here is coming from a source and it is exclusive information from ExposingSMG.com that will be credited as such. Read at your own cost.
Let’s start.
Private Chats For Upcoming Leaderships
One thing you will start understanding about Hillsong is that they will always value building their corporation and keeping it safe rather than being a safe transparent environment that actually preaches any teachings of the Bible.
Whenever the church is in deep trouble with the public, every once in a while a leading member of Hillsong will go up on stage and preach to a bunch of staff and leadership members.
They won’t ever address real problems the church has because they want to brainwash majority of their workers and members. These meetings though are not for the public eye, inside them they will have their leading members come up on stage and PRAISE the work their founders have done for Hillsong.
Hillsong
Basically, in a tone or theme like “these situations (they’ll call sexual abuse allegations or other issues as “situations” or other fancy words rather than saying them) have been hard on all of us but I want to honor the foundation they (the founders of Hillsong aka Frank Houston and his son Brian) have built for us blah blah blah”
CHURCHWATCHER
In shorter words, whenever the church goes through a scandal big enough to rock them, they have a gathering with people who work for the church telling them to not believe what’s being said and to consistently honor the work the founders have done for them.
This is important because Brian’s father, Frank has been involved in many sexual assault cases that deal with molestation and child rape. And Brian has apparently known all about them but only condemned them when they went public.
So the church’s way of making sure everyone is still on their side is to have people higher up on the Church’s ladder, give speeches honoring the vision of the founding members and to just “focus on Jesus and find time to pray.”
Whenever there is an issue with Hillsong they will ALWAYS try and divert the attention on praying to Jesus rather than taking any sort of accountability themselves. They will always do damage control to control the narrative in the public eye.
Hillsong Church interim global senior pastor Phil Dooley
Think about it, it’s much harder to tear down an organization when your workers and followers so blindly believe in it and you. So they make sure their staff and upcoming leaders don’t pay too much attention to the fact that their church is run on cult-like practices but rather “think about Jesus and what He said in the Bible about certain issues and crisis.’”
Which to youth groups and staff it all seems like powerful words but in reality the issues they’re addressing are rape, molestation, sexual assault and then they’re addressing those same issues with statements like “think about how Jesus has said crisis will come in present, past and future times, I encourage you to fix your eyes on Jesus and go back to the scriptures and teachings and remind yourself of the promises of God.”
Basically a bunch of brainwashing statements to have the members of the church not realize how very little accountability the church takes and how much they’d rather hide and protect their leading members than protect their vulnerable local members.
For example, lets say this member named Brandy had been sexually assaulted by one of the guys in charge of youth study or something. If Brandy were to go and make a complaint to a leading pastor or leading member, often times they’ll say a bizarre statement like “this encounter should be told in a confessional booth” or “this is not for me to hear.” Basically shushing you and telling you somehow this falls on you rather than on them.
The meetings I just spoke about don’t address issues like this because they pretend they never even heard of something like that happening. The meetings usually happen when something big gets out about the church and they need to do damage control.
The main takeaway? They want to keep everyone in the dark about what gets exposed on them and whenever something does get exposed, they’ll brainwash you with fancy statements about focusing on God rather than on them and their creepy ways. Once again these “meetings” are not for the public, they are for church staff members and other leadership/upcoming leadership members.
“It’s Always You, Never Us”
Andrew White for The New York Times
This has to be a real statement they say in their little sheltered culty meetings.
No matter how much Hillsong is at fault, they will never come out and say it. They will always, even behind closed doors try and make you feel like you did something wrong.
There’s a story about this pastor a while ago who got exposed for having sexual relations with male prostitutes and the church, and what did they do? Hold your laugh—blamed his wife.
Basically saying something like “whatever you’re doing in your household wasn’t well enough so he turned to gay sex” lmaooooo
Once again, these things aren’t public it’s just stories that circle around.
But those are always their main takeaways whenever you present them with a problem. If it’s one of their leading people getting caught, it’s always “this isn’t for me to hear,” “we have to think about our own actions and how we appear to God,” “we are sending out an investigation (and then they never do or they send out an “investigation” from a cooperation they are in charge of).”
And they have a very smart way of manipulating their members and they do this in a few ways.
One with their music, two with their overly passionate pastors who will ramble about God knows what just to get you to think they said something worth listening to, and third is by making religion seem “western” and “hip.”
Manipulation of the Church
Hillsong started off as a musical church group, that was the idea that kicked off having the church in the first place. So adding music and concerts as part of their church regime seemed to be very empowering and different from how some other churches do things.
Especially because Hillsong Church’s music isn’t like 7th grade choir, it’s an ENTIRE production. In a way, it’s supposed to mimic a club scene or a concert scene.
People often times will be enamored by the emotional feelings tied to the songs rather than the emotional feelings tied to their bible teachings.
When you are under emotional manipulation from a place you’d least expect it (a church), you aren’t really thinking correctly.
You are swelled up by this beautiful connection to the music and the arena of everyone putting their hands up and praising together and you’re hooked onto Hillsong and the emotion it brings out of you.
So all the sudden after being fed 0.03% of biblical teachings, here’s a performance from our very best and while you’re all up in this emotional energy, you’re on a huge high from raising your hands with thousands of people…. why don’t you buy a shirt? Why don’t you buy concert tickets for next week? And bam! That’s how they’ll get you with buying their merch and other profitable things.
These people are easier to manipulate, they’re vulnerable and the church tries to hide any harsh teachings of the Bible and would rather sprinkle glitter around it.
Bruce Herwig former singer for Hillsong writes:
Why? Because they want this to be #funnnn and if it’s #funnnn you’ll always wanna come back and you won’t feel like you’re being lectured at church. Some people will view going to church and school as the same thing because there’s work to do, things to memorize, ways to behave and sometimes that’s not so fun.
So Hillsong tries to remove any of those emotions because they want you to keep coming back.
Instead of going into detail about the harsh truth, (could be harsh religious stories or detail about sin and bloodshed), they sort of put you in a bubble to celebrate yourself with all of the fun and easy parts.
This is the definition of “consumer Christianity” where they use religion only for the purpose of marketing. And when you’re selling a product, you wanna make sure people are being tricked into only seeing the good, fun and easy parts rather than anything else.
This is also how they use religion to make it seem as if it’s cool and hip. That’s why whenever they have to talk about topics such as the church being anti-LGBTQ+ or anti-abortion they’re always like “waaat 😄 are yOu 🤪😜 talkin’ about 🌈🥳 we are only a ✨little✨ against it, Christianity is fun 😤 now buy our next concert ticket and stop asking unnecessary questions!!”
Disclaimer: This is not to condemn the church for whatever religious opinion they might have but it’s to show you how it acts as a show rather than anything else.
In the previous post that I have linked above, we go into detail about how much money the church makes from its members and how you have to give them a 10% of your salary while making donations.
Some people buy the merch as well and the concert tickets and it’s basically an entire cash cow operation.
It’s the same exact reason why Mr. Carl Lentz himself was so close to Justin Bieber. Not only did he, as his pastor have an odd relationship with him, but he was like his second father—always whispering in his ear, getting him to do whatever he wanted him to do.
Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images
Whether that was spend 10 million on the church (10% of his salary income), make huge donations, or attend conferences, which in return made thousands of fans come to Hillsong just to try and run into him, it’s all about control.
It’s not about the spiritual journey. Sure, lets say Carl was a great pastor and gave Justin the advice he needed in times of help, it doesn’t change the fact that Carl was a complete hypocrite. He was cheating on his wife with many, many, many different women and using his biggest client as a cash cow.
YouTube/Hillsong Channel
I have learned some information that takes their cash cow business and sky rockets it into outer space, and that is human trafficking.
Yup you read that right.
Hillsong and Their Alleged Human Trafficking Business Scheme
I mean the entire church is a business scheme but this story really takes the cake.
As we all know Hillsong is a church that is heavily celebrity influenced. Not only do they take the celebrities money, they take their promo with it.
The church advises some of these celebrities that join them to pose and post in a way that makes it look like you will meet the celebrity if you go to Hillsong!
Which is a total lie.
You can’t really meet them there because half the time they won’t be there and the other half, they won’t even be seated NEAR you.
Someone once told me of a story where one of the Hillsong volunteers accidentally seated someone in the front row where all the celebrities and business investors sit and they got in big trouble. Unfortunately for them, they thought they were working in a regular church and not a brothel. LMAOOOOOO okay I’m done
So yeah the seats are completely segregated between “local manipulated folks (in the back, up-top on second floor) and celebrity manipulated folks (first row).”
Some of these celebrities who come to Hillsong church alongside any other important executives, are put into a meeting. That meeting is basically advising them to promote Hillsong in a way where new young members will come join the church.
Btw, Hillsong and their pastors (specifically Carl Lentz) were very VERY persuasive in getting people to join the church. In real time I’ve heard stories about Carl Lentz trying to charm new people into stopping by even after they said they had their own beliefs or went to a different church.
GETTY
Here’s a very specific story that my source told me about.
Behind closed doors, he would not take no for an answer, so you had to be very persistent with not going because anytime you caught him or his members, it would be the story of “you’re missing out on a really great opportunity” or “you just don’t know how lucky we are to have found Hillsong.”
So yes, back to the story. The church always wants new members to continue the cash flow and to start doing other special favors.
If these celebrities or business people helped bring new people, they would be compensated in ways that didn’t have much to do with money.
After they each bring a group to the church, the church members will analyze them to make sure they fit into these two categories:
they are attractive and
financially stable to the point of constantly spending on the church
If these people were not both these things, they would be advised to never come back.
How would they tell them to never come back? Oh usually set them up to get robbed, yelled at, assaulted.
How about the people who fit into both categories? Oh they had a job all right. The church or at this point cult, would have a questionnaire process that gets recorded. To help push them down this rabbit hole, they will play videos made by other church members, celebrities, or business people who encourage them to keep going and that “this is exactly what I did.”
At any time during this point if somebody wants to back out, they’re allowed to do that but after that, there really is no backing out.
In this stage many of the woman who got chosen had to sleep with pastors and other leading members. If someone is bringing many people to the church, the church will repay them by giving them one or more of these woman to sleep with… but you must pay in order to have this bonus.
It’s like having a row of women to sleep with. The more you pay, the more you get.
Some people will spend $15-30k a year just to be included in this sex scheme. Others can pay up to 250-500k to have multiple partners.
I don’t fully know the details as to why somebody would spent 250k to sleep with someone from under the church’s wings but think of it as some sort of secret society club that these people wanna be in. Very exclusive and it’s not being done by your average church goer. It’s about exclusivity.
We’ve spoken about this in another Dark Hollywood post where we talked about Disney stars and how people with power and money needed to fill their satisfactory appetite in horrible ways.
These intimate “meetings” take place in areas that the church has full control of, like rooms that the church has access to. They make sure to record EVERYTHING because Hillsong arms itself with protection of blackmail.
That means any celebrity who partakes in this scheme won’t ever come out to say or hint at it because the church will have video and photo proof to take them down.
And yes, some of these women are shipped out overseas for men who are willing to pay huge amounts of money for them.
So why is this being done?
The church wants to create really strong bonds that have all been formed because of it, that way they will never run out of people or money. Many of these people even go as far as marrying the women they have been “assigned” too and forever having the Hillsong connection while Hillsong has the payroll. Cause remember, not just any church goer is part of this scheme.
John Lim / Hillsong Church
Another reason is "why not?”
People with money and power always find a way to abuse it. It does not matter if they sprinkle religion into it or not, they’re all users trying to lure people for more power and money.
Brian Houston in the documentary “Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed”
So what does this have to do with human trafficking? Well besides the fact that these women can easily be shipped off overseas to rich men, there’s apparently another scheme like this one that deals more with shipping people overseas rather than having a sleeping buddy who you sort of paid for.
The details for that scheme are a bit scattered, it’s not something I know much about.
All I really know is that the church may have some connections to other organizations that participate in human trafficking, and because they’re always trying to get people on their payroll for these special “bonuses,” they were on board.
Hillsong
Well you made it to the end of this post! Hope you enjoyed!
Let me know what you guys think in the comments down below. I’m really interested in seeing what you guys have to say. Keep an eye out for other posts coming up in this October special.
