Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed

• March 24, 2022
• Discovery+

An in-depth look at the controversial global mega church and its many issues and controversies.

Watching suggestions from a streaming service can be fraught with danger. For every great series or movie the service brings up, there is the massive turd where you find yourself asking “What were they thinking?!” Enter into this Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed, a documentary limited run series focusing on Hillsong Church found on Hulu.

I’ve been to a few mega churches in my time. Not many but a few. I could count them on one hand. And I haven’t gone because of some need to check them out but rather because I was invited persistently by someone I knew so it seemed harmless enough to go for a friend. And not at one have I ever encountered the Spirit of God. They tend to be very expensive multimedia extravaganzas that are short on the Gospel or spirituality and long on making you feel good about wherever your life is. They have well-choreographed presentations that are very entertaining, but very rarely do they specifically mention scripture. That for me is an issue as church should be based on the Bible.

What Hillsong largely preaches is termed ‘prosperity gospel’ or ‘prosperity theology’. That states material well being and good health are the consistent desire of God and all you have to do is say and do the right things without any desire to actually do them and the good times will roll!

This documentary series touches on that and even goes a little into the church’s founding and its general history. Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed gives you just enough to understand its current position and structure. They are very much focused on the now and not the then.

This is a limited run documentary series from TLC/Discovery+ that does the church absolutely no favors. Nor is it helpful to anyone currently connected to the organization. I dare say it even frames that at certain points as a Christian version of Scientology but not nearly as big.

They go into how their political corrections in their homebase of Australia and how those connections have largely insulated them from legal repercussions. They’ve connected themselves with politicians and celebrities which is all part of their business model. They make it clear that they are following a business model, and not a path to grow their church and faith. And what they put out, certainly makes it appear to be a business with a party at the top for those in the higher echelons while those towards the bottom suffer and toil.

Pastors such as Carl Lentz, the first one they really focus on, get to hang with the likes of Drake and Justin Bieber. You may not be familiar with Carl Lentz, at least by name, but I am guessing his face rings a bell. When Justin Bieber was going downhill fast the singer connected with Hillsong and became best buds with Lentz. There was a period where the two were often pictured together,

This dovetails with something else. Hillsong did their best to attract celebrities and power players of any type into the congregation. It was part of their growth strategy. Come to church and you might run into somebody famous! Who wouldn’t find that tempting?

Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed even touches on their strategies for dealing with sexual assault or just general allegations of everything from affairs involving Carl Lentz to those of the founder Brian Houston. They even go into how his father was a pedophile and apparently used the church to hunt and even to a certain extent groom young boys to molest. You create something and it’s rotten from the founding to the present as well as from the top down and nothing good will overcome and they make that clear here.

But what is a megachurch without income? They discuss tithing as well as satellite organizations and how that is all used to pull in money. And money needs to come in to keep the lights on but most churches also use the incoming money to do charitable work of some type and that appears to be totally lacking as portrayed in Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed. The money seems to be going strictly to the leadership of the church to not only fund their lavish lifestyles but to generally line their pockets.

Speaking of lavish lifestyles, they make it clear that any pastor was treated as a king. They had make up crews since most of the services were either broadcast or streamed online and there are ways to treat them to make them feel good. Some of it sounds borderline demeaning to those who have to tend to the pastors make up and so forth.

They even draw parallel to this being a cult. They do so by interviewing one young woman whose family was in a cult known as the Children of God. She makes it clear that what occurs in Hillsong is not nearly as severe as what happened in Children of God but the parallels are certainly there.

It shows how those who made a name for themselves have gone off on their own and pretty much continue what Hillsong has done independently of the church. It’s like a cancer that breaks off from the main tumor and spreads to other parts of the body.

This limited series manages to paint a horrifying picture of this megachurch. It is frightening and unsettling. It’s as much against large religion as it is this particular church. It does no favors to anyone. You will be seriously disturbed by how Hillsong is run and how damaging it is portrayed here. This is just a gripping series that lets those involved do the talking rather than have some disinterested narrator tell the story. That makes for a much more engaging story.

Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed is a disturbing and informative documentary on the controversial megachurch. It’s not for the faint of heart but it is something you should see. I highly recommend it.