In March, 2022, the documentary series ‘Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed’ was released on Discovery+, with victims shedding light on the widespread emotional, financial, and sexual abuse by leaders of one of the most popular megachurches in the world. The series was just the beginning of Hillsong’s fall from grace. Dan Johnstone, Documentary Filmmaker behind the Hillsong series, takes a journey to speak with whistleblowers, examine dark secrets leaked from inside the church and hear first hand experiences from former Hillsong members, including an insider who worked closely with the infamous pastor, Carl Lentz.
In March, 2022, the documentary series ‘Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed’ was released on Discovery+, with victims shedding light on the widespread emotional, financial, and sexual abuse by leaders of one of the most popular megachurches in the world. The series was just the beginning of Hillsong’s fall from grace. Dan Johnstone, Documentary Filmmaker behind the Hillsong series, takes a journey to speak with whistleblowers, examine dark secrets leaked from inside the church and hear first hand experiences from former Hillsong members, including an insider who worked closely with the infamous pastor, Carl Lentz.
Watch Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed on discovery+. Go to discoveryplus.com/hillsong to start your 7-day free trial today. Terms apply.
Find episode transcripts here: https://hillsong-a-megachurch-shattered.simplecast.com/episodes/ep1-the-church-i-see-now
DAN VO: [00:00:00] I'm Dan Johnstone, and this is Hillsong: A
Megachurch Shattered, from Discovery Plus. Like so many others, my
journey into the orbit of Hillsong started with curiosity and attraction.
Music, sneakers, fashion, and well, Jesus. I was curious about what it was
about Hillsong Church that made it different. Why out of all the other
megachurches and global religious institutions, it was Hillsong that was
[00:00:30] making headlines, going viral, attracting celebrities, winning
awards, and breaking music download records.
Why a small church from the outskirts of Sydney, Australia crossed over
from church culture to pop culture and became a cultural phenomenon,
and why this church was the subject of a conference call that I was on two
days after Christmas, the twilight days of 2020. That call was about a
scandal in the news.
Hillsong celebrity pastore Carl Lenz had stepped down after admitting to
infidelity. The question of the call was, was there more to this [00:01:00]
story, Something deeper?
I didn't know, within a year of that call, I would work with some of my
closest friends to make and release a three part documentary that was
watched by millions.
They wanna spread their tentacles as far as they can.
It almost took my life.
DAN VO: I'd receive the most heinous accusations and threats from legal
firms, and I'd be called out directly by Hillsong itself.
Sadly, there is a documentary about our church coming out soon. Surprise,
surprise. And there are [00:01:30] also producers behind this
documentary, and their purpose is not the healing of people, but simply to
hurt the church.
DAN VO: I didn't know back then that I would also hear compelling
stories, powerful thanks, and sober testimonies from across the world.
I didn't know that I would have random chance encounters with current
and former Hillsong members, at not one or two, but five different coffee
shops in multiple cities, that at times leave me feeling paranoid I was
being followed. I didn't know what was behind the door we were opening.
I thought I [00:02:00] could make a documentary and remain above the
subject.
I was wrong. You can't wade into the stories of Hillsong without becoming
a part of the story yourself. For those who've lived through it, the
testimonies are too deep, the pain too strong, and the experience too
confusing. I put it like this, if you offer an arm to help someone from
drowning, you’d better be prepared to be pulled in and swim too.
This podcast came about because our documentary took the Hillsong story
to [00:02:30] the edge of a cliff. Since then, the voices of the church itself
and thousands of others around it, blew it over the edge. Among the
debris, people want answers, including me. And we're here to try and find
them.
TITLE CUE
DAN VO: For listeners who aren’t familiar with Hillsong, to call it a
megachurch will be a vast understatement. [00:03:00] Hillsong is a super
massive megachurch founded by a man named Brian Houston with
locations, at least at its recent height, in 30 some countries with 150,000
congregants worldwide.
This is cool church.
This was gonna be a place where I could call my home.
DAN VO: If you've been inside even a slightly modern church in the last
30 years, odds are you've heard Hillsong’s worship music.
Hillsong's music, a major marketing tool and revenue stream for the
church. [00:03:30] Has masterfully evolved to match trends in the secular
mainstream. They've now amassed billions, with a B, listens and plays on
Spotify and YouTube. In 2010, the Australian based Hillsong broke into the
US market, planting a church in New York City, behind their young,
attractive, and effortlessly charismatic Pastor Carl Lentz. They instantly
made a splash in American culture, quite literally when Carl began making
headlines for baptizing celebrities in resort [00:04:00] pools, like a scene
out of Righteous Gemstones. He baptized Justin Bieber in an NBA player's
bathtub, and was soon in the same social circles as Kevin Durant, the
Jenners and Jay Z.
Behind Carl, Brian Houston's Hillsong became a Church of the Stars. It
was modern, progressive, even edgy, a rebellion against the old Christian
guard. It made Jesus cool again, and the sky was the limit. Until one day in
November, 2020 when Carl shocked everyone [00:04:30] by announcing
his resignation over his Instagram page. He’d had an affair and was
stepping down.
That was the first domino to fall, but many would follow. More pastors
would step down for sexual misconduct. More victims would come
forward alleging abuse by Hillsong's leadership, and Hillsong founder
Brian Houston would be criminally charged for covering up his father's
child's sexual abuse, a charge he denies and plans a fight in court.
And on March 24th, 2022, our [00:05:00] documentary, Hillsong
Megachurch Exposed, was released on Discovery plus. Brian Houston
suddenly left the church in what seems like a forced resignation. His wife,
Bobby, was removed from the church and an explosive leak emerges
detailing and investigation by Hillsong into Carl Lenz and Hillsong, New
York City. More and all of this Later.
I knew that I needed to continue to follow this closely, and I wanted to
document it along the. But in this process, [00:05:30] I've been an
outsider looking in, and I knew that to continue this journey, it would need
to be from the inside looking out. And when I met to Delali Rouge, I knew,
or at least I hoped that I found my partner. Someone to help me write the
next chapter of this story.
And now, months later, I'm on the sidewalk next to Central Park on a hot
and sunny day in New York City, meeting her for the very first time.
Delali: Our first conversation on the phone, [00:06:00] I remember one of
the first things you said, like, I thought you were a spy, a Hillsong spy.
DAN: Well, it just, it was one of those things where it was like, this is too
good to be true. I remember being very suspicious.
Delali: Did you like Google Me? No. No. Okay. Um, nobody did on the
team. What if I was, what if I, what if I was a spy? Would you have figured
that out?
DAN: I think it would've been exciting if you were.
Delali: Oh my goodness. Let's rewrite history. Yeah. What if I am a spy?
(Laughs)
DAN VO: I was first put in contact with Delali in December of 2021,
[00:06:30] as we were editing the final episode of the documentary. It was
just a matter of days after we'd sent initial letters to Hillsong, so I knew our
documentary was on their radar. And to suddenly hear from someone
claiming to be a former Hillsong member, after months of struggling to
find anyone related to Hillsong to speak with us at all, it felt odd. The
timing was off, but I took the call.
DAN: Yeah, I think I could feel that you were kind of feeling us out too.
Delali: Oh, [00:07:00] 100%. I was nervous too. It was like a first step
reaching out to an outsider and I also did not know what the intentions
were. You know, I really wanted to feel out what the intentions were.
DAN: Right.
DAN VO: Delali had over 10 years of footage from within Hillsong, New
York City, stored on a hard [00:07:30] drive. She, for a time even served as
the head of Hillsong, New York City's film department. She had intimate
moments of Carl Lentz and other Hillsong leaders. She had heard of our
project and two others in production and thought the footage might be
useful, but she wanted it to go into the right hands.
Delali: I have spoken to other production companies that I'm not gonna
name, but that, you know, that are, that were really interested in this story
about Hillsong, this, this huge thing. [00:08:00] And, what I got from it
was that they were purely interested in this, the sensational part of the
story, like the one sided part of the story.
I remember specifically the conversation that we had where we were on
the phone and I believe that we talked for like over an hour, but the first
[00:08:30] 45 minutes was not about Hillsong, we just talked about life.
And um, that was something that like made an impression on me because
I was like, I got to feel your heart around it, and I got to feel that your
intentions were different than what I may have thought initially.
DAN: I have a question for you. How was your circle of friends, when you
told them you'd make contact with me if you told them, [00:09:00] what
was their initial reaction?
Delali: Uh, they don't know.
DAN: Oh, . That's cool.
Delali: The truth is I told like one or two very close people, but the reason
why I didn't make it public is because I still don't know what possible
ramifications I could, I could have gotten. Like I, I didn't know if you know
[00:09:30] lawyers were gonna come and find me. When you're in these
spaces, there is a insidious, like fear of, uh, repercussions. If you speak out
or, or even just share, it feels like speaking out against your family.
[00:10:00]
DAN: Right.
DAN VO: Delali ended up giving us our footage, and we used a lot of it in
the documentary, but only a fraction of it. There were shots of Carl
baptizing celebrities and resort pools, intimate shots of Carl and Brian
backstage, joking like old pals. The footage she shared was incredible, but
I knew she had more to share - her story. So we kept in touch over the
months and started to form a bond. Delali and I have opened up to each
other about our [00:10:30] lives, our dreams, and our pasts.
She left Hillsong in January of 2020. To this day, I still don’t know exactly
why. It's the only thing she doesn't seem ready to open up about. She says
that she's past a raw state of pain that comes from leaving Hillsong and
watching it unravel. But healing is a long and complicated process.
DAN: How did you feel when the documentary came out? All we went
through in terms of getting to know each other and, and having the
[00:11:00] footage. How did you feel in the days leading up and then the,
the dropping of the documentary?
Delali: I, it felt surreal. It was very hard to watch the documentary. It was
very difficult to watch it. It felt like I was watching a TV show about like
some fictional, crazy situation, but I was like, but that's my life. Like these
people were my leaders and these people were [00:11:30] people who I
talked to and you know. I felt the weight of like the the eye of an out
outsider, right? The gaze of an outsider. Seeing the bird's eye view from an
outside perspective was both difficult for me, but also challenging in a
good way. It just felt really heavy [00:12:00] and it felt like, what now?
What do we do now? Right? With this thing that's blown up.
DAN VO: What do we do now? It's a question that's all too common for
many former Hillsongers. What do you do when something that defines
your entire life is pulled from your grasp or too hot to keep holding? Ror
these people, Hillsong was everything.
DAN: And I, I have noticed that when you, some people speak out against
Hillsong, people take it very [00:12:30] personally because they still
believe in the church or they still have part of it.
Delali: When you talk about your church and it becomes like, a public
discussion, people are so quick to take offense because we're, we're
talking about their identity. It's complicated. The, the thing that
outweighed the incredible moments was just the insidious abuse, I guess. I
don't even know if I wanna use that word.
DAN: Why are you getting stuck on the [00:13:00] term abuse?
Delali: That's a good question. When you are an outsider and you read the
articles or you read the testimonies of people, it's clear as day that it was
an abusive system. But when you were inside, it's hard to make that clear
line. [00:13:30]
DAN: But it was perhaps abusive in the negative effects that it had on
people's psyche.
Delali: 100%. And I think most of us don't know what to do with that. And
how do we process the bad? How do we, how do we hold onto the good
and move forward? Most of us don't know what to do with that.
DAN VO: Holding onto the good [00:14:00] and processing the bad. It's
the conundrum at the heart of healing from Hillsong. How do you carry
the messages, the bonds, and the friendships while leaving behind the
trauma and the abuse? In other words, what do we do now? And when
there are no passengers in Hillsong, when everyone plays a part, that
question becomes even harder to answer.
14:19 - AD BREAK
Delali: Okay, so this is my, this is my spot right here, [00:14:30] Dan. This
is a place where, I come, I've had multiple conversations with a lot of
people.
DAN: I feel like I'm walking in a Narnia. I should describe it. There's a
small opening off the side of a path. There is a side path in Central Park
and there is a beautiful green canopy of shade and, yeah, I feel like we just
entered a small time bubble. [00:15:00] What do you think is the hardest
thing to explain to an outsider of why it hurts to see these documentaries
or to see our documentary?
Delali: That's a great, very, very good question. It's hard because, in, in a
sense, we were not using our brains, we were dumb. You know, I don't
know if dumb is a thing, but like [00:15:30] I can't not look at the bad. I
cannot put my head in the sand and be like, these hard facts of stuff that
are evil, the stuff that are like physically hurt people. I cannot just push it
aside and sweep it under the rug and say, at least I, I met my best friend. At
least I met my spouse. At least I met, you know, whatever, um, my friends
for life. There is that complexity that's hard to [00:16:00] name. It's hard to
name. So that's why, you know, having a conversation with somebody
who just only sees it in, in black and white only sees is all bad. I'm like,
no, it wasn't all bad. But I can also not have a conversation when
somebody says it's all good, cuz it wasn't all good. Um, the idea of being
a victim but also a villain at the same time [00:16:30] is something that's
not easy to talk about. Does that make sense?
DAN: It makes, I mean, victim and villain are strange words. Um, the
complexity is you can't be a passive participant in Hillsong. If you were a
volunteer, it meant that you were actively giving up your time for
something that you believed in. If you were a pastor, you were actively
performing what the church proposed and wanted [00:17:00] to espouse
and wanted to grow. You can't say, Oh, I was, it was just a job. You can't
say like, Oh, it was just, I just had to do it for this. It attracted you, got you,
grabbed you, and then you, you were a part of it. Yeah.
DAN VO: After hours of talking in the New York Summer sun, Delali
invited me up to her apartment nearby. She had something to show me.
Delali: I'm ready to go inside. Oops. All right. [00:17:30] Let's go.
DAN: Describe to me the space that we are in.
Delali: We're in my house with my apartment in New York City. I think
part of my story is reflected, is illustrated in my space. This is my space,
this is my home, and I have things that obviously because Hillsong was a
huge part of my life. Inevitably, [00:18:00] I have little things here and
there.
I have more than little things. I have a lot of things that, um, you know,
take me back to like a certain time, a certain place. So let's see.
DAN: You have to pretend you're like blowing dust off them.
Delali: It's, it's interesting cuz I'm like, I look around my apartment and
almost everything,[00:18:30] a lot of things are linked to a memory that
has to do with the church that I was part of. So for example, just an
example, look at the wall, right? Like
DAN VO: Hanging on Delali’s wall is the word Rouge. Her last name.
Beautifully hand scripted in large black font, centered on white matte, and
framed in gold.
Delali: This was a gift from somebody who was part of the creative team at
Hillsong, who would do like Calligraphy. [00:19:00] And she said like,
Hey, let me write something for you. And she said, What do you want me
to write for you? And then I asked her to write this and she wrote it and
then she gifted it to me. Oh, you know what I have up here? I'm gonna
look for some old passes. Oh my gosh. So these are all the backstage
passes for all of the conferences that I was leading, you know, film team in
or volunteering.
As the film team leader, every conference had [00:19:30] like a theme,
right? So you see it here.
DAN VO: Delali had a box of media passes, eight of them, from Hillsong
conference over the years, each showing the crisp, clean, Hillsong design
and the smiling face of an attractive young model. On the bottom of each
pass was the word “team”.
Delali: It's the, it's the memories for me. It's just little things like that. I can
look at something and like I can smile and also have some strong
[00:20:00] negative feelings towards it. You know, look at a, like talking
about bittersweet right here.
So this, the story of this saxophone, and I gotta show you pictures. The
saxophone was gifted to me by, uh, a group of friends actually collectively
at Hillsong Paris gathered their money and bought me the saxophone. And
I played it at, we used to have these, uh, parties, [00:20:30] Hillsong Paris
parties.
Actually, we used to have parties here at New York City too, which is a
whole nother thing. We used to have raunchy parties here. So we had a,
we had a party on a Bateau Mouche, which is like, a boat that navigates
the Seine in Paris. and it was just a hill song party and people came,
dressed up, looked cute, whatever.
And I was part of, uh, the entertainment and I have a photo to, [00:21:00]
to prove it.
DAN: I wanna see it. Oh my goodness me,
Delali: This is me playing this saxophone looking cool. And this was the
entertainment we had.
DAN: You are wearing a leather jacket, a blue baby, blue dress. Cool
sunglasses just wailing on that horn. I think that, I think that's how they say
it in the biz.
Delali: Okay. I love [00:21:30] it.
DAN: This is so cool I can hear the music.
Delali: It was good. I don't know if I was good cuz you know, that's kind
of, the entertainment was for free so, you know, you kind of pay for what
you get. But, uh, I was there and I was trying to sound, uh, like a
professional and look like a professional.
DAN: This is so cool.
Delali: Yeah. That's it.
DAN VO: It was a profound experience meeting Delali for the first time,
and sharing in hours of discussion about a topic that’s [00:22:00]
something that she, as an insider, and me, as an outsider, were both trying
to navigate from entirely different perspectives. It was the culmination of
weeks spent getting to know each other more deeply, having laughs and
sharing pictures of our dogs, and outlining our goals for the podcast.
Tomorrow we'd set out to take a journey together to continue this story
from where our documentary left off. But that night I got a call from Delali.
She didn't wanna do the podcast anymore. I always understood this was a
[00:22:30] possibility, but I did feel blindsided and instantly thought it was
something that I had said.
The next day, Delali agreed to meet up with me and talk.
Delali: I had a four and a half, almost five hour conversation with a friend
of mine, who happens to also be pastor at Hillsong. We hadn't spoken
really in two years, [00:23:00] two plus years. Um, and um, I went in the
conversation really not thinking anything more. I was just like, you know,
I, I, I've been thinking about this person and I wanna reach out.
And our conversation was so complex. It was so, um, I left the
conversation with my mind set about certain things. I left the [00:23:30]
conversation, my mind changed about certain things. And I said, I'm out. I
don't wanna do this anymore.
DAN: Do you remember the first thing I said when you told me that you
didn't wanna do it?
Delali: Yeah. You said, I had a feeling that this would happen.
DAN: Yeah. And it was. And it was because I knew the person that you
were meeting.
Delali: You know of the person I was meeting.
DAN: Yeah, sorry. Excuse me. Yeah, I, I knew of the person that you're
meeting, and I don't [00:24:00] have an analogy for it, except for the day
before you get married, you don't go and visit your most significant other
ex.
Delali: Okay, Yeah, I know what I mean.
DAN: Yeah, there’s nothing romantic about it. I just mean in terms of like,
Delali: Yeah I know what you mean.
DAN: I mean, what was it, what was it that you talk about the heaviness of
the complexity. What was it about the conversation that made it hard.
Delali: I think I had [00:24:30] always been aware of this, but the
conversation sealed the deal for me. The actions of a few impacted so
many people who were genuine, who still are genuine, who still believe in
the divine, who still believe that like we can make a change.
Unfortunately the root of the tree, you know, if I want to go with an
[00:25:00] analogy of a tree, a tree that is Hillsong. The root, the
foundation is rotten. Like it's, it's not healthy. And that has taken a while
for us to see, but we're seeing it and I, I left that conversation convinced
that the, the root is not salvageable. [00:25:30] But the life that came out
of that tree, the friendships, the, the, the families, the dreams, that stuff is
salvageable and that stuff is what, you know, how do we move forward
with that?
DAN VO: Delali’s meeting and our sudden change of heart, was the
embodiment of the Hillsong dilemma we've been talking about. Speaking
out against the few bad actors that have [00:26:00] triggered its collapse,
meant speaking out against the good people that built it. It meant betraying
your. It also showed how quickly those on the journey out of Hillsong can
stop, turn around and question the next step.
On the path out of Hillsong, there are endless paths back and those on it
have a complicated decision to either take one of those paths, set up
camp, or continue on.
Delali: But I woke up this morning and I [00:26:30] realized I just had to
do it. I also felt like this would be an opportunity for me to be just a voice,
to be able to have conversations with you about the complexity of it all
because those are the type of conversations I've been having with the
people who have left HillSong and are now in like limbo. Because on one
hand we see [00:27:00] what's going on through social media. We see
what's going on through the articles, we see what's going on through the
documentary and through conversations as well. So we don't necessarily
wanna go back, but then what do we do with this, um, journey, spiritual
journey that we were on? We were all in it together.
DAN: right.
Delali: So, yeah. So basically the bottom line is just for, I really, I would, I
really am looking forward to having these conversations [00:27:30] that
don't only paint one side or another side, but helps to paint maybe a more
intricate picture of what it, what this phenomenon called Hillsong was all
about.
DAN: Right? The goal is always to heal and sometimes exposure is how
you lead to healing.
Delali: I agree.
DAN: and I really want to hear from Carl. I want Carl to [00:28:00] speak
to me.
Delali: Why?
DAN: Because I think, I think he owes some people some answers and he
owes some people some acknowledgement. He's leaving the arena and he
needs to look those people in the eye and either say, I'm sorry, either say I
hear you, or either say, I see you because he is asking for our forgiveness. I
think he should be granted that. If it, if he is meaningfully sorry for what he
did, which I, I have only the benefit of the doubt that he is, I think he
should be grown to [00:28:30] forgiveness.
Delali: Sorry. For what part?
DAN: For his, uh, affairs affairs. Affair. He is asking for forgive in his
Instagram post. He's asking for forgiveness. He's saying that he's gonna do
the work. Great. Owning up to it, doing it. I'm not trying to humanize him.
I'm not trying to gotcha him. I'm not trying to do any of that. I'm just trying
to say like, you've been silent for two years now if more, and there are
some people that just want an acknowledgement that your intentions were
good, your actions were wrong, I think that will [00:29:00] go a long way
to heal a lot of people. That's why I want him to sit in front of me.
Delali: Yeah, I think people do need to hear from Carl. I think people are
waiting to hear from, something from him. But I can definitely try to help
you with that. Let's see what we can do.
DAN VO: Carl has avoided me for over a year now. My emails, text and
dms have all been met with total silence. But [00:29:30] maybe now with
Delali’s help, I can finally sit down and speak to him and ask him the
questions that have burned in the back of my mind since the day he left
Hillsong. Questions that grew far more urgent just two weeks after the
documentary aired, when a sudden bombshell investigative report with
incredibly damning allegations about Carl and Hillsong New York City was
made public.
DAN: April 11th, the internal investigation of Hillsong NYC and Carl
Lentz’ leadership is leaked through the Christian Post newspaper.
Delali: Plot twist. [00:30:00]
DAN: This is about your community. Like this is a report about where you
are, you were part of Hillsong NYC. They're talking about you.
Delali: Yep. 100%.
DAN VO: This season on Hillsong: A Megachurch Shattered, Delali and I
wade through the shocking sequence of events surrounding the release of
the documentary.
DAN: So yeah, we have this two month period where the Hillsong we
were looking at when we started the film is utterly different than the
[00:30:30] Hillsong we saw at the end of the film.
Delali: Absolutely.
DAN VO: Dive into the Lentz report.
Loxie Gant: Where the idea in Christianity is, don't worship a false idol.
These preachers become the false idols that are then being worshiped, and
that's a huge recipe for disaster.
DAN: Sit down with a new whistleblower from Hillsong's very beginnings.
Geoff Bullock: Frank was basically using gay conversion therapy, uh, in a
way that was really, uh, sexual abuse. If we know [00:31:00] the truth and
we speak the truth, then we set ourselves free.
DAN VO: and try to track down the man who set the fuse on Hillsong’s
ongoing collapse, but has yet to speak: Carl Lentz.
DAN: And I'm just gonna try and walk by and just see if he's there. I'm
fairly sure, um, they're watching us. Okay. Yeah. So let’s get out of here.
[00:31:30]