Church plants - transfer growth - and now ‘takeovers’ are on the agenda. Today’s “Brisbane Times’ reports the latest Hillsong ‘takeover’ :
Brisbane becomes the latest stop in Hillsong journey
by Cosima Marriner May 11, 2009
SYDNEY, London, Kiev, Paris, Cape Town, Stockholm, Moscow … and now Brisbane.
The languid Queensland capital has become the latest stop in Brian and Bobbie Houston’s odyssey to franchise their pentecostal Hillsong Church around the world.
Mr Houston has resigned as president of the Australian Christian Churches, a position he held for 12 years, to focus on the “multisite” expansion of Hillsong. And that, coupled with the controversial move interstate, has prompted speculation that Hillsong is ramping up its domestic network of churches, ready to pounce on churches struggling amid the global financial crisis.
Garden City Christian Church on Brisbane’s southside will be renamed Hillsong Brisbane Campus and the Houstons installed as senior pastors there on May 24, after 79 per cent of Garden City members voted in favour of the takeover.
An information document circulated before the vote said the Houstons had chosen to move into Brisbane because “it is a fast growing area with great potential for the Gospel”.
The Garden City Christian Church’s 3000-strong congregation will significantly bolster Hillsong’s numbers, which stand at 21,000 across Sydney.
Hillsong told the Herald there are “currently no plans” for other churches in Australia. “However, our heart is to bless and build churches through example, encouragement, and strategic partnerships and we believe it is right for churches to endeavour to reach and help people wherever there is need,” it said in a statement.
The Sydney-based Houstons, who already spend much of their time travelling to the branches they have set up overseas, intend to be in Brisbane “as much as possible” to lead services and meetings.
Garden City’s senior pastor for eight years, Bruce Hills, was forced out before the arrival of the Houstons. Garden City Christian Church announced Mr Hills’s resignation in December, amid criticism that the church was not growing enough. Yet in an address to a Christian conference at Easter, Mr Hills revealed he had a nervous breakdown last September. “Emotionally I just imploded,” he said.
When he returned from eight weeks’ leave, Garden City Christian Church elders told him: “We’d rather have more of a CEO leader than you. We’d like you to resign.”
Describing it as “the deepest, darkest experience I’ve ever been through”, Mr Hills said he was “really angry about what these people had done”.
Steve Dixon, who has been acting pastor at Garden City since Mr Hills’s resignation, will now be “campus pastor” of Hillsong Brisbane.
A former Hillsong staff member for seven years, who now blogs as The Thinking Theologian**, argues the worldwide economic downturn has crimped the Houstons’ global expansion ambitions, forcing them to look closer to home for new Hillsong branches.
“An established, sizeable congregation, with a catchment of wealthy city-slickers, is far too lucrative an opportunity to turn down,” the blogger posted. “But it won’t stop at Brisbane. I suspect as increasing numbers of churches feel the pinch of the global recession, they’ll be more than willing for Brian Houston and co. to step in and give them a makeover, repackage them, and then market them under the Hillsong brand.”
Since starting their church with 45 people meeting in the Baulkham Hills Public School hall in 1983, the Houstons have been trying to emulate the model of established churches, where there is one leader for the faith, and “operational” pastors appointed to run individual churches in locations around the world.
The takeover of Garden City Christian Church coincided with Mr Houston’s resignation from the Australian Christian Churches presidency at its conference conference on the Gold Coast.
“Its [sic] a happy, sad time for me as my time as leader of ACC comes to an end tonight. My heart is full of vision for the future though,” Mr Houston said on Twitter.
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