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 PrintableVersion Hopes for Hillsong?Sydney. Home not just to the Opera House and the Anglican evangelicals but also to Hillsong. Led by Brian and Bobbie Houston, Hillsong is an Assemblies of God church at the cutting edge of modern worship. A London offshoot hires out the Dominion Theatre in the West End. Their latest conference was held in September in London’s Docklands. I went along to the Excel Centre one Friday to find out more. The walkway from Custom House station was lined with red T-shirts. These young volunteers were there purely to make guests feel welcome — the ‘red carpet’ experience. Long queues were forming with an hour to go before the Hillsong night started. Delirious was to lead the praise and worship, and the bass was already booming behind the closed doors. When the doors were thrown open, a seemingly endless stream of (mostly) young people flooded in. The aircraft hanger ambience was completed by rows upon rows of temporary red seating. Technical excellenceAs the meeting began, the hall was darkened and the stage filled with Hillsong’s own worship team. A technician’s heart would swell with joy at the sound, lighting and effects. Three giant screens relayed images of the lead artist. Smoke blurred the edges and added to the atmosphere. Lighting flashed around the stage and audience. The volume made the Tube later seem like a morgue by comparison. With the crowd nicely warmed up, it was time for the main act to appear. But, first, the collection buckets were passed around. Texts like 2 Corinthians 9.10 were deployed to persuade us to dig deeply into our pockets. The action was paused to give us time to fill out the donation cards left on every seat. God’s future for usWith the arrival of the band Delirious, the sound was cranked up another couple of notches. The crowd really began to engage, bouncing around and raising a forest of arms. The sermon came from Zhenya Kasevich, leader of a Hillsong church in Kiev. He spoke for 30 minutes on killers of our destiny. God has a great future for us, he said, but Satan wishes to frustrate that. The four killers are fear, pride, selfishness and greed. He declared that we must not be too proud to take everything God gives, or to copy someone else’s success. He recited stories of how much money the church in Kiev had raised. With each year the gifts increased, and with each total he drew a cheer. Then he reminded us of the rich young ruler, who held onto his riches and threw away his future. The example of greed was Gehazi. If Elisha had a double portion of Elijah’s spirit then Gehazi might have had four times more anointing, but his greed made him a leper. While Delirious returned, Kasevich appealed to non-Christians to turn to Jesus. The substance was that God did not hate them, but loved them and wanted them. He urged them to raise their hands to indicate that they had called upon the Lord. He played the crowd, pointing out raised hands and encouraging more. Search and rescue teamOn Saturday I returned for some daylight sessions. First came Darlene Zschech, Worship Pastor and author of My Jesus, My Saviour. She spoke about bringing through the next generation. There is a lost generation of young people with great potential, but whose lives are futile. We must reach them with the gospel and then hand down to them not just our practices, but our core values (e.g. Psalm 145.10-12). Next was Christine Caine, the Hillsong Network Co-ordinator and a fiery orator. Her one-liners will stay in many memories. Matthew 28.18-20 has become ‘the Great Suggestion’, a task for the elite troops to carry out, optional for the rest. ‘But if you are not a fisher, who are you following?’ (Matthew 4.19) Most churches are more like keepers of the aquarium, concerned with keeping the resident fish happy. But we are God’s search and rescue team, so: ‘Church! Let’s get back to seeking and saving the lost!’ How did we lose sight of this mission? Caine argued that we have seen the wickedness of the world and turned the church into a holy fortress. The walls are the rules that we develop to protect us from temptation. These rules work by keeping us as far as possible from ‘worldliness’ like jewellery, tattoos or drinking. We define ourselves by what we don’t do, then only grant entry to people who agree to obey our rules. But unfortunately we have taken ourselves inside this fortress! So lust, greed, gossip and envy have come in too. Instead of being in the world but not of it, we are of the world but not in it! ‘God is not waiting for the next evangelical superstar’, she said. ‘He has already come, and we are to be his witnesses.’ So we must be transformed with the passion of God. This passion must be affirmed in good works and a holy life. Then Jesus Christ must be proclaimed verbally — ‘Don’t leave proclaiming the gospel out of the gospel!’ Mixed messagesBoth Zschech and Caine are correct. Their own passionate logic will enthuse others. To be fair, the targets they were aiming at are large, slow-moving, and not difficult to hit. And it is much easier to point out the faults in others than to see our own. The whole Hillsong experience left me a little nonplussed. It felt like a cross between a rock concert and a Caister meeting. It stands out from the world by offering worship to God. It stands out from the liberals by putting its faith in the life, death and resurrection of the historical Jesus. On the other hand, the medium is the message, and that message is very different from the spoken one. ‘I am not here to be cool’, Caine said, ‘and many churches are too trendy for God’, but everything about Hillsong shouts cool and trendy. ‘Life in Christ is a life lived for others’, Zschech said, but the worship ethos is all about what I experience. She rejected the world’s message that we must have money and looks to belong, but all the speakers and performers are daubed with glamour. Prosperity?Many of the obvious faults are not theirs alone. The depth of biblical explanation leaves much to be desired. Music and movement is seen as the way to get into the presence of God. The crowd is manipulated — willingly! — into giving the desired emotional responses. Their gospel is too cheap. But one concern specific to Hillsong is about money. There is a prosperity gospel undercurrent to Hillsong that breaks to the surface again and again. Brian Houston even entitled one of his books You Need More Money. The Sydney Morning Herald visited and concluded: ‘The music is catchy, the mood euphoric and the message perfect for a material age: believe in God and you'll be rewarded in this life as well as the next.’ It seems that the medium does match the message after all. Tim Mitchell,
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