{"id":34349,"date":"2023-11-29T14:51:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T22:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=34349"},"modified":"2023-12-03T08:22:23","modified_gmt":"2023-12-03T16:22:23","slug":"34349-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/34349-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillsong"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" Hillsong NYC<\/a><\/p>\n

During the height of COVID-19 in 2020, a mega-star Church pastor fell from grace and rocked the world. He was an instrumental mentor to Justin Bieber. This pastor sat with Bishop T.D. Jakes exchanged powerful insights into racism and how to guard against it and, more importantly, at the time, how to process the images of George Floyd being murdered on TV. My son and his wife attended several of his church services in NYC. For them, it was their initial journey to finding a church home as a couple. Carl Lentz, the Senior Pastor of Hillsong NYC, and many key staff members, it turns out, exemplify what happens when leadership succumbs to the Powers as described in J.R. Woodward\u2019s The Scandal of Leadership<\/em>. Carl Lentz became a leader who had become controlling, and it continued to the point of domination as a way of life.[1]<\/a> It did lead to his being fired, but the global Hillsong Church\u2019s fall from grace did not stop there. I\u2019ll continue with more of the Hillsong story after my introduction.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reading The Scandal of Leadership<\/em> reminded me of the Hillsong debacle for several reasons. First, I was sold on their music. The music that was created was contemporary, worshipful, and meditative. The music appealed worldwide and drew hundreds of thousands of worshipers to their church services. During the pandemic, their weekend services drew an estimated 444,000 online participants.[2]<\/a> Secondly, because of the global reach and the young contemporary congregants, many have probably fallen away from the Church. They might even be in the category of the \u201cnones, dones, or gones.\u201d And so, I wanted to explore the implications of leadership succumbing to domination, misuse of power, and imitating powers rather than Christ because they have far-reaching and genuine consequences.<\/p>\n

Woodward describes what happens when pastors or public figures are put on a pedestal. They become objects to worship versus regular beautiful and broken people simultaneously.[3]<\/a> Again, Lentz embodied the celebrity persona but was quite good at masking the broken side. How would Dr. Lieberman or Carl Jung describe this shadow side of Lentz? As I mentioned earlier, shock waves were sent across the globe once Lentz was fired. I remember my daughter-in-law calling and texting when she initially heard the news. She had recently attended one of Hillsong\u2019s women\u2019s conferences at the NYC venue and was stunned. Fortunately for her, she was surrounded by people of faith who could help her process what had happened. But how many others did not have someone to help them through the experience? Young people. Impressionable. The future of the Church.<\/p>\n

Hillsong Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

A quick background on Hillsong. It was initially established in Australia by Brian Houston as part of the Assemblies of God church in 1983. It was part of a church network his father started six years earlier. It grew in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s because of its contemporary worship. In 2001, Brian merged the two churches and rebranded to Hillsong.[4]<\/a> Before the pandemic, there were over 150,000 weekly attendance in over 30 countries (twelve churches in the U.S.)[5]<\/a> Shortly after Lentz is fired by his mentor Houston, Brian himself is fired for misconduct and accused of covering up his father\u2019s indiscretions. This is a case study of imitating a person or Power, i.e., Lentz imitating Brian and Brian imitating his father, resulting in fallen leadership and a global scandal.[6]<\/a> Today, the number of Hillsong churches in the US is now at three, and the worldwide weekly online and in-person attendance is down to an estimated 21,000. Two years later, Brian Houston was replaced by the Board of Directors. And sadly, I don\u2019t think the Church has released any new music since 2022.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

In conclusion, Hillsong was a tragedy, and the impact has not been thoroughly evaluated in terms of how it affected its members. So, how does the Church respond to these types of abuses of power? Woodward delves into the remedies in the last three chapters. He continues to utilize the imitation framework to examine how we can learn from how Jesus developed his identity.[7]<\/a> One of the key points is that our theology, Jesus is Lord, must be an integrative approach that defines every aspect of our life.[8]<\/a> We must be in love with our first love and seek to imitate Him. Lastly, one of Woodward\u2019s earlier works, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World, <\/em>provided keen insights into how a church can organize to minimize falling into any person becoming an object or pedestal. It is a polycentric approach to leadership and a way of distributing power rather than a hierarchical, centralized organization. Woodward argues that the hierarchical structure lends itself to people being skeptical of those in power. A corollary requirement is that leaders lead by relinquishing the need to control. He proposes shared leadership spread among those in the five-fold ministry gifts. And this polycentric approach helps create a missional culture. \u201cIf we are to cultivate mature communities of faith, we need missional equippers who live as cultural architects, with a heightened sense of contextual awareness and the ability to shape and cultivate culture within the congregation.\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> JR Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership:\u00a0 Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church<\/em> (Cody: 100 Movements Publishing, 2023), xxvii.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Leonardo Blair, \u201cHillsong Church Australia suffers marked drop in giving, attendance amid COVID-10, scandals: report,\u201d Christian Post, (Wednesday, August 24, 2022): 3, https:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/hillsong-australia-suffers-drop-in-giving-attendance-annual-report.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> JR Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership:\u00a0 Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church<\/em> (Cody: 100 Movements Publishing, 2023), xxxii.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Jessica Sager, \u201cHillsong: The Celebrity Megachurch\u2019s Bombshell Scandals and controversies Through the years,\u201d People (May 16, 2023): XX, https:\/\/people.com\/human-interest\/all-about-hillsong-megachurch-scandals-controversies\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ruth Graham, \u201cHillsong, Once a Leader of Christian Cool, Loses Footing in America.\u201d New York Times (Originally published March 29, 2022, Updated June 22, 2023): https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/29\/us\/hillsong-church-scandals.html<\/a><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> JR Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership:\u00a0 Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church<\/em> (Cody: 100 Movements Publishing, 2023), xxxv.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., 213.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid., 215.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World<\/em> (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 60.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hillsong NYC During the height of COVID-19 in 2020, a mega-star Church pastor fell from grace and rocked the world. He was an instrumental mentor to Justin Bieber. This pastor sat with Bishop T.D. Jakes exchanged powerful insights into racism and how to guard against it and, more importantly, at the time, how to process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2309],"tags":[2347,2846,809],"class_list":["post-34349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership","tag-dlgp01","tag-woodward","tag-scandal","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34349"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34428,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34349\/revisions\/34428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}