Hillsong’s global board appointed a four-person “integrity” unit to investigate the complaint and concluded Houston required church discipline, but he was not held accountable. Houston repaid her from his personal funds. The woman also asked for her conference fee and a “kingdom builder” donation to the church returned. “These issues are now public, and therefore we would like to share with you the details,” the statement adds, confirming earlier media reports less explicitly.Īustralian media reported that while Houston had been publicly promising to reform policies concerning misconduct as sex and financial scandals plagued some Hillsong campuses, he did not submit to the discipline of his church when officials tried to sit him down for the 2019 incident.ĭooley told Hillsong staffers that even though the woman in the 2019 incident had “a lot of conflicting emotions” about the incident with Houston in her hotel room, she told someone at the church about the encounter. When Houston announced he would temporarily step down from his role as global senior pastor, Hillsong said it “did not make a public statement because we were still working through a number of issues privately with Pastor Brian.” The situation with his father over many years had taken a personal toll that was greater than he had realized, and he needed to focus on his upcoming legal issues.” When he stepped down in January this year, the reasons he gave were genuine. “As you are aware, Pastor Brian recently stepped aside from his ministry duties. “There is significant media coverage around these issues, and it is important that you hear from us, understand the truth, and have knowledge of the actions of the board during these times and the heart behind these actions,” the statement reads. This woman had also been drinking, so her recollection is not completely coherent.”Īs local news reports of the complaints began unfolding Friday, the Hillsong Global Board, which had informed church members about the situation earlier in the day, released a public statement defending the church’s handling of the complaints. He doesn’t have much of a recollection because of the mixture of the anxiety tablets and the alcohol. “But he was in the woman’s room for 40 minutes. Brian has said there was no sexual activity,” he said. “This woman has not said if there was any sexual activity. “Later that evening, he went to go to his room, didn’t have his room key and ended up knocking on the door of this woman’s room, and she opened the door, and he went into her room.”ĭooley said the church couldn’t conclusively say what happened. “It was after one of the conference nights, and he was drinking with a group,” Dooley said during the meeting, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Houston reportedly met the woman, who was not a member of Hillsong, in the foyer of the Pullman Hotel where several Hillsong officials were drinking. In a recording of a meeting with 800 staffers of the global megachurch cited by Crikey, Hillsong Interim Global Senior Pastor Phil Dooley said Houston doesn’t recall having sex with the unidentified woman in the hotel room in 2019.ĭooley took over for Houston earlier this year as he fights criminal charges of allegedly concealing sex abuse committed by his father decades earlier. In a statement outlining investigations into two complaints against Houston's behavior in the last 10 years, the global evangelical church network also said that its global senior pastor exchanged an “inappropriate text message” with a staffer in 2013, resulting in her resigning shortly after. Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston violated the church’s code of conduct by entering the hotel room of an unidentified woman for 40 minutes while under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs during the church’s annual conference in 2019, officials revealed Friday. Pastor Brian Houston appears on stage during Hillsong’s 2014 conference in New York City at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
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