Brian Houston: The Hillsong Experience

In places like Sweden, where they have a strong conformist culture and pressure for everything to be the same, and for no one to stand out, if Hillsong comes in and allows freedom from that, it could be a huge draw, couldn’t it?

In Scandinavia, we’re in Sweden and we’re in Denmark, in Copenhagen, we are very much countercultural in that sense. Because I know exactly what you’re talking about, where they have that philosopher [Aksel Sandemose, who wrote about] the 10 rules everyone lives by, and I feel like that is a very restrictive and limiting thing. When we’re building there, we’re building on Swedish and Danish pastors, but not on that cultural expression, that’s for sure.

Among these diverse cultures, one thing people coming to your church might have in common is a familiarity with the Hillsong name because of Hillsong music. It’s been reported that each week, Hillsong music is sung by over 50 million people in 60 different languages. How much does that name and brand recognition play into starting churches all over the world?

No doubt about it, Hillsong is a strong brand. It’s well known, and that does draw some people initially. But my experience is people may be drawn initially by our music, but it’s not what’s going to keep them. What people really care about is the community, the sense of family, their children being looked after well in children’s ministry, and teenagers in youth and so on. You don’t build a church on the music; you build a church by being a church—keeping it about God and people. One of the little themes we have is, Hillsong church is not built on the gifts and talents of a few but on the sacrifices of many. I think we also try to remind ourselves, a pretty big church, that Hillsong ultimately is about “the one”—it’s always personal.

The interesting thing with our churches, in the early stages, no doubt, people are drawn by the music. But if I was to look at New York, for example, there are literally thousands of decisions for Christ. If you were to walk down the streets of Manhattan, the people you see, they’re the people who are coming in and building our church. We have a strong emphasis, obviously, on evangelism and salvation, and that’s ultimately what’s building our church.

For you, what is the relationship between Hillsong music and Hillsong the church?

To be honest, if there wasn’t a church, there wouldn’t be any music. I’ve always seen the praise and worship from our church going out around the world as an arrowhead to a greater message—obviously the message of Christ, but it’s the message of his church, as well. These days, no doubt, when our songwriters are writing songs, they’re thinking about the impact they’ll have globally, but mainly, they’ve not written songs for the world, they’ve written songs for our church. And my experience is, if the songs work inside Hillsong Church, they’re going to work everywhere. So I always feel like the worship is the sound of a healthy church. As long as the church stays healthy, the impact of those songs will continue, I think, and they’ll have sort of a hope to them, a life to them, that blesses people.

About 10 years ago I had the opportunity to visit Hillsong in Sydney, and I remember being blown away, because I hadn’t understood there was an actual church behind the music.

That was true especially 10 years ago. Many people, especially in America, had no idea that Hillsong was more than just music. I find that’s changing pretty rapidly, and people are discovering the life of the church; and I’m sure here in the USA, planting in New York and in Los Angeles, has helped that. But, like I said, the worship, the music is something of an arrowhead for the greater message. We’re passionate about the local church—not just our church, but about the church. For example, our conferences—Hillsong Conference, which we have in Australia and in London and now in New York—champion local churches everywhere. We’re very much about the local church.

Hillsong is an outward-focused, global-reaching church. How do you weave that into the DNA of your church, from the leadership to core volunteers all the way to the person who has only been attending a few Sundays? How do you create a culture that is excited about evangelism and global discipleship?

Many years ago when our church was very young, we sat one day—probably for a whole afternoon—coming up with a single sentence vision statement for our church, and it’s still our vision statement to this day, and the first five words are: “To reach and influence the world.” The rest of it is, “ … by building a large, Christ-centered, Bible-based church, changing mindsets and empowering people to lead and impact in every sphere of life.” So we’ve always been a church that’s high on vision. I’ve found that people are up for that. Our church gets inspired by vision, all the way through to the mums and dads who just come along each weekend.

Vision Sunday in our church is literally one of the biggest Sundays we have all year. It’s generally the first Sunday of February, which in Australia is when school goes back; it’s like September in the US. We link to Vision Sunday globally, so it’s rolled out to all our global campuses from Australia, and it’s a huge highlight. Our church just seems to be up for expansion, for vision. What matters to people is that they’re receiving the Word and they’re growing and part of a life-giving community, and their kids are being looked after, and so on, but also, I think we have a church that realizes what they’re part of is bigger than the [individual] part they play. People look at the music or look at the leadership or whatever, but in my mind, the real gold of Hillsong church has always been the people. We have an incredibly generous congregation and a church that’s making a difference around the world.

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