The Global Phenomenon of Hillsong Church: An Initial Assessment¹

Abstract

In a short time, Hillsong has become a powerful congregational presence across the world and deserves more focused scholarly attention. Hillsong Church is part of an ongoing elaboration of evangelicalism, much of which has recently merged with a softer form of Pentecostalism (often called Charismatic Christianity), encouraging sermons and songs to be more conversational, and embracing a more therapeutic emphasis on emotional well-being with the promise of immediacy to an intimate God whose Spirit-filling empowerment energizes even the most mundane activities of work and family in everyday life. Arising out of Australia, Hillsong has become a worldwide commercial enterprise, distributing music and related products to Christian consumers who are entrained to a particular rhythm of religious sounds. Hillsong is also a philosophy of ministry that represents a set of theological convictions, an approach to pastoral leadership, and a type of networked ecclesial organization. In the end, Hillsong is more than just a church, a collection of music, a style of worship, an approach to ministry, or a set of corporate entities—it is an impressive ecclesial force, a global phenomenon that builds on a set of historical developments that comprise a wave of understandings and practices zooming into our religious future.

Early last year, our Aunt Debbie texted my wife and I to say that a Hillsong concert was scheduled a few months away not far from where we lived. She wanted to go and would we go with her…? It was a curious message because Aunt Debbie is not a Pentecostal, “Spirit-filled” Christian nor is she prone to flying out to events on a whim. I certainly did not know she had any interest in the ministry of Hillsong Church. She was raised in a strict, Bible-centered congregation where all the women wore veils and only men preached from the pulpit. She grew up to become a well-educated professional, succeeding in a corporate career while taking care of a husband and kids. She sincerely believes in Jesus and anticipates the resurrection, believing that prayer works and that the Bible is true. Her church was fine, mixing hymns and newer songs, all nice and orderly. And yet—Hillsong captured Aunt Debbie’s attention. She got a glimpse of a different type of worship when visiting churches on vacation, a taste of raw emotional ecstasy, and began to seek out more spiritually immersive environments. She wanted a space where she could lose herself and raise her hands—yes, raise her hands—without worrying what others around her might think. So, one late summer evening, Aunt Debbie, my wife, and I joined 4,000 other Hillsong ticket-holders at an open-air arena in the hills of North Carolina. We took our seats in rows facing three giant screens and several impressive boxes of stereo speakers. The music started, loud and energetic, and she immediately recognized it, and we sang along, following lyrics projected for us, learning the melodies, lights moving and flashing all around, the swell of an enormous crowd of voices rising around us. I looked over to see Aunt Debbie raising her hands—one arm first, then the other as well. She raised her hands, and she worshipped.

For many in the United States like my Aunt Debbie, Hillsong represents a compelling musical pathway to an emotional one-on-one connection to God. Yet as a sociologist of religion, I knew that the Hillsong experience sought by my Aunt Debbie was more than just about a style of worship. It touched her as a mature woman who is deeply religious yet seeks support for traditional roles that have been marginalized. It also connects her to a social atmosphere that is more modern than her usual church setting and reflects her everyday experience living in an urban and often youth-affirming world. And Hillsong provides opportunity to enact an embodied and emotional participation in worship, one that is as physically involved as it is compelling and cathartic.

Hillsong Church is part of an ongoing elaboration of evangelicalism, much of which has recently merged with a softer form of Pentecostalism (often called Charismatic Christianity, see Cox 1995), one that encourages sermons and songs to be more conversational, embracing a more therapeutic emphasis on emotional well-being (Martí 2008, forthcoming; Miller 1997). Worship is a guided, event-focussed, corporate effort attached to a promise of immediacy to an intimate God, a God whose Spirit-filling empowerment energizes even the most mundane activities of work and family in everyday life (Martí 2008, 2010b). More than this, Hillsong is also a worldwide commercial enterprise, distributing music and related products to Christian consumers who are entrained to a particular rhythm of religious sounds. Hillsong is also a philosophy of ministry that represents a set of theological convictions, an approach to pastoral leadership, and a type of networked ecclesial organization. In a short time, Hillsong emerged out of Australia to become a powerful congregational presence in cities and nations across the world. Hillsong is more than just a church, a collection of music, a style of worship, an approach to ministry, or a set of corporate entities—it is an impressive ecclesial force, a global phenomenon that builds on a set of historical developments, a wave of understandings and practices zooming into our religious future.

ORIGINS OF THE EXPANSIVE REACH OF HILLSONG CHURCH

A new book edited by Tanya Riches and Tom Wagner (2017), titled The Hillsong Movement Examined, gathers an interdisciplinary group of researchers from across the world to provide an extensive, multi-faceted assessment of Hillsong. One of the many things found in this rich book is that the original Hillsong church, located in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, always had a global ambition, and that the distribution of their worship music and their embrace of television broadcasting allowed them to experiment and eventually master the media that enabled them to penetrate global markets. The astonishing numerical growth of the church motivated their leaders to essentially lobby their denomination to remove “outdated” geographic restrictions on local church ministries. The boundaries restraining competition constrained the expansive work of the Spirit.

Calling themselves “pioneers,” the leaders of Hillsong aggressively pursued an apostolic model of leadership, placing Senior Pastor Brian Houston as the primary driver, and, throughout their development, working consistently from performance-based events to attract and mobilize young adults. Christian rock concerts for youth in the 1980s became a template for success: create a self-contained event, guided by professionalized practices, taking cues from the triumphs of Contemporary Christian Music, and rallying individuals to join, embrace, and extend the Hillsong style of spirituality where spiritual empowerment overcomes just about anything. The event orientation of their worship dovetailed into the event orientation of their message of salvation: How are you responding to God now? What will you do with God in your life today?

After obtaining a promise that the heads of their denomination (the Australian branch of the Assemblies of God) would not interfere in the workings of any particular local church, Hillsong rode a wave of officially sanctioned freedom to pursue even more expansive initiatives. These zealous leaders viewed their local church as a free-standing apostolic entity enabled to do anything, anywhere, in order to accomplish and expand its mission. In exercising greater autonomy, Hillsong insisted on its independence—effectively freeing it from all boundaries (geographic, administrative, financial) keeping it from finding new places to minister, to recruit, to plant, and to expand, believing that any positive response to the Spirit visible in their followers further legitimized Hillsong’s efforts ever-outward to newer and untested territories. With “local expressions” now in 14 nations (which they insist are all part of “one house with many rooms” with co-pastors Brian and Bobbie Houston at the head), God is clearly on their side.

Hillsong is now a globalized structure, more complex than its denominational roots, and, in his role as Senior Pastor, Brian Houston exercises leadership over a growing number of disparate, multipronged, and financially ambitious substructures housed in the One House of Hillsong.

Similar to other prominent churches—Willow Creek Church with its Seeker Orientation (Sargeant 2000), Mosaic with its focus on artistry and creativity (Martí 2005), and the Crystal Cathedral with its development of the Church Growth Movement (Mulder and Martí forthcoming)—Hillsong is among those big-footprint congregations that become an exemplar and an influencer, a church whose contingent development in history takes on a proactive agency, defining a way of doing “church” many believe is necessary for the world today (Connell 2005; Goh 2008; Klaver 2016; Wade 2016).² Hillsong is, as a passionate leader affirmed to me, “the distinct and definitive work of the Holy Spirit happening today.” Conducting their ministry amidst widespread reports of religious decline and secularization, Hillsong’s leaders interpret their astounding growth as an implicit critique of the failure of so many other churches. They keep busy in part by scrutinizing their own successes and strategically striving to put in place even more churches and Hillsong ministries in ever-expansive circles, creating opportunities to deliberately meet with other church leaders, inspiring men and women to reinvent the spirituality around them, paving the way for others with similar ambitions, calling people back to what they see as the simplicity of faith in Jesus, and promoting a Christian identity they believe is necessary in our time yet rooted in eternity.

THE MESSAGE AND MEANING OF HILLSONG³

As a church, Hillsong cannot avoid needs—personal, local, global—that seek to be met. So while Hillsong does encourage social engagement, couching such work as giving hope, offering justice, and healing brokenness, at the same time Hillsong believes in interpersonal rather than structural solutions and pushes toward encouraging conscious decisions by individuals to move, with God’s help, beyond their personal suffering (Wade and Hynes 2013; see also Emerson and Smith 2000; Markofski 2015; Miller and Yamamori 2007). Hillsong wants to bring help and solution, and individuals must receive help and enact attainable ends for their own benefit. As such, Hillsong ministries rarely challenge the dominant status quo. There are no explicit politics or advocacy, and partisanship is avoided. Larger structures are largely ignored. Hillsong understands that in advanced societies today individuals are left to their own selves, that those selves are pulled in multiple directions simultaneously, and that they must courageously face the task of fashioning coherent selves from their otherwise disconnected lives (Martí and Ganiel 2014; Martí 2015).

The primitivist faith of Hillsong centers on a radical, “born again” revival agenda, so all aspects of the Hillsong ministry are filled with testimonies, stories about how people participate in The Story. By simplifying the message of Christianity and tying an individual’s biography into a broader continuity (my story/His Story), a modern ego finds a place to foster a sense of cogency. Everyone is on a journey. The beginning is always there, is always offered, and a starting point that is always promised. The void Hillsong sees in people—especially in young adults—is filled by reclaiming again and again the call of God on each person. It is an ongoing agenda of every believer’s spiritual life. Hillsong’s Christianity is not based on perfectionism; people “fall,” but they are encouraged to “get up.” If they fall often, they are commended to get up just as often, an inspiring act of persistence, with the belief that, with Jesus, they can be empowered by the Spirit to break the momentum and launch into a victorious life (Martí 2012, forthcoming).

Empowerment almost always centers on finding resolutions for family and work issues. Yet the ambition is always greater. Amazing things happen through ordinary people because of an extraordinary God. Although Hillsong has a softer Word of Faith orientation (Bowler 2013; Harrison 2005; Martí 2008), it quickly transitioned its theological framework from economic prosperity to borrow the language of positive psychology, adopting a “flourishing” mentality and directing people toward an emotive call for humility and surrender, the growth and enablement of emotional and relational health, powerfully stoking a person’s energies toward immersive activity in their local church. The church is not any one person’s house; it is “our house,” a place of family, intimacy, and connection. In reinforcing this message, a sign at the entrance of every Hillsong Church simply says, “Welcome Home.”⁴

Hillsong’s implicit understanding of the uncertain self in an uncertain world undergirds messages that resonate with young people still in their 20s (especially single), locating themselves in the bigger world, struggling through newfound independence, whose financial means rarely match their outsized ambitions, and whose ambitions finally become more disciplined and ultimately fulfilled by fitting themselves into their understanding of God’s imperatives for the world (Martí 2010a). Women (sisters) are empowered as princesses, as daughters of the king who are warriors (Jenkins and Martí 2013); while women may have many private roles, all share public roles as daughters, wives, and mothers, and their Hillsong churches are helping them cope with that despite their disparate educations and career paths (Miller 2016). For everyone gathered, the message is a positive one, filled with a “winning” victorious attitude. This is a faith that does not bring you down; it lifts you up. And it is always there for you.

Worship matters for enacting Hillsong’s message, and many observers of Hillsong see it as central (McIntyre 2007; Riches and Wagner 2012). Hillsong worship involves the hopeful anticipation of the Pentecostal ego motivated to participate in an event-dependent effort (the gathering of worshippers) to surrender oneself with a characteristic openness to God (which involves setting aside distractions and “letting go,” see Martí 2008, 2010b, forthcoming) that is meant to lead the earnest believer to the deployment of spiritual power. One’s spiritual empowerment is mobilized to achieve what now become sacredly charged tasks in one’s everyday life (Martí 2008). Moreover, the social quality of worship allows cosmopolitan urbanites to become part of a larger group. However anonymous a person may be, they are part of this group, this family, and this house. Even the shape of the music—the power ballad, the war cry—provides individuals a basis for individualized action in the world apart from the group, resourcing the enactment of a strategic religious identity (see Martí 2017; Martí and Ganiel 2014). Hillsong music also provides a sonic religious identity, one that is portable and reproducible, whose aesthetics are mimicked with readily available instruments using recordings and YouTube videos as a guide, such that immersion in the tribe is accessible in more and more places, and, via digital reproduction, can be relived again and again.

THE HILLSONGIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY

Many sub-Hillsong churches now across the world follow the pattern set by their primary exemplar: they riff on evangelical–Pentecostal liturgical structures, eschew denominational sponsorship or approval, localize their newly institutionalize meanings of church, appeal to the individualized needs of disconnected urbanites, advertise themselves with contemporary fonts and graphic-design logos, and use any available meeting space with the capacity for amplified sound, projected images, and sufficient accessibility. Doing church in a Hillsong way becomes learning how to mobilize and produce affect in a particular manner, one that is viewed as distinctly cosmopolitan, further affirming a transnational bond among their network of churches.

Keep in mind that the musical set up for Hillsong worship and the architectural requirements for constructing a sacred space in the Hillsong way are minimal, meaning that few people and little expense are required to duplicate a Hillsong-styled mystical-musical experience. Online files, which can distribute words, videos, and musical scores, allow for extensive and eclectic borrowing and duplication. More broadly, these gatherings creating an atmosphere of immersive contemporary worship are finding resonance with people almost everywhere by dovetailing into the larger currents of church goers who warmly acquiesce to the Pentecostalization or Charismatization of worship occurring across the world (Christerson and Flory 2017; Ingalls and Yong 2015).

Pentecostal preachers have been among the most enthusiastic pioneers in mediating religion through radio, television, and the Internet, and eager lay volunteers gaining greater electronic access contribute to their expansive use. Media-enabled opportunities to witness and participate in Spirit-filled worship have been widely available from many of these congregations for decades. Hillsong is on the vanguard of promoting a selection of its experiences on DVDs and YouTube. Today, learning and participating in Hillsong Church is as easy as turning on a TV set or clicking on a website. Pastors, worship leaders, and dedicated members speak through screens, inspiring fellow believers while drawing newcomers into the promise of the Spirit—even more so now with the launch of a new cable channel in 2016 that further extends the ministry of the Sydney, Australia-based Hillsong Church. The Hillsong Channel carries at least 12 hours a day of original programming, including replayed services from Hillsong churches based in London, Los Angeles, and Sydney (with snippets from other “local” Hillsong congregations across the globe), media highlights from Hillsong conferences, lengthy vignettes on the ministry and theology of Hillsong, messages by lead pastor Brian Houston, original music from Hillsong worship bands shown either as music videos or in live performance with arena-filled crowds singing in unison, and much more.⁵ Hillsong Channel is an example of the many venues of mass media that make the Hillsong experience closer than ever (see Klaver 2015). In short, whether through local gatherings, occasional events, or regular mass media offerings, the accessibility of the church to understand, participate in the style of Hillsong Church, and therefore imitate the church is so widespread as to make Hillsong nearly ubiquitous.

Finally, the infectiousness of Hillsong is truly widespread. The popularity and pervasiveness of Hillsong is noted among church leaders of all Christian groups—even in mainline and Catholic circles.⁶ For many years, I have sat amidst discussions by pastors in the United States who take “pilgrimages” to prominent Hillsong churches, attend Hillsong conferences, and glean advice on Hillsong approaches on framing sermons and organizing ministry. They all consider the benefits of membership in the Hillsong Leadership Network (a small fee is necessary; resources also available in Spanish). Some start extension campuses in their neighborhoods, taking on the Hillsong name as a brand, hoping to catch a wave of excitement in their region. The scope of Hillsong’s reach across national borders is breathtaking; several Hillsong churches are recognized in the United Kingdom, Europe, Brazil, and Russia. At a recent conference session on “the Hillsong Movement,” a Hungarian scholar showed videos of Hillsong-like gatherings in Eastern European churches, showing both Protestants and Catholics utilizing the ready access of Hillsong music online, copying Hillsong sights and sounds to revitalize their ministries (see Povedák 2014). Elsewhere, a missionary told me Hillsong music is part of the regular rotation of worship songs in the smaller churches of the Dominican Republic. These shifts and the expansive reach of this distinctive signature of ministry has led to speculation regarding the “Hillsongization” of Christianity.⁷

HILLSONG AS A HEURISTIC FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION

The purpose of this paper is to persuade scholars that they will find much to explore in the phenomenon of Hillsong—and the references at the end of this essay provide potential resources (see also Riches and Wagner 2017). However we approach the expansive successes of Hillsong—the revivalist theology, the rave-culture aesthetic, the apostolic model of leadership, or the ongoing isomorphism of congregational type—I urge that all simplistic dismissals of brand marketing, celebrity pastors, or what was once described to me as “7/11 songs” (“seven words sung eleven times”) be avoided. Thoughtful sociologists know better; an expansive, global phenomenon demands serious consideration for what it reveals about religion and social change (Martí 2017). As a newer ecclesial movement, and one that has cohesion and appears to have some persistence, Hillsong is certainly a vital arena of investigation, even if only to acknowledge its existence as part of the evolving religious ecology. At the individual level, how does embodiment matter for this and related experiences? How are experiences uniquely gendered? Are there period or cohort effects to disentangle? What makes public spaces of intense private experiences so appealing? At the organizational level, how do these practices become institutionalized across transnational spaces? How do variations by region, country, or people group matter? What about organized resistance to such religious practices? How are leaders diffusing these forms of religious life trained, and how do they go about spreading and recruiting new leaders? What are the affinities between the religious and commercial logics implicit in the use of media? What can we learn about “big footprint” congregations who create larger movements of change in religious fields? Of course more could be added here, and even more ideas are welcome. By introducing the breadth and complexity of what Hillsong represents to date, this essay constitutes an invitation to an expanding dialogue, welcoming all connections, paradigms, and unrecognized insights it may generate.

Footnotes

1

This Editor’s Note is adapted from Martí (2017, forthcoming).

2

Ellingson (2007) demonstrated how mainline churches take in resources and practices from prominent evangelical churches as a source of renewal, effectively colonizing the ministries of mainline denominations. The seeping of Hillsong practices into mainline congregations has been anecdotally noted in conversations, blog posts, and Hillsong-sponsored events. Of course, resistance to pervasive “Hillsongization” has been noted as well (see footnote 6).

3

In formulating this section, I keep in mind considerations on the use of ethnographic methods for the study of theology (see Martí 2016). The word “Hillsong” should be understood primarily to mean the visionary leadership of Hillsong Church and then, secondarily, as the institutionalized understandings taken on by members of Hillsong churches.

4

The church examined in my book Hollywood Faith, Oasis Christian Center in Los Angeles, California, was deeply influenced by the early ministry of Hillsong Church, and one manifestation of that influence is the prominent placement of a sign in the church lobby saying, “Welcome Home.” However, during my ethnographic work, the actual origin of the sign was not revealed and therefore not reported in my analysis (see Martí 2008: 17).

5

For example, Hillsong’s lead pastor Brian Houston regularly hosts a half-hour interview show with prominent evangelical leaders regarding their life experience in ministry, all of whom have an informal connection to the church’s ministry and complement consistent messages regarding the philosophy of ministry guiding the congregation. Of the dozen or more interviews accomplished as of this writing, one featured Erwin McManus, lead pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles, the focus of my first book, A Mosaic of Believers (see Martí 2005).

6

See footnote 2 above.

7

The term “Hillsongization” is widely attributed to a prominent Australian evangelical leader, Michael Raiter, who first used it in a blog post, titled “The slow death of congregational singing,” in The Briefing, posted April 2, 2008 (http://matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2008/04/the-slow-death-of-congregational-singing-4/). The term widely resonates among liturgists who resist the narrowing of church music to Hillsong’s particular set of practices.