Is Scott Morrison Actually a Member of Hillsong? (Spoiler alert: it's where he gets his policy)

A lot of people question whether Australia’s PM, Scott Morrison, can be reasonably considered as a follower of Hillsong. Morrison has espoused his faith openly as a Christian, yet because there is no Hillsong sign outside his current church, Horizon, in Sydney’s Sutherland shire, there seems to be some doubt despite pictures like these taken 6 weeks after he secured the highest office in the land.

Here he was hiding nothing in July 2019.

But an appearance doesn’t mean membership and adherence to the dogma does it? No, it doesn’t but for Morrison, that was icing on his cake. While Morrison was very clear on his CV in 2006 that his interests included ‘Church (Hillsong Waterloo), he confirmed that allegiance again, 13 years later at Hillsong’s annual international conference, standing and praying proudly next to Houston.

Given the lengths he was prepared to go to get his buddy Brian Houston into the White House and to shield himself from questions surrounding the whole debacle, which screamed of cult leader devotion, could it still be in doubt where his deepest loyalties lie?

So let’s be really clear, Morrison has been guided by not just Houston, but his own pastor at ShireLive for 8 years, Michael Murphy, the former Associate Pastor to Brian Houston at Hills Christian Life Centre/Hillsong who continues to have a strong relationship with him CURRENTLY.

Murphy was there from the very early days of Hills and is as Hillsong as it gets, only he has a real love for business expansion, especially for ACC churches.

In 1997 Under the direction of Brian’s father Frank Houston, Murphy took over the CLC in Sutherland, instituted the Hillsong ideology, and then, he met Scott Morrison somewhere, Murphy says, around 2006. Their politics and shared modi operandi has been interwoven ever since.

Mike Murphy, Morrison’s pastor 📷 leaderscape.com

As a teenager at Hills CLC, I really liked Mike Murphy. He was close to a founder before it exploded into Hillsong. Was hard finding out he was more like Brian’s henchman from those who said he had to do all of Brian’s early dirty work, whatever that may have been. Anyway, he stuck Hillsong around until about 1997 when according to this transcript from 2003, SBS, Insight

— A new preacher was installed by Frank Houston at the church. MICHAEL MURPHY, PREACHER: Summary presentation of some of the prophetic words of God to Shire Christian Centre. 

Michael Murphy had done his apprenticeship at Hillsong. Under his stewardship, the church adopted a Hillsong look. 

 CHERILYN EVANS: What I left in the city and went back to my home church to avoid is now what is in place in that home church. There is no option. If you do not go along with Hillsong, you do not have an option. 

 Cherilyn did have one option available to her and that was to leave. 

CHERILYN EVANS: We tried at the time. Hundreds of people went to Mike Murphy and said, "We don't agree with what's going on in this church and we do not believe in this prosperity preaching. We do not believe in this gospel." 

Cherilyn intends to keep up her campaign. 

 CHERILYN EVANS: They can preach their message from their own church, they can tell people what colours to wear and how to make a lot of money, and I won't like it and I'll talk about it amongst my friends about it. But when they take over my church, then I have to speak out. —

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How Pastor Michael Murphy took over the church in the Sutherland shire, is what Morrison has done and continues to do in Australia.

And he doesn’t care who speaks out, either…

I wonder what happened to Cherilyn Evans.  With Mike Murphy going on to run media called THE GREATEST STEALTH his business relationships just expanded Hillsong just went in and took over a lot of churches over the years, and with business leader Mike behind him, Scott Morrison had no choice but to succeed in politics using the skills he learned every Sunday and, with support like that, every day in between.

Pastor Mike Murphy was pretty clear about how the church should treat Scott.  It’s basically ‘pray for him before you preach at him.’ said Murphy in this interview, which is just a gift that keeps on giving when it comes to Morrison and his faith, and Murphy’s willingness to be so open about it.

“My attitude is if I am helping him and Jen to keep focused on why they are doing what they are doing, and their spiritual journey in Christ, then that foundation will form his policy. I know not everyone would agree, but I wouldn’t see my role as inserting influence in policy. Now, as a style of church, we definitely encourage people in the marketplace.”

BUT HERE’S THE FUN PART

That was 2018. After Murphy had gone on to his own business, and a new pastor was heading Horizon.

Even though Murphy left 5 years ago, Shirelive became Horizon (not that anybody has indicated any kind of change in the church apart from pastors) the links to Hillsong are still incredibly strong.  There’s little to be found about the current pastor Brad Bonhomme’s background, except for the generic pastor loving life stuff, so it’s not like Horizon or Brad has taken any noted change of course away from Mike’s 18 years of teaching Hillsong teachings. It’s doubtful given Murphy’s connections, that anything has changed at all.

Murphy now runs a business called Leaderscapes  and ‘an alumnus of Alphacrucis College ‘ and its Council’s Chairperson  where it states he 

currently mentors church, political and business leaders, and has founded and continues to serve on various boards. 

That was quote was from Alphacrucis’s website, dated 2021.  oh, and Hillsong teaches Alphacrucis courses to their students at their ‘College’. 

It’s never stopped.  Scott Morrison has never stopped being Hillsong for a moment. 

Mike Murphy describes himself on Facebook as ‘a Lead Pastor Coach, Church Health Consultant, and Momentum Catalyst’. (by ‘health’ i think he means ‘growth’)

So YES THE PRIME MINISTER IS HILLSONG.  There are so many connections. and Brian Houston’s ‘7 mountain of influence’ ideologies aimed at evangelicals infiltrating every area of culture, family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government are being happily carried out by Morrison.

There’s a web of relationships that he and his former and current pastors share in the Sutherland Shire and in Hillsong and affiliated churches. But maybe it’s not Brian Houston that is the smarts behind this operation. He didn’t make the 7 mountains concept up, of course, but it was Trump-centred, for a while there. It’s scary stuff, all from the book of Revelation, something you really want your PM to pursue.

Apart from the crazy virtuous, moral grandstanding and ability to willfully deceive people and look them the eye, it’s not just Houston’s agenda he’s carrying out. Maybe to examine how very, very, oh so very Hillsong Scott Morrison is, it would pay to listen hard to the operator of the Greatest Stealth podcast, because I can guarantee you the PM is. 

Justin Bieber and Carl Lentz: Their Bizarre Bromance and Breakup What Really Happened?

A whole lot went on between Justin Bieber and his pastor Carl Lentz. His 2014 baptism in a bathtub was highly publicised. Young Justin, only 21 actually, was at a pretty desperate stage in his life. The tide was turning and he was doing things that people really didn’t like. But before he moved into Carl Lentz’s house for a month following that 3 am conversion moment, which is NOT CREEPY AT ALL, we need to step slightly back.

Early 2000’s. Justin’s mom, had introduced her son to Judah Smith around the age of 7 and he was programmed then through listening to sermons. So while he backslid for a while, Carl Lentz did not exactly introduce Justin Bieber to Jesus or big name pastors. Rather, it’s all he ever knew.

What followed was a bromance both parties wanted to the world to see. Justin made Carl famous and Carl made Justin back into a good wholesome guy. From the pics it seemed like they had the time of their lives.

They were forever going places and hanging out and grinning from ear to ear and it was so much damn good clean fun, it couldn’t go unnoticed. Soon, all was forgiven with Justin and his previous consumption of groupies and wild animals.

What most people don’t realise is that the relationship between this shepherd and his newly found sheep was NOT NORMAL FOR HILLSONG CONGREGANTS AND PASTORS. So as much as Carl Lentz tried to normalise it by saying things like,

“We don’t spend an extreme amount of time with celebrities, but we do know people who the world knows as well. And sometimes that comes with flak, comes with extra notoriety, and you just try to handle it the best you can [and] just go ‘We’re living a regular life in a really incredible city and sometimes there’s people you’re going to recognise in our house, in church, and it is what it is.”

He also went on to say:

But with Justin [Bieber], he’s doing music, or he’s on tour doing the music he just recorded. So, with him, it can look like sitting in the studio for hours, which I’ve done,”

And I can ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE YOU that Carl Lentz has never spent “hours” sitting in a mechanic’s workshop, or a nail salon, or any other workplace. Because it doesn’t happen. Hillsong provides one-way events. If you want more support, there’s smaller groups that meet at other times and you are also welcome to buy RESOURCES to help you on your way.

2015 :Justin flew to Sydney to attend the central Hillsong conference with Hailey Baldwin. Baldwin is the daughter of Stephen Baldwin who famously refused to star in any movies that were not acceptable to Christianity and thus never starred in any movies again. And don’t you think it’s strange we NEVER EVER hear about Hailey’s mom, Kennya Baldwin? Like, ever? They had a great time with Carl and the gang.

At this stage Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin are just childhood friends.

2017 Things get very very interesting.

In early July, Justin flies in again to Hillsong conference, only this time it’s only him and Carl. The bromance is going strong. So are their fashion imperatives, because what are these guys up to no really? I mean, what is this?

By the end of July, Justin Bieber called off a world tour and is rumoured to be putting out an album for Hillsong. Some collective sigh of relief is witnessed that Justin Bieber is now all better and safely in the care of the Good Guys.

Yet, in August he posts a stream of consciousness rambling about his wrong doings. And about how he is trying to be man he wants to be to be ready to be a husband and father. 23 years old.

Justin Bieber instagram aug 3 2017

There was no album for whatever reason and Wiki cites ‘depression and exhaustion’ for his calling off the tour, though Bieber himself wanted ‘relaxation.’

2018 was a huge year for Justin, as well as his relationship with Carl Lentz.

In an apparent Christian American Rom-Com Music Industry collision of dreams come true, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were seen dating carrying on from the end of 2017.

This was a match Carl Lentz encouraged. So much so that they went into couples counselling with Carl Lentz which is not like Tom Cruise getting marriage guidance from David Miscavige except it’s just like that.

But something went wrong. Justin Bieber did not want to continue his relationship with Ms. Gomez. Not long after, he started seeing Hailey Baldwin again, and six months after dumping Selena Gomez, the two were engaged and then married.

Carl Lentz was so upset that he was unable to even fake the response anticipated by Bieber’s pastor. He was upset, but why? Justin was his big golden goose, and wields more influence than any messiah. To the very market the MLM Hillsong wants: young, impressionable, malleable minds.

But: from that time onwards, the two had almost nothing to do with each other again. Here they spend the day together in Feb, 2019, but they seem mournful. The good old days are long gone as is whatever they had. No more Justin walking with Carl like cats full of canaries. No more nights like this:

But there’s also no crying in the park, which happened the same time that people at Hillsong NYC approached leadership to complain about Lentz’s behaviour and were rebuffed.

The Daily Mail got the wrong pastor on the beach with the Biebers in October, 2020. they were together ALL THE TIME doing GOD KNOWS WHAT and then, nothing. Why? That’s not Carl Lentz with him in Santa Barbara. They’ve hung out once in two and a half years.

(YES Lentz was at THE WEDDING, but who officiated? It wasn’t Carl)

Why? WHAT HAPPENED TO JUSTIN BIEBER AT HILLSONG?

In Justin’s case, he seems to have slowly extricated himself from Hillsong, quietly, respectfully, just started going back to Judah Smith’s church, without saying anything. And it’s like no one even noticed. Justin Bieber no longer goes to Hillsong at all.

Maybe Kanye and Justin Bieber are going to take over Hillsong, but that would be a strange thing to do, given how little he’s spoken on the topic and few times he’s been there since he started dating Hailey Baldwin in June 2018. Bieber is not afraid to talk openly about his drug problems and his mental issues, all of which seem to have resolved since he got away from Carl Lentz.

So why doesn’t he talk about why he no longer attends Hillsong? What happened with Carl? He was so thrilled when it was happening? Why so quiet now? Surely it can’t be just about his choice of wife. Surely.

Something very intimate went on between Carl Lentz and Justin Bieber. Something that when it stopped for whatever reason, they could no longer be anywhere near each other. For whatever reason.

There are a lot of blind items out there. They seemed crazy a while back.

Now that Lentz is gone and Bieber’s writing songs called “Holy” which is in the new genre of Erotic Christian music, he’d be the perfect evolution for the Ponzi scheme that is Hillsong. There’s an audience looking right now for redemption in the face of the train wreck their faith got mangled up in. Who better than Bad Boy Gone Good, Justin?

Very few escapees speak about their Hillsong experiences and Justin Bieber is no exception. My guess he’s been way too exploited or way too traumatised or feels way too ashamed like anyone else. There’d be a lot to get over if he were to set foot in that place again. His heart got broken and it wasn’t by Jesus.

Carl Lentz's Firing Is Just a Whole Lot of Why Now and Other Questions

Hillsong and megachurches like it have been paying off mistresses for years. There's a very powerful dynamic going on when people are constantly weeping at your feet during the heightened concerts they hold, and you are their connection to God. It has an effect on those in power.  Those hot, sweaty nights in church among a young, overly fertile crowd leads to a highly charged sexual environment that is undeniable.

Usually, the affairs pastors have are not planned and are merely encounters followed by guilt, shame, and a quest for forgiveness with all kinds of promises that the encounters won't reoccur. This result is innumerable pregnancies, and rashes, that need to disappear.

I know this because women, mistresses, and male lovers, as well as pastor's ex and current wives have written to me for years telling of the abortions that were forced upon them by an anti-abortion preacher who calls the junior pastor and his jezebel into the office for counselling only to hit them with a medical referral.  

It was more than ten years ago when a pastor’s ex-wife told me of her fear of her husband because of the life insurance policy he threatened to cash in on her. And he wasn’t one of the biggest names.

The Carl Lentz story is not shocking, but it is surprising.

All his peers are doing it. Some get caught.

But why now? There's loud chatter that his "moral failures" have gone on for many years.  (Trust me, they'd have a form ready now on letterhead in every Hillsong office worldwide for pregnant mistresses to fill in along with the morning-after-pill and some Amoxicillin.) Even Carl promised his (most recent) mistress that ‘he paid good money’ to keep her out of the press.

So who or what can't the machine stop from exposing Carl's wrongdoings? Hillsong NYC is a particularly abusive arm of the machine. That’s nothing new, it turns out. So what happened so ‘recently’ to upset Brian? So badly as to let go of this Golden Goose Lentz?

It’s more likely the ‘leadership’ and the ‘trust’ issues since Brian Houston is himself, the greatest moral failure of the Hillsong enterprise.

It’s now understood that his wife, Laura, discovered the photos between Carl and his side-piece on the work computer. Really?  Is Carl Lentz as stupid as Gavin Rossdale with Gwen Stefani?

This story doesn’t make sense. Because this is a huge loss to Hillsong and the Big Boss, Brian Houston.

After all, Carl Lentz was a dream come true for Brian. He arrived in 2000 at Sydney’s Hillsong College and by 2003, he was married to Laura Brett, the daughter of Kevin, an old pastor mate of Brian’s from New Zealand who says Brian was 14 years old when Kevin first met him. This is a SUPER CLOSE network of people.

Brian and Bobbie Houston gave their younger son Ben a church in L.A. They gave their eldest son, Joel, a band in the end, but it’s important the organisation’s main franchises stay in the family. So they sent Carl Lentz with Joel Houston to New York to have a church.

What a simple start, just ten years ago, with such beautiful lighting. Life got better and better for Carl or so it seems. But there’s a catch.

Sure, Carl and his family may have been living the high life and rubbing shoulders with the A-listers, but every single moment of that was dependent on Brian Houston's approval, on keeping Brian happy, on keeping on bringing in the big money and the big names. Carl never really owned anything, which is why his book “Own the Moment” makes sense. The moment was all he could ever hope for.

In his own way, Carl Lentz may be a victim of the Hillsong machine. Did Brian Houston need to inform the entire world of Lentz’s personal and professional failings, BEFORE an investigation took place? Did he really think the greater evangelical world would accept those vague statements, or was it a deliberate method to humiliate his former favourite rather than have his ‘restoration’ take place privately, which would have been entirely possible?

The facade of care for Lentz’s wife and family falls down pretty quickly when you consider the many different ways this could have been handled. This will be the Lentz story that goes down in history, and Brian, ever keen to deflect the attention away from his harbouring a paedophile for 5 years, funding his life until he died, and lying to the anyone who will listen about how he told the truth immediately, would be EVER SO KEEN for everyone to LOOK AT WHAT CARL DID, instead.

It's interesting as well that the focus has been on his "moral failures", with an exotic girlfriend in the media as a distraction. Isn’t it convenient that she was ready within a day to talk to the media? Ranin Karim states that she and Carl Lentz only ‘broke up’ the day after his Instagram confession, which ‘blindsided’ her. Which was 6 weeks after Carl had stopped posting on social media. And just before selling their family home.

If Carl and Ranin only ‘broke up’ that day, the ‘affair’ kept going for another few weeks after Laura ‘first found out, while quickly selling the house.

It’s not adding up. The house sold on the 23rd of October, 3 days before Laura officially found out. And ten days before he/they were fired. That’s a fortunate coincidence.

“Breaches of trust” and “leadership” issues are going to be much more interesting, but we're all too busy staring at his mistress's tattoos to think about what went on behind the scenes.

Brian’s ego is insatiable and fragile. Whatever Carl did to upset that is what’s at the heart of this. It’s going to be a long time before he gets to speak, though.

Carl Lentz Instagram 5 Nov 2020

Carl’s surely become well-acquainted with the Non-Disclosure Agreement he signed all those years ago.

There’s NO WAY that the Global Senior Pastor Houstons didn’t know about Carl’s activities. No one's falling for that old line again.