February 16, 2023 • 32 mins
You can’t talk about Hillsong without talking about money. The church is a multimillion dollar enterprise. Its followers give a lot of their time and their money. What do they get in return? Noemi shares her experience as a volunteer at Hillsong Boston. It’s a place where the elite was enjoying lavish hospitality in green rooms while volunteers worked exhausting hours. Elle Hardy analyses how volunteer labour became central to the Hillsong model. Noemi and Elle dig into allegations that nannies employed by Hillsong pastors were paid a pittance. Two members of the Hillsong “nannies club” share their stories. And Elle and Noemi call in a financial investigator to find out about Hillsong’s wealth and accountability.
False Profits: Hillsong is produced by Storyglass for iHeartRadio
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is false prophets. I'm Noemi Ribe And in this episode,
I'm looking at Hillsong and money with l Hardy, a
journalist who has reported on Hillsong for several years. We
talked about exploitation in the last episode, and exploitation takes
a lot of different forms, including economic abuse. So we're
(00:23):
checking out Hillsong's financial oversight, looking at potential misuse of
church funds, and hearing about how past has traded employees.
You know, at the heart of the series is not
balance sheets, it's human beings, people like me who were
part of Hillsong Church. The people talking to us in
this series gave time, tithes, and trust to an organization
(00:47):
that turns over millions of dollars. So it's right to
ask was that transaction fair? Was it transparent? Because in
this story you can't really separate the stuff about money
from the spiritual stuff. Now to the big question, Yeah,
how much would they pay you? Oh? Okay? So every
(01:10):
so breaking it down every week, it was one fifty
flat rate no matter how many hours I worked. So
even if I did a twelve hour day or a
six hour day, it was the same amount of pay.
Meet tiff Tiffany Perez. We became friends through Hillsong. While
I was a volunteer in Boston, tiff was part of
the Nanny Club, a group of young women looking after
(01:32):
pastors kids. It's not a club you join if you
want to earn a living, but hey, you're helping to
do God's work, right. Tiff worked with Josh Kimes, lead
pastor in Boston, and his wife Leona. I did all
day Tuesdays and sometimes all day Wednesdays, so all day
meeting about twelve hours, like sometimes there was like a
(01:55):
ten to ten or I'm doing like a ten and
staying over into wednes Tiv had been a volunteer in
New York, moved to Boston and became a nanny, which
came with three accommodation with another pastor, Steve de Groza.
Let's do the math, Okay, So it was one fifty
flat rate. Flat rate, that's let's say four weeks in
(02:17):
a month for the four weeks of six hundred dollars
a month a month. Okay, Yeah, now we're going to
divide it. I was part time, so we can do
twenty Okay, so twenty hours a week times four eighty hours,
so six hundred divided by eighty hours. You were making
seven fifty. Yeah, I was thirty at the time. Like,
(02:41):
it's like not livable, No, not at all, especially in
a city like Boston. And yes, you were living with Steve,
but that meant you had to commute into the city.
And I'm assuming the commute was on you. Yeah, and
that that wasn't There was nowhere touching what I did
four hills on Boston. And just to get technical here,
(03:03):
because Tiff was paid as a nanny, even if her
wages were really low, that made her an employee, not
a volunteer, and that raises a whole bunch of questions.
So did they pay you cash or did they like
it was a venmo so they went into duct tax
or anything. Okay, so it's just a venmo once a week, yeah,
(03:25):
one fifty. Yeah, if they remembered, because sometimes I'd have
to remind them. What would you say when you had
to remind them, hey, didn't get paid. That's awkward. It
is because not only were they my employers, they were
also my pastors. And that's like another level. Yeah, yeah,
(03:47):
awkward to for Hillsong pastors because there are all sorts
of laws about minimum wage, tax and overtime. Remember Megan Fallon,
She told us in the last episode about how volunteering
became a way of life. She was a nanny too,
and in her case for the past as Caine and
Carl Kating in New York. Megan was interviewed as part
(04:08):
of the lawyer's investigation, and for her, this wasn't only
about money. It's about how becoming a Hillsong nanny closed
down her social and her spiritual life. When I started
working for the pastors, I got cut off from everything, right,
So it was like, well, your responsibilities taking care of
our children. Now, you can go to a service if
(04:30):
you have time, but you probably won't. You have to
leave your connect group, you have to leave your connections team.
I was super isolated. I was really lonely. I started
getting super anxious and depressed. My only friend was their
two year old son, you know. But also I don't
know if you've all ever been like a nanny before,
but it's hard because you grow super attached to this
(04:52):
child and at the end of the day you have
to leave. I was also living in New York. While
I was living in Brooklyn, but super expensive. I was
not getting paid really anything. So my dad was helping
me out with my rent and it came to a
point where he was like, you know, I can't do
this anymore. I had seen the pastors, and not just
(05:13):
the Keatings, but other pastors be like really rude and demeaning,
mean to me my friends kind of like we were
just like the help. Like I remember specifically one time
I borrowed a vacuum from another family in the we
called it the compound in the apartment complex, and when
they came home, I didn't empty out the vacuum part
(05:35):
and Carlo like dumped it on the ground and was
like you need to throw this out next time, and
then like clean this up again. And so if things
weren't done the right way. Um, looking back on it,
it was abuse. Really these are supposed to be my pastors.
But honestly, like I got paid more than some of
my friends did. When we would talk and they were like,
oh my gosh, you get that much, Like wow, like
(05:57):
two hundred dollars every two weeks. There's something I don't
know if that's an exact number, but something like that
and not even forty hours a week, like more than that,
and I got paid more than a lot of my
friends did. The lawyers heard Nanni's were routinely paid below
the minimum wage, tax wasn't deducted, and overtime wasn't paid,
(06:21):
and the lawyers warned Hillsong that could be a violation
of label laws. Lawyers do law right, They're not in
the business of faith or spiritual harm. But for me,
this economic exploitation again exposes something rotten in the relationship
between Hillsong and its followers. A lot was made of
the fact that Hillsong, New York was a new campus.
(06:44):
Everyone was working hard to start a new church, and
perhaps supervision and oversight went by the wayside for a while.
You know, it was described as the wild West. But
let's get Ashley as his view on this. She's a
cult survivor and an advocate for victims of abuse in churches.
Ashley believes the fact that Hillsong, New York is just
starting out is not an excuse, and she flags up
(07:07):
that Hillsong is affiliated to a charity called One. Its
mission is to fight human trafficking, force labor, bonded labor,
and involuntary domestic servitude. When I looked at the economic exploitation.
I could not help but see parallels between what was
happening to the nanny's and the volunteers quote unquote volunteers,
(07:31):
and the things that a ministry connected with Hillsong is
supposed to be against. So labor trafficking, human trafficking is
a huge problem across the globe and is supposed to
be fighting those things. And so to find a lot
(07:54):
of the patterns that we see in labor exploitation and
traffic agging present in the church was so ironic and unsettling,
because I feel like this isn't just an organization who
oops accidentally did labor exploitation because they didn't understand the laws. Now,
(08:16):
this is an organization that new or should have known
because of the organizations that they support and claim to
have leadership really dedicated to. So a lot of times
when we think of modern day slavery, we think of,
you know, somebody's not getting paid anything at all, But
actually labor exploitation includes not being paid a living wage,
(08:41):
not being given minimum wage, not being paid over time,
those types of things. A lot of times what happens
is there will be a person who feels somehow indebted
to the person they're laboring for being paid not enough
for them to really gain financial stability to leave. And
when we look at Hillsong, we're seeing pastors saying things like,
(09:03):
you don't have a college degree, you couldn't get a
job outside of this. We have them in a position
where they feel like they're working for really low amounts
of money. Because I'm helping the ministry, I can't help
but see the overlaps between the organizations they're supposed to
(09:26):
support and then what they're actually doing in their own organizations.
And while the nunnies were being paid very little, Hillsong
inside is with sharing stories with the investigators about how
money was being spent on expensive gifts, entertaining celebrities, and
the pasta's lifestyle. Since this is a virtual interview, I'm
wearing the virtual interview uniform where I've got a color
(09:50):
on top and then jim shorts and no shoes on bottom,
just like Jesus would do. My name is Ben Kirby,
and I created this strange social media sensation called Preachers
and Sneakers where I show the high priced items that
mega church pastors where we like a bit of backstory.
(10:12):
So how did Ben get into pastors and their sneakers.
So I was by myself and I slept late on Sunday,
and being in the South, it's very like you go
to church on Sunday's if you're involved in that world,
and if you sleep through, there's some element of you
that feels a little guilty. And so even though that's
like not correct theology, that is like, you're not a
(10:33):
bad person for sleeping through church, but there is some
kind of embedded little amount of guilt that from your upbringing,
I guess, and that wasn't even instilled upon me. It
was just like, by being in this Southern church world
by proximity, there's this kind of inherent guilt if you
skip church. But that's a different conversation. But I slept
through church, and I wanted to have some type of
(10:53):
church experience, I guess, to check the box. And so
that week I had this certain Worships song stuck in
my head and I happened to just look it up
on YouTube because I was gonna watch the video and
that was it, and I noticed a worship leader, like
you know, the guy leading the band, lead singer, was
wearing a pair of Kanye's collaboration with Adidas. He was
(11:16):
wearing a pair of Yeasys, and so very quickly I
was like, oh, those are worth eight hundred bucks, and
that like stuck out to me. And I didn't care
that much about reforming modern preaching or how we present
Christianity or whatever, but I felt compelled, like like a
lot of people do, to just share it on Instagram
(11:37):
with all my millennial friends that are doing the same,
not thinking that anything's gonna happen, having no plan or
any kind of strategy or anything. And I just made
a video basically saying like, hey, how much of these
guys getting paid where you can wear a pair of
eight hundred fifty dollar shoes like it. It wasn't informed.
It was probably a little unfair where it's just like, Okay,
I've watched a three minute video and now I'm developing
(11:59):
these hot takes about this guy's footwear. Ben, my friend,
you did the world service. This quickly turned into an
account devoted to preachers wearing super expensive designer clothes. Trust me,
Hillsong Fashion, he stays and nothing on some of the
other pastors. But they did get noticed, and so it
was pretty easy at first to find plenty of examples
(12:21):
of preachers wearing the Nike Air Fear of Gods or
wearing eve St Laurent or ys L boots all the
way to Gucci sneakers and loafers and incredibly expensive jackets.
I mean, there was a whole host of things that
you know, hill Song wasn't the only ones, but they
were definitely presenting some of that same aesthetic. And so
(12:41):
I threw a few posts up there. And hill Song
is one of the more recognizable names in modern church,
and so that would always get a good amount of engagement.
And at the same time, the die hard fans of
hill Song were quick to come to their I guess defense,
And I can't say I've had many pleasant interactions with
(13:03):
people involved with that church. I'm not a brand's person,
so I couldn't tell how much their wardrobes were worth.
But other people could, like other people do no brands
and could recognize like oh oh okay Janice Lagata, remember
she was a part of Hillsong New York from the start.
(13:24):
And that's where the whole celebrity church vibe played out,
with Justin Bieber hanging out with Carl Lenz and other
famous names dropping by and the pulse the same to
channel that vibe to riding around in black SUVs with
their own drivers, wearing fancy clothes and enjoying all the
trappings of a glamorous life. And then when they would
get called up on things, you're like, oh this this
(13:45):
is an expensive watch, or you know, these shoes or whatever.
Then you know that's who's like, oh these were a
gift or just turn it back around, well, why do
you think pastors should be poor? And this is me
wanting things that I haven't earned, and I just need
to work harder and do more good things so that
I can be more blessed. And we are ill equipped
(14:09):
to critically think about things and critically argue. And even
if you could, the power dynamics are so out of
control you wouldn't. If you wanted to know how rich
Hillsong Ace Coast Waltz, you could look at it san
your report, the last one made public was for two
thousand and nineteen. It gives basic facts like how much
(14:32):
revenue was generated, how much the church spent on staging
its services, and how much it's spent on stuff, but
it's not very detailed, and churches aren't legally required to
provide much information and how many of us scrutinize our
church's balance sheets. Anyway, a new Hillsong had a lot
of money. My understanding for the first five years at
(14:55):
least was like, Oh, all of this money is coming
from the big church, like it's coming from Australia. We
are being supported by them. We are financially struggling. No
one said those exact words, but yeah, the way they
would phrase things, the way they word things. You know,
I've talked to other friends and I'm like, what did
(15:15):
you think the financial status of hill Song, New York was?
And we all just had this idea that it was
a struggling campus, right, And they would say things like, oh,
only eight of the people who attending are tithing regularly,
and so you just had this idea that, Okay, I'm tithing,
but I'm one of the few, and so I have
(15:37):
to keep doing my part because most people just aren't
pulling their weight. You know. That's another thing I think
about churches now, Why can't people know how much the
rent is on this building, how much we're paying for whatever,
and as a community make these decisions about is it
worth it? Like many churches you're expected to give temperacent
(16:01):
of your income and tides, but as Joanna said, a
lot of people don't, including me. I never gave Hillsong
one penny, one thing at least I'm happy about. But
plenty of people do pay tides, and Hillsong has strategies
to encourage some people to give a lot of their money.
I was given a document by someone who used to
(16:21):
be fairly high up in Hillsong, shall we say, and
it was about the position of a development pastor. But
as it was explained to me, it was really about
targeting high net worth individuals at the church. So the
document is written in that kind of very bland hr
language that makes it seem like it's all very above board.
(16:42):
But the person who was involved in this said that
they were told very explicitly that it was really about
finding out who the rich people were in the congregation
and working out how they could get money out of them.
You see terms like providing opportunities for the outworking of
a person's gift of generosity. This just meant fly ending
out who's got money and how much you can get
out of them, And it was about finding out what
(17:03):
they're interested in. So maybe they had a vision for
giving some sort of hearing bus in India and then
they'll name it the l Hardy hearing bus in India.
You know, as part of the cell, was this actually
about developing a hearing bus in India or is this
about growing the hillsonge brand. Yeah, And you know there's
(17:24):
this thing about blessings and whether by giving more you're
getting more spiritually. And it wasn't just rich people who
gave more and more. Here's all Odhara deal, who we
met earlier in the series. I had to realize I
had weird views about my tithing, about the way I
gave my money. I really believed I had to give
(17:44):
my money to Hillsong, And when I decided I was
going to leave the church, I was just like, oh
my god, what am I gonna do with all this
tithing money I had to give my money? Oh my god,
I don't want to lose any blessings that da da
da da. And I had to unpack that, and you know,
obviously I'm definitely not in that place anymore of the
way of view tithing, and I don't view tithing is
(18:05):
just giving money. I viewed as giving time to something
that you feel like is benefiting God in the world.
But at the time, at the end of I was
definitely like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with
all this money. And that's something that they instilled in me.
I remember when I joined Hillsong Foundation, which is another
(18:27):
part of the church where you give more than your
ten percent. I talked to someone and she was like, well,
if you just want God to bless you more, blah
blah blah, then you need to give more. And I
was just like, yeah, you know, I guess that's a
great way to look at it. Obviously I want more blessings.
(18:48):
A year and a half later, I was like, what
am I doing? Tithes are important to Hill Song, but
they're only a part of an empire that's turning over millions.
The biggerners are music sales. Then there's plenty of merge
and conferences. If it's so successful, what does that look
like in terms of money? What are the numbers? That's
(19:10):
the billion dollar question and one to which I wish
I knew the answer. So Hill Songs say that they're transparent,
they have financial returns that are audited by and Young.
One of the biggest accounting firms in the world that
they will put on their website every year. But it
doesn't go into any detail. It just tells you the
headline numbers, so revenue, assets, what they're spending on things
(19:34):
like salaries, but not how much is going to whop,
which is what I'd love to know. It's a very
handy way of saying that you're transparent while being very opaque.
But I mean we do know. For example, so the
East Coast in two thousand and nineteen probably the height
on the highest point it ever got, they were spending
about twelve million in operations each year, had about six
(19:56):
million in assets. The Australian operations there same year, we're
talking about in U s. Dollars about sixty million in
annual revenue and then millions in curclus. I think a
lot of the music arms and other churches paying back
had to come through the Australian operations, which is why
they've got a lot of money there. But you know,
(20:18):
when you're totaling up churches on every continent bringing in substantial,
probably millions each per year, I don't think it would
be difficult to argue from that that in the real peak.
Hill Song years, which I would say is two thousand
and ten to two thousand and twenty. That we're talking
in billions of dollars in US dollars. We're cycling through
(20:39):
the Hillsong brand globally, which I think is a tremendous
amount of money. I knew they had a lot of money,
I didn't know to what excet, and I always wanted
to know more, And I did learn a little bit
(21:01):
about what Josh Coimes made. It was around believe forty
thou which is not that much, but it was just
for him to spend because his housing was paid for
and with all utilities, transportation was always paid for. So
really his forty dollars was just for him to spend.
It's funny because the first thing that I can think
(21:23):
of was the and I'm sorry for the Christianity's out there,
but there's this Bible verse that talks about money being
the root of all evil, and if they're so interested
and focused on money, it says a lot about their
culture and where they're at right now. Yeah. One of
the other things which I really want to know in
(21:43):
terms of the money, that it wasn't so much just
a straight up salary. I mean, I remember Brian Houston
used to publish his way way back in the day,
you know, like fifteen years ago or something, and it
was a few hundred thousands, but eventually he wound up
not just a few hundred thousand, just a few hundred thousand. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
fifteen years ago as well. Um, oh my god. But
(22:06):
you know, comparatively saying hey, I'm not one of these
preachers with a private jet, and and sort of trying
to to play it that way because he didn't want
to buy one, because he could afford it for sure. Yeah,
but he went on to say, I think that he
wasn't taking a salary, you know, a bit like a
bit like President Trump. And it's sort of like, but
your brand recognition for want of the better term is
(22:27):
so big now, But what so many of the passes
and people that were able to climb the Hillsong ladder
got It wasn't just in your pay packet. It was
you know, for example, if you've been a producer on
any Hillsong songs or records, you're getting a cut of
the royalties. But it's books, it's speaking to us. And
when Hillsong was really at its peak, I mean some
(22:48):
of like Carl Lents going to conventions in the States,
he would have commanded tens of thousands per appearance. And
I mean that's how Brian was making his money was
in book sales and music royalties and appearances and then
building themselves up and building their own celebrities so that
they could just make untold riches and then you can say,
I'm not taking this out of the collection plate. You know,
people are willingly paying me. They look in some ways
(23:10):
more ethical than other churches through this very kind of
bizarre business model. So it's fascinating to see how they
even use their same brand and the church for their
own marketing and their own business. Yeah. Well, I mean
you would have seen the merchandise stands and things like
that at the conference. I would set them up, not
our conference, but at church. Yeah, every Sunday there was
(23:32):
a merch table. I mean it was so baked into
the business model. You know, we were talking about, you know,
if Josh is only getting forty grand a year, but
you know he's getting his kids nannied for free, and
and there was this weird kind of trying to think
of the right word because I'm not sure if it's obsession,
but just this drive to constantly use the free labor
(23:52):
volunteer pool. It was just finding new and bizarre ways
to put these people to work. It was just a
really is our culture that came in and I mean
I don't need to tell you about it, but just
that constantly that everything they did, you know, and just
feeding this constant growth had to be done by free
volunteer labor. My name is Barry Bowen. I'm an investigator
(24:19):
of religious financial fraud. I worked for Trinity Foundation, a
watchdog organization based in Dallas, Texas. I grew up in
South Louisiana and my dad was a minister. And in
the nineteen eighties there was a big scandal involving a
televangel's pastor about ninety minutes drive from where I lived,
a guy named Jimmy Swaggered. And then around two thousand
(24:43):
three or four, I was flipping through a TV channels
one day and I came across a televangelist and fundraising mode. Um.
It was a guy named Mike Murdoch, and he said
on TV, so a seat on your credit card and
God will erase your credit card debt. Basically, he's telling
donors give a donation with the credit card, and God's
(25:04):
going to wipe out your credit card debt. And when
I heard him say that, as like you're lying to people.
That's fraud and I'm gonna take you down. We asked
Barry Bowen to look at the allegations as surfaced in
the lawyer's investigation at Hillsong New York. Here's his opinion
on how transparent and Hillsong finances are. So they created
a newsroom to deal with some of them media issues,
(25:27):
and so their newsroom on their website they have an
article and I just wanted to read this to you.
In the past few months, we've received questions from several
journalists about the purported misuse of church funds by Hillsong
Church employees. In many cases, inaccurate accounts from extremely unreliable
sources have been reported as if they are true. Hillsong
(25:48):
Church has a record of excellence and fiscal accountability globally
and an unwavering commitment to financial integrity, with numerous structures
and auditing procedures in place to protect against misuse. Talk
about spin, there's a difference between good policies and good systems.
(26:08):
Hillsongs policies are good, but are they followed is the question.
Sometimes the only way to know that they're not being
followed is if whistleblower surface. And in the case of Hillsong,
New York, what we do have is the Louis Report,
which flagged up areas of concern involving pastas and church funds.
(26:29):
That report reveals a totally different picture from what the
Hillsong newsroom is reporting that there were definitely red flags.
There were misuse of PEX cards. These are rechargeable like
debit cards. Money can be pun on them and spent
by an employee of the church, and according to insiders,
(26:52):
these were used to pay for gifts, for clothing, for food,
and a According to some of the insiders, these expenses
were not reimbursed. Basically, in a normal church setting, when
an employee uses church funds for personal expenses, they're required
(27:14):
to reimburse it and the employee must provide receipts to
the church finance office. If they're not providing receipts, how
do you know if it's a personal expense or church expense?
And this was the big problem. One of the insiders
at Hillsong revealed that the receipts. In some cases it
didn't exist. It is very careless. It borders on criminal.
(27:42):
And the reason I can say that is when you
make these kind of personal spends on a church card
and you don't reimburse the church, then you're profiting off
the church. This should be considered income. It's time exable income.
If it's not reported, are not reimbursed. And there were
(28:05):
other areas too, what's called self dealing. Very explains. Self
dealing occurs when you have a person that owns a
for profit company and also runs a nonprofit organization and
they do business with each other. This is not illegal
in the United States unless you excessively profit off the
nonprofit organization. So we see this often among televangelists. They
(28:30):
will own their own publishing company and they'll publish their
books their DVDs and sell them to their church or ministry.
And now if they're selling their book at full retail
price to their church or ministry, that's taking advantage of
the nonprofit. It should be discounted. It should be host
sale price. One of the problems in these type of
(28:50):
business relationships is a pastor can set up a company
and charge a consulting fee to his church or ministry.
A pastor can own the copyright of his sermons and
then license them to his church. In fact, Carl Lentz,
his dad is an attorney, Stephen Lenz. Stephen Lentz wrote
(29:11):
a book The Business of Church, and he advised pastors
on how to license intellectual property rights to their church.
There's all kinds of ways to make money off of churches.
This is just one example. In the case of Hillsong,
one of the pastors and his wife Can and Carla
Keating at Hillsong, New York City. They operated a coffee
(29:33):
shop and the hill Song had a Bible study group
meet there, and it was alleged that these PEX cards
were used in the course of their coffee shop business,
so that would be a clear conflict of interest. Kine
and Collacating told the lawyers their coffee shop was used
for the church meetings, and Kine believed he would have
(29:55):
used the church cod that but Karla said she was
unaware of a church cod that was used unless it
was for church catering. So these details matter. What about
the bigger picture? How was Hillsong East Coast spending the
money it raised? How much was spent on its primary purpose,
which is to reach and influence the world by building
a large, Christ centered, Bible based church. Here's Barry Bowen
(30:19):
again analyzing one of these reports. I was able to
determine that approximately seventy of the funds were spent on
the reported purpose of Hillsong. And this is really important
to understand. There's charity Navigator that advised donors to look
(30:39):
for organizations that at least seventy five percent of all
funds are spent on the purpose of the organization. If
you're spending more than on fundraising, you're not spending on
your purpose. If the reporting is accurate, then hill Song
(31:00):
is a good steward of the money that's given. However,
I have questions that I wonder if their documents are
actually accurate, if there are a proper representation at how
money is actually spent. For example, these PEX card abuses
are those properly reported? I doubt they were. And this
(31:23):
is the information that I would like to know about Hillsong.
How much is your chief financial officer paid? How much
are your head pastors paid? That kind of information is
critical for concerned donors. One of the things that we're
interested in is excessive compensation. We do not want nonprofit
leaders getting rich off of their tax exempt status. In
(31:45):
the next episode, l heads to Australia. This is where
the Hillsong Empire started and where founder Brian Houston has
been living a life fit for a preacher king, and
it is where a bomb is about to go off
under Hillsong finances as a whistleblower takes the church to court.
This is the closest that we've gotten yet to looking
at Hillsong's books, and this is just dynamite. The one
(32:08):
thing that anyone that's looked into Hillsong over the last
ten twenty years has been trying to find out is
how much money is there and where's it going
This is false prophets. I'm Noemi Ribe And in this episode,
I'm looking at Hillsong and money with l Hardy, a
journalist who has reported on Hillsong for several years. We
talked about exploitation in the last episode, and exploitation takes
a lot of different forms, including economic abuse. So we're
(00:23):
checking out Hillsong's financial oversight, looking at potential misuse of
church funds, and hearing about how past has traded employees.
You know, at the heart of the series is not
balance sheets, it's human beings, people like me who were
part of Hillsong Church. The people talking to us in
this series gave time, tithes, and trust to an organization
(00:47):
that turns over millions of dollars. So it's right to
ask was that transaction fair? Was it transparent? Because in
this story you can't really separate the stuff about money
from the spiritual stuff. Now to the big question, Yeah,
how much would they pay you? Oh? Okay? So every
(01:10):
so breaking it down every week, it was one fifty
flat rate no matter how many hours I worked. So
even if I did a twelve hour day or a
six hour day, it was the same amount of pay.
Meet tiff Tiffany Perez. We became friends through Hillsong. While
I was a volunteer in Boston, tiff was part of
the Nanny Club, a group of young women looking after
(01:32):
pastors kids. It's not a club you join if you
want to earn a living, but hey, you're helping to
do God's work, right. Tiff worked with Josh Kimes, lead
pastor in Boston, and his wife Leona. I did all
day Tuesdays and sometimes all day Wednesdays, so all day
meeting about twelve hours, like sometimes there was like a
(01:55):
ten to ten or I'm doing like a ten and
staying over into wednes Tiv had been a volunteer in
New York, moved to Boston and became a nanny, which
came with three accommodation with another pastor, Steve de Groza.
Let's do the math, Okay, So it was one fifty
flat rate. Flat rate, that's let's say four weeks in
(02:17):
a month for the four weeks of six hundred dollars
a month a month. Okay, Yeah, now we're going to
divide it. I was part time, so we can do
twenty Okay, so twenty hours a week times four eighty hours,
so six hundred divided by eighty hours. You were making
seven fifty. Yeah, I was thirty at the time. Like,
(02:41):
it's like not livable, No, not at all, especially in
a city like Boston. And yes, you were living with Steve,
but that meant you had to commute into the city.
And I'm assuming the commute was on you. Yeah, and
that that wasn't There was nowhere touching what I did
four hills on Boston. And just to get technical here,
(03:03):
because Tiff was paid as a nanny, even if her
wages were really low, that made her an employee, not
a volunteer, and that raises a whole bunch of questions.
So did they pay you cash or did they like
it was a venmo so they went into duct tax
or anything. Okay, so it's just a venmo once a week, yeah,
(03:25):
one fifty. Yeah, if they remembered, because sometimes I'd have
to remind them. What would you say when you had
to remind them, hey, didn't get paid. That's awkward. It
is because not only were they my employers, they were
also my pastors. And that's like another level. Yeah, yeah,
(03:47):
awkward to for Hillsong pastors because there are all sorts
of laws about minimum wage, tax and overtime. Remember Megan Fallon,
She told us in the last episode about how volunteering
became a way of life. She was a nanny too,
and in her case for the past as Caine and
Carl Kating in New York. Megan was interviewed as part
(04:08):
of the lawyer's investigation, and for her, this wasn't only
about money. It's about how becoming a Hillsong nanny closed
down her social and her spiritual life. When I started
working for the pastors, I got cut off from everything, right,
So it was like, well, your responsibilities taking care of
our children. Now, you can go to a service if
(04:30):
you have time, but you probably won't. You have to
leave your connect group, you have to leave your connections team.
I was super isolated. I was really lonely. I started
getting super anxious and depressed. My only friend was their
two year old son, you know. But also I don't
know if you've all ever been like a nanny before,
but it's hard because you grow super attached to this
(04:52):
child and at the end of the day you have
to leave. I was also living in New York. While
I was living in Brooklyn, but super expensive. I was
not getting paid really anything. So my dad was helping
me out with my rent and it came to a
point where he was like, you know, I can't do
this anymore. I had seen the pastors, and not just
(05:13):
the Keatings, but other pastors be like really rude and demeaning,
mean to me my friends kind of like we were
just like the help. Like I remember specifically one time
I borrowed a vacuum from another family in the we
called it the compound in the apartment complex, and when
they came home, I didn't empty out the vacuum part
(05:35):
and Carlo like dumped it on the ground and was
like you need to throw this out next time, and
then like clean this up again. And so if things
weren't done the right way. Um, looking back on it,
it was abuse. Really these are supposed to be my pastors.
But honestly, like I got paid more than some of
my friends did. When we would talk and they were like,
oh my gosh, you get that much, Like wow, like
(05:57):
two hundred dollars every two weeks. There's something I don't
know if that's an exact number, but something like that
and not even forty hours a week, like more than that,
and I got paid more than a lot of my
friends did. The lawyers heard Nanni's were routinely paid below
the minimum wage, tax wasn't deducted, and overtime wasn't paid,
(06:21):
and the lawyers warned Hillsong that could be a violation
of label laws. Lawyers do law right, They're not in
the business of faith or spiritual harm. But for me,
this economic exploitation again exposes something rotten in the relationship
between Hillsong and its followers. A lot was made of
the fact that Hillsong, New York was a new campus.
(06:44):
Everyone was working hard to start a new church, and
perhaps supervision and oversight went by the wayside for a while.
You know, it was described as the wild West. But
let's get Ashley as his view on this. She's a
cult survivor and an advocate for victims of abuse in churches.
Ashley believes the fact that Hillsong, New York is just
starting out is not an excuse, and she flags up
(07:07):
that Hillsong is affiliated to a charity called One. Its
mission is to fight human trafficking, force labor, bonded labor,
and involuntary domestic servitude. When I looked at the economic exploitation.
I could not help but see parallels between what was
happening to the nanny's and the volunteers quote unquote volunteers,
(07:31):
and the things that a ministry connected with Hillsong is
supposed to be against. So labor trafficking, human trafficking is
a huge problem across the globe and is supposed to
be fighting those things. And so to find a lot
(07:54):
of the patterns that we see in labor exploitation and
traffic agging present in the church was so ironic and unsettling,
because I feel like this isn't just an organization who
oops accidentally did labor exploitation because they didn't understand the laws. Now,
(08:16):
this is an organization that new or should have known
because of the organizations that they support and claim to
have leadership really dedicated to. So a lot of times
when we think of modern day slavery, we think of,
you know, somebody's not getting paid anything at all, But
actually labor exploitation includes not being paid a living wage,
(08:41):
not being given minimum wage, not being paid over time,
those types of things. A lot of times what happens
is there will be a person who feels somehow indebted
to the person they're laboring for being paid not enough
for them to really gain financial stability to leave. And
when we look at Hillsong, we're seeing pastors saying things like,
(09:03):
you don't have a college degree, you couldn't get a
job outside of this. We have them in a position
where they feel like they're working for really low amounts
of money. Because I'm helping the ministry, I can't help
but see the overlaps between the organizations they're supposed to
(09:26):
support and then what they're actually doing in their own organizations.
And while the nunnies were being paid very little, Hillsong
inside is with sharing stories with the investigators about how
money was being spent on expensive gifts, entertaining celebrities, and
the pasta's lifestyle. Since this is a virtual interview, I'm
wearing the virtual interview uniform where I've got a color
(09:50):
on top and then jim shorts and no shoes on bottom,
just like Jesus would do. My name is Ben Kirby,
and I created this strange social media sensation called Preachers
and Sneakers where I show the high priced items that
mega church pastors where we like a bit of backstory.
(10:12):
So how did Ben get into pastors and their sneakers.
So I was by myself and I slept late on Sunday,
and being in the South, it's very like you go
to church on Sunday's if you're involved in that world,
and if you sleep through, there's some element of you
that feels a little guilty. And so even though that's
like not correct theology, that is like, you're not a
(10:33):
bad person for sleeping through church, but there is some
kind of embedded little amount of guilt that from your upbringing,
I guess, and that wasn't even instilled upon me. It
was just like, by being in this Southern church world
by proximity, there's this kind of inherent guilt if you
skip church. But that's a different conversation. But I slept
through church, and I wanted to have some type of
(10:53):
church experience, I guess, to check the box. And so
that week I had this certain Worships song stuck in
my head and I happened to just look it up
on YouTube because I was gonna watch the video and
that was it, and I noticed a worship leader, like
you know, the guy leading the band, lead singer, was
wearing a pair of Kanye's collaboration with Adidas. He was
(11:16):
wearing a pair of Yeasys, and so very quickly I
was like, oh, those are worth eight hundred bucks, and
that like stuck out to me. And I didn't care
that much about reforming modern preaching or how we present
Christianity or whatever, but I felt compelled, like like a
lot of people do, to just share it on Instagram
(11:37):
with all my millennial friends that are doing the same,
not thinking that anything's gonna happen, having no plan or
any kind of strategy or anything. And I just made
a video basically saying like, hey, how much of these
guys getting paid where you can wear a pair of
eight hundred fifty dollar shoes like it. It wasn't informed.
It was probably a little unfair where it's just like, Okay,
I've watched a three minute video and now I'm developing
(11:59):
these hot takes about this guy's footwear. Ben, my friend,
you did the world service. This quickly turned into an
account devoted to preachers wearing super expensive designer clothes. Trust me,
Hillsong Fashion, he stays and nothing on some of the
other pastors. But they did get noticed, and so it
was pretty easy at first to find plenty of examples
(12:21):
of preachers wearing the Nike Air Fear of Gods or
wearing eve St Laurent or ys L boots all the
way to Gucci sneakers and loafers and incredibly expensive jackets.
I mean, there was a whole host of things that
you know, hill Song wasn't the only ones, but they
were definitely presenting some of that same aesthetic. And so
(12:41):
I threw a few posts up there. And hill Song
is one of the more recognizable names in modern church,
and so that would always get a good amount of engagement.
And at the same time, the die hard fans of
hill Song were quick to come to their I guess defense,
And I can't say I've had many pleasant interactions with
(13:03):
people involved with that church. I'm not a brand's person,
so I couldn't tell how much their wardrobes were worth.
But other people could, like other people do no brands
and could recognize like oh oh okay Janice Lagata, remember
she was a part of Hillsong New York from the start.
(13:24):
And that's where the whole celebrity church vibe played out,
with Justin Bieber hanging out with Carl Lenz and other
famous names dropping by and the pulse the same to
channel that vibe to riding around in black SUVs with
their own drivers, wearing fancy clothes and enjoying all the
trappings of a glamorous life. And then when they would
get called up on things, you're like, oh this this
(13:45):
is an expensive watch, or you know, these shoes or whatever.
Then you know that's who's like, oh these were a
gift or just turn it back around, well, why do
you think pastors should be poor? And this is me
wanting things that I haven't earned, and I just need
to work harder and do more good things so that
I can be more blessed. And we are ill equipped
(14:09):
to critically think about things and critically argue. And even
if you could, the power dynamics are so out of
control you wouldn't. If you wanted to know how rich
Hillsong Ace Coast Waltz, you could look at it san
your report, the last one made public was for two
thousand and nineteen. It gives basic facts like how much
(14:32):
revenue was generated, how much the church spent on staging
its services, and how much it's spent on stuff, but
it's not very detailed, and churches aren't legally required to
provide much information and how many of us scrutinize our
church's balance sheets. Anyway, a new Hillsong had a lot
of money. My understanding for the first five years at
(14:55):
least was like, Oh, all of this money is coming
from the big church, like it's coming from Australia. We
are being supported by them. We are financially struggling. No
one said those exact words, but yeah, the way they
would phrase things, the way they word things. You know,
I've talked to other friends and I'm like, what did
(15:15):
you think the financial status of hill Song, New York was?
And we all just had this idea that it was
a struggling campus, right, And they would say things like, oh,
only eight of the people who attending are tithing regularly,
and so you just had this idea that, Okay, I'm tithing,
but I'm one of the few, and so I have
(15:37):
to keep doing my part because most people just aren't
pulling their weight. You know. That's another thing I think
about churches now, Why can't people know how much the
rent is on this building, how much we're paying for whatever,
and as a community make these decisions about is it
worth it? Like many churches you're expected to give temperacent
(16:01):
of your income and tides, but as Joanna said, a
lot of people don't, including me. I never gave Hillsong
one penny, one thing at least I'm happy about. But
plenty of people do pay tides, and Hillsong has strategies
to encourage some people to give a lot of their money.
I was given a document by someone who used to
(16:21):
be fairly high up in Hillsong, shall we say, and
it was about the position of a development pastor. But
as it was explained to me, it was really about
targeting high net worth individuals at the church. So the
document is written in that kind of very bland hr
language that makes it seem like it's all very above board.
(16:42):
But the person who was involved in this said that
they were told very explicitly that it was really about
finding out who the rich people were in the congregation
and working out how they could get money out of them.
You see terms like providing opportunities for the outworking of
a person's gift of generosity. This just meant fly ending
out who's got money and how much you can get
out of them, And it was about finding out what
(17:03):
they're interested in. So maybe they had a vision for
giving some sort of hearing bus in India and then
they'll name it the l Hardy hearing bus in India.
You know, as part of the cell, was this actually
about developing a hearing bus in India or is this
about growing the hillsonge brand. Yeah, And you know there's
(17:24):
this thing about blessings and whether by giving more you're
getting more spiritually. And it wasn't just rich people who
gave more and more. Here's all Odhara deal, who we
met earlier in the series. I had to realize I
had weird views about my tithing, about the way I
gave my money. I really believed I had to give
(17:44):
my money to Hillsong, And when I decided I was
going to leave the church, I was just like, oh
my god, what am I gonna do with all this
tithing money I had to give my money? Oh my god,
I don't want to lose any blessings that da da
da da. And I had to unpack that, and you know,
obviously I'm definitely not in that place anymore of the
way of view tithing, and I don't view tithing is
(18:05):
just giving money. I viewed as giving time to something
that you feel like is benefiting God in the world.
But at the time, at the end of I was
definitely like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with
all this money. And that's something that they instilled in me.
I remember when I joined Hillsong Foundation, which is another
(18:27):
part of the church where you give more than your
ten percent. I talked to someone and she was like, well,
if you just want God to bless you more, blah
blah blah, then you need to give more. And I
was just like, yeah, you know, I guess that's a
great way to look at it. Obviously I want more blessings.
(18:48):
A year and a half later, I was like, what
am I doing? Tithes are important to Hill Song, but
they're only a part of an empire that's turning over millions.
The biggerners are music sales. Then there's plenty of merge
and conferences. If it's so successful, what does that look
like in terms of money? What are the numbers? That's
(19:10):
the billion dollar question and one to which I wish
I knew the answer. So Hill Songs say that they're transparent,
they have financial returns that are audited by and Young.
One of the biggest accounting firms in the world that
they will put on their website every year. But it
doesn't go into any detail. It just tells you the
headline numbers, so revenue, assets, what they're spending on things
(19:34):
like salaries, but not how much is going to whop,
which is what I'd love to know. It's a very
handy way of saying that you're transparent while being very opaque.
But I mean we do know. For example, so the
East Coast in two thousand and nineteen probably the height
on the highest point it ever got, they were spending
about twelve million in operations each year, had about six
(19:56):
million in assets. The Australian operations there same year, we're
talking about in U s. Dollars about sixty million in
annual revenue and then millions in curclus. I think a
lot of the music arms and other churches paying back
had to come through the Australian operations, which is why
they've got a lot of money there. But you know,
(20:18):
when you're totaling up churches on every continent bringing in substantial,
probably millions each per year, I don't think it would
be difficult to argue from that that in the real peak.
Hill Song years, which I would say is two thousand
and ten to two thousand and twenty. That we're talking
in billions of dollars in US dollars. We're cycling through
(20:39):
the Hillsong brand globally, which I think is a tremendous
amount of money. I knew they had a lot of money,
I didn't know to what excet, and I always wanted
to know more, And I did learn a little bit
(21:01):
about what Josh Coimes made. It was around believe forty
thou which is not that much, but it was just
for him to spend because his housing was paid for
and with all utilities, transportation was always paid for. So
really his forty dollars was just for him to spend.
It's funny because the first thing that I can think
(21:23):
of was the and I'm sorry for the Christianity's out there,
but there's this Bible verse that talks about money being
the root of all evil, and if they're so interested
and focused on money, it says a lot about their
culture and where they're at right now. Yeah. One of
the other things which I really want to know in
(21:43):
terms of the money, that it wasn't so much just
a straight up salary. I mean, I remember Brian Houston
used to publish his way way back in the day,
you know, like fifteen years ago or something, and it
was a few hundred thousands, but eventually he wound up
not just a few hundred thousand, just a few hundred thousand. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
fifteen years ago as well. Um, oh my god. But
(22:06):
you know, comparatively saying hey, I'm not one of these
preachers with a private jet, and and sort of trying
to to play it that way because he didn't want
to buy one, because he could afford it for sure. Yeah,
but he went on to say, I think that he
wasn't taking a salary, you know, a bit like a
bit like President Trump. And it's sort of like, but
your brand recognition for want of the better term is
(22:27):
so big now, But what so many of the passes
and people that were able to climb the Hillsong ladder
got It wasn't just in your pay packet. It was
you know, for example, if you've been a producer on
any Hillsong songs or records, you're getting a cut of
the royalties. But it's books, it's speaking to us. And
when Hillsong was really at its peak, I mean some
(22:48):
of like Carl Lents going to conventions in the States,
he would have commanded tens of thousands per appearance. And
I mean that's how Brian was making his money was
in book sales and music royalties and appearances and then
building themselves up and building their own celebrities so that
they could just make untold riches and then you can say,
I'm not taking this out of the collection plate. You know,
people are willingly paying me. They look in some ways
(23:10):
more ethical than other churches through this very kind of
bizarre business model. So it's fascinating to see how they
even use their same brand and the church for their
own marketing and their own business. Yeah. Well, I mean
you would have seen the merchandise stands and things like
that at the conference. I would set them up, not
our conference, but at church. Yeah, every Sunday there was
(23:32):
a merch table. I mean it was so baked into
the business model. You know, we were talking about, you know,
if Josh is only getting forty grand a year, but
you know he's getting his kids nannied for free, and
and there was this weird kind of trying to think
of the right word because I'm not sure if it's obsession,
but just this drive to constantly use the free labor
(23:52):
volunteer pool. It was just finding new and bizarre ways
to put these people to work. It was just a
really is our culture that came in and I mean
I don't need to tell you about it, but just
that constantly that everything they did, you know, and just
feeding this constant growth had to be done by free
volunteer labor. My name is Barry Bowen. I'm an investigator
(24:19):
of religious financial fraud. I worked for Trinity Foundation, a
watchdog organization based in Dallas, Texas. I grew up in
South Louisiana and my dad was a minister. And in
the nineteen eighties there was a big scandal involving a
televangel's pastor about ninety minutes drive from where I lived,
a guy named Jimmy Swaggered. And then around two thousand
(24:43):
three or four, I was flipping through a TV channels
one day and I came across a televangelist and fundraising mode. Um.
It was a guy named Mike Murdoch, and he said
on TV, so a seat on your credit card and
God will erase your credit card debt. Basically, he's telling
donors give a donation with the credit card, and God's
(25:04):
going to wipe out your credit card debt. And when
I heard him say that, as like you're lying to people.
That's fraud and I'm gonna take you down. We asked
Barry Bowen to look at the allegations as surfaced in
the lawyer's investigation at Hillsong New York. Here's his opinion
on how transparent and Hillsong finances are. So they created
a newsroom to deal with some of them media issues,
(25:27):
and so their newsroom on their website they have an
article and I just wanted to read this to you.
In the past few months, we've received questions from several
journalists about the purported misuse of church funds by Hillsong
Church employees. In many cases, inaccurate accounts from extremely unreliable
sources have been reported as if they are true. Hillsong
(25:48):
Church has a record of excellence and fiscal accountability globally
and an unwavering commitment to financial integrity, with numerous structures
and auditing procedures in place to protect against misuse. Talk
about spin, there's a difference between good policies and good systems.
(26:08):
Hillsongs policies are good, but are they followed is the question.
Sometimes the only way to know that they're not being
followed is if whistleblower surface. And in the case of Hillsong,
New York, what we do have is the Louis Report,
which flagged up areas of concern involving pastas and church funds.
(26:29):
That report reveals a totally different picture from what the
Hillsong newsroom is reporting that there were definitely red flags.
There were misuse of PEX cards. These are rechargeable like
debit cards. Money can be pun on them and spent
by an employee of the church, and according to insiders,
(26:52):
these were used to pay for gifts, for clothing, for food,
and a According to some of the insiders, these expenses
were not reimbursed. Basically, in a normal church setting, when
an employee uses church funds for personal expenses, they're required
(27:14):
to reimburse it and the employee must provide receipts to
the church finance office. If they're not providing receipts, how
do you know if it's a personal expense or church expense?
And this was the big problem. One of the insiders
at Hillsong revealed that the receipts. In some cases it
didn't exist. It is very careless. It borders on criminal.
(27:42):
And the reason I can say that is when you
make these kind of personal spends on a church card
and you don't reimburse the church, then you're profiting off
the church. This should be considered income. It's time exable income.
If it's not reported, are not reimbursed. And there were
(28:05):
other areas too, what's called self dealing. Very explains. Self
dealing occurs when you have a person that owns a
for profit company and also runs a nonprofit organization and
they do business with each other. This is not illegal
in the United States unless you excessively profit off the
nonprofit organization. So we see this often among televangelists. They
(28:30):
will own their own publishing company and they'll publish their
books their DVDs and sell them to their church or ministry.
And now if they're selling their book at full retail
price to their church or ministry, that's taking advantage of
the nonprofit. It should be discounted. It should be host
sale price. One of the problems in these type of
(28:50):
business relationships is a pastor can set up a company
and charge a consulting fee to his church or ministry.
A pastor can own the copyright of his sermons and
then license them to his church. In fact, Carl Lentz,
his dad is an attorney, Stephen Lenz. Stephen Lentz wrote
(29:11):
a book The Business of Church, and he advised pastors
on how to license intellectual property rights to their church.
There's all kinds of ways to make money off of churches.
This is just one example. In the case of Hillsong,
one of the pastors and his wife Can and Carla
Keating at Hillsong, New York City. They operated a coffee
(29:33):
shop and the hill Song had a Bible study group
meet there, and it was alleged that these PEX cards
were used in the course of their coffee shop business,
so that would be a clear conflict of interest. Kine
and Collacating told the lawyers their coffee shop was used
for the church meetings, and Kine believed he would have
(29:55):
used the church cod that but Karla said she was
unaware of a church cod that was used unless it
was for church catering. So these details matter. What about
the bigger picture? How was Hillsong East Coast spending the
money it raised? How much was spent on its primary purpose,
which is to reach and influence the world by building
a large, Christ centered, Bible based church. Here's Barry Bowen
(30:19):
again analyzing one of these reports. I was able to
determine that approximately seventy of the funds were spent on
the reported purpose of Hillsong. And this is really important
to understand. There's charity Navigator that advised donors to look
(30:39):
for organizations that at least seventy five percent of all
funds are spent on the purpose of the organization. If
you're spending more than on fundraising, you're not spending on
your purpose. If the reporting is accurate, then hill Song
(31:00):
is a good steward of the money that's given. However,
I have questions that I wonder if their documents are
actually accurate, if there are a proper representation at how
money is actually spent. For example, these PEX card abuses
are those properly reported? I doubt they were. And this
(31:23):
is the information that I would like to know about Hillsong.
How much is your chief financial officer paid? How much
are your head pastors paid? That kind of information is
critical for concerned donors. One of the things that we're
interested in is excessive compensation. We do not want nonprofit
leaders getting rich off of their tax exempt status. In
(31:45):
the next episode, l heads to Australia. This is where
the Hillsong Empire started and where founder Brian Houston has
been living a life fit for a preacher king, and
it is where a bomb is about to go off
under Hillsong finances as a whistleblower takes the church to court.
This is the closest that we've gotten yet to looking
at Hillsong's books, and this is just dynamite. The one
(32:08):
thing that anyone that's looked into Hillsong over the last
ten twenty years has been trying to find out is
how much money is there and where's it going
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