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