A recent article in the Weekend Australian newspaper turns the heat up on Brian Houston’s jet setting lifestyle built on the foundation of his father’s child rapes…
(Photos, links, and snide remarks added.)
Tax Funded Globetrotter: Brian Houston
Hillsong boss back to face the music
By John Ferguson, Weedkend Australian, 19 Oct 2019
The globetrotting lifestyle of Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston is revealed in his communications with the faithful. But the church has failed to explain how Mr Houston’s adventures across many countries are being funded or how much he is being paid.
Mr Houston returns to Australia at the weekend and parishioners have been told he is likely to attend Sunday services. It is expected he will face questioning in Australia over claims the US rejected him as a guest of President Donald Trump at a White House function with Scott Morrison.
Mr Houston, who is under police investigation over his handling of historical child sex abuse committed by his father, communicates regularly via Instagram with his followers in the church, posting travelogue photographs of his movements. Police inquiries relate to abuse of children by his father, Frank. It was reported on by the child sex abuse royal commission.
Since March 30, Mr Houston has posted visits by him and wife Bobbie to cities and countries including London, Wales, Italy, Germany, New York, Paris and Nazareth. At least one of those postings related to a trip with a family member.
The Weekend Australian is not suggesting Mr Houston, a close friend of the Prime Minister, is doing anything wrong by travelling the world, [pffft… I am] in many cases coinciding with church events, but the church has declined to say how the trips have been funded.
The Weekend Australian was this week denied an interview with the evangelist. A spokesman said there had been strong international growth in the church requiring his travel.
In 2010, Mr Houston and the church provided a detailed breakdown of what he and Bobbie were earning. Back then, he earned a total of $300,000, plus the use of a luxury car, making him one of the world’s highest-paid pastors. Hillsong has been under pressure over its overt emphasis on materialism as a reward for faith.
Praying for more wealth… to fund those monthly overseas trips…
Mr Morrison has declined to comment further on his relationship with Mr Houston.
Churchgoers in Melbourne were told last Sunday that Mr Houston was due back in Australia by the weekend after three months overseas. The church is increasingly influential on a global scale, attracting millions of listeners to its religious music and an estimated 130,000 people attend services weekly around the world.
NSW police confirmed this week they were still investigating Mr Houston’s handling of child sex abuse offences committed by his father, who died in 2004. Frank Houston was a serial sex abuser and one of his victims, Brett Sengstock, 58, is fighting Brian Houston over the issue.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/09/23/hillsong-brian-houston-scott-morrison/
Hillsong and Brian Houston stridently maintain the Hillsong leader has done nothing wrong, claiming he acted in the best interests of the boy repeatedly abused by Frank Houston in 1970. Hillsong had then not been formed [yes it had – it just changed names] — Brian Houston, head of the Assemblies of God from 1997 to 2009, founded Hillsong in 1983.
With the support of Greens MP David Shoebridge, Mr Sengstock is not surrendering. “I am looked at like a leper,’’ he said. “They just hammered me. He (Brian Houston) just wiped me.’’
The child sex abuse royal commission found in 2015 that Mr Houston and his then church executive failed Mr Sengstock.
Brett Sengstock who was repeatedly raped by Frank Houston from age 7 years