Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed

Being a person that grew up on churches myself I found this series to be really accurate and helpful for those who are blind enough not to understand the problem with mega churches like Hillsong.

It explained almost every single problem with this company. And that right there gained my respect.

It's also a story about most mega churches and churches who strive to be mega themselves. I've been a part of two different ones in the past 15 years and it's the same story as far as the money and notoriety, the covering up of misdoings, etc.

I thought the story was well told, including different perspectives from real people at different locations. It shows how the culture from the "top" is inoculated in all of the other branches regardless of geography.

I also have to add that the music from Hillsong has really touched so many people around the world, myself included. I still listen to them from time to time and I'm grateful for it. That part of the doc didn't really affect me so much, though I can see how it would bother people. I don't have a problem with churches finding avenues to increase income when they're actually doing good work to help the less fortunate people in the world. Unfortunately, many times, this just isn't the case.

When a church is more concerned with how their "campus" looks than how their city looks, that's where the problem is. When the church people begin to worship their pastor and leadership, this is also a problem. That's what has happened with Hillsong and so many other large churches. It's nauseating and infuriating.

This documentary did a good job on the exploration of cases of sexual misconduct, sexual abuse and the subsequent appalling behaviour by the church. However there were hours of minor complaints and whining for reasons often never properly explained. I would have liked to see in-depth reporting on the mechanics of how the whole thing operates, the churches prosperity preaching techniques and how they extract $$$ from their parishioners among other things.

I didn't feel like this documentary was very well put together. The people they interviewed was more about quantity and not quality.

When there was an interesting storyline, it quickly moved on to the next topic.

This film details the dehumanizing descent of Hillsong's evangelical entrepreneurship journey, but it's not exposing a "scandal", it's simply revealing the culture within organized religion, over and over once again. Abuse, gaslighting, victim blaming, public shaming - all are elements within not only this mega church culture, but can also found within the smaller, localized, wannabe mega church. Because this is the model - the blueprint. The only thing sensational about this story is the name Hillsong and the fame of Carl Lentz.