Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed

The first episode was powerful, especially the focus on how worship music is designed to provoke an emotional response that congregations interpret as divine (especially as a former worship leader). Afterwards, it felt so drawn out and had a few cringey interviews with petty arguments. Very frustrating to watch the majority of people escape this cult yet still cling to Christianity...

It feels incomplete. No info about how much money Carl, Brian or the church made. Is it exempt from taxes, if so, how did they manage and go about with the IRS? Nothing about Bonnie, Brian's wife or Carl's wife, how did these two profit from the church? Apparently Bonnie was preaching. Where is Carl these days, where did he end up and with what fortune? It's not very in depth. They idea was good, the beginning was promising and then it just felt like it lacked in information. It needed more.

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.

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.