Disgraced Hillsong founder Brian Houston has sent an email to Hillsong Church members apologising for his actions amid extraordinary revelations of the church’s ruthless business practices in the United States — including imposing non-disclosure agreements on pastors as it enforces secrecy around its operations.

Houston resigned from the church last week after revelations of his behaviour with two women, and said he was “deeply sorry” for the pain he had caused. 

He praised his wife, Bobbie, who he said was “the most Christ-like, beautiful, loyal and faithful person alive today”.

“As hollow as it may sound, I believe I am the person and pastor you believed me to be,” he wrote. “Imperfect and flawed, but genuinely passionate about God, people, calling and life. I am determined that my mistakes will not define me.”

He lamented that this was “not the way I imagined it to end” and at the same time he suggested it might not be over after all.

“Bobbie and I are unified and we are believing together that this year will be a year of respite and restoration to our souls as I continue to prepare to fight for my innocence in the legal proceedings ahead of me,” he wrote.

“I still have a sense of bright hope for the future and I know God is not finished with me yet. We have no intention of retiring. As Bobbie would say: ‘The final chapters of our lives are not yet written.’ ”  

NDAs and non-compete clauses

Houston’s message of contrition and hope is at odds with revelations coming from the US which outline for the first time the cold tactics Hillsong deploys in building and controlling its empire.

Influential Phoenix pastor Terry Crist, who broke ranks with Hillsong this week, has effectively blown the whistle on Hillsong’s business model which has seen hundreds of millions of dollars slosh through a multinational network of churches that enjoy tax-exempt status in jurisdictions such as Australia, the US and the UK.

He has also detailed the lengths Hillsong went to to exert control over individual churches in the face of moral and financial scandals.

Crist revealed that senior Hillsong pastors were “suddenly asked” recently to sign non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements. The “non-competes” would forbid pastors from setting up a rival church in the same community for at least 12 months.

“Some of us couldn’t do that in good conscience,” he said.

Crist said Hillsong had refused to allow his church to set up a local board of governance which included one or two non-Hillsong pastors “for the sake of accountability by non-vested pastors who have nothing to lose by speaking truth to power”. This was to protect his church against “scandals and lawsuits”.

He had been told Hillsong had an “all or nothing” position on the negotiations: “We had to allow the global board to govern our church and to own our properties or we had to leave.”

Reacting to the scandals that had engulfed Hillsong, Crist called on the church to conduct an investigation into its board and to dismiss any board members “who had protected the institution and not the people”.

“We have to get it right and when secular corporations are more transparent than the church and when secular boards hold their employees and boards to a higher standard of accountability, we have failed,” Crist said.