Hillsong Church at a Glance

What is Hillsong Church like, beyond all the music we know and love?

The 30-year story of Hillsong Church is fascinating. I’ve had several reporters ask about it lately, including for this story, so we’ve been putting together something of a fact sheet. I’ll probably add more thoughts on Hillsong later. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.

I asked my team to put together a briefing for me about the church to prepare me for the recent interviews. Here’s what they included at the top of the briefing, focused on the high points, and edited into an article.

Brian and Bobbie Houston founded Hills Christian Life Centre in Sydney in 1983 as a congregation of 45. With the popularity and brand of the world-famous Hillsong music, the church changed its name to Hillsong Church in 1999—the music renamed the church.

Currently, almost 100,000 people worship at Hillsong campuses around the globe.

It’s quite a fascinating phenomenon that warrants a discussion of what they’ve done to see such dramatic growth.

The Numbers

Hillsong looks like many other megachurches: contemporary worship, informal preaching, specific strategy for their vision, multiple locations, state-of-the-art technology, and a dynamic leader. What’s remarkable about Hillsong—among other things—is that Hillsong is in Australia, which is not exactly an evangelical bastion. Having 30,000 people on a weekend in Dallas is noteworthy. Having 30,000 people in Australia was inconceivable—until Hillsong.
In 2011, nearly one out of every three Australians said their religious affiliation was either “no religion” or not stated (it’s about 20% in the U.S.). As I said in the RNS article, “In a country where 55,000 people indicated ‘Jedi’ …