Hillsong payment to Church of the Highlands pastor Chris Hodges ‘curious,’ Australian lawmaker says

AL.com, Alabama/March 23, 2023

By Anna Claire Vollers

Alabama Church of the Highlands pastor Chris Hodges was mentioned by name in an Australian parliamentary session, amid questions about an international megachurch’s lavish and allegedly fraudulent spending.

An Australian legislator called a $10,000 payment from global megachurch network Hillsong Inc. to Hodges “curious.”

Andrew Wilkie, an independent member of the Australian Parliament, claimed on March 9 that the Australia-based Hillsong had engaged in fraud, money laundering and tax evasion, based on a set of financial and business records he said were leaked by a Hillsong whistleblower.

During his speech to Parliament, Wilkie mentioned a number of financial transactions he found concerning.

“There were also the curious payments of $10,000 each to (New Zealand megachurch pastor) Paul de Jong and Chris Hodges, the external pastors who investigated allegations of (Hillsong founder) Brian Houston’s 2019 sexual misconduct in a Sydney hotel room involving a female parishioner,” Wilkie told Australian Parliament. It’s unclear if the amounts were calculated in Australian or U.S. dollars.

Wilkie said the leaked documents show hundreds of thousands of dollars in church donations were spent on honorariums and airfare for visiting U.S. evangelists like Joyce Meyer and T.D. Jakes as part of a reciprocal scheme in which Houston traveled to American churches and received his own “eye-watering honorariums.”

Under Australian law, Wilkie said, it could be illegal for charitable organizations to send payments overseas or to claim certain types of payments as tax-deductible.

Wilkie also accused Hillsong leadership of lavish spending “that would embarrass a Kardashian,” saying Houston and others dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax-exempt church funds on luxury trips, private jets, designer clothes and cash gifts to church board members. He said Hillsong earns $80 million more in annual income than it publicly reports.

An Australian agency that regulates nonprofits has said it will investigate the claims.

Hillsong leadership has disputed Wilkie’s characterization. In a statement, Hillsong said the allegations arose last year during “an employment related court case by an employee” and had already been investigated by a forensic accounting firm.

When AL.com reached out to Hodges for comment, a representative of the church responded and declined to provide one at this time but said the request had been forwarded to the church’s Board of Trustees.

Brian Houston founded Hillsong in the 1980s with wife Bobbie and expanded the evangelical powerhouse to locations in more than 30 countries. He resigned his position as head pastor last year after a Hillsong investigation found evidence of misconduct with two female parishioners.

Wilkie said Hodges was involved in the investigation, which was carried out by an “integrity unit appointed by the global board” of Hillsong, according to a Hillsong statement from last March.

Hillsong’s financial records, which AL.com obtained from the Australian Parliament’s website, appear to show that Hillsong paid Hodges $10,000 in March 2019, on a list of expenses titled “Senior Pastor Donation Expenses.” The page also lists a $10,000 payment to De Jong, as well as payments in various amounts to other pastors and ministries between 2018-2020. The document doesn’t list what the payments are for, other than to say “Donations are distributed to the following organisation/people (sic) for their ministries.”

Hillsong frequently pays honorariums to guest speakers and Hodges did speak at the Hillsong Conference in 2019, an annual event that draws crowds of more than 30,000 people to Sydney.

Other documents also show Hillsong paid Hodges a $20,000 honorarium plus airfare and accommodations for being a guest speaker in 2012.

Hodges has had close ties with Hillsong and Houston for more than a decade.

At the Hillsong Conference in 2018, Hodges told the crowd that he counted the Houstons as “some of my closest ministry friends” and called Brian Houston one of his heroes. Hodges told the audience he’d attended nearly every Hillsong Conference since 2008. Hodges’ son David also worked briefly as a youth minister at Hillsong Church in Los Angeles.

The financial documents also show that Church of the Highlands paid $15,000 for Houston to speak at the church in September 2016. The Association of Related Churches, the global church planting network cofounded by Hodges and currently headed by Highlands pastor Dino Rizzo, paid more than $30,000 for Houston to speak at several ARC conferences.

Hillsong’s new global senior pastor Phil Dooley said in a statement that as a result of the new allegations of financial misconduct outlined by Wilkie, Hillsong would commission “a third-party evaluation of its financial structure and processes,” and that the global organization has already made operational changes over the past year.

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