In the Sydney Morning Herald today:
Hillsong on a mission to spread the word north
SYDNEY, London, Kiev, Paris, Cape Town, Stockholm, Moscow … and now Brisbane.
The languid Queensland capital has become the latest stop in Brian and Bobbie Houston’s odyssey to franchise their pentecostal Hillsong Church around the world.
Mr Houston has resigned as president of the Australian Christian Churches, a position he held for 12 years, to focus on the “multisite” expansion of Hillsong. And that, coupled with the controversial move interstate, has prompted speculation that Hillsong is ramping up its domestic network of churches, ready to pounce on churches struggling amid the global financial crisis.
Garden City Christian Church on Brisbane’s southside will be renamed Hillsong Brisbane Campus and the Houstons installed as senior pastors there on May 24, after 79 per cent of Garden City members voted in favour of the takeover.
For more read here.
I can remember first visiting them when they were running out of a warehouse in Baulkham Hills. I wonder how this development is going to effect Assemblies of God in Australia. Could this one church (21,000 members in Sydney alone) one day dwarf the denomination (215,000 Australia wide)?
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Curious Christian 
This is one of those topics I personally struggle with greatly. I can’t speak to the specifics of the Hillsong case (and I hope you’ll forgive me if I”m a bit skeptical about taking CT’s account of the situation at face value), so I’m going to have to speek in more general terms.
On an intellectual level, I tend to believe that people have the right to hold any view they want when it comes to homosexuality and even express that view as appropriate. But as someone who has gone through some extremely trying times due to spending a childhood surrounded by people who held that view and expressed that view — even if only on rare occasion — I tend to get very edgy about the whole idea on an emotional level.
I also admit that in my opinion, some Christians have a strange idea of what it means to express their views on this subject. For example, I’m dumbfounded by the fact that a good number of Christians publicly condemn the Day of Silence — an event meant to raise awareness of and combat anti-gay bullying — as “promoting a pro-gay agenda.”
It’s kind of hard to be okay with people expressing a “negative” view of homosexuality when a seemingly significant number of people who wish to do so seem all too ready to overlook or downplay gay people’s basic humanity and worth in the process.
So yeah, I’m kind of torn on the subject.
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oops. commented on wrong post. sorry about that.
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No worries Jarred. Saw your post on the homosexual issues elsewhere.
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