Hillsong Church - pay to pray

 

Photo Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

Saw a documentary the other day that made me so angry.

It was about Hillsong church, a church for young people at the go. A very trendy and hip church.

The frightening thing about the church was that the leaders of the church were living the good life with nice cars and nice houses and talking about how generous God has been to them.

But the truth was that they were living on the members of the church's gifts.

They were preaching about the goodness in giving, even the Sunday school was preaching about giving money, to the children. They learned that giving money to the church makes you closer to God, to children!

The intention of the Church could have been good at the beginning but had grown to an industry with churches around the World. From one church in Australia to churches in 30 countries. They have also used the concept of having celebrities like Justin Bieber and others, probably well paid, as members to attract other young members.

It is built on voluntary work and many people participated in that.

I understand the need for some people to feel a belonging to something. If you have had a bad life and someone opens the door for you and lets you in. It must be a great feeling.

But these churches, there are many like this, are making a profit from people's needs rather than helping them.

The Church of Scientology is also an example of that.

The "preachers" are using cliches from the podium and talk about the goodness God has given to them. Sure, they have got a good life. The volunteers work for nothing with the belief that that good life will also come to them one day.

For some, perhaps it will, but most of them will have the same life as they always have had.

Ok, they can help drug addiction or alcoholism at one point. From drug addiction to God addiction. Addiction is addiction.

And there are many other ways for addicts to get help and it looked like they didn't have a plan to help people. More than prayers. There are better ways to help where you don't have to donate a lot of money.

Their preaching feels very shallow and built around cliches. Many of the leading figures seem to not know much about the Bible they are preaching from. They know some of the written words but not the depth of them. One of the staff didn't even know about Judas and what he stands for. I am not a religious person, not in that meaning anyway, but I know the story of Judas at least.

The whole church is built around a pop culture with cool clothes and a cool style.

They even, and that is scary, said that they could heal cancer and other diseases by prayers.

Cheat on people's needs.

It is so shameful.

And everything was about money, giving was the giving of money. And the more the members give the closer they will be to God. 

Profit on people's needs.

It has been criticized to have a sect status. If you want to leave the church, people from the church are ghosting you to have you back. Sometimes for years. Many defectors also talk about a silent culture in the church.

Hillson has grown from one church too many churches with around 150000 visitors every week.

Criticism has also been given to overworked volunteers. And the tribute to beautiful people. Those who stand at the podium are always beautiful and mostly white men. Coloured are not so common, but now a black priest has been authorized in the USA, due to the criticism.  

The members have to give one-tenth of their income to the church. And every Sunday they have to give money if they visit the sermon. It is a lot of money in the end. And none of them ends up at the volunteer's hand. 

An industry of believers to grow bigger and bigger and, sadly, there must be a need for churches like Hillson, some sort of emptiness and loneliness is hanging over many people and a search for context in their life.

The leader of the church gave me a feeling of greedy persons with false smiles and as far as I know, is greedy one of the Seven deadly sins.