Ben Houston, son of Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston, recently joined Carl Lentz on his “Lights On” show to discuss their time at Hillsong, the fallout of their departures from the church, mental health, and navigating a way forward.
Houston and Lentz first became friends while attending Hillsong College. Lentz went on to found Hillsong’s New York congregation in 2010, and Houston founded Hillsong Los Angeles in 2014. Neither Houston nor Lentz is still a part of Hillsong Church.
For Lentz’s part, his tenure at the church ended in 2020 amid scandal—one of the first in a wave of major scandals that has plagued the church in recent years.
Throughout the conversation, the two described the mixed emotions they feel when they think about their former church.
“I think it’s hard right now in this season to talk about certain aspects, because I think of 40 years of Hillsong Church,” Houston said. “I think about the best of the best. It has been my entire life, and I am so grateful to God to be a part of what we were a part of and just to see what God did. It was unbelievable.”
“But we talk now,” he continued, “after a couple of years, a few years, of turmoil and all this, and it just makes me sad on one hand…because it’s so easy to get caught up in certain aspects of things and lose sight of all of the good.”
While Houston clarified that he is not seeking to “belittle anything of where someone was hurt or where someone was betrayed or let down,” he said that when it comes to his time at Hillsong, he “wouldn’t change anything.”
Similarly, Lentz said that he wants to remember his time at Hillsong for “the whole body of work that we were a part of” rather than the pain of his public scandal.
“I don’t want to get trapped as a prisoner in the moment of that crisis,” Lentz said. “Doesn’t mean that you minimize the pain. It just means that we’re human beings.”
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“When people ask me about Hillsong Church, they want me to rip it to shreds. And I’m like, ‘I can’t do it, man. I hate to break it to you; it’s really not that special,” Lentz said. “What happened to start it wasn’t that special; God breathed on it. And how that last chapter ended—not that special.”
