AUSTRALIA
Christian Today
Carey Lodge
Senior pastor of Hillsong, Brian Houston, is expected to give evidence during a national inquiry into the way in which churches dealt with allegations of sex abuse against his father, Frank Houston, and two other leaders, the Guardian reports.
Australia’s sex abuse royal commission is to examine how the Australian Christian Churches (ACC) movement, formerly Assemblies of God, handled the allegations when they came to light in 2000.
Originally trained as a Salvation Army officer, Frank Houston later became a Pentecostal Christian pastor in the Assemblies of God church. He founded the Sydney Christian Life Centre, which was in 1999 merged with his son Brian’s church – Hills Christian Life Centre, now known as Hillsong.
He is therefore credited with building a movement that became one of the largest megachurches in the world.
Before his death in 2004, aged 82, Frank Houston confessed to sexually abusing a boy in New Zealand three decades earlier, and was immediately removed from ministry by Brian.
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