People in Glass Houses

by Tanya Levin

  Not Hillsong. They don’t even have to pay the performers, or hire a studio. Hillsong is the production house. The majority of the musicians and production technicians are volunteers. The live audiences pay to be a part of the recording. Hillsong is the artist, the record company, the publisher, the distributor and the retailer.

  The workers don’t get paid and no tax is paid on any of these stages of production, the way any other guitarist or band would have to.

  Songwriter royalties, the only copyright that needs paying, and some production expenses are subtracted. Apart from that, Hillsong gets all the profit. And it’s all tax-free!

  Imagine if you could run a financial institution under these conditions. You can and the AoG does. On the Australian Assemblies of God website, an investment account is advertised brightly fl ashing higher interest rates than competitor banks. Lower interest rates on home loans might be helped by the tax breaks as well as the supportive attendance of the prime minister and the federal treasurer at the primary place of business.

  Yet in the terms and conditions on the application form it says that ‘the AoG Development fund is designed for investors who wish to promote the charitable and religious purposes of the Assemblies of God in Australia and for whom the considerations of profit are not of primary relevance’. Of course not.

  ‘All profits derived from the activities of the AoG Development fund are used for the wider work of the Assemblies of God in Australia.’

  The next point concedes that ‘such investments are not specifically secured’ but are underwritten by the AoG. The AoG Development Fund is not subject to the normal requirement to have a prospectus and trust deed under Corporations Law, and this scheme has not been examined or approved by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. In 2004, there was $19.4 million invested in an underwriting body whose annual report for 2003 reveals a surplus of $63,000 in 2003 and net assets of $288,531, compared with a loss of $1 million in 2002.

  An organisation or individual needs a thousand dollars minimum to invest. It’s not actually a secured investment, but the Assemblies of God guarantees your money so there’s no need for that governmental rigmarole. Despite the fl ashing interest rates, by the time you get down to the fine print you understand that this is not a money-making enterprise, no way. It is an opportunity to invest in the work of the Lord. Unfortunately for most of the population, you have to be a Christian in order to take advantage of this offer. That may seem simple to most, but you have to have an affiliation with a Christian church in Australia.

  This company has also branched out into mortgages and superannuation. No tax. All completely legal. The fund reserves the right to refuse investment with anyone. The amassing of Christian wealth has begun.

  The investments are said to be low risk and high liquidity, such as fleet cars and real estate. It’s not clear how many properties are owned by the pastors in the church’s names. Or in one of the business’s names. Hillsong runs too many other companies and incorporated associations to list. Some, such as Colour Your World, don’t seem to be registered businesses at all, while others such as Australian Christian Women NSW Incorporated don’t seem to do anything at all except organise conferences, yet they are entitled to all the charitable tax concessions.

  Leadership Ministries Incorporated (LMI) is the incorporated association through which Brian and Bobbie’s pay is channelled. LMI manages the Houstons’ properties. Having at least twice sold real estate to their own company, they make a tax-free profit on properties they can keep using. There is also a Life Ministries Inc. in Western Australia which receives the same tax concessions.

  Educational institutions are, as mentioned, also exempt from sales tax. Any church, or even an ice-skating rink, could be used as a bible college auditorium either now or in the future. Thus, any purchases made on behalf of this college are also tax-free.

  Which is strange given that Hillsong rents its current meeting place out to corporate companies privately.

  If you have a ministry of your own externally, say, youth or missions, and you had come up with a really cool idea, your merchandising products bought by the church are tax-free. The profits are received back into the ministries, and still no tax.

  These are just the formalities. The straight job, as it were, what you put down on paper. But it’s the chickenfeed. Everybody knows moonlighting’s where the money is.

  When a pastor preaches at his own church, he earns his weekly salary. When he preaches at someone else’s, he gets a traditional ‘love offering’ as well. The love offering stems from the days when evangelists travelled in faith, not knowing where they might rest their heads that night or how they might feed the new baby.

  Because of the sacrificial life they were leading, a visit to your church obviously cost them. The congregation was always happy to dig deep after their tithes, to give a love offering for the visiting pastor. It is still a common practice.

  The love offering is pocketed. No one sees it. And the favour will be returned when the hosts appear at the visitor’s home church. It’s the main reason evangelists travel as often as they can and why they have so many close friends.

  Hillsong is indeed a registered company. Its board of directors is the eldership of the church. Brian presides over both, and the Gloria Jean’s boss Nabi Saleh is now a clear second. There is nothing on paper to link Gloria Jean’s to Hillsong apart from Nabi Saleh himself.

  Gloria Jean’s is one of Australia’s most recent business success stories. Founders Nabi Saleh and Peter Irvine met at Hillsong and decided to open a coffee chain. Their timing was impeccable.

  With smoking and drinking receding from the picture in these healthy days, especially for born-again Christians, coffee has taken the cultural place of the smoke break and even lunch. Being able to make a cup of coffee is now a very employable skill.

  Which is why Gloria Jean’s has opened up an outlet at a women’s prison that specialises in programs of rehabilitation. Visitors to the jail can buy a full-priced cup of coffee from an inmate who is on wages of about fifty cents an hour. These women are trained up so that on release they are able to get jobs with Gloria Jean’s, having graduated from a very cheap traineeship. Gloria Jean’s also sponsors Mercy Ministries, Hillsong’s young women’s rehab, where ‘girls in trouble’ (or who have ‘been involved in lesbianism’) can get help. There’s no better place than a jail to recruit ‘girls in trouble’ or train the unemployable for future use, at almost no cost. And of course it offers these women the opportunity to become part of the family that Nabi Saleh says you join when you work for Gloria Jean’s.

  I contacted the jail’s governor and expressed my concern about the recruitment opportunities for the mob from Gloria Jean’s, given the connection with Hillsong. After many weeks, I received a clarification. It wasn’t that Gloria Jean’s had anything to do with Hillsong; it was just that the owners of the particular franchise at the jail attended Hillsong. Sheer coincidence.

  There are rumours that Hillsong members get the best franchise locations, but these have never been officially confirmed.

  Surely it pays to be part of two families, not just one.

  Gloria Jean’s sponsors Opportunity International, which is behind the micro-enterprise agreements that are operating around Australia and in countries in which foreign gods are worshipped.

  The United Nations declared 2005 the year of micro-enterprise, and the federal government in Australia wasted no time in endorsing it. The idea is that a big company with lots of money offers people who have no hope of starting their own business a little bit of money to do it. The individual can then become self-sufficient, with a debt to the big company. Labor MP Warren Snowdon described some of the results:

  Hillsong Emerge spent $315,000 from a federal government grant to employ seven people for a microcredit program in Sydney that gave just six Indigenous people a loan. The total grant for the microcredit program was $965,421, with ninety-three borrowers across Australi
a. Only $362,673 of the grant ended up in the hands of Indigenous borrowers.

  The sum of $610,000 was also spent by Hillsong on projects for ‘business development’ and ‘self-confidence for young women’ in Sydney, which was supposed to help Indigenous people find employment.

  Answers to questions asked by the federal shadow minister for indigenous affairs, Senator Chris Evans, reveal that, from seventy-four clients, Hillsong Emerge advise that to their knowledge ‘none of those assisted have moved to full self-employment’.1

  *

  None of this would ever have been possible without the original sponsors: the tithers. The Old Testament practice of tithing has kept the pastors in frequent flyer points from here to eternity.

  Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.

  But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’

  In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it.

  Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty. (Malachi 3:8–12) Malachi, Malachi, Malachi. An international revolution based on five verses in Malachi.

  What we were taught was that you better give unless you want to steal from God himself. Plus when you give, God will pour out blessings on you. Easy as pie. If the payout was never guaranteed, there was a clear answer to this. When you sow into something, the harvest doesn’t come overnight. You don’t plant an avocado seed and expect to find avocadoes the next morning. The Lord doesn’t reward impatience. Oh, and the longer you wait, the bigger your harvest will be.

  To tithe literally means to give a tenth. This is a complicated Old Testament practice, relevant to certain tribes of Israel. It was never for every man, woman and child, despite being heralded as such by the prosperity proponents. The understanding at Hill-song and in churches like it around the world is that each person should tithe whatever they receive as income. Pocket money, babysitting earnings, wages, Christmas bonuses, all before tax.

  One must give one’s first fruits to God, not the tax department.

  Tithing is not just for individuals. Ten per cent pretax of what every tiny church makes in the weekly offering goes back to the head office of the Assemblies of God. This is called the National Executive expense account and is used accordingly for the members of the team to travel. It’s an expensive role to go around gathering up love offerings, and it’s impossible on a meagre pastor’s salary.

  Offerings are money you want to give above and beyond your tithe. This may be a general offering, or for a specific purpose such as the building fund, overseas missions or a love offering.

  Sacrificial offerings occur when the pastor believes that it is appropriate for you to go without something to support a cause.

  It often comes across as a privilege to be involved in such a special project, such as a building or outreach, and people are willing to sacrifice ‘that trip to McDonald’s’, as it is often referred to, and give the money used for that to the church.

  How does one pay tithes and offerings? At Hillsong it couldn’t be easier. Not one service that I have ever attended has neglected to mention that the envelopes under your seat, labelled according to offering department, allow you to pay by cash, cheque (made out to ‘Hillsong Church’), or that you can fill your credit card details out. The envelopes have the boxes ready to tick against a backdrop of the Sydney Opera House or the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Makes giving an all-round Australian experience.

  The offerings are taken upstairs and counted by the counters, then the money is written up and put away into bags. On Monday the armed truck comes and takes the money away.

  Where do the millions go? Hillsong says that its books are open and anyone can have a look for themselves. The catch is that they mean anyone who is trusted by the church. And the reports from such people who have asked to see the books describe being looked at up and down and being told they had an attitude problem. In any case, Hillsong conceded an income of $50 million for 2005.

  Brian told viewers of ABC TV’s Australian Story in 2005 that ‘sixty per cent of that goes to helping people directly through our programs and our ministries and so on, twenty-eight per cent to buildings and facilities and twelve per cent to administration and running of the ministry’.

  Does it go where they say it’s going? If, hypothetically, the AoG says that money is going to ‘missions’ and all the missions money goes to the TV program, does TV count as missionary work? Does the Lord’s work include the business-class airfares and five-star accommodation that pastors scratch each other’s backs with? Who pays for the restoration processes for the fallen pastors? Do the sacrificial givers know that the AoG spent $100,000 in 1995 on one defamation case that they eventually discontinued? It doesn’t matter. Nationalise the Loss, Personalise the Profit is the virtual bumper-sticker on the fleet cars they’re driving.

  People talk of envelopes of cash pushed over tables as commission on love offerings. And pastors are looking great.

  None of this is a philosophical problem for the new fundamentalist Christian. God wants you to be rich. He called you to live in abundance. Why shouldn’t Brian ride a Harley? It’s the best way of demonstrating the blessing of God in his life.

  How else will the new Christians understand how their lives can be, will be, if they follow this same formula? They have to give in order to receive. They have to tithe and be faithful. And then they too will get their harvest.

  It’s just that none of the average joes can compete with those tax breaks. God may want them to be rich. They may need more money. But without the government assistance, it’s unlikely they’ll get it as easily as the leaders do.

  IF I WAS A RICH GIRL

  I clearly remember two young men who each had specific dreams and goals for their future. On separate occasions, they each shared their personal vision for their lives with me. Both of them had outstanding business acumen, with the potential of great success in the corporate world.

  The first one confidently told me his vision. ‘Brian, my ambition is to be a millionaire by the age of 30!’ He had set himself a goal and he certainly had the determination and potential to achieve it.

  But the vision of the second young man impressed me more. ‘Brian,’ he said, ‘my personal vision is to fund and finance the salvation of the earth.’ What a powerful perspective he placed on his gift and talent. To him, money was a tool which could do great things for the Cause of the King and the Kingdom.

  —Brian Houston, For This Cause (2001)

  Prosperity theology is very confusing to me. It’s a contradiction in terms, like military intelligence.

  Not that I’ve got anything against going shopping. And I love rich people. Rich people are lots of fun. I’ve read Paris Hilton’s book so many times I can’t believe how much fun rich people are having.

  Who wouldn’t want to be a part of it? Yet, as she says (in her book Confessions of an Heiress), ‘An heiress would never talk about money. It’s boring and only agents, lawyers and managers should ever talk about money.’

  Paris is right; it’s gauche to talk about money. That’s because Paris comes from old money. Not that old, but much older than the prosperity spin-doctors’.

  Old-monied people don’t discuss money because only the miserly eccentric aunt or the crazy cousin talks about how much things cost, or where the money is hidden.

  I am Jewish. This is a religion where your fi rst-born son gets bought back from the synagogue by making a cash donation. You buy the seats you sit at in the synagogue and they engrave your family’s name on a gold plate. G-d is indeed a G-d of money. The better a Jew you are, the more money you get. That’s the way it works. But ask any Jewish person, and they’ll tell you they have no money, they wish they didn’t h
ave what they have and that money is a terrible thing. Jews are a constant turnover of old and new money.

  New-monied people love talking about money. How much they made, what they spent it on. What new-monied destinations they travelled to. How it’s changed their lives. Other new-monied friends they’ve made. And how much more money they’re going to make at this rate. They can’t believe how great money turned out to be.

  New-monied people talk about money all the time because that’s how they think it’s made. Expressing one’s financial status seems to be related to expressing one’s business acumen, in their minds. Recent success seems to make them experts on future investments as well. Oddly, this somehow ends up being about investing in them. Even if their success was contingent on picking the right lotto numbers.

  Even though new-monied people appear to love nothing more than to gather together and talk about money, the sad truth is that they actually need to do this. Talking about it, visualising it, living it, was often part of the book they read, or workshop they went to. And even when the money’s made, they can’t stop living it like a 24-hour-a-day infomercial.

  Once they’ve got money, the new-monied don’t know what to do with it or how to maintain it. So they write motivational books on how you can become more like them. Or if they’re AoG, they start a church.

  New-monied people like to talk about how getting money didn’t turn out to be as bad as they thought it would be. They didn’t hate themselves quite as much as they thought they might, didn’t feel themselves changing, and if they did, they surprisingly felt it was for the better. Even if they do find their values becoming a little more conservative of late.

  Prosperity proponents always remind you that money is not important to them. Just like Jenny from the Block, they will always tell you that the rocks that they got mean nothing to them.