People in Glass Houses

by Tanya Levin

  That night Pastor Phil Dooley, a lifelong participant and Hill-song board member, appeared on stage to host a domestic goddess competition. Two women were involved in a race to see who could change the baby doll’s nappy and then fold the washing and run the basket to the top of the stadium and back the quickest. The crowd went wild.

  The room kept spinning. Then the music started. Brian and Bobbie’s eldest child, Joel Houston, led the singing, and more and more men were appearing on stage as musicians.

  When they finished, Pastor Christine Caine grabbed the spiritual baton. ‘We’ve already had Praise Reports,’ she announced, ‘miracles are happening, awesome things are happening.’ What? Where? Her job was to speak before the offering. ‘Jesus just wants the little you’ve got and then God will put his lot on our little and do something awesome.’

  It was Bobbie’s turn again. ‘One day your Compassion child will just thank you that you cared enough.’ Then time to watch the movie of Brian and Bobbie and their dear eighteen-year-old daughter Laura in Uganda meeting their souvenir orphans. You can’t help but feel the awkwardness as African children dance around them dressed in Jesus shirts. Brian smiles, inconvenienced by all this humanity rubbing on his sleeves. Bobbie can’t believe how easily children can sing without a band.

  There was some kind of intermission. As people were returning to their seats, they were greeted by The Picture on all the big screens. The room stopped moving and went smack on my head. An African boy of about eight stood, pleadingly looking up, his hands resting behind his head. The title read: ‘Will you be my sponsor?’ The pamphlet with the same photo said: ‘Adopt: to take and make one’s own.’

  Somebody had to say something, and at times like this it’s usually me. I stood up, looked around and said, ‘They’re for life you know, not just for Christmas.’ I wondered if anyone would object if the African kids wore bikinis and lip gloss. I was so sad. Holly Wagner prepared to speak. She said that it doesn’t matter if you’re not married. ‘If you’re single, the husband you marry will be grateful,’ she said, that you have been to conferences like these.

  I left the auditorium, knowing I couldn’t take the heartache any more. I figured I may as well make my way downstairs to the Christian expo to find out what such a thing was and to see if I could find Shazza or one of the other girls. I was not alone. Behind me was Judith. I’d met Judith in the turn-around-and-greet-someone bit before I left. She had followed me out.

  ‘I want to talk to you outside,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re not happy with something. I’m concerned that you’re not happy.’

  I stopped. ‘Talking to you, Judith, is not going to make it better.’

  She followed me to the stairs.

  ‘Judith, you’re following me,’ I said. ‘Please stop.’

  ‘But you’re not happy. We have to talk.’

  ‘Judith,’ I said, in my best refuge worker put-the-knife-down-Sheree voice, ‘I am asking you to stop following me.’ I looked at the people nearby in the lobby. ‘Can anyone see that I am asking Judith to stop following me?’ I said in a regular voice. No one cared. I had no idea who Judith was.

  I went downstairs and Judith followed. At the entrance was the Compassion table full of photos of children, someone for everyone. Judith tried to stop me from talking to the nice ladies behind the counter.

  I saw Shazza and the girls on the other side of the room. Surely they could make sense out of this. Judith followed.

  ‘Shazza, why is Judith here following me?’ She didn’t know. Eventually I left.

  It wasn’t until the next day that I found out Judith was Brian’s little sister.

  The second and final day of conference was almost too much to bear. I felt completely pointless without a husband to apply my knowledge to, so I hung with the volunteers. They were fi nding it hard to bear as well. I suggested to the boys that they be put to better use. What about the single girls? I asked them. Did they need trainee husbands? The boys were surprisingly keen on this idea. I wandered in to see Darlene Zschech speak.

  Now, Darlene is not a preacher, she is a singer. But she spoke clearly, and gently. Her theme was choice: how our lives are about choice and how hard choices are. Then she had her wedding dress brought on stage with her daughter’s baby dedication dress. These were to represent the two stages of a woman’s life, childhood marked by dedication at church, and a wedding dress to symbolise adulthood.

  Choose to love, said Darlene, choose to forgive. Life is richer with forgiveness. Darlene seems to love and forgive like a pig in mud. One cannot imagine her otherwise. She appealed to the women on choosing to stay.

  ‘Some people think it’s a choice between good and evil,’ she said. ‘I find it’s between good and greater. Not all choices,’ she continued, ‘require you to leave your post. Like Holly said last night, you can outlast a problem.’

  Then the smiling stopped. ‘Some of you are not excited to go home to your husbands tonight, and I’m serious. If you are getting hurt, you need to put your hand up, but if there are emotional things the Holy Spirit could resolve, you need to choose to stay. Try to stay.’

  Think about your children, she said, and their children.

  I couldn’t. All I could hear was, ‘You slut, these kids don’t even look like me’—smash! And then, ‘Choose to stay, it’s just emotional stuff.’ I wanted to hand out the domestic violence hotline number to the girls as they streamed out of the auditorium. Put your hand up? What does that mean? What about, ‘If you’re getting hurt, pack up and go’?

  My shoulders weighed right down. My heart fractured. It hit me then. Darlene thinks it’s okay to stay for emotional stuff, but the state might disagree. I figured she was putting an entire community of children at risk. Emotional abuse is domestic violence, and by the time the black eye materialises the damage is already done.

  As the conference was nearing an end, I was determined to find Donna, my old youth pastor. I tried to track her down in the old building where the offices are, but all I could find were the gold doors to Brian’s room. I wanted to know about the sexual abuse course she was running. S.A.F.E., Sexual Abuse Finally Ends. After what happened with Frank, they had to know what they were doing. Twice during Colour I had asked her personal assistant where I could find the theoretical base and the model they were using in practice with clients. Twice she referred me to a useless website. I finally spotted Donna in the front section where pastors and their personal assistants sit. As I walked up to try to tap her on the shoulder and noticed security getting itchy, I heard, ‘Tanya, Tanya.’

  I looked up and there was Christine Caine sitting in the pastors’ section. ‘Come sit here,’ she called to me. I smiled at security and happily obliged.

  Christine Caine is Australia’s leading female evangelist. She impressed Joyce Meyer so much that Joyce wrote out a cheque for a year’s salary for a nanny so that Chris would be free to travel the world. Now she and and her husband spend just three days a month in Australia.

  Chris Caine arrived as Christine Cariofylus at Youth around the time I was leaving. She stood at the side and was the most unremarkable person in the group. A Greek girl from Blacktown.

  Short and plain, she tied her hair back and looked disinterested in the hype going on around her. I remembered the night Donna first mentioned her.

  ‘Christine,’ Donna almost whispered, ‘has led two people to the Lord this week while visiting someone in hospital.’ Chris looked uncomfortable at the attention.

  Jewels spent some time with Chris at bible college. She remembered her giving up smoking the day class started. Chris just quit. She was determined. She could do anything.

  Chris was always busy. My memory is that she started her church work at the Hills District Youth Service. She was an ex-law student who’d graduated from Arts with distinctions. After university she ran away to Greece, got convicted by the Spirit, and came back home to start again.

  Chr
is moved on to work with Pat Mesiti and Youth Alive. They were two Mediterranean powerballs of energy together. Then she got her own ministry. She married, had a baby she named Catherine Bobbie, and life took off.

  Grateful to Chris for saving me from security, I nestled into my seat next to royalty. I hadn’t seen her since a Hillsong women’s Thursday morning some years ago. By then, she had become very blonde, very toned and very expensively dressed. We had chatted while American ladies lined up to be photographed next to her, on their way upstairs to sit for a moment in Darlene’s chair. I had always liked Chris, but I noticed her eyes had become glazed. New Chris was here.

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘Chris,’ I whispered. ‘I know you’re in there. You’re still in there, aren’t you?’ She smiled and stared ahead. Donna was about to speak. ‘Chris, you’re the smartest person in this room. How do you do this, day after month? How?’

  ‘Shh,’ she smiled, and stared ahead.

  ‘Chris, you’d be missing Pat,’ I sympathised. ‘Now you have only Aussies to work with.’ She smiled again. ‘Come on,’ I pushed. ‘You’re the smartest person in this movement, how do you do this?’

  She scribbled me a note: ‘I’m not being rude but there are about 700 pairs of eyes on me at the moment. I can’t talk.’ Fair enough. I forgot she was at work.

  Her gesture was the most kindness I got from an AoG pastor all year. I won’t forget her for it. She wanted a Barbie notebook like mine. She gave me her email. Her assistant, Annie Dollarhide, made arrangements for us to have coffee, but right at the last minute she cancelled. After that, Annie said Chris was too busy with her travelling and pregnancy to make it after all.

  I stayed to see Donna talk for an hour about how your emotional baggage will ruin your marriage. Everyone had a good time; I went home devastated. Don’t call me daughter. I’d just paid a hundred dollars to watch 4000 women be demeaned and degraded. I’d been at a marketing expo for Compassion.

  I was talking to Shazza not long after. She was getting nosy about the book, maybe a little defensive, and told me it was time I spoke to Brian. She said that it was just like Pastor Ray Mac-Cauley had said, people never confront the source of their problems. People like me just like to complain for the sake of it. If I had genuine issues, the best way to address them would be to ask Brian himself.

  It was still early days. I told her I hadn’t contacted Brian and Bobbie because I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to talk to them about. At that point it seemed a waste of everybody’s time.

  Still, if the ‘bitter and wounded’ label was starting to circulate, I decided I might as well clear the air. I wasn’t lashing out. I was just wondering what was going on.

  So I emailed Brian and Bobbie.

  From: Tanya Levin

  Sent: Friday, 8 April 2005 12:26 pm

  To: Brian Houston

  Subject: Greetings

  Dear Brian and Bobbie,

  I hope this finds you well.

  As you may be aware, I have recently been given the opportunity to write a book. My publishers, Allen & Unwin, have asked me to write a book on my experience growing up in Australia as the daughter of a Jewish mother and an English father, who both became born-again Christians, and then Pentecostals.

  The story is very much about what it is like to grow up in a small church, leave, only to come back and fi nd that the church is anything but small and is now influencing governments and communities in a way that I believe is uniquely Australian.

  The rumour mill, reliable as it may or may not be, has questioned me as to why I have not contacted you for an interview. My immediate response was that I had not wanted to waste your time—I am still trying to get my head around everything that’s going on. However, I think it would be appropriate for us to meet, so that my attending Hillsong does not become an issue for anyone, particularly for you. Meeting with you would be an opportunity for me to extend a formal courtesy and to minimise unnecessary sparks from the rumour mill. To me it seems simplest for Hillsong members to know that the leadership are working with me directly, and thus they have nothing to fear.

  Ideally, I would like to meet with you every month or two if your schedules allow over the next few months. This is a big work for me, and I have by no means begun to write. A one-off interview would not serve the personal purpose I am trying to achieve, any more than a one-off visit to Hillsong would depict the big picture.

  Perhaps a cup of coffee in the next couple of weeks would be a good start. Look forward to hearing from you.

  Best wishes,

  Tanya Levin

  Two days later the general manager of Hillsong, George Aghajanian, wrote to me. He thanked me for my email, and he informed me that ‘We are aware that during your attendance at our recent Colour Your World Women’s Conference you caused significant disruption to the meetings you attended.’

  What I had done was not described, but it was enough for Hillsong to ‘ask you to refrain from attending any future Hill-song church services or events; including accessing Hillsong’s land and premises at any time’. Also, leadership and staff were ‘unable to provide assistance for your proposed book’.

  They appeared paranoid. Being brought up a nice Jewish Christian girl, however, I wanted to give them one ‘it is written’ and one ‘brother, let us work this out’. So I wrote back.

  From: Tanya Levin

  Sent: Friday, 22 April 2005 11:18 am

  To: Brian Houston; Bobbie Houston

  Subject: FW: Hillsong Church

  Dear Brian and Bobbie,

  On the 8th of April, I sent you an email through Brian’s address. This, for some reason, has been passed on to the General Manager, a George Aghajanian, someone whose name rings a bell but whom I have never met. You can imagine my distress when I received his response (see below).

  This has left me baffled. After some consideration, I have decided that this must be an administrative error because it would be impossible for the Brian and Bobbie that I know to endorse this type of treatment of anyone in their name. After twenty years, to be turned away by email by a stranger like a rabid dog or typhoid Mary just couldn’t happen.

  Surely the church that you see is not a church without ME?

  No, indeed, the Brian and Bobbie that I know taught us to be mindful of entertaining angels (Heb 13:2) and to treat the alien living in your camp as one of your native born (Lev 19:33, 4). Just like Bobbie says in I’ll Have What She’s Having, Ch 6 (iv):

  When it comes to STRANGERS AND FOREIGNERS conviction rises above any shyness or insecurity, because often such people help stretch our world. The planet is such a big, bright, fabulous place and meeting such people enlarges our small world view.

  (The bible also says ‘you just better be nice too, because you never know when you might be entertaining angels unknown’, which is food for thought. Wouldn’t it be a major shame to discover you’d just been rude to an angel!)

  Mr Aghajanian is, after all, a general manager, which strangely suggests a corporate response to my request to you in your pastoral role. I had previously understood that you were a Christian church that professed a commitment to biblical principles.

  As Bobbie says in I’ll Have What She’s Having, chapter 5, in section 1, ‘Guard the Specifics’:

  EVERY CHURCH HAS A SPIRITUAL HEAD. If you understand God’s delegated authority and how the body of Christ works in our individual churches, then you will understand that the spiritual head is the Senior Pastor and his partner.

  Thus when seeking an opportunity to be transparent about my attendance at Hillsong, I presumed you were the people to speak to.

  I have searched my bible and those of others, and have found no instruction on the General Manager. I had thought you were the shepherds of the sheep and not in the wool industry. Still, if biblical principles no longer apply, and it is now a corporate structure I must negotiate, please may I be directed to the Chief Executive Officer. I would also appreciate a copy of the new mission statement w
ithout the ‘bible-based’ bit.

  What seems even stranger is that Mr Aghajanian does not appear on any of the advertisements welcoming everyone to Hill-song. Nor does he sign his letters with ‘love you forever’, forever being the operative word. But you do.

  With all due respect, if you’re going to advertise yourself as so approachable, beware. People might start approaching you.

  And on a personal level, Mr Aghajanian wasn’t my senior pastor throughout my teenage years. He didn’t shepherd me through the eighties and oversee my youth group. He didn’t dedicate my baby to God nearly six years ago. It was you. That’s the part that seems to hurt.

  It can’t be a case of mistaken identity. Despite the tens of thousands of people you must have met, Bobbie remembered my full name clearly when we caught up at a funeral last year. Amazing, and quite flattering, I might add. But I guess we have always greeted each other over the years, as you have known my family and so many of the friends I still have in Hillsong all this time. In any case, the phone calls made to people close to me following my email eliminate any possibility of your uncertainty as to who I am.

  You can now understand my bewilderment at Mr Aghajanian’s email. I must ask you, therefore, to verify Mr Aghajanian’s statements as your own, as I wrote to the two of you, not him.

  From all the people that have read his thoughtful paragraph, in Hillsong and out of it, locally, and overseas, the same question is being asked of me over and over:

  ‘Why didn’t they answer you themselves? ’

  One proposal was that, given the sheer volume of the mail you receive, mine could have been overlooked or delegated incorrectly.

  This is the only explanation that makes sense.

  For this reason, I am sending you the GM’s response and my original mail, flagged and to both of your addresses.

  Looking forward to hearing from you.

  Warmest regards, Tanya Levin

  I never heard from Brian, Bobbie or George again.

  You can’t just go banning people from AoG churches. You have to do something to be excommunicated as a Catholic, and they can’t ban you from every church in the world. I hadn’t done anything. It’s impossible to be disruptive in a Pentecostal meeting, or it ain’t the real McCoy. In any case, my mother brought me up never to be rude in church. I find it hard to sit still through some parts, but I didn’t disrupt their meeting.