Amelia Marshall
Baulkham Hills High School
Belief Systems Prize & High Distinction
The Hillsong Phenomenon

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”                                                                            - Mark 10:25

It is widely acknowledged that, just as politics and state should be kept separate, wealth and faith are often mutually exclusive.  This is not, however, the case with the Hillsong Church, subscribers to the prosperity theology of the Pentecostal denomination.

What is the Hillsong Phenomenon?

The Mission Statement of the Hillsong Church explicitly states the institution’s ambition: to reach and influence the world by building a large Bible-based church, challenging mindsets and empowering people to lead and impact in every sphere of life .  In an era of increasing ambivalence and antagonism towards organised religion - with the 1998 Australian Community Survey placing 27 percent of Australians as unsympathetic or antagonistic towards churches, compared with 20 percent claiming to be frequent attendees, 17 percent sympathetic and 36 percent apathetic – this seems a lofty objective, necessitating nothing short of a phenomenon.  Hillsong’s achievements, however, extend beyond the aspirations of their mission statement; these achievements are, indeed, phenomenal – comprising three areas of success:
Social and cultural
Political and
Economic.
To adequately account for the Hillsong phenomenon, one must first understand the nature of this phenomenon, and, in this, the three-abovementioned aspects of performance.