Former Hillsong Church co-founder Brian Houston, who resigned from the global Hillsong movement last spring, has returned to the pulpit, only this time it was at a megachurch in Seattle, Washington.
Houston, 68, delivered his message A Legacy That Outlasts You at the Christian Faith Center on Aug. 21, insisting that God doesn’t write people off as society does and that he still has “so much more” to give.
Everyone leaves a legacy even if that legacy is one filled with problems often encountered during life, including bitter relationships, marriage breakdowns, and bankruptcies, Houston said. And he told those in attendance, sometimes they might feel like they are one of those people.
“But you’re alive,” he said. “You’re breathing. And your legacy hasn’t been determined just yet. The best is yet to come,” he said. “We decide our legacy is birthed in our revelation of Jesus, our transformation by him.”
“Legacy is just a commitment that you’re going to live according to God’s purposes in your life. When purpose and destiny and legacy collide, it’s like a combustible force. When we attach our lives to God’s purpose, it creates legacy. It’s the most wonderful way we can live our lives,” Houston said.
“We can decide, my mistakes, my failings, my failures here, my brokenness over there, the fact that I got ripped off here, I was offended over there, we can let those things decide our legacy. But that’s not what should determine our legacy. It’s so much more than that,” he said.
Houston reminded the audience that certain people and a toxic cancel culture will try to marginalize you, but God never writes people off.
“People will write people off,” he said. “People are harder on people than God is, by far. Cancel culture will write you off. Maybe social media trolls, if you get any of them—because I get none—they might write you off. But God won’t write you off,” he said.
As CBN News reported, Houston stepped down from all of the governing boards of the Sydney, Australia-based Hillsong Church after he was charged by the New South Wales Police Force for allegedly covering up information about his father’s child sexual abuse offenses.
He remained as the church’s global senior pastor. Later, Houston announced that he would “step aside from all ministry responsibilities” until next year amid charges of concealing his father’s offenses.
Then, as CBN News reported in March, Houston resigned as global senior pastor of Hillsong after the church announced he had breached the “Hillsong Pastor’s Code of Conduct” involving separate incidents with two women, including a former staff member, in the last 10 years.
Houston, 68, and his wife Bobbie founded Hillsong Church near Sydney in 1983. In February of 2022, the megachurch reported 150,000 members in 30 countries.
Houston later apologized to church members in an email sent one week after the church’s global board announced his resignation.
In the email obtained by the Australian news outlet Eternity News, Houston also said he and Bobbie “have no intention of retiring.”
“I still have a sense of bright hope for the future and I know God is not finished with me yet. We have no intention of retiring. As Bobbie would say, ‘the final chapters of our lives are not yet written’,” he wrote.
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