Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Hillsong UNITED’s Joel Houston reflects on fame, faith and the burden of ministry, questioning performative Christianity as he seeks a more authentic walk with God.

Joel Houston stepped back from the stage three years ago. Now he’s explaining why.

The Hillsong UNITED leader, who is on hiatus from the band, spoke with Rich Wilkerson (of the ‘Cross and the Switchblade’ clan) about church, the stage, ministry and responsibility.

Some of what he talked about could also be categorised as performative Christianity.

Wilkerson, a Miami-based pastor and podcaster, was in Australia for this year’s Parable Conference, hosted by Houston’s sister and brother-in-law’s Parable Church plant.

When the Platform Becomes a Burden

Houston said he’s still trying to work out what he described as a strange reluctance with the platform. It’s a hesitation about the stage that he thinks comes from growing up in and around it all.

Both being pastors’ kids, Houston told Wilkerson, “I think when you grow up in a household like ours, like my dad, same with you, it’s just like I never saw the kind of platform something to kind of aspire to.

“I just saw it as something that carried a burden. I’ve always felt that.”

That goes deep, is intensely personal and is something Houston says he’s wrestled with for years.

He said that he always thought you had to be anointed, adding, “or whatever word you want to put on it. Or you had to be just exceptionally talented, and I never felt that way.”

COVID changed some things, and for various reasons since then, including turning 40, Houston said he started asking what’s next.

Through prayer, he’s always wrestled with what he wanted to do and tried to reconcile that with what he felt was God’s call and purpose. That’s never really been entirely clear.

Houston likened this to travel, stating, “It’s been much more a journey of ‘I don’t know what that is specifically, but I know it’s something.’”

That journey goes back to a decision when he was younger to do whatever, wherever God put him or opened a door.

To him, that felt like worship; obedience was just to do the thing, and he’s still trying to figure out whether that was right or wrong.

After a season of stepping back, Houston said there’s a part of him that thinks maybe it’s time to step back in, “and that looks like saying ‘yes’, when it’s hard not to find a definitive reason why not.

“I think I got quite comfortable in the last few years, just not being around it, of not being on stage, not having a microphone in my hand, not feeling like I have to speak into everything and anything.”

The Cost of Christian Celebrity

This time out wasn’t just about finding peace. The time involved soul-searching and questioning the sincerity of what he was doing.

As Houston recalled, “It felt insincere to me to kind of just get on with doing the thing that I’ve always done because that’s probably the easiest thing to do.”

He added that God’s been doing a lot in his life and said this period of resting felt right. He went hard from a young age and was blessed by the success, which far exceeded his expectations.

Success, though, came with a cost. What looked incredible on the outside, he said, didn’t accurately reflect what was going on within.

“Inside I was dying, and I couldn’t explain why. You know everything’s perfect.”

“The ministry that everything’s, like everything we touched, felt like it worked. Like it just was great, but I kind of just realised that’s not it.”

There’s more to it than just feeling like you’ve arrived. Houston realised that God opening doors comes with great responsibility. He’s learned that it’s something to carry heavily and lightly at the same time.

The songwriter doesn’t want to force anything, saying it’s okay not to keep going. Houston stepped back because it just didn’t feel right.

His hiatus even included taking a break from church.

Rediscovering God Beyond the Stage

Talking about grieving and loss, Houston said, “I spent two or three years there not really going to church. I know that’s probably shocking for a lot of people maybe to hear, but it’s just the truth.

“It’s not because I didn’t love it. It’s almost because I love the church too much. Things happened, and there was a grieving process there. I’m still happily married, but it felt like a divorce.

“I gave my whole life to that church. That’s all I knew. I still love it. And I never in a million years imagined that that wouldn’t be the church that I would be a part of.

“At the same time, you know, I have such a strong conviction about what the church is and what I believe the church is meant to be across the earth.”

Houston says he’s still rock-solid in his faith. It’s the assumptions about what church is and the perception of what’s real and what’s not that have been challenged.

He’s never stopped being surrounded by a great community and has since found a church.

Commenting on Hillsong and UNITED’s massive success, self-doubt as an artist, and insincerity, Houston said wrestling with it all has been healthy.

Packed into this is a tension between being perceived as a nepo baby and expectations that he would one day fill his dad’s shoes. None of these pressures and expectations came from his father, whom Joel credits for not pressuring him.

UNITED’s fame came with its own caveats. Houston said that even though he felt like an imposter, like every ’90s kid when it came to fame, he also embraced it.

It was being famous for being in the church that made him feel uneasy.

Houston told Wilkerson, “I realised that came with a responsibility, and then internally there were parts of me that just wanted to sabotage that all the time.

“I don’t know how or why, but it was like, I didn’t want to feed that beast in my life.”

What helped Joel stay grounded was his friends who didn’t care about what he was doing. The gigs, albums, and tours sat alongside a normal life.

Authenticity in an Age of Performative Christianity

Fame, he asserted, comes with two choices.

The first is an all-out embrace of the persona, and you pursue it like an addiction to be on show for people all of the time.

The second choice, Houston said, “is to go, that’s one part of my life, and then there’s this other part of my life which is just normal — every other moment that you’re not in front of people.

“I was of the latter. I was just, ‘this is what matters’, and then I also go and do these things.”

Wilkerson likened the UNITED frontman’s step back to a forced sabbath. This was around the time of COVID, which Houston said he selfishly welcomed with relief.

“Hopefully I’ve worked it out,” he said, “I want the second half of my life to count more than the first half of my life.”

This sabbatical is working for him. Houston said that he has a real peace about it. If the best days are behind him, he’s okay with that. He doesn’t believe they are.

He said, “I’ve had to search my heart, and I’ve had to go deep with God. And I did that. I did that by just writing songs, just doing the thing that I felt like God gave me.”

This involved honestly spending time with the Lord without expectation, without it being something for a record, or for a moment, or for a tour.

Houston expressed that he wants to feel like he’s out in the wilderness crying out to God, writing, searching, and finding.

“I felt closer to God,” he declared, “in just sitting by my piano or my computer late at night with no one around, not knowing what I’m doing, than some of the most intimate, amazing moments that I’ve had on stage.”

He also knows this isn’t where he is meant to stay, which illustrates what Houston says he’s been wrestling with these last couple of years.

Speaking about performative Christianity, he wants to walk humbly into the thing God wants him to do.

The son of Hillsong’s founder said, “I think that’s more effective. I actually believe it’s more effective if we could just be who we are and be honest about where we’re at and the way we are kind of on the journey of sanctification.”

“Like when people have been that way — been honest — that’s what’s really helped me in my journey. Not seeing everybody looking like they’ve got it all together all the time.”

Agreeing, Wilkerson said that, in a likes, shares, and comments commodity world, being honest is only going to get harder. Globalisation and social media metrics encourage the repetition of whatever those metrics clap for.

He then added, “If we’re not careful, they’ll applaud you all the way to hell.”

Addiction and Healing

During the interview, Houston dove briefly into self-medicating with alcohol, using the substance as a coping mechanism and questioning whether he was a fake.

Houston wants to be real. Acknowledging that struggle helped him see that learning about God was connected to the songwriting process.

His healing came through the gift of songwriting, not because it was for the church or an album, but by the grace of God.

As he stated when thanking Wilkerson for the opportunity, “I pray to God that anything I’ve said encourages people.

“My biggest fear is that it would confuse people, and if they do at all, just leave them behind, dump them and move on.”

God is in the redemptive thing, Houston said, adding that there’s so much beauty in the tough stuff, if we’re broken enough to be honest about some things.

“My hope,” he affirmed, “is that the spirit of God fills in all the gaps, and that the fruit of it is the fruit of the Spirit in people’s lives.”

Houston didn’t want to do the podcast, and yet it’s as deep as any song he’s ever written.

This is an A.W. Tozer-level ‘Whatever happened to Worship?’ take on Christian celebrity, church leadership, and the mechanisms of an industry that seems to be more about satisfying consumers than serving the Gospel.

___

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and YouTube.