Hillsong for a long time have tried to convince the Christian church that they are not a cult. Since Hillsong is under more scrutiny with their stance on social issues, it is of our opinion that they may start to tamper with their belief statements.
Therefore, we thought it was worth distributing their “What we believe” statement so people can see how much they don’t follow it.
Hillsong writes,
We believe that the Bible is God’s Word. It is accurate, authoritative and applicable to our everyday lives.
We believe in one eternal God who is the Creator of all things. He exists in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. He is totally loving [except critics] and completely holy.
We believe that sin has separated each of us from God and His purpose for our lives.
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ as both God and man is the only One who can reconcile us to God. He lived a sinless and exemplary life, died on the cross in our place, and rose again to prove His victory and empower us for life.
We believe that in order to receive forgiveness and the ‘new birth’ we must repent of our sins, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and submit to His will for our lives.
We believe that in order to live the holy and fruitful lives that God intends for us, we need to be baptised in water and be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables us to use spiritual gifts, including speaking in tongues.
We believe in the power and significance of the Church [that’s Roman Catholic cult teaching] and the necessity of believers to meet regularly together for fellowship, prayer and the ‘breaking of bread’.
We believe that God has individually equipped us so that we can successfully achieve His purpose for our lives which is to worship God, fulfil our role in the Church and serve the community in which we live.
We believe that God wants to heal and transform us so that we can live healthy and blessed lives in order to help others more effectively.
We believe that our eternal destination of either Heaven or hell is determined by our response to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back again as He promised.
Hillsong Church is a member of the Australian Christian Churches. A movement of almost 1100 churches and more than 250,000 believers across Australia. For the ACC’s full constitution, history, leadership and statement of belief, please visit: www.acc.org.au
Source: What We Believe, Hillsong, http://hillsong.com/what-we-believe, Accessed 10/10/2014.
Hillsong Church Watch 
Many non-Charismatics would agree with some points in ACC’s full doctrinal statements (see doctrinal basis page). Most Charismatic Christians would have no problems with them at all, even though ACC has some worrying Word-of-Faith teachings. See http://thewordonthewordoffaithinfoblog.com/ on why WOF is so dangerous.
Where the official ACC position contradicts Hillsong’s actual teachings/behaviour and is worthy of a completely separate entry. e.g. sanctification -> increasingly pure behaviour over a person’s lifetime. Some of what ACC says online is not taught or put in practice by Hillsong.
e.g. Hillsong’s world-pleasing behaviours *cannot* encourage increased personal holiness if Hillsong followers are supposed to always accept people – especially unrepentant Christians justifying their sins – “just as they are”! (See Ephesians 5:8-13, 2 Corinthians 6:14-18, 1 John 3:7-10)
Houston has repeatedly been shown by serious Christian writers, apologists and pastors that he completely avoids any mention of sin and repentance of sins in his speeches. Despite being reproved repeatedly for this major negligence by more than enough Christian leaders Houston rejects their corrections, labels them “negative Pharisees” to harden his gullible listeners’ hearts as well as his own, and continues to preach only Hillsong’s “positive-sounding to the world” Churchianity.
He cannot claim lack of knowledge about this matter – this has gone on for years and years now – therefore his behaviour shows he simply doesn’t care enough about genuine Christian salvation to preach the *full* Gospel.
I’m not sure how believing in the significance of the Church is related to being a cult, as you point out. The Nicene Creed includes that. These are pretty old, I should say original statements of Christian belief. That is to say that if you do not believe that God’s primary work in the world comes through the church, you are specifically NOT a Christian.
“We believe that the Bible is God’s Word. It is accurate, authoritative and applicable to our everyday lives.”
If Hillsong REALLY believe the Bible is accurate, then why do they defy 1 Timothy 2:12 when it relates to women ‘pastors’ ?
If Hillsong believes what they say they believe, why do they never ever ever preach the Word of God?