Christian megachurch Hillsong have confirmed that they have acquired beloved Melbourne concert venue Festival Hall.
As first reported by NME, the pentecostal monolith took to their YouTube channel on October 25th to confirm that they have purchased the venue.
At the 27-minute mark of the Sunday service, Pastor Bryan Houston announced that Hillsong had made the acquisition.
“By gods grace, we’ve been able to purchase Festival Hall,” he said. “It is going to become the city location for Hillsong Melbourne.”
The church intends to allow the venue to keep hosting live events throughout the week, but it would be “the house of God” on Sundays.
Houston continued, “Hillsong Melbourne has had to move around a lot with rented venues and so on. We’ve started an entity called Community Venues [Pty Ltd.] – that have been able to require Festival Hall.
“Hillsong Church will be the anchored venue. For every Sunday night or Sunday morning or whenever we have church, it will be our venue.
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“We’re going to keep running it as a community venue so it can reach the community. We’re excited about that.”
Elsewhere during the service, Hillsong shared a short promotional video about the new venue narrated by Tim and Nicola Douglass — the Pastors of Melbourne’s Hillsong arm.
“This journey of purchasing this incredible facility started about 18 months ago. Just happened to hear about that it was for sale and started enquiring, thinking that it was a long shot,” Tim Douglass explained.“Now, we’re sitting in a miracle. God can make a way even through impossible circumstances.”
The promo saw Douglass echo Houston’s past claims that it will continue to host “community” events at Festival Hall unrelated to Hillsong.
“It has served the people of this city in different events over the years, and it’s going to continue to do that. We just get to be the church who purchases it,” Tim Douglass commented.
Founded 30 years ago in Sydney, the Hillsong empire has churches in city centres in 30 countries, on six continents. Including New York City, New Jersey, Boston, Connecticut, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Dallas, Kansas City, Phoenix, London, Spain, Barcelona, Berlin, Konstanz, Düsseldorf, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bali, and Tokyo.
