Hillsong United Reviewed: Oceans, Theology and a Catholic View

What Is Hillsong United?

Hillsong United is a worship band of Hillsong Church, the Pentecostal megachurch Brian and Bobbie Houston founded in Sydney in 1983. It began in 1998 in Powerhouse, the church's youth ministry, under the name United Live. Darlene Zschech, then Hillsong's worship pastor and the writer of Shout to the Lord, mentored the young musicians and encouraged them to record. Reuben Morgan led the band first. In 2002 Joel Houston and Marty Sampson took over.

Searchers confuse the Hillsong names constantly, so here is the difference. Hillsong Worship writes songs for Sunday congregations: Shout to the Lord, Mighty to Save, What a Beautiful Name, King of Kings. Hillsong United is the band that tours arenas and records albums with a rock, atmospheric and later electronic sound. Hillsong Young & Free is the youth pop project.

Joel Houston, born in 1979, is the eldest son of Brian and Bobbie Houston. He played bass before he sang lead, became Hillsong's creative director in 2008, and spent years as one of the pastors of Hillsong NYC. Around him gathered the voices that defined United: Jonathon Douglass (known as JD), Jad Gillies, Matt Crocker, Taya Smith (now Taya Gaukrodger), Benjamin William Hastings, and earlier Brooke Fraser and Marty Sampson. Michael Guy Chislett produced much of the band's sound, and Dylan Thomas served as music director.

The church's own scandals are covered in our Hillsong Worship review of the Hillsong Church scandals.

Hillsong United Timeline, 1998 to 2026

Hillsong United's history runs from a youth-group EP to the top Christian song of the 2010s, then into a long quiet.

• 1998: The band forms in Hillsong's youth ministry and releases the EP One.
• 2002: Joel Houston and Marty Sampson take over leadership. To the Ends of the Earth is released.
• 2007: All of the Above, the first studio album, debuts at No. 6 in Australia. It carries Brooke Fraser's Hosanna and Lead Me to the Cross.
• February 2013: Zion debuts at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and tops the Christian albums chart, with newcomer Taya Smith singing Oceans (Where Feet May Fail).
• October 2014: United wins five Dove Awards, including Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for Oceans.
• May 2015: Empires is released. It wins Worship Album of the Year at the Dove Awards in October 2016.
• 2016: Oceans wins Top Christian Song at the Billboard Music Awards, and the band wins Top Christian Artist for the second year running. The documentary Hillsong: Let Hope Rise, directed by Michael John Warren, reaches cinemas on 16 September through Pure Flix after an earlier deal with Warner Bros. fell through.
• 2017: Wonder, the fifth studio album, includes So Will I (100 Billion X).
• 2018: So Will I (100 Billion X) is released as a single and wins the Dove Award for Recorded Worship Song of the Year. Its lyric sparks a creation and evolution debate, covered below.
• April 2019: People, a live album, followed by an arena tour that included Madison Square Garden.
• August 2019: Former co-leader Marty Sampson posts that he is losing his faith.
• November 2020 to March 2022: Hillsong Church is shaken by the dismissal of Carl Lentz and the resignation of Brian Houston.
• April 2022: Are We There Yet? is released on 29 April, and the band tours the United States with Chris Tomlin. Taya releases her first solo album the same year.
• 2023: The Christian Beat reports that Taya has resigned from Hillsong Church.
• 2023 to 2026: No new Hillsong United studio album appears. Benjamin William Hastings and Taya build solo careers. We found no official announcement that the band has ended.

Which Hillsong United Songs Are Sung Most?

The United songs that reached parishes, youth groups and Catholic retreats are the ones most clearly built on Scripture. Here are the facts and the passage under each one. Open your Bible beside this list.

• From the Inside Out (Joel Houston, 2006). A prayer that God's praise would rise from the whole person, in the spirit of Psalm 103:1: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me."
• Hosanna (Brooke Fraser, 2007). The crowd's cry at the triumphal entry (Matthew 21:9) and a prayer for a heart broken for what breaks God's. Certified Gold in the United States.
• Lead Me to the Cross (Brooke Fraser, 2007). A plea to be brought back to Calvary, echoing Galatians 6:14: "far be it from me to glory except in the cross." Certified Gold in the United States.
• Scandal of Grace (2013). The cross as the stumbling block Paul names in 1 Corinthians 1:23.
• Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) (Matt Crocker, Joel Houston and Salomon Ligthelm, 2013). Peter stepping out of the boat onto the water at Jesus' call (Matthew 14:22-33). Sung by Taya Smith, it spent a record 61 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart, was named by Billboard the top Christian song of the 2010s, and is certified four times Platinum in the United States.
• Touch the Sky (2015). Heaven found in humility (Luke 14:11). Certified Platinum.
• Even When It Hurts (Praise Song) (2017). Praise in pain, in the line of Job 1:21 and Habakkuk 3:17-18.
• So Will I (100 Billion X) (Joel Houston, Benjamin Hastings and Michael Fatkin, 2017). Creation praising its Maker, then the singer joining in. Its pattern follows Psalm 148. Certified Platinum.
• Another in the Fire (2019). The fourth figure in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel 3:25). Certified Gold.

What Does Hillsong Church Teach?

Hillsong Church teaches classical Pentecostal Christianity: one God in three Persons, the full divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, his atoning death and bodily resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, the authority of Scripture, and Christ's return. On those truths Catholics stand with Hillsong, and United's best songs sing them clearly.

Hillsong also carries the marks of its tradition. It was part of the Australian Christian Churches, the Assemblies of God fellowship in Australia, for most of its history, and became a separate movement in 2018. Its distinctive emphases are:

• Baptism in the Holy Spirit. A second experience after conversion, often with speaking in tongues. See our guides to Pentecostalism and speaking in tongues.
• Believer's baptism and a memorial Lord's Supper. Baptism by immersion for those who profess faith, and communion as an act of remembrance and obedience.
• Encounter and blessing. A strong focus on personal encounter with God in worship, and a history of teaching on God's blessing that critics linked to the prosperity gospel.
• Leader-centred government. A church built around its founding pastor until the crises of 2020 to 2022.

Since February 2023 Phil and Lucinda Dooley have led Hillsong Church as global senior pastors.

What Does a Catholic Review of the Lyrics Find?

A Catholic reading of Hillsong United finds strong songs about the cross, creation and suffering, a near silence on the Church and the sacraments, and a style built for feeling that needs the ballast of the liturgy.

What is true and strong

• The cross at the centre. Lead Me to the Cross and Scandal of Grace keep Calvary in view, and that is Catholic to the bone. Every Mass makes present the one sacrifice of the cross (CCC 1366).
• Hosanna is in the Mass. Catholics sing "Hosanna in the highest" in the Sanctus at every Mass. When you sing Hosanna, you are singing a word the Church has never stopped singing.
• Praise in suffering. Even When It Hurts refuses to make praise depend on good outcomes. The Church teaches that suffering united to Christ can share in his redeeming work (Colossians 1:24; CCC 1521).
• Creation praising God. So Will I follows the shape of Psalm 148 and the Song of the Three Young Men (Daniel 3), which Catholics pray at Sunday Morning Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours.
• Faith that steps out. Oceans prays for trust that goes past comfort, as Peter's did. The Catechism calls faith a personal adherence of the whole person to God (CCC 176).

What is missing

• The Church. United's songs are almost entirely about God and the individual heart. The communion of saints, the Church as the Body of Christ, and the Mother of God are absent.
• The sacraments. Baptism, confession and the Eucharist are never named as the places where Christ meets us. For a Catholic, Oceans is answered most fully at the font and the altar.

Where Catholic teaching differs

• Encounter and feeling. United's live sound is designed to build to a peak. The Catechism teaches that faith is an act of the intellect and will moved by grace (CCC 155). Feelings are a gift, and they are never the measure of God's presence. The Eucharist is no less real on the day you feel nothing.
• Authority. Catholics judge every song against the faith guarded by the bishops, successors of the apostles (CCC 861-862).

Can Catholics Sing Hillsong United Songs?

Yes, Catholics may sing Hillsong United songs whose words are true, in private prayer, youth ministry, prayer groups and many parish events outside the liturgy. At Mass the rules are stricter. Here are both sides, stated fairly.

The case for singing them

• Truth belongs to Christ wherever it is spoken. The Church recognises "many elements of sanctification and of truth" outside her visible structure (CCC 819). A true line about the cross stays true whoever wrote it.
• Scripture tells us to sing. Paul urges believers to sing "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Colossians 3:16). Lead Me to the Cross and Another in the Fire do exactly that.
• The writers are innocent of the church's failures. Refusing their work punishes them for other people's sins.

The case for caution

• What we pray shapes what we believe. The principle lex orandi, lex credendi (CCC 1124) means a playlist that never names the Eucharist, Our Lady or the saints will slowly teach a Catholic that they are optional.
• The sound can outrun the words. St Augustine confessed that when the music moved him more than the words, he sinned (Confessions X.33).
• Royalties follow the music. Streams and licences pay rights holders, Hillsong's publishing among them, and some Catholics in conscience decline to fund it.
• The treasury goes unsung. The Second Vatican Council called the Church's musical heritage "a treasure of inestimable value" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 112) and gave Gregorian chant "pride of place" in the Roman liturgy (SC 116).

At Mass

The Council taught that texts for sacred song must be "in conformity with Catholic doctrine" and drawn "chiefly from holy scripture and from liturgical sources" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 121). The General Instruction of the Roman Missal gives chant pride of place, other things being equal, while admitting other sacred music (GIRM 41). It also forbids replacing the chants of the Order of Mass, such as the Agnus Dei, with other songs (GIRM 366). So a United song can never stand in for the Gloria, the Holy, Holy, Holy or the Lamb of God. Lead Me to the Cross might suit a Lenten penitential service, at the pastor's judgement.

What Controversies Surround Hillsong United?

Hillsong United's own documented controversies are two public debates: a 2018 dispute over the word "evolving" in So Will I, and a former co-leader's 2019 announcement that he was losing his faith. No band member has faced a criminal charge or a finding of misconduct that we could find in the record. The far larger scandals belong to Hillsong Church's leadership, summarised here and set out in full elsewhere.

The church behind the band

Since 2020 Hillsong Church has been shaken by documented failures at the top. In November 2020 it dismissed Carl Lentz, lead pastor of Hillsong East Coast, who admitted being unfaithful in his marriage. In March 2022 Brian Houston resigned as global senior pastor after the church's board found he had breached its code of conduct in two incidents involving women. A 2015 Australian royal commission had found that he did not refer his father Frank Houston's abuse of a boy to police, and in August 2023 a Sydney magistrate found him not guilty of concealing that abuse. Joel Houston is Brian Houston's son and served for years at Hillsong NYC alongside Carl Lentz. None of these findings concerned Joel Houston or any band member. Our full account of the Hillsong Church scandals, with sources and the church's responses, sits on the Hillsong Worship page.

So Will I and the evolution debate (2018)

In June 2018 The Christian Post reported a Twitter debate over a verse of So Will I (100 Billion X) that speaks of creatures "evolving" in pursuit of God's word. Asked about it, Joel Houston replied that evolution is a pattern God built into nature and that science and faith are not at odds. He then clarified that he does not believe in evolution as a theory of the source of life, and that God created humanity out of the dust and breathed his Spirit into us.

A Catholic can read this calmly. The Catechism welcomes the scientific study of "the development of life-forms and the appearance of man" (CCC 283), and Pope Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis (1950) allowed research into the development of the human body while teaching that God creates every human soul directly (CCC 366). Joel Houston's clarified position sits close to that teaching. The lyric is defensible for a Catholic.

Marty Sampson's crisis of faith (2019)

Marty Sampson co-led Hillsong United with Joel Houston from 2002 and co-wrote many early songs, though he had long stopped recording with the band. In August 2019, as RELEVANT reported on 12 August, he wrote in a later-deleted Instagram post that he was "genuinely losing" his faith, citing fallen preachers, rare miracles, apparent biblical contradictions and hell. On 13 August The Christian Post reported his clarification: he said he had not renounced Christianity and that his faith was on "incredibly shaky ground". He added that he had only ever received support from Hillsong.

Pray for Marty Sampson by name. St Thomas the Apostle doubted, and the risen Lord came back for him (John 20:24-29). If your own faith is shaking, our guide to faith deconstruction walks through the hard questions honestly.

The band's credit

Give credit where it is due. Through the worst years of its church's history, no Hillsong United member was named in a misconduct finding. Taya, speaking to The Christian Post in 2022 as the church scandals broke, said she was grateful her faith rested on Jesus and not on any person. That is the right instinct for every believer.

Our Verdict: Should You Listen to Hillsong United?

Yes, with discernment. Hillsong United is one of the strongest worship bands of its generation on the cross and on creation, and one of the weakest on the Church and the sacraments, which it barely mentions. We rate it highly for private prayer and youth ministry when the songs are chosen one by one, and as unsuitable for the fixed parts of the Mass.

• Where it helps: Lead Me to the Cross, Hosanna and Even When It Hurts are near-Catholic in content. So Will I can open a heart to the praise of creation. Oceans teaches trust when the ground gives way.
• Where to be careful: the arena sound can make feeling the measure of faith. The songs leave out the Eucharist, Our Lady and the saints. Some listeners in conscience will not fund Hillsong, and that is a fair choice.

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What Catholic Music Should You Play Beside It?

Play Hillsong United beside Catholic music that carries the whole faith: the Eucharist, Our Lady, the saints and the Church's ancient chant. Here is where to start.

• Matt Maher. A Catholic songwriter whose songs, such as Your Grace Is Enough and Lord, I Need You, are sung in Catholic and Protestant churches alike. He has led worship at World Youth Day events.
• Sarah Hart. A Catholic songwriter whose liturgical and devotional songs are used in parishes across the United States.
• The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. A teaching order in Ann Arbor, Michigan, whose recordings of Marian hymns and chant reached the top of the Billboard classical chart.
• The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles. A contemplative community in Missouri whose albums of chant and polyphony, such as Advent at Ephesus, have topped Billboard's classical charts.
• Gregorian chant. Start with the Salve Regina, the Pange Lingua and the Ubi Caritas. The Council gave chant pride of place (SC 116). Learn one this month.
• Audrey Assad's Catholic-era albums. Fortunate Fall and Inheritance drew deeply on Catholic prayer and hymnody. Know that in 2021 Assad said publicly that she no longer practises the faith, as the National Catholic Reporter reported, so treat these albums as the work of a season of her life.

What Hillsong United Teaches Every Believer

Hillsong United's story teaches that gifts flourish when they are trained, that scandal elsewhere cannot cancel truth, and that faith must rest on Christ and his Church, whatever happens to any band. Take these lessons home.

• Raise up the young. United began as teenagers in a youth group whom an older worship leader took seriously. Every parish can do this. Find one young musician this month and invite them to serve.
• Build on Christ. Taya said in 2022 that if her faith had rested on a person, she would have been "swirling". Jesus said the house on the rock stands (Matthew 7:24-25). Build on him.
• Do not wait. No one knows the day or the hour (Mark 13:32). Peter got out of the boat when Jesus called. Go to confession this week; our step-by-step guide to confession makes it simple.

A Daily Worship Habit Built on United's Best Songs

Take five of Hillsong United's strongest songs and root each one in Catholic prayer. Fifteen minutes a day, five days, starting today.

1. Day 1, Oceans. Read Matthew 14:22-33. Name one thing God is asking you to step into. Pray, "Lord, save me," as Peter did, and do the first small step before bed.
2. Day 2, Lead Me to the Cross. Pray the Stations of the Cross, at church or at home. Make an examination of conscience and book your next confession.
3. Day 3, Hosanna. Read Matthew 21:1-11. At your next Mass, sing the Sanctus with your whole voice.
4. Day 4, So Will I. Pray Psalm 148 outdoors, or the Song of the Three Young Men (Daniel 3:57-88). Thank God for ten things in creation by name.
5. Day 5, Another in the Fire. Read Daniel 3. Bring one trial to the Lord in front of the tabernacle and ask him to stand in it with you.

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