Bethel Church enters Hillsong territory with new church plant in Sydney
Bill Johnson’s Bethel Church in Redding, California, announced Sunday that it has planted a new church in Sydney, Australia, where the scandal-scarred Hillsong Church is headquartered.
Johnson, and Kris Vallotton, a senior associate leader at the megachurch, joined several leaders on stage at the California church’s worship service to commission Matt and Elisabeth King as the senior leaders of Bethel Sydney, increasing their current stable of churches to eight.
In addition to the original Bethel Church in Redding, there is also Bethel Atlanta, Bethel Austin, Bethel Cleveland, Bethel New York, Bethel New Zealand, Bethel Sydney and Bethel Valparaiso. Five of those churches were planted in the last 15 years, according to the church’s website.
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“We've been saying for years [that] we don't plant churches, and I think we planted like three in the last five years or something, and our last one was in New York, and now we're planting in Sydney,” Vallotton told his congregation during the service.
Matt King, who was on a three-day visit stateside with his wife, said the new church plant “is going to be a dwelling place for the Lord.”
“It will be a place where people encounter God with our face to face with God,” he said. “We believe that God has marked Australia at this time. We believe that is a divine moment in Australia. There is such a hunger for genuine experience of the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit that is not promoting a name or an individual but is simply promoting the glorious Gospel of the Kingdom.”
Dave Harvey, director of Bethel Leaders Network, said in a recorded presentation that Vallotton had recently prophesied “that the Australian church was about to step into a new era” and that revival would sweep the country’s entire East Coast.
Elisabeth King said she and her husband met while they were students at the Bethel School of Ministry and were “transformed, equipped and changed.”
They later joined the staff at the school as pastors and went on to become missionaries in Europe, where they did itinerant ministry along with work at a ministry school.
She said they moved to Australia about two years ago after God started to “shout Australia out of the blue.”
“Since then we've been building, and now we're building with a core team,” she said, noting that they have witnessed bodies being healed, deaf ears opening up and lives changing radically for the better.
In June, when it held a paid conference at Dayspring Church in Sydney, tickets sold out within two weeks and people were so desperate to attend, some offered to pay triple the selling price of the tickets.
“We announced the conference, and in two weeks the tickets were sold out, and people emailed us and asked can we pay triple price to just get in,” Elisabeth King said. “There is such a hunger, and yeah, we are just so excited and expected for what God will do.”
In a formal announcement on its Facebook page on Sunday, Bethel Church reiterated that it is investing in a prophetic decision with the new church plant.
“God is moving in Australia. It’s been prophesied by leaders in our house that a wave of revival will happen on the eastern coast of the nation, and that Australia is walking into a new era with God. We fully believe that we will see God move through Bethel Sydney in powerful ways, bringing additional support to the move of God already happening there,” the church said.
“The vision for Bethel Sydney is revival — to see all of Australia fall deeply in love with Jesus, transforming lives, and sending them out to release more of God, in cities, states, and the world. It’s the mandate of Bethel, and Matt and Elizabeth King are excited to embrace this mandate while serving the communities in Sydney!”
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