Hillsong songs like “Shout to the Lord” and “Everyday” were my hymns, as fundamental to my understanding of music as “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” These are not just Christian rock songs - they are worship, and for millions of people around the globe, they are an inseparable piece of Christian life.īut I don’t know any of the songs we sing at Hammerstein. I don’t think I even realized they had been written in my lifetime. I didn’t know they were written in Australia. I grew up in a Texas megachurch that played songs written by Hillsong members every Sunday. “I know the words are on the screen, but that’s not what we’re doing here.” This is a time of worship, a church service - not, I repeat, a concert. “This is not Christian karaoke,” he jokes. They play four songs before a local pastor appears with long curly hair, a sleeve of tattoos, and a Hawaiian shirt. A man plays a guitar and a woman sings lead, along with a bassist, a drummer, four backing vocalists, and a choir of about 15 people at the back of the stage. The worship band at the Hammerstein - Hillsong’s Manhattan campus - isn’t huge. According to the church, for every person attending in person three more watch online. More than 100,000 people are estimated to attend Hillsong church services every week, including Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Nick Jonas, and the Jenner sisters. What began as a small pentecostal church in a suburb of Sydney now holds services on all six habitable continents, with 30 locations and more than 80 affiliated campuses.
Hillsong is one of the largest evangelical Christian churches in the world. But it's morning now, the floor's no longer sticky, and the event taking place isn’t a concert - it’s church. Ten hours earlier, the stage was occupied by holographic Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku, the three balconies and large pit filled with her fans. The sound booth has four technicians and two big cameras for the ground floor alone. A few people mill about, and to their left is a merchandise table branded as a “welcome lounge” selling T-shirts and CDs and soft-covered books.
Inside the Hammerstein Ballroom's great double doors, beyond the metal gates and metal detectors, the three-story music venue's lights are turned down, the stage empty.
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