Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston and wife Bobbie selling clothes, furniture online

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Friday, January 27, 2023

Shortly after selling their $4.5 million home in Australia, embattled Hillsong Church founders Brian Houston and his wife, Bobbie, are now hosting a fire sale of their used designer clothes, furniture and other home goods described as “pre-loved” online.

The sale was announced by Bobbie Houston on Instagram Wednesday, in a message that directed her followers to ClosetBabyCloset where an array of couches, boots, jackets, bags, cushions and designer shirts are on display.

“ITS NO SECRET THAT WE’VE SOLD OUR HOME. We have gifted & donated things our entire lives, and will continue to do so — a good friend will help get some of these items to college students & local charity drop offs — but right now we are selling in order to move things properly and efficiently,” Bobbie Houston said in her announcement of the sale.

The sale comes days after she shared a photo of her injured and bloodied eyebrow on Sunday, telling her followers that she had taken a “wee tumble” a day earlier.

“Fell down my stairs and landed amongst a stack of Cmas decorations! No head or facial damage, just a few bruises & a wee gash. I do have a 2mth old stress fracture in my foot (of course), so maybe that compromised my ‘wondrous agility and finesse on the stairs,’” she explained.

The Houstons put their home up for sale in September 2022, only months after Brian Houston formally resigned on March 23, 2022, as global senior pastor of Hillsong Church in the wake of revelations that two women had made serious complaints of misconduct against him in the last 10 years.

Brian Houston, who is now fighting criminal charges in Australia that he covered up his father’s child sexual abuse, has since blamed public statements made by the church’s board for his abrupt resignation instead of any “mistakes” he made in ministry.

He argued that the board's statements led to public speculation and allowed “people’s imagination to run wild and draw their own conclusions” about his departure from Hillsong. 

“I want to be clear. The media and others incorrectly say I resigned because I breached the Hillsong code of conduct, but that’s just not true. I didn’t resign because of my mistakes. I resigned because of the announcements and statements that had been made, which Bobbie and I felt made my position untenable. And I spelled out my reasons for my resignation in my resignation letter to the Hillsong Church board,” Brian Houston said in a Facebook video last November.

He added that when he offered to resign last March, he was expecting the board to reject it and fight for him, understanding how much pressure he was facing at the time.

“I guess a big part of me hoped that the board, knowing the pressure I was under, would reject my offer and continue to fight for me, but that was not to be,” he said. “We certainly did not want to just abandon the Hillsong congregation, as some have suggested. We adore the people of Hillsong Church, and to be honest, we miss you all terribly.”