But the proposed rental eventually became a purchase. “Hillsong was approached by a developer to lease office space and have a multi-use venue at a 50% discount to the market due to benefits that the developer would receive by having a ‘community facility’ within the tenancy,” the report said. In its 2017 annual report, without naming the family connection, Hillsong East Coast explained how it had purchased a new Manhattan headquarters at 363 Lafayette Street. A few years ago, Shnay’s company, SK Development, along with two other firms, began constructing an office building at 363 Lafayette Street in NoHo that opened in 2018. ![]() The pastor, a former real estate broker, is the developer Abram Shnay’s son-in-law. A former volunteer in New York wrote to church leadership in 2017 about allegations of sexual harassment within Hillsong, including Lentz’s own alleged “inappropriate sexual behavior.” Vanity Fair reported in February that the volunteer said he was told by Termini that he needed to defend the church the way that Termini would defend his wife.īefore Termini became Lentz’s interim replacement at Hillsong, he held jobs as the church’s head of global real estate and director of business development. Former congregants have described Termini as not only an integral player in Lentz’s kingdom-they employ some of the same emotive style in their sermons-but an avid protector of it. “We were hoping to share this update with you this weekend,” Houston wrote.)įor several years of his Hillsong tenure, Termini was a central presence at what congregants and volunteers came to call “the compound.” Lentz and other Hillsong NYC pastors lived, worked, and partied at the building, a converted warehouse of luxury condos along the Williamsburg waterfront. “I’m in the beginning stages of planning to start a church in Hawaii where my brother, his wife and baby live,” Termini said, adding that “Pastor Brian and I have a close relationship and he has given me his blessing.” (Hillsong didn’t return a request for comment, but following the publication of this story, Houston and Termini both announced Termini’s departure from the church on Instagram. While the source suggested that Termini had grown tired of Hillsong’s controversies, the pastor struck a more sanguine tone when reached by text message. A few days later, Houston announced that Chrishan and Danielle Jeyaratnam, formerly pastors at Hillsong’s location in Perth, Australia, would replace Lentz on a permanent basis. Last month, Houston announced that the investigation was complete, and that while the church wouldn’t release the results, its board of directors had learned that it needed to make changes at the branches Lentz had led (and, the announcement seemed to imply, only at those branches). The pastor is preparing to move to Hawaii, a source familiar with his plans said, where he’ll start a separate church following the series of scandals at his old place of employment. ![]() ![]() Brian Houston, the church’s global senior pastor who founded Hillsong in Australia, publicly distanced himself from Lentz and announced an investigation of the East Coast outposts.Īmid the turmoil, Termini is now leaving Hillsong too. But Lentz’s infidelity, the apparent cause of his ouster, also led to broader scrutiny of Hillsong as congregants and volunteers recounted a pattern of exploitation and alienation within the church. The appointment provided some continuity: Termini had been working at Hillsong in New York for much of the time since it opened in 2010, and he was embedded in Lentz’s inner circle, along with a small group of other senior pastors. After the celebrity-friendly megachurch Hillsong fired embattled pastor Carl Lentz in November, his initial replacement as the head of the church’s East Coast locations was executive pastor John Termini.
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