Hillsong’s Brian Houston has detailed his own slide toward depression after discovering that his father had sexually abused underage children.

In an edited extract from his new book Live Love Lead, Houston describes first learning of his father’s crimes in 1999. “I didn’t even have a category for this kind of accusation,” Houston writes. “A riptide of painful emotions washed over me, wave after wave. Confusion. Anger. Incredulity. Fear. Hurt. Betrayal.”

Frank Houston, who founded the Sydney Christian Life Centre, is credited with building a movement that became Hillsong, one of the largest megachurches in the world. Before his death in 2004 aged 82, he confessed to sexually abusing a boy in New Zealand three decades earlier, and was immediately removed from ministry by Brian. Further accusations of abuse emerged in the following years, several of which proved to be true.

Read the article “Hillsong’s Brian Houston on His Father’s Child Abuse: ‘A Nightmare that Would Change My Life’” on christiantoday.com.