At the end of 2023, I was deeply sad and laying on my floor. At some point, I looked up and saw my little studio setup from a perspective I never had before and I thought, “If I saw this in a movie, I would think the character about to be introduced is probably a cool protagonist.” And then I went back to crying. Fast forward a few months to March and I was back on the floor weighing up my options after my roommate and I received (and accepted) the official notice that we will have to move in May. There’s a longer version of the story, but the TL:DR recap is that since COVID, we have been pay ..read more

To Carl Lentz, some people matter but most people are matter. Hi Stacey. Well… that was something. And it feels like the polite thing to do would be to ask what happened and be open to your perspective. But I’m tired. And I don’t want to. I respect your perception of Hillsong & the Lentzs the same way you I think you respect mine: I acknowledge that it exists and it’s valid to you, but I don’t actually give a fuck because it doesn’t jive with my narrative. And that’s fine. At this point, I think I might understand what happened to you more than you understand what happened to me or any of ..read more

I was talking with a friend recently and they mentioned how they have been careful to make sure that their TikTok algorithm doesn’t show them stuff related to religious trauma – no deconstruction, no exvangelical, ex-hillsong, ex-Christian, no ex-anything and, in conclusion, no me. And I get it. A high percentage of my closest “real life” friends pay no attention to me on the internet. Like none. If I’m doing something multimedia (like Heart For This House), they’ll support me, but in regular day-to-day life, internet interactions and actual conversations about the place(s) and the faith that ..read more

2020 is crazy. Consistently. Unimaginably, wait-what-now-?! crazy. Even the days that seem normal, are normal for crazy. Yesterday, for instance, was a pretty normal day. After staying up all night catching up on podcasts, I fell asleep around 7am, to wake up at the crack of noon and spend most of the day writing, with Jingle Jangle playing on a loop in the background. It was a pretty standard… Monday? Yes. Yesterday was Monday. Whatever that means. I remember when days used to feel like something. I would stand in the kitchenette at work, stirring a spoonful of honey into my tea and say thing ..read more

On November 5th an instagram post went up, it was a picture of some white people that I knew… thought I knew? Kind of knew? But in retrospect, never really knew at all. And maybe I kinda knew that, I wasn’t even following 4 out of 5 people in the picture. I was good with just knowing of them. It was a nice enough photo, but the caption was jarring. It was an explanation that what the photo seemed to portray wasn’t exactly the whole picture.  And in thinking about it now… I mean… I guess that’s exactly how pictures work. Right? We step into the frame with whatever we’re carrying and we cho ..read more

It has been a year since the firing of Carl Lentz and the very visible part of the (I think) end of an empire. Back in October, I thought I would feel more on the actual dates, as in thought I would feel something but… nope. Probably because I was a woman on a mission, a woman with a LOT of editing to do. So I’ll probably write some proper “a year later” thoughts soon, but in the meantime ..read more

After years of faithful sacrifice, serving as a volunteer (and unknowing Judas-goat) as part of Hillsong East Coast, (letting my presence be used as quiet reassurance to people that looked like me that Hillsong was a place worth staying in, serving in and trying to save,) when I left, I should have been louder about why I was leaving.  So I’m being loud now, in an attempt to keep the people of Georgia from learning the hard way. To keep them from investing their time, energy, talents and money into a place that is only invested in taking all of the above away from them. To keep them away ..read more

Hillsong Dallas is now Hillsong Dunzo. *laughs in won’t-He-do-it* It’s a start. Janice Lagata The empire is burning. And if you still have doubt as to why that is… how? What’s not clicking? Brian Houston is not a good leader. And consequently, Hillsong is not a good organization. It might not have started out that way and it’s probably not what Brian originally intended, but none of that matters now. It is what it is, and what it is, in the kindest, least-controversial description I can muster, is unhealthy. I don’t think many would dispute that. Even among people who still attend Hillsong, a ..read more