Maybe some of you watched "Australian Current Affair" (ACA) last week (April 21st) when they featured an exposé on Sydney's massive Hillsong Church in Baulkam Hills, Sydney. The program was called "Hillsong goes to Hollywood" and it reported on the news that Hillsong is about to release a feature film about their band, Hillsong United.

The main issue – predictably – was "where is all the money going?" The program reported that Hillsong rake in a cool $72 million every year. This is sourced from tithing by their attendees, profits from major events, income from their Bible College and profits from their music industry. The question was asked: how much will they now reap from this movie? And of course the program pointed out that all of this income is tax free because they are a church.

Over the years there have been various such exposés of Hillsong and they always make me cringe. I don't want to give a "thumbs up" to Hillsong – I have my own reservations about Hillsong (and the matter of money is probably one of my lesser concerns) but let me share with you why these programs make me cringe.

These kinds of programs make me cringe because they are slanted to make the average Christian look like a blithering idiot. Anyone who tithes is stupid for giving his money away. We're idiots for getting sucked in by religious hucksters who are only after our hard-earned cash. Programs like this perpetuate the idea that churches are only after our money. Admittedly Hillsong doesn't help the cause by their emphasis on 'giving' at some of their meetings (of which there was ample footage in the program).

They make me cringe because they paint an unfair contrast. In this program they contrasted supposedly fabulously wealthy Brian Houston from Hillsong with unselfish Bill Crews from the Uniting Church who runs a soup kitchen for the poor and hungry at Wayside Chapel in Sydney. That's no contest because they are putting together two extremes from the "Christian" community. Why didn't they come and talk to us and compare Hillsong to an ordinary garden variety church like ours?

I cringe at these exposés because they are often unfair. ACA have a vested interest – as is so often the case with the media – of sensationalising a matter. Furthermore Tracey Grimshaw, the hostess, explained in her closing remarks that they had asked Hillsong for a reply but that they had received no response. Yet Hillsong posted on their media page, "the program made no attempt to contact us to get the facts – or even hear our perspective – before airing this piece of fiction". So who's telling porkies?

I cringe because in all of this the good news about Jesus is not only sidelined but totally ignored. The message and mission of the church is not PRIMARILY to run soup kitchens for the poor and needy. Neither is the message and mission of the church PRIMARILY to produce awe-inspiring worship resources. Our message and mission is PRIMARILY to preach the gospel of the Kingdom about the doing, the dying and victory of Jesus. I don't think that message always comes out very clearly in Hillsong and I don't think that message comes out very clearly at Wayside Chapel either – of course I'm speaking from my limited experience of these institutions and I wish I could be proven wrong. Okay, I know, ultimately God is the judge. But the point is that this message most definitely didn't get a hearing in ACA's program, Hillsong goes to Hollywood.

John Westendorp