Hillsong Melbourne’s expansion into the greater west of the city came as a “surprise” to lead pastor Joel A’Bell.

The West and Greater West campuses of the burgeoning Hillsong church launched their first Sunday services last weekend to packed houses in Maidstone and Hillside.

A’Bell told Eternity that while there were always plans for a multi-campus approach in Melbourne—similar to Sydney—the new campuses came out of a relationship between Hillsong Church and Paul and Jo Kellock, the pastors at Life Christian Church in Melbourne that has now been folded into the “Hillsong family”.

After launching in Melbourne’s City Centre in February this year, Hillsong now has four campuses across the city. Photo: Hillsong Melbourne at Athenaeum Theatre. Source: Hillsong Collected.

“Paul had said his season at Life Christian Church was coming to an end, so they had embarked on a journey to find a new senior pastor, or a church that they could become part of.”

Last week, a team spent several days renewing Life Christian Church to make it ready for the first Hillsong service.

“People came last week and it was Life Christian Church, and the next week they turned up and it was Hillsong,” said A’Bell. But it’s not just a coat of paint, new chairs and a logo that makes a Hillsong Church.

“What’s ahead of us is the hardwork of building an already great community. A church never becomes Hillsong overnight. It’s about being adopted into a family. The cooperation between parents and children is really what makes family family.”

The two new campuses for Hillsong in Melbourne, join the existing East campus in Bayside and original city campus at the Athenaeum Theatre on Collins Street. With the first Melbourne campus launching officially in February this year, the growth of the church in Victoria has been enormous in a short period of time. A’Bell says it’s part of a plan set by Pastor Brian Houston to “plant great churches in cities of influence that can influence nations.”

“That’s why we’re in London, that’s why Paris, Cape Town, New York, and now Barcelona three weeks ago too. When it comes to Australia, Melbourne is now such an influential city in Australia, and we want to reach Australia for Jesus. So we see Melbourne as a strategic city to do that.”

The launch of the services last week attracted hundreds of visitors to both West campuses, said A’Bell. He knows are a lot of Christians “on the fringe” of other churches in the area, who will consider joining the new Hillsong campuses.

“That’s the problem with the fringe—they’re not planted anywhere. So anybody on the fringe of Hillsong is doing the same thing, looking around and checking out other churches. That’s typical I think in every part of society.”

But what A’Bell is really excited about is the number of new people —people new to church or who haven’t been in a really long time—they’re seeing in their campuses.

“One of my favourite comments at the end of the service, especially in a new church environment like Melbourne, is when people say ‘that was a great speech’, or ‘loved your talk’ and you can tell that they’re not used to being in a church because they’re not saying ‘great sermon’ or ‘great message’. They’re using words from the street.

“They’ve got no clue of church culture; they don’t know what’s right or wrong. In some of our services we’ll call people down the front to respond and we want to pray with them. They’ll come running down and jump up on stage – they don’t know they’re supposed to stop at the front and turn around and look at the crowd. We have a church reaching people that haven’t been to church before.”