Scott Parker: 'Hillsong Boy'

Scott Parker comes on the podcast to discuss 'Hillsong Boy': a theatrical exploration of the highs and lows of growing up queer in a megachurch, based on Scott’s real life. 

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Transcript

Will Small (00:03)
Scott Parker, welcome to the Spiritual Misfits podcast.

Scott (00:07)
Woo woo. Yeah. Hi.

Will Small (00:09)
I'm really excited to have a chat. I've been looking forward to this. We're going to chat about a whole range of things. kind of came across your work recently when I saw someone shared the details of your theater performance, Hillsong Boy, which launched earlier this year. And we're going to chat about that. But before we get into it, us the, know, who is Scott Parker in a few sentences? How do you describe who you are and what you're doing in the world?

Scott (00:26)
Yeah.

All right, I'm a theater maker. I'm a dad, so I have two kids and I live in Wollongong and I trained as a clown in Paris. That was like my training, but I'm also like have a very long history of being involved at Hillsong Church. I was there for around 20 years, so like 19 years, I think it kind of works out.

Will Small (00:52)
Wow.

Scott (01:04)
I was on the worship team there for a while. In fact, ever since I was a kid, I was sort of involved in the worship team there as a vocalist. How else would I describe myself? I'm a bit of a nerd. Like I play a lot of like tabletop RPGs. And to be honest with you, if I could like be less busy and just do that, I think I'd be pretty happy. But that's like...

You know, that's like another side of my life. Yeah, I think I'm well and truly out of Hillsong now. I left in 2019 after sort of a long period of deconstruction while serving at the church. And then eventually it sort of all blew up and I left.

Yeah, I attend Leichhardt Uniting Church now, which is a wonderful affirming church. I should say I'm queer as well. I'm bi or pan or something. I tend to not try and give myself too many labels around that because I'm always discovering, especially in such a long period of time in the church, I'm still sort of discovering stuff about myself in that world of my sexuality. So, you know, I go with queer because it's sort of the easiest thing to say.

But yeah, during my time at Hillsong, I was, I experienced conversion therapy and I was involved in an exorcism or two. you know, attended Christian counseling and all of those things. I also had a lot of wonderful times at Hillsong, I should say, my time at Hillsong. You know, I didn't stay there for 19 years because it was awful. I stayed there because in some ways it was wonderful and in other ways it was really, really terrible.

Will Small (02:40)
Mm.

Yeah.

Scott (02:49)
and did some real lasting damage. yeah, I mean, that's kind of me. My day job at the moment is I work for the federal government in the arts, the arts agency, Creative Australia. I'm a grants officer, that's my day job. And on the side, I'm making theater. So my life is very full. And as I said, I'm always open to having it less be less full.

Will Small (03:12)
Mm.

Scott (03:20)
But I can't help myself.

Will Small (03:20)
It sounds like it's, it sounds like it's full of very good things though. And it sounds like you've found yourself in a place that is probably increasingly feels integrated, feels like it makes sense, maybe more than some of the previous spaces you've been in.

Scott (03:24)
Yeah!

Absolutely, yeah, A life at Hillsong being a queer theatre maker is one of severe cognitive dissonance. So getting out of there and being able to kind of reconcile all of the various fragmented parts of myself. It's an ongoing process, but it's been a really valuable one.

I'm feeling increasingly settled and especially like I used to live in Bondi and life was life is pretty hard in Sydney at the moment since moving out of Sydney I'm especially feeling like I got more space to kind of process those things and having done this show as well it's been really great to take that stuff to the stage and meet so many people who have been through the same stuff and do this process in a sort of community a weird kind of theatre community

Will Small (04:12)
Mm.

Scott (04:22)
which I kind of think is the best way to do this reintegration thing. But yeah, yeah, it's, no, I'm very glad to be doing the process and doing the work, but yeah.

Will Small (04:27)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, there's, there's so much there that, I'm keen to unpack in this bit of time we have together, but, you know, I love to just use the, guess the people see a lot of things in the name of this podcast, right? Spiritual misfits. seems to be a term that resonates with a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. And, there's, guess a lot of different ways of unpacking what that could mean, but I love to use that as a bit of an entryway into understanding people's backstory. As you think about maybe what it looked like for you to grow up.

in the world of faith and Christianity, like did you, did you kind of grow up within Hillsong as a kid? How did you end up there? When along the way might you have had early feelings of being a spiritual misfit or how does that phrase resonate with your experiences over time?

Scott (05:20)
That's a good question. Yeah, so my mom and dad are not involved in Hillsong, never were. I'm Italian Maltese English, that's my two kind of parental heritages, I guess. My dad is agnostic, my mom very Catholic and my mom's side of the family very Catholic. So they put me through Catholic, you know, in the Catholic church. did the first, my first church was the local Catholic church.

But then I think my mom noticed that I was just bored and so they moved me to the local Anglican church. And then from there, I stayed there until I was about 13. And when I was 13, a friend of mine at school, you we were talking about church stuff and for whatever reason, I'd fallen in with the Christian crowd at school. I guess, because I was a Christian myself, although didn't really, I mean, it was more of kind of a cultural thing, less so a conviction, as they would say. But I fell in with these, this group of very like, you know, born again Christian types.

And they were wonderful, really wonderful people. One of them, their dad was a worship pastor at Hillsong. And so we were talking about church music and I said, I love this song, this is gonna get my age, but it was called My Redeemer Lives. And I remember being like obsessed with that classic, loved it. It was like the best song we did at our little Anglican church back in, you know, 2000, year 2000, 1999. And...

Will Small (06:34)
Mm, classic.

Scott (06:45)
He said, I know the person who wrote that song, which was Ruben Morgan. I was like, how? How do you know the person who wrote a song that I listened to? And he said, you want to come along and see my church? So was like, yeah, sure. I'll come along. And I always loved music. was, you know, I was in all the bands at school and, you know, I love performance. I've always been in theater, you know, like I first started doing theater when I was like eight or nine, you know. So performance and all that sort of stuff is very much in my, core of my, of who I was even then.

And I went along to a youth night, a night of youth at church. think it was wildlife at the time, or maybe 68ers or something like that, I think is what they used to call it. And I just remember being absolutely stunned. Like I could not believe that something like this existed every Friday night. know, that was like pumping music and the games were off the chain and like everything was, you know, was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

I started going to youth on a Friday with them, like pretty well on the regular, made heaps of friends and I was already kind of a bit of a, like, I mean, we talked about spiritual misfits, but I was kind of a misfit at school as well.

You know, I knew I loved performing and I loved, you know, I was very, I don't know, I was just a little bit experimental in the way that I lived my life. Already at that time I was a bit of a weirdo and I embraced that, but it also, you know, when you live in the Sublin Shire.

Will Small (08:11)
Right.

Scott (08:16)
you're growing up in the Sutherland Shire in the early 2000s, it's not a particularly safe place to be different. And I came to church and everybody just embraced that. Everyone was like, yeah, this weird kid came and he's, you know, and we're to call him our friend. And I was like, you know, nobody had really done that for me before. I was part of a youth theater at the time, shop front. And I had a bit of that there as well. But yeah, it was so profound. was like all these cool kids, like these people that were like actually genuinely the cool kids, probably were the cool kids at their school. You know, they went

surfing every weekend and they were just cool. I was not cool. And I remember being like, my god, the cool kids want to hang with me. And so that just hooked me. I had these friends, I had this amazing experience every Friday night. And I was there. Eventually the Anglican church, was like, I'm going to actually, I should say, a pastor at the church pulled me aside and said, you can't be attending two churches. You can only attend one because the Bible says that those who are planted

Will Small (08:51)
Thank

Scott (09:15)
the house of the Lord will flourish and you need to be planted. A tree isn't planted in two places so you need to choose. So eventually I went to... no, no, no, at the Hillsong, yeah. And so I ended up going, going, yeah. yeah, deeply Pentecostal theology. I think at the time as well, it was the time of the Blessed album recording which, you know, like the feature song from that album was Darlene's song Blessed which was, blessed are those who dwell in their, in your house, they are ever praising you. It was like...

Will Small (09:20)
Was that pastor at the Anglican Church or at Hillsong?

Yeah, I was going to say that sounds very, that sounds Pentecostal.

Scott (09:44)
the verse of the moment. So they used that, I kind of weaponized that. And I went away and basically said to this Anglican church, yeah, I'm out. And the minister at that poor Anglican church was like, don't leave, you're like the only boy in our youth group. And I was like, no, I'm gone. And it was so mean. just like, you but yeah, they, from then on I was at Hillsong.

Will Small (09:44)
Right.

Yeah.

Scott (10:08)
And I was there, went through the youth ministry, became a youth leader, I was on the worship team, did the whole thing, and then I left when I was 32. you know, it was quite a introduction to it. My parents weren't really on board. They, right from the start, were calling it a cult and saying it was weird and saying they didn't like me going. And they actually were like, you know, we're putting our foot down, we're not driving you into the city every Friday night.

At which point I was like, okay, well, I'm just gonna find my own way there. And so I'd get on a bus and travel like an hour and a half on the bus at like 14 or 15 into the city every Friday night to go to youth. And then I'd like wrangle a car ride home from someone. I'd be like, can you take me home? And I'd do that every single week until I had my license. And yeah, when I had my license, that was it. I was there like, I was at church every single day if I could be there every single day. Yeah, so like I was hooked.

Will Small (10:57)
Yeah. Coming into that world, coming into that world as like a 13 year old or around that sort of age is interesting because developmentally, like it's a hugely significant time in your life. And then what you get from that environment in terms of belonging, connection, the sense of like being part of something bigger, like you're saying that Friday night kind of mountain top experience. I think that's powerful people at lots of different stages of life, but there is a potency there for like a teenager.

figuring themselves out. And then I suppose, as we think about questions of sexuality and who we are in our body and, you know, attractions and things like that, that's all kind of starting to ramp up as well. So the kind of confluence of those things at that time, I'm imagining was obviously, yeah, incredibly powerful in lots of different ways. What did that start to look like? Like, when did you...

Scott (11:26)
Mm.

Yeah

Will Small (11:50)
you know, you mentioned things like exorcisms and conversion therapy, and obviously only talk about what you feel comfortable talking about. But when did you start to like discover things within yourself that felt like you had to change to exist in that, in that world?

Scott (11:54)
Yeah.

think, look, I think I started getting thoughts that maybe I was a bit different to like, like I was just waiting for the moment that I'd be like, you know, like attracted to the girls around me in the same way that the boys were. And like,

it just never really, I mean like I'd have like a crush here or there, but like never the way the other boys were. And you know, I was probably, you know, I mean that starts when you're 13 or 14. So I was just like, yeah, I'm just, you know, eventually, eventually. And then I realized that, you know, yeah, I'd occasionally have like a crush here or there on a girl, but then I would also have these other crushes that I'd be like.

you know, that I didn't recognize as being crushes at the time. And I think that was part of me being sort of in denial. I'm not sure. I probably talked to like a million other queer people who experienced the same thing. Especially within the church who would say, no, I just really want to be friends with this boy. You know, that's what it is. I'm just want to be friends. And then you sort of realize as, as I got to maybe about 15 or 16, I was like, I started thinking, because as I said before, I was part of this youth theater company. It was a cooperative in Carlton.

Will Small (13:00)
Mm.

Scott (13:14)
in Sydney and it was shopfront and there were lots of queer kids at shopfront it was sort of like this one space where you could kind of be openly queer in early 2000s and not cop too much flack from people you know like some of my best friends were like you know lesbians or you know gay and they were like 14 or 15 which is you know a huge thing I just remember thinking maybe maybe that is maybe and I

Will Small (13:36)
Yeah.

Scott (13:43)
As soon as I started saying maybe, I was like, no, can't be, it's not gonna happen. I'm gonna make the choice, I'm gonna make a choice, this is not me. eventually I ended up going to Newtown High School of Performing Arts and there were a lot of queer kids. And I remember people coming up to me and being like, you're queer, right? And I'd like, no, no, go away, I'm not, I'm straight, I'm really straight, look how straight I am. But I mean...

Will Small (13:47)
Mm.

Scott (14:12)
Yeah, you sort of start going, no, no, no, but eventually it becomes inescapable. And I kind of had to be like, yeah, okay, I am having these feelings for other boys. Maybe I am, maybe I am gay, maybe I'm bi, I don't know.

as soon as you admit that to yourself. Like guess one of the things I'm most prized as a value is honesty and being able to be honest with myself as well as honest with the people around me. And so you've got youth leaders and you trust you youth leaders, right? Like I had many youth leaders across my time at Hillsong.

None that I told responded in a way that was like affirming, absolutely not. A few kind of ignored it. So I'd say, hey, think I'm same sex attracted because you wouldn't label yourself gay or bi or whatever. You'd say same sex attracted. I think I'm same sex attracted. One youth leader just kind of like fobbed it off and was like, no, I'm not gonna talk about this.

Will Small (15:05)
Mm

Scott (15:15)
Which to be honest with you is probably the best thing he could have done in that moment, because I don't think he was equipped at all. Probably would have just said the wrong thing. Other youth leaders recommended I go and get spiritual counseling or prayed it away or tried to pray it away. At one point, a leader recommended a program which was called Setting Captives Free.

Will Small (15:19)
Mm.

Yeah.

Scott (15:36)
which was an online program. If you Google it, you'll get a whole bunch of news reports about some of the outcomes of that program, which were terrible. But essentially it was an online conversion therapy program that involved modules that you would complete. And then at the end of the module, there was an accountability partner. And so myself, I was probably 17 or 18 at the time. It's possible I was a minor. I can't pinpoint in time.

Will Small (15:45)
Mm.

Scott (16:05)
how old I actually was when I was doing it. Because it just sort of, to be honest with I'd completely forgotten about it until I heard somebody bring it up and say they'd gone through conversion therapy and they went through this program. I was like, no, I went through that program as well. But you talk to an accountability partner who was basically this like middle aged guy in New Zealand, I think, or like

Southeast Asia, I'm not even sure, like there was somewhere in the world and I would report to him every sort of sexual experience or moment I'd had in my day, whether I'd been masturbating, whether I'd, you know, looked at a guy, lusted after a guy or like...

any of the thoughts I'd had and what I'd done in that moment to kind of stop myself or like whatever. And then he provided vice or whatever. And the point was that I was supposed to, you know, see if I could complete the end of the module and then boom, you're done. You're not gay anymore. Which, sorry, there's something outside making a squeaking noise. I've just, yeah. But yeah, yeah, I guess I, I,

Will Small (17:00)
Wow.

That's all right.

Scott (17:14)
I found I didn't really complete the module. I maybe got like a couple of weeks into it and then was like, nah, this isn't working. And then I bailed. And then I guess what fills the void is a sort of self -loathing where you're like, I don't know if there's anything I can do to fix this problem except to just be in denial.

People would come to church like Cy Rogers, who many of your listeners have probably heard of, who was a very famous ex -gay preacher. Nearer to the end of his life, because he sort of died recently, but nearer the end of his life, he no longer was calling himself ex -gay, but like, he was gay, but also he decided to deny himself that. That was his message.

Will Small (17:42)
you

Scott (18:01)
At the time he was kind of transitioning into preaching that message at church. So I just was like, like I remember him saying, well, God hasn't called you to not be gay, but he has called you to be pure. And so I'd be like, okay, cool. So I can't change this, but I guess this just means I'm going to be celibate and I'm going to be righteous and I'm not going to engage in that. And you know, God's going to call me to be with a woman. So great.

know, that's what I'm going to do. And I know a lot of queer people in the church had the same thinking about it. So it was, yeah, it was a real, it was quite a tumultuous time. And then a few years later, I ended up in a relationship with a Hillsong College student from out of Hills. And we, you know, yeah, we were intimate a number of times. And

Will Small (18:40)
Mm.

Scott (18:56)
we were, that was, lasted for a few months and it was like this like up and down thing of like, don't know why I'm doing this. What, what is going on with me? until eventually I broke it off with him and then, yeah, things got really dark after that. I don't know how much you want to go into that on this podcast, but you know, like my mental health really suffered and I just got worse and worse. And from then on, my mantra was pretty much like, I'm a crap Christian. Like I'm just a bad Christian. I'm a Christian. I can't not be a Christian, but I'm a bad.

Will Small (19:16)
Mm.

Scott (19:25)
Christian, like I'm a really bad one. And that was like just the world I lived in for years after all of that went down. Until eventually I realized that, the gospel wasn't good news to me anymore, like there was no good news in this. was just, everything was bad. And the more I started to unpack all of this and pick the threads, because I had to, it was survival, you know, like

Will Small (19:27)
Mm.

Scott (19:53)
The more I started to pick the threads, the more it sort of all, sorry, think my, sorry, sorry. I'm getting a call through on a device and it's cutting my headphones off.

Will Small (20:01)
You're fine. Totally fine.

Scott (20:14)
Sorry, can you hear me by the way? Okay, I'm just gonna disconnect from, I've got like four devices in this room that are all connected to these headphones and one of.

Will Small (20:31)
Totally fine. I understand the dilemmas of Bluetooth devices.

Scott (20:38)
Yeah, okay, I think that's solved. I just got a call coming through on my closed laptop, which is great, on my day off from work. Wonderful, that's what I like to hear. Okay, so sorry about that. Yeah, so, yeah, I started picking the threads and...

Will Small (20:47)
Right.

that's totally fine.

Scott (21:01)
you start picking one thread and it pulls another and another and another until all of a sudden the concept of God unravels for you and you're not sure you know you're not sure what you believe anymore or how to believe and eventually I'm I'm on the platform you know sometimes leading worship on the weekend and not actually believing in God at all which

you know, is its own form of cognitive dissonance. And I know lots of worship leaders, especially at Hillsong, are in the same position, probably even now. You know, it's not uncommon, but it's really hard to leave. know, you're talking about leaving everything you know. Everything is wrapped up in what Hillsong is. Your life is enmeshed, you know. My entire schedule and routine and my friends, everyone is there.

So, but then as I said, like I really prized honesty as like this quality within me that I wanted to nurture and never to let go of as a quality, as a trait. And I couldn't do it anymore.

And the weekend that Scott Morrison was re -elected or elected as prime minister in 2019, that had been quite a devastating night for us. I'm a bit of a pinko lefty and even as a Christian, which is another form of cognitive dissonance, I will tell you. the night that he was elected, I've just felt so low about everything. I was like, I cannot believe this man

country has elected this man and then I got to church the next morning and everyone was jubilant like so happy and I was like on stage and I there were numerous other things around it I tell the story in the show but I I got down the front to sing the songs and this guy runs to the front of the stage and throws his hands in the air and he yells

Will Small (22:42)
Mm.

Mm.

Scott (23:05)
in worship and I just cringed so hard that I left the church. I was like I can't I can't be involved in this anymore. Like how is this like it doesn't fit my idea of who I am of what I believe about the world what I believe about God.

Will Small (23:10)
Yeah.

Scott (23:22)
And literally on the platform, I, I know, I tend to chuck Tanties when I'm not happy with stuff. I put the microphone down and I stood there for all four worship songs and then I walked off stage and I never came back to church. That was my last day. said I was never going back. And, and since then it's been a process of rediscovering for myself what faith looks like because, you know, I think a lot of people probably listen to your podcast, probably know that.

Will Small (23:35)
Wow.

Scott (23:50)
you even if you don't believe in the God of the Pentecostals or whatever, like you still believe in something and you still want a community of faith around you in some way. And you're still curious. You don't lose any of those things when you leave the church. You still have that devotional side of yourself, that side that loves worship.

Will Small (24:01)
you

Scott (24:12)
what worship looks like now is very different for me, but I guess it's been a process of trying to work out since I left the church what that means now that, you know, and I still call myself a Christian in some ways, because I know that there's a lot of people out there who would like to not call me a Christian and I won't let them, you know, there's a lot of people that I know that would be like, no, he's not a Christian anymore. He's a backslider. And,

And a lot of people would probably say, you never believed. And I just won't let them have that. I won't let them have that on me. No. No, they don't get to tell my story. And so I call myself a Christian. I'm still trying to work out what that means. But I'm calling myself that.

Will Small (24:43)
They don't get to tell your story. Yeah.

Hmm. Scott, I really appreciate you sharing, in, in a fair bit of depth there about some of those tumultuous years. And I just feel the weight of it. And anytime somebody shares a story like that with me, as much as I can, as someone who hasn't had that experience, I just, you know, I feel the injustice and the grief and the angst and, and just, you know, I just want to acknowledge that. And, and so disappointed in a sense that,

you and many others have had to experience a story like that. But I also dignify and honor you being willing to share that story and to articulate it in an honest way. So tell me a little bit about, you had a pretty decisive moment there. Obviously there's a big buildup, then that's pretty baller, putting the microphone.

down and standing there for four songs and then never going back to church. But it would have, like you said, like the, the month, the days, the weeks after that, you've extracted yourself from this ecosystem that you've been a part of, you know, for so long. that would have been very disorienting. And I'm wondering between that moment. And then when you stand on stage in March this year to share kind of publicly your story in this performance work.

Scott (25:52)
Yeah.

Will Small (26:18)
What, what happened in some of that kind of disorienting or reinventing yourself space in between? did you, how'd you kind of find life after Hillsong?

Scott (26:28)
Yeah, I think I realized what I don't think at the time I really had any like system for deconstruction or working out what I was like, you know, like, there was no like systematic, yeah, I'm gonna work out what I believe here I go. I think, at first, it was just a lot of testing and seeing what fit what felt good. Trusting my body and trusting my gut and trusting my instincts to know what feels right for me.

and not second, not questioning that, I think, because like, I guess when you're involved in a church like Hillsong, you're taught to sort of be skeptical of your own inner voice or to externalize that inner voice as God talking to you. And if it's not in accordance with what you understand of God's word, then it's the devil, right?

It's never yourself. And if it is yourself, you're not, you don't listen to your own inner voice. So I guess a part of it was just like working out what my inner voice was telling me about the world and about what I wanted to believe. And I think one of the first things was like, my God, I can believe anything I want. Like I could try any number of beliefs and see what works.

I definitely had a moment of the new atheist side of myself coming out. I got into a little bit of that, but then I was like, no, I don't like these guys. No offense to anybody who still really loves them, but I just found it reductive and I found it dismissive of people's faith.

Will Small (28:08)
And it can be just in some ways a mirror of, you know, some of those fundamentalist tendencies exist in ideologically opposite spaces.

Scott (28:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And I was like, I don't know if I really want this, although they are saying some stuff that I go, yeah, 100 % like.

But then they'd like go in like these extremely devoted working class Catholic families and they'd be like going at them and I'm like, dude, you are a freaking Oxford scholar with like millions of dollars in the bank account. And for me, was like, as I said, I'm a bit of a pinko. So I was just like, there's a class issue here that I don't appreciate. Yeah, sure.

Will Small (28:36)
Yeah.

Mm.

Scott (28:50)
it may, know, religion may be the opiate of the masses, but it is, you know, it's the light in the world, you know, it's a light in the dark world, I think is what Mark says, like, it's not just the opiate of the masses, people just stop there. It's actually hope, you know, it's hope and light, and it's important. And, you know, I think reducing it to nothing.

Will Small (29:03)
Mm.

Scott (29:13)
It's so dismissive and I just, yeah. Anyway, that was my journey through new atheism. I was like, well, okay, I'm not an atheist. So what am I then? Do I need to be something? And then, you know, my partner and I, my wife, we both sort of in performance world, you know, she's been, you know, we've been together for a very long time and we both have like a real fascination with like folk.

Festival and vernacular culture, especially in the British Isles because both of us have heritage there and so we've been to so many like folk festivals and folk events we've gone to the Bury man and we've you know gone down to like we've been to Bulgaria and been to the the server festival in Bulgaria and we've done like all sorts of stuff and there was something about the earthiness of that Movement and the belief within that movement which isn't it isn't a systematic belief You know, I think when I was in the when I was in the church, we would always just call it like pagan

And it's like, yeah, cool, paganism. Like it's just one monolithic belief system, but actually like what we discovered by going to all of these amazing events and rituals and you know, it's, it's ritual is what it is, you know, it's ritual. And, and sometimes that ritual involves a bit of, you know, a bit of Christianity and a bit of like the druidic ways and a bit of like, you know, it's fascinating.

But to me, like community is rooted at the center of it. And in that I was like, yeah, community is what I want. It's the thing that I prize the most is people. But then I was like, okay, well, what metaphors make sense to me? Christian metaphors, like it's how I've always thought, you know, I have read the Bible cover to cover way too many times. I know it back to front. It's in me, you know.

And at that point I was like, okay, I want to form a Christianity that's more rooted in community, that doesn't shy away from community being the central facet. And in that I found Black Art Uniting Church where I literally turned up and said, I don't believe in God. And they were like, great. That was it. You know, I'm on their board now. Like I, you know, I sit on their, on their committee. I sing at church now, which I never thought I'd ever do again. But for me, I think about God now in the sense of like,

Will Small (31:21)
Well.

Scott (31:25)
the energy that flows between people, know, that God is the energy between us. It's this conversation, it's all the conversations I've been having after our show, these wonderful conversations that I just live for, they're just so good. Like, people come up and say, yeah, I've shared this experience. And it's just like this moment of solidarity where I get to, and maybe it's bit selfish of me, but I just get to look at people and be like, my God, we're the same, you know, like, we've had the same experience and like,

Will Small (31:49)
Mm.

Scott (31:54)
I think for me, God is in that moment of looking at somebody and saying, my God, we're the same, you know? There's something that unifies us. There's something that connects us. And I think that thing is God. And I'm happy to sit in that and the mystery of that and to not understand that and to be really vague about it and to have theologians be like, yeah, but, and I don't care. Like for me, that makes my life richer. It makes my experience of life richer. It means that I can.

Will Small (32:15)
Yeah.

Scott (32:21)
can be involved in any number of religious communities and feel at home, you know? The one that I want to be involved in at the moment is Leichert Uniting. I'm very happy there, you know? So yeah, I'm sorry, I don't even remember what the original question was, but that's a journey of...

Will Small (32:37)
I'm loving it, man. I'm very strong resonance with a lot of what you're saying. And I think that I've definitely spoken about it quite a bit on the podcast, but that idea of like, you know, Christianity is a language. It's a set of metaphors. It's a tradition that you are steeped in and it's hard to start over. Like I don't, I don't have neither the energy nor the wisdom nor whatever it takes to actually start a new tradition.

And learning another tradition, whilst that might be admirable, it's kind of a bit arrogant in some ways to think I can just come in and become an expert in it. so

Scott (33:16)
Yeah, I mean not to like shut down people that like want to convert to like Islam or whatever like from you know Christianity. I go you go on your journey right but for me it feels a little bit like well I feel like more and more like religion really is rooted in your culture, in your community. The reason that religions look the way they do is because of the cultures that they exist within.

Will Small (33:22)
Totally.

Scott (33:44)
and you know for me to turn around and be like

You know, like even I like I wouldn't even call myself like Druidic or pagan because I'm just it's just not my culture. You know, like I, I admire it. I learn from it. I think it's amazing. But also I'm like, you know, this isn't me. I, you know, my family is Catholic going back generations, right? Like, you know, I, I have there is a tomb in Egypt, which is where my family's from. And it's a Catholic tomb. That is where the bodies of my ancestors currently are.

Will Small (33:53)
Mm.

Scott (34:17)
The records of my family are held within the Catholic Church in Alexandria. You know, like, it is my culture. And I think I don't really feel like I need to go and, I know, I need to go and appropriate somebody else's culture in order to find God. I just don't think I have to. Of course, if other people do, then that's great. You know, I'm not, no judge, but.

Will Small (34:36)
Yeah. Yeah. And the flip side of that is like, if, we think about it as a language, like, I mean, it's, it's amazing when people speak multiple languages or when they start to learn another language as an adult, go for it. but I think there's something about like, you know, in some ways it'd be a waste to not try and find what about my 20 plus years. And then, I mean, you go then the generational thing there's my life.

there's the lies before me, like, it'd a bit of a waste to not try and find something in there of beauty and a way of engaging the world. And I mean, this is putting aside, like, I know that for some people, the trauma that they've experienced unjustly makes this near impossible. And in that case, I say, walk away and get distance and do whatever you need to do. It's not like I'm saying stick it out and be re -traumatized for the sake of this nice metaphor.

Scott (35:25)
Yeah.

god no, no. Yeah. I absolutely have so much respect for like, there are a lot of queer folk that don't want anything to do with the church. I fully respect that.

Will Small (35:33)
Yeah, but I think there is something about

Scott (35:40)
It is, you know, when you've been spiritually traumatized, going back to the scene of the crime, so to speak, I begrudge nobody wanting to avoid that. People who've come and seen my show have said, like, it took a lot of energy and a lot of effort to even come and see my show because I do, I create Hillsong on stage for the first bit of the show. You know, part of it is trying to capture a bit of what Hillsong was like. It's very, very hard because Hillsong has a lot of money and I do not.

Will Small (35:47)
Mm.

Mm.

Scott (36:10)
But, you know, like part of that means that there's a lot of people that come and see the show that are like nervous before they come in. And that, you know, I've heard back from them that first bit is really hard. I get people standing on their feet, raising their hands in the air, singing the song. Yeah, it's a lot. But then I do pull it apart and I hopefully leave people feeling a little bit more resolved by the end of it. yeah.

Will Small (36:10)
you

Yeah.

Yeah, well, that's a brave, that's a brave journey for people, but I do imagine that if handled well, and I'm sure you handle it very well and guide people through that space. And that actually can be very healing in a sense to go back and to then see that there's different outcomes that can, that can emerge from this. How did you like, yeah, how did you get to the point of going, I want to create a public work about these, this deeply personal journey. I mean, Hillsong's funny, right? Cause it is, it's incredibly public.

and always seems to be about the mega, but ultimately all the people in Hillsong, all the thousands of people in Hillsong are persons with a personal experience and journey. So yeah, how did you get to the point where you decided this is something I want to bring people into in that kind of setting?

Scott (37:24)
Yeah, I've been thinking about doing this show actually even while I was still at Hillsong. Part of it was like, yeah, can I, I think it started, like think I first met up with someone in like 2015, right? And it started as like, okay, let's use this show to reconcile being at Hillsong and being queer. Like try and like find a middle ground here.

Obviously that is not what the show became because in the end it just became like realistically it was never going to be the case that I would be allowed to be openly queer but also serving on the team. They would have tolerated my existence at the church but it wouldn't have been like, yeah we'll put you on the platform or we'll you know highlight your presence in the service you know there's a lot of queer people at church who are openly queer and they do not have a platform like that's just how it goes right.

So eventually with that knowledge, I was like, so you're accepted, but you're not really accepted. So I'm out of here now. But this nagging thing in the back of my head was like, I still got to make that show one day. And eventually, you know, I mentioned it to Robbie, my producer and Felicity, my co -creator and director.

Will Small (38:30)
Mm.

Scott (38:40)
conversations over a number of years of bringing this up and saying, yeah, one day I'm going to pitch this show. And they're both, they have no experience in, well, that's not true. mean, Felicity has a background in the Catholic church, but no experience with Hillsong. So, you know, it was, I was like, one day we'll sit down, I will tell you my stories of being at Hillsong. I'll tell you all the crazy stuff that happened and we'll make a show about it.

Then the opportunity came up to pitch a show. There's this one space which is this wonderful experimental space in Sydney called Brand X. And I thought, you know what, if there's one space in Sydney that will take the show as a concept without any writing behind it or any idea of what we're creating, it'll probably be this one. So I pitched it to them and they took the show. And at that point it was on. And I said to Felicity, as I was putting it, said, I'm putting the application, are you on to be the director? She said, yes.

After she joined, we went and approached Robbie and Robbie said, yep, I will produce this show. And now here we are with this show that, you know, I have to say, although I did a lot of the writing of the show, a great deal of the, you know, additional writing and structuring and obviously the directing and the creating of the work came from Felicity. Like she's an incredible artist, theater artist, and I'm very privileged to have her on the show. And I think, you you talk about creating a safe environment for people to experience this.

It's very much, I can trust that it's safe because of her presence on the project, because she's so good at creating safe spaces for queer folk. That's one of the things she does. She herself is queer, you know? So it's actually a wonderful environment to which to be creating the show. And it means that we can have debates. Like, you know, the central core debate of the show is, is Hillsong a cult? There's like a central sort of debate around, should we call Hillsong a cult? And if we call it a cult, what does that mean?

Will Small (40:24)
Mm.

Scott (40:28)
you know, and part of my discussion was, no, it's a church. It, you know, we can't officially call it a cult. It's a church. It's very mainstream. There are lots of other churches like it around the world, around Sydney even. and she would very strongly disagree with me. And we tried to capture that little butting of heads in the show as well. We've got a little bit of work to do in sort of finessing that idea. but you know, it's a, I think.

been a wonderful process of sort of creating this work and being able to sit in the room with Felicity and just be like here are all of my journals like my private journals that I wrote over you know X number of years we're gonna read them and see what messed up stuff is in them because they are they're very messed up like you can see the internal processes of my because I was writing notes at church in them and then I write a reflection in the evenings

And so you can see the words of the preachers going in and then the words of the preachers being transmogrified in my brain into something else. And eventually that leads to, know, like I'm journaling through the whole thing with the Hillsong College student and through that dark pit patch that I went through, I've journaled that whole thing. So it's, we don't give that to the audience. I think it's a bit much, but we do draw from it as like a.

Will Small (41:33)
Mm.

Scott (41:52)
as inspiration in a way. But yeah, it's very cathartic to sort of get all of this stuff that I genuinely was like, I think I'm gonna burn these journals. I'm just gonna burn them. But no, no, I've done the opposite. put them on stage. you know.

Will Small (41:55)
Yeah.

Nothing, nothing like the arts to, to take the shit of our lives and make something, something good out of it. I'm interested, you know, when I used to like, I didn't grow up in a Pentecostal church, but I had enough friends that went to Pentecostal churches that I would go along. And I went to Hillsong conference a couple of times as a teenager. And it was kind of a cousin of where I sat within the Christian tradition as a, as a Baptist, you know, Baptist coastal sometimes.

Scott (42:15)
Yeah.

Will Small (42:35)
call depending on the environment. But, you know, I would always have this struggle when I went to Hillsong, around the performance and the worship team and that sort of, even when you talk this story about someone going down the front and like worshiping Scomo in a sense, I always felt like there was this sense that, you know, separating the worship of God from the performance of the team on stage was very difficult. Now you are performing and not

Scott (42:37)
Yeah.

Will Small (43:04)
calling it worship, it is performance in a true performance sense. But I'm curious, would you see in some sense with where you're at now that this actually is an act of worship or that there is a sacredness in performing this work, even if that's not for anybody else, but just for you personally? Does that question make sense?

Scott (43:21)
Yeah, I feel, I think I still feel uncomfortable with the word worship, just because, I don't know, it's so wedded to like, you know, I say it and I see meetings with Darlene Chek and talking, you know, discussions about worship and worship conferences and worship album recordings and...

Will Small (43:37)
Mm.

Scott (43:40)
I know the concept of worship, it's just so foggy in my brain, but I could certainly call it sacred. It feels sacred to me, but not because of anything I'm doing. I think it's mainly because of the presence of so many queer folk who've had experience in the church, even those without, know, sort of all joining together to say, yeah, this was messed up. What happened to us? And sort of finding solidarity in that. find it sacred in the same way that I find like

I don't know, like a protest sacred, know, you know, like any sort of meeting where solidarity is shared, I think, as I said, like, I think I find God in the confluence of individuals, you know, in the place where individuals meet and dialogue and communicate and share thoughts and grief and disagree and.

and agree and you know all of those things so to me yeah I guess I would call it a sacred space I feel very comfortable calling it performance as well you know nearer to my end at my time at Hillsong even then I was I felt like the best way that I could sort of marry what I was doing at church was to call it performance and to say yeah it's performance but that doesn't make it any less real you know like Hillsong Boy near to the end of performing Hillsong Boy like I perform the show now

I it's probably been like maybe 20 or so times. Once you perform a show more than a couple of times, it starts to get into your body and you stop having to kind of connect to it necessarily on like a, like it, its resonance becomes a little less, it becomes a bit muted, a bit more muted. And I guess I was near to the end of the run, I didn't even feel like I was performing my own story when I was performing those things. Like I performed the exorcism I went through.

you know, it, but even then I'm not, it's not affecting me. It is well and truly performance. I'm thinking craft, you know, I'm thinking like, how am I moving my body? Where am I at this moment? What am I trying to do to the audience? You know, like these are all the questions I'm asking. I'm not sitting in it thinking, gee, how bad was that exorcism that happened? with that said, I can still go down to the audience and see, you know, dozens of people crying at the end of the show.

you know, there are moments where I call out in desperation to God. Now, if I did that with my whole heart, with everything within me, every single night, I'd just be doing exactly what I was doing at Hillsong, which was not healthy and actually ended up causing me a lot of harm. I'm doing it in a craft based way where I I'm disconnected from what I'm saying in a lot of ways. I'm connected as an actor, but not as an individual. doesn't mean I don't look out into the audience after I've done those and see people crying, you know, moved.

And think that's the thing about performance is it's this wonderful craft that.

it can be done in a way that if you do it right, it moves people. like beautiful music can move people without necessarily moving the person who's playing it. And I think in that way, I'm very happy calling something performance. And the more that I, when I was at Hillsong, the more that I could move toward that and say, like, yeah, I'm not going to try and cry out to God. Like I do three, I was doing three services back to back on a Sunday.

Will Small (46:59)
Mm

Scott (47:01)
Do three services back to back and cry out to God in desperation in every single one of them. You leave absolutely wasted, your voice is gone. You don't even know if what you were doing was half good anyway, because you're not conscious of what you're doing. You're just crying out to God, right? You have to apply craft. And the more I kind of was able to disconnect myself from the concept of worship entirely, the better of a worship leader I felt I actually was. But you know, that's a controversial statement, I'm sure. There'd be a lot of people who'd like, that's not genuine. And I'm like...

I know. I mean, get into a debate with me about what is genuine, you know. I don't know. Yeah, anyway. Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble.

Will Small (47:31)
Well, I think.

Yeah.

I definitely think, no, I love it. love it. I mean, I think that that's, that's half of the problem is pretending like it's not a performance when it obviously is. And if you can say performances can have great value and performances can be, can be really good. And maybe if you, if you come to with the word worship, we can even say that performance can be worshiped, but it's that whole, the cognitive dissonance of like, trying to pretend really hard that it's not that. And it's just so interesting in some ways, like

thinking about this show as a bit of a parallel to a Hillsong service. It's like queering it, right? Because in many ways it's like doing the opposite. And you could think about that from an audience perspective as well, right? So the audience in a Hillsong service can be, now, like we said, there can be great value for people there. I don't want to take away from that if it's something that's been important to people, but it can be like putting shame on people through a performative creative way.

And it sounds like what your show is probably doing is helping to remove shame from people and really doing at its best, what maybe we would hope would happen in a gathering, you know, spiritual community that people would experience healing from their trauma and that they will be seen and that they will be moved and that they'll be valued and they'll be loved. Again, I'm not saying those things never happen in Pentecostal services, but it's quite interesting to think that maybe people are coming to your show, not at all seeking that, but maybe in some ways getting

Scott (48:45)
I hope so.

Will Small (49:09)
what could be what we would think of as what a church service is supposed to do at its best. Like tell me a little bit about some of the response that you're getting and some of the experiences that people are having as they come out. Again, acknowledging that it can be quite difficult for people if they've got personal trauma tied up in this space. What's it doing for people?

Scott (49:27)
Yeah, Look, a lot of it is like, if I'd known there were so many queer people at church while I was there, I think I'd have a much easier time, you know? Because every service I meet somebody from Hillsong, an ex Hillsonger, who is queer. every, sorry, did I just call it a service? Performance, my God.

Will Small (49:48)
Yeah, you did. I was just going to say.

Scott (49:50)
gee. Strike that from the record. I'm so sorry. Every performance, I meet somebody who is from it. Yeah, I know. I'm just talking services and performances.

Will Small (49:56)
I set you up for it.

Scott (50:02)
But yeah, like every performance I have a conversation with somebody at the end who is from Hillsong and Queer and didn't know that there were so many people or did know and is now, but it's a bit different to see it on stage and to hear all those. A lot of people saying, you know, I can't believe we had the same experience, you Yeah, even people from other churches, you know, like there's a lot of people from C3 who've come and seen the show and...

but even people from the Catholic Church who've been coming and seeing the show and saying, yeah, I had the same experience in the Catholic Church. I'm like, like I'm starting to feel like the resonance of this church is like, of this show, it's some, I think we're capturing something that unfortunately is very common amongst most denominations, if not all denominations.

lots of people have had exorcisms performed on them. It's a very mainstream practice. They're obviously not called that within the Pentecostal movement. They're called deliverance ministry. There are people whose job it is to travel from church to church and perform deliverance services. It's increasingly common in Australia. I don't think that the end of Hillsong, and not to say that Hillsong has ended, but...

It's never gonna be as big as it once was. It's decreasing in size. It's gonna have to sell off assets at some point, you know, if not already. I think, I don't think the end of Hillsong means the end of any of these practices. And I think what I'm most aware of is that, yeah, cool. I experienced this at Hillsong, but people are experiencing this in their local church. You know, like I've talked to a guy who experienced this in his local church up on the central coast, you know, like it's just so common.

and

Like, you know, in our thing about deliverance that we do in the show, like there's a survey because the deliverance ministers love to use a survey to work out whether you got demons in you. So, you know, I just did a quick Google search and found a deliverance minister in Australia and I found their survey that they use because obviously I couldn't remember what the survey was that I'd actually taken all those years ago. So was like, let's find a let's actually find one that gets used. And it's just ridiculous. Like it's absolutely, you know,

It's it's parodic. look, you look at it you're like, how is this a thing? But then it's so common and everybody, you know, like if you're queer, there's a strong chance that you've encountered this practice before. Sorry, queer within the church. you know, I know way too many people who've experienced the same thing.

whether within a service itself or in like a back room in suburbia, you know, which is where mine took place. Like it was a back room on like a, we were doing connect group and for connect group we went to this house in the back room of, in a back room in Brighton, LaSance, you know. It was very suburban. I talk about having cups of tea and Tim Tams. It was very chill and very not.

It wasn't like the power of Christ compels you or anything like that. But it was equally as damaging, you know? I'm renouncing my own identity in these things they give me. Like, I renounce my homosexuality. I renounce things that I loved and enjoyed, you know, books like Harry Potter or like music, like, you know, metal or like things that I was listening to at the time.

you know, I was told to renounce my family because they'd been involved in Freemasonry, that my dad was a Freemason and that my grandfather was a Freemason, and therefore I had to renounce them and their connection to Freemasonry. Like, it's not, you know, even though it's just words on a paper, for a 16 -year -old, they embed in your brain, you know, they become defining moments of who you are.

Will Small (53:56)
Mm.

Scott (54:00)
They define your theology. And I think lots of people have experienced that. And that's the main takeaway I keep getting from this is just how prolific it is. We sold out this show most nights and it's full of people that I have never met before, which...

Trust me, when you're independent theater in Sydney is rare. Most of the time I know the people who are in my audiences. But in this case, it was full of people I didn't know, which is just great. Like, I mean, that's what I want. I want my work to be reaching people I don't know. I mean, it was full of people I did know as well, but like, you know, I'm being introduced to people who I have never met before who have exactly the same story as me, who've been through exactly the same stuff. There'd be lots of listeners who I'm sure would be like, yeah, that's me. You know?

Will Small (54:24)
Mm

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm sure it's incredibly validating for people and it's important work. hope that you are able to, well, I said to you before we hit record, I want you to bring it up, bring it up to the coast so I can see it locally here. But I hope it reaches lots of audiences that can see themselves in it, but also see the possibility of, yeah, healing and recovery, whatever that looks like for them.

Scott (55:03)
Yeah.

Will Small (55:15)
you know, I'm conscious of your time and I won't take too much more of it, but I am interested, you know, in like, yeah, when you stepped foot back in like heart uniting church and that's a space that you're now engaged with, obviously there are alternative versions of your story where that doesn't need to happen. what, what is that space for you now? Like what, what does church or Christian spirituality or being engaged in that space, what's it doing for you? and

you know, maybe just a little bit of a sense of, for people that are like longing for a community on the other side of one that has, it's untenable for them to exist there anymore. But like you said, those parts of yourself, don't just switch off when you walk out the door. It'd be great to hear like how it's looked for you to find a community that feels yeah, more aligned with who you are.

Scott (56:10)
Yeah, I guess, look, I mean, I, I am like, so not evangelical in any sense anymore. Like, I don't feel compelled to tell people they should come to my church or like, even get involved in a church or be spiritual or anything like that. I think what I found at Leichhardt is a space that challenges me to continue thinking outside of myself, which is something I appreciate.

I'm sure that there are people who will find that in yoga or find it in community work and just working with like a local food bank or something. And I think that's awesome. Maybe that's all it needs, right? But there are a lot of...

There's a lot of joy for me in working out how to make a space that everybody can feel welcome in. for me, mean, like theater for me is that. I do theater because I like creating spaces for people to find themselves in and to find a bit of joy in. And the fact that we can do that every week in this space in like art, this like old church that definitely needs a bit of a, needs new everything, but it's beautiful space.

and like I think the ministers there are just incredible like Radhika and Adrian who are the ministers there have created a space where anybody can feel welcome no matter who they are and they can get involved no matter who they are there are lots of different people from all different places and different walks of life which

I don't know if there's a space where I'd find as much of that. Even in theater, I can't really create that space because all theater is designed for a audience and audience, you keep an audience in mind for who your work is for. But this space on the weekend draws people from all different backgrounds and class is, it's just like the broader spectrum. And I really do like that.

and for all the critique of Hillsong. Hillsong sort of did the same, know, there were lots of different people.

from lots of different places and lots of different experiences. And I think I like that. I like that I can find a space like that. I don't think there are many spaces like that out in the world these days. Third spaces that aren't home or work where you can find community and it's structured. You're not just kind of hanging out without any sort of structure. And then of course, you know, there's liturgy where we connect together and we speak together and we sing together.

And that connects back to that thing I talked about of our little obsession with folk culture and paganism is like vernacular culture. It's important. It's, you know, I remember reading a book that was about, think it was that old book, Songlines by Bruce Chapman, I think. Anyway, he has a big section in the middle. It's problematic. The book is problematic. I'm just going to put that out there. But there's a section in the middle where he talks about the singing ape, which I think is really interesting from like a concept of like as human beings.

Will Small (59:13)
you

Scott (59:19)
there's an argument to be made that we sung before we spoke. And I don't know if that's true, probably not true. I don't know what Bruce was on, but whatever. Like to me, it kind of feels like this practice of singing together is a spiritual practice and important, an important practice. And doing that in a space where it's not just like we're emotionally singing, it's actually we're all singing together. You know, we're doing this together. I'm looking you in the eyes while we sing, you know, like we're having fun.

Will Small (59:28)
you

Scott (59:46)
there's something in that that really resonates for me.

I, yeah, but I don't know, I don't feel compelled to sell that to anyone. I don't feel like I need to sell that to anyone. It's each to their own. Lycart is a beautiful queer affirming space where there's lots of queer people and you know, have, you know, queer folk and trans folk preaching on the platform every weekend and like, I just never even thought that a space like that could exist. And I've lived in the UK for a bit. I lived in the north of England and there were certainly churches that were queer affirming but

finding a queer affirming space that was actually growing and that had people actually in it was like very, very rare, very hard to find. know, like I have friends in London who are contacting me saying, we know that you're at a queer affirming church. Do you know any? And I'm like, no, I don't. I can't tell you about queer affirming spaces in London. I'm sure they exist. I think it's unique and special and I want to be a part of it. So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but.

Will Small (1:00:28)
Mm.

Mm.

Yeah, it's lovely. It's funny that when you, know, things are far more compelling when you're not trying to sell them. And in a sense, you know, I, I find it hard to listen to that and not want to be part of that or to be part of something similar to that. and there's been quite a few, guests from like art uniting on the pod, including radical. And yeah, I mean, so much respect for that crew.

Scott (1:00:57)
you

Yeah, Radica's wonderful. Love her. Love her. Love her and Adrien.

Will Small (1:01:17)
Yeah. Well, Scott, thank you. Thank you so much for everything you share with me and Sarah and for what you have, you know, through sharing with me, shared through the listeners of this show. I'd love to give you the last word, the final thought. you know what you'd say to anybody out there who feels like a spiritual misfit.

Scott (1:01:37)
You're not alone. There's lots of us. You you might be a spiritual misfit in the community you're in, but you're not a spiritual misfit in sort of the broader scope of the world and what's out there. And, you know, I hope you find a place you do fit in and the place that you do feel like you belong, because they're around and there's lots of us that are still looking for those spaces. But yeah.

Will Small (1:02:02)
Beautiful. Couldn't have said it better myself. You pretty much just articulated the central message of the Spiritual Misfits podcast very succinctly. Thanks, Scott.

Scott (1:02:09)
I'm glad. All right. Thank you.