Career
Houston commenced ministry training as a Salvation Army officer shortly after turning 18. With further growth it moved to Darlinghurst, and then warehouse premises in the inner Sydney suburb of Waterloo, which housed a 600-seat auditorium, a Bible and Creative Arts College, and many other ministry arms. Houston was known by those close to him in the church as "the Bishop", not as an official title but as a humorous reference to mainstream churches.
He was also involved in over twenty Christian Life Centres being opened throughout New South Wales and overseas.
In 2000 Houston confessed to the sexual abuse of a boy in New Zealand 30 years earlier. In August 2007 further allegations emerged that Houston had sexually abused a trainee pastor during counselling sessions in the early 1980s.
On 8 October 2014 Brian Houston admitted to a Sydney hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that his father was guilty of other cases of sexual abuse against children. Houston died from a stroke on 8 November 2004.
Hazel died 10 months earlier.
