Watching this made me think of the distinction between the great and the very bad documentary series or films.
I'll give an example of a fantastic documentary to make my point: "The Act of Killing", a documentary film from 2012 that had the former Indonesian death squad leaders re-enact their killings. The director of the movie didn't force those murderers to tell their stories: they were happy to do so in great detail. The director/producer didn't have to shape their story into something "sellable" for a wider audience - no, they did it themselves, the film just shows the outcome of that experiment. THAT is what is enticing about it, just watching it play out as naturally as possible. What we see is the reality of Indonesian history, documented for our amusement and bewilderment.
Compare that to this series. It seems to me that the series started as "we want to produce a docuseries about Carl Lentz and what happened to him, but we're hearing all these other stories about Hillsong being flush with money and no accountability, let's go there". With this alone, you have perhaps 5% of a story. So what do you do? You add pathways from point A to Z. You show things that should be (quite) natural in the context of an evangelical church (e.g., women being taught to be good wives, men taking on leadership positions, the Bible being at the center of a Christian church - wow, this is really unexpected) but that will trigger a secular audience. You show people that are willing to go on camera to say they thought they were underrepresented among leaders (and it's the sleaziest thing ever to then add "We asked Hillsong for comments and they provided none" - of course they won't, why would they contribute to your money-making production, which is made at their expense?). You talk about volunteers not being paid for their work (because they're volunteers). None of this is central to the story, but because you only had 5% to begin with, and because you want to hook in the secular audience that wouldn't care about Hillsong otherwise, what you do is "wrap" the 5% with narratives A, B, C, D...
Notice the difference between "The Act of Killing" and this docuseries. "The Act of Killing" starts with the story - the story that is in need to be told AND that the perpetrators WANT to tell. This starts with figments of stories that the producers piece together with their own preferred narratives, so that in the end what they present to us is THEIR story, THEIR take on Hillsong and on what Hillsong is. A telling part of the 1st episode that showcases this problem is the scene with the theologian on a TV transmission saying that "the text" doesn't say anything, that it's all interpretation (so as to leave the viewers thinking "these Conservative white men and their literal reading of the Bible, how dumb that is", without realizing that this attack is itself a political narrative).
There are evidently parts of the story that are true and that deserve investigation/merit criticism. No doubt. But while great documentaries present stories as a well-executed, straightforward dish for us to consume, this presented the story as a dish drowned in dressing, oil, seasoning... Forcing us to find the story among the many narratives the producers added.
I'll give an example of a fantastic documentary to make my point: "The Act of Killing", a documentary film from 2012 that had the former Indonesian death squad leaders re-enact their killings. The director of the movie didn't force those murderers to tell their stories: they were happy to do so in great detail. The director/producer didn't have to shape their story into something "sellable" for a wider audience - no, they did it themselves, the film just shows the outcome of that experiment. THAT is what is enticing about it, just watching it play out as naturally as possible. What we see is the reality of Indonesian history, documented for our amusement and bewilderment.
Compare that to this series. It seems to me that the series started as "we want to produce a docuseries about Carl Lentz and what happened to him, but we're hearing all these other stories about Hillsong being flush with money and no accountability, let's go there". With this alone, you have perhaps 5% of a story. So what do you do? You add pathways from point A to Z. You show things that should be (quite) natural in the context of an evangelical church (e.g., women being taught to be good wives, men taking on leadership positions, the Bible being at the center of a Christian church - wow, this is really unexpected) but that will trigger a secular audience. You show people that are willing to go on camera to say they thought they were underrepresented among leaders (and it's the sleaziest thing ever to then add "We asked Hillsong for comments and they provided none" - of course they won't, why would they contribute to your money-making production, which is made at their expense?). You talk about volunteers not being paid for their work (because they're volunteers). None of this is central to the story, but because you only had 5% to begin with, and because you want to hook in the secular audience that wouldn't care about Hillsong otherwise, what you do is "wrap" the 5% with narratives A, B, C, D...
Notice the difference between "The Act of Killing" and this docuseries. "The Act of Killing" starts with the story - the story that is in need to be told AND that the perpetrators WANT to tell. This starts with figments of stories that the producers piece together with their own preferred narratives, so that in the end what they present to us is THEIR story, THEIR take on Hillsong and on what Hillsong is. A telling part of the 1st episode that showcases this problem is the scene with the theologian on a TV transmission saying that "the text" doesn't say anything, that it's all interpretation (so as to leave the viewers thinking "these Conservative white men and their literal reading of the Bible, how dumb that is", without realizing that this attack is itself a political narrative).
There are evidently parts of the story that are true and that deserve investigation/merit criticism. No doubt. But while great documentaries present stories as a well-executed, straightforward dish for us to consume, this presented the story as a dish drowned in dressing, oil, seasoning... Forcing us to find the story among the many narratives the producers added.