Hillsong operated for most of its history as part of the Australian Christian Churches, the Australian branch of the Assemblies of God, before separating in 2018 to become its own autonomous Pentecostal and Charismatic denomination governing its own global network rather than sitting inside a larger one. That network model, individual local churches operating under a shared name, shared worship material and shared oversight from a global center, let Hillsong expand quickly into new countries through the 2000s and 2010s without requiring each new campus to build denominational structures of its own.
Global oversight runs through the Hillsong Global Board and the Hillsong Eldership, based at the church's original campus in Baulkham Hills, New South Wales. Phil and Lucinda Dooley have served as global senior pastors since February 2023, following the departure of co-founder Brian Houston, who stepped down as global senior pastor in March 2022 after an internal investigation into his conduct with two women in the 2010s. That change coincided with a period of contraction: nine of Hillsong's sixteen United States churches subsequently left the network, and the church's own reported annual revenue fell by roughly 17 million dollars, from about 93 million dollars in 2019 to about 76 million dollars in 2021.
Individual Hillsong churches retain a degree of day-to-day autonomy in staffing and local ministry even while operating under the global brand and its shared governance bodies, which is part of what made it possible for a substantial share of the United States congregations to withdraw from the network in 2022 while the remaining churches, including the original Australian campuses, continued operating under the Hillsong name and its global leadership.