The Incredible Story of the Pastor Who Pretended to Have Cancer
And how he’s making a ministry comeback
Once upon a time, Planetshakers Church was a serious rival to Hillsong for the title of the largest megachurch in Australia. At its peak, Planetshakers church was a multicampus juggernaut with thousands of faithful attendees. It ran conferences for tens of thousands of young people across the entire nation. And, at one time, it was pumping out more worship albums than Hillsong Music. Heck, the first winner of Australian Idol was a Planetshakers worship leader named Guy Sebastian, who still plies his trade as a pop musician.
From the outside, looking in, Planetshakers Church looked and sounded seriously ‘cutting edge’ with its bright lights and smoke machines. But without a doubt, the poster child of the Planetshakers movement was Mike Gugliemucci. To impressionable teenage me, he seemed like the coolest guy in the world. He stood up the front, with slicked-back hair, playing the bass guitar. And it was he who wrote many of Planetshakers biggest hit worship songs.
We would sing his songs in our own, much smaller, less significant church in the suburbs of outer Brisbane, though we never quite did them justice. No one could be as cool as Mike Gugliemucci. That’s what I felt as a young person. Best of all, he made…
