Hillsong Church's Donna Crouch has shared an emotional update about her 90-year-old mother, revealing that more than three years after receiving a devastating stage 4 metastatic cancer diagnosis, her condition remains stable - something Crouch says even her oncologist has struggled to explain.
Crouch opened up about the deeply personal family journey while preaching a message titled The Unlikely Ones at Hillsong Church Australia on Aug. 9. The service was streamed from the Hillsong Convention Centre in Sydney.
According to Crouch, her mother was 87 when doctors discovered that cancer had spread throughout her body. The family was initially confronted with the possibility that she had only months to live, while simultaneously facing what appeared to be a lengthy wait to see a specialist.
That was when Crouch said she began desperately looking for her own "Good Samaritans."
A doctor connected with Hillsong helped secure an earlier appointment, and Crouch recalled another surprise when an oncologist told the family that a treatment they had feared could cost tens of thousands of dollars would begin the following week without costing her mother anything.
But the story took an even more unexpected turn.
Crouch said women from Hillsong began regularly praying for her mother, while one church volunteer continued contacting her over a period of roughly three years.
Then came an oncology appointment in February 2026 that Crouch clearly has not forgotten.
She recalled the oncologist reviewing her mother's scans and joking that if she had been using Chinese medicine, he might have credited that - particularly striking, Crouch noted, because the doctor himself was Chinese.
Crouch said the physician ultimately told her mother she was "defying modern medicine."
She was careful, however, not to present the situation as a complete miraculous healing. Her mother still has cancer, she said, and the disease nearly claimed her life last year. But the cancer has settled and was considered stable at the time of the appointment.
Crouch said the oncologist also knew people were praying for her mother and suggested prayer as an explanation when the medical picture did not make sense.
The Hillsong leader revealed that her mother has now turned 90 and is preparing to become a great-grandmother - an outcome dramatically different from the grim prognosis her family faced several years earlier.
The cancer testimony was only one of several surprisingly candid moments in Crouch's message.
At another point, she recalled her husband Stephen encountering a stranger during an early-morning walk about three years ago. Crouch joked that Hillsong had been receiving so much negative attention at the time that when a car slowed, turned around and approached him, the initial reaction was essentially, "He's going to get killed."
Instead, the emotional driver asked Stephen whether he attended Hillsong and whether the church believed in prayer. The man then revealed that he had been given just three to six months to live following a cancer diagnosis.
Stephen prayed with him on the street.
Crouch said the two have remained in occasional contact and offered another remarkable update: the man is now walking his dog every morning, his cancer is "under control," he has returned to Catholic Church and is participating in Alpha.
Crouch also addressed Hillsong's troubled recent history more directly than listeners might have expected.
Speaking about the need for qualified children's ministry volunteers, she said the church could not simply take anybody, declaring, "We've just been through a royal commission into abuse. We need the best." She stressed that workers need to be properly onboarded, screened and trained, particularly with more than 400 children now attending Sunday mornings at the Hills campus.
Despite the controversies that have surrounded Hillsong in recent years, Crouch painted a picture of a church attempting to rebuild its volunteer culture and prepare for growth. She said "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds" of people had joined the congregation over the past year and estimated that another 70 to 80 Bible studies and host homes could be needed.
Her message repeatedly returned to one theme: ordinary people can become the unexpected answer to someone else's desperate situation.
And for Crouch, that idea is no longer merely a sermon illustration.
After watching her mother move from a frightening stage 4 cancer diagnosis and a months-to-live prognosis to celebrating her 90th birthday, she believes she has witnessed what can happen when doctors, friends, church volunteers and people committed to prayer all decide to "cross the road" for someone in need.
