Review: Under His Command, Season 2
Mark Honeychurch - 24th November 2025
John Campbell is back with Season 2 of his TV show Under His Command, where he takes a second look at the controversial Destiny church in four 15 minute episodes. This time John’s looking at the church’s “Man Up” program and talking to ex-members of the church, mainly anonymously as these apostates are taking a risk by speaking up.
Episode 1 points out some of the obvious hypocrisy of Brian and his church, like railing against grooming and recruiting of children in a sermon, and then teaching the children of Destiny church to march and chant. John talks to Wayne, one of the co-founders of Destiny church’s Man Up program. Man Up was originally conceived as a support group for men in the church, and the church’s website says about the group:
Man Up works hard to establish a better way of life for our participants through genuine relationships and real talk. Men are encouraged and supported to heal their inner selves in order to lead fulfilling lives as leaders in their homes and communities.
At Man Up we empower men to overcome struggles that they may face in life. We strengthen men to become better fathers, husbands and leaders in their home and community… We address issues of family violence, anger, depression, obesity, divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, suicide and offer proven strategies and accountability for men to overcome them.
However recently the group has been used as a paramilitary force of sorts, disrupting and threatening Story Time events in libraries and protesting against other religious groups on the streets, as Under His Command details throughout season 2.
As an aside, a large contingent from Destiny flew to the UK recently for the Unite the Kingdom rally in London, run by controversial figure Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (more popularly known as Tommy Robinson). And at a recent protest in Auckland in June of this year, Man Up members ripped up a long list of flags that Brian considers enemies of Christianity:
This list of flags included not just other religions, such as Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism and Hinduism (but not Judaism), but also the flags of Palestine, Khalistan (a non-existent nation that Sikhs would like to see created as their homeland), the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the World Economic Forum, the LGBT and Transgender flags and even a “No Religion” flag:
Here’s what the MC for the event had to say about the No religion flag:
New Zealand has been declared a Christian nation. That means every other religion has no jurisdiction spiritually in these places. The plague of No Religion, or the atheist flag. Psalm 14, verse 1 says “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God’. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good.” We come against the antichrist spirit of the nation of New Zealand. We rebuke the foul demonic spirit that holds men and women captive. We say repent today and hear the word of the Lord. We pull down the banner of No Religion, an antichrist in New Zealand, and we say Jesus Christ and Christianity is the religion. Tear it up, brothers.
They then proceeded to rip the flag in half and dump it in a pile with all the other discarded pieces of flag.
Obviously Brian is very confused about what having no religion means - he seems to act like it’s an ideology, which it really isn’t at all. He also seems to think that ripping up a flag with an old version of the American Atheists’ logo (a variant of the Atomic Whirl) is going to upset the sensibilities of non-believers, not realising that, by and large, we’re not going to care about the “desecration” of this logo. I presume Brian wouldn’t have been able to pop to his local flag shop to pick up these flags, and will have paid good money for one-off jobs having the logos printed on material, just to then rip them up. Maybe it didn’t cost that much, though, as I’m guessing he would have chosen the cheapest, flimsiest, most rippable material they had available.
Back to the TV show. In episode 2, one ex-member, speaking anonymously, says:
“Stop the hate, the atrocities of Destiny church. There’s a lot of pain behind that - a lot of pain for my friends, a lot of pain for my family, that the church has caused, and people behind that church have caused.”
Through John’s words, this ex-member expresses her concerns that Destiny church is turning kind, considerate Christians into hateful people - mentioning some of the very public events that Destiny has been behind: “painting over rainbow crossings, storming story readings and libraries, attacking entire groups of people”.
She continues, pointing out that Brian Tamaki’s personal crusade against gay and lesbian people is ironic considering that he has gay and lesbian members of his family who are likely being hurt by his words.
There’s an accusation that Brian is “brainwashing” the church’s members, in order to make an army out of them. I could be pedantic here and point out that brainwashing isn’t generally considered a real thing, but I get the sentiment here - through the church, Brian is manipulating people to behave in negative, antisocial ways that they otherwise wouldn’t do. A claim is even made that, much like how Scientology is said to operate, the Man Up program leaders will shame their members into complying with their orders - threatening to publicly post members’ secrets that they revealed during confidential Man Up support sessions if they don’t toe the party line.
Multiple ex-members spoke in the episode about how violence is the opposite of what Christianity in general is supposed to be about, and also the opposite of what Destiny’s Man Up program was designed to do.
Episode 3 starts with John talking to Sunita, who along with Daniel is suing Destiny church for defamation. These are the two drag queens who haven’t been able to find work since Destiny church forced several libraries to cancel their events last year. Apparently the kind of harassment Sunita received from members of Destiny church changed once they realised that, rather than being a male drag queen, she’s a cis-gendered heterosexual woman - it was no less hateful, but a lot of the slurs people were using at first didn’t make much sense. It’s also a little funny that Sunita used to attend Destiny church, over 20 years ago - despite the church’s attempts to deny this fact. The harassment received by Daniel was so severe that he’s chosen to move abroad to the UK to ensure his safety.
The two drag queens’ lawyer played a clip of Brian Tamaki speaking in a sermon, saying of Drag Queen Story Time:
“It’s a underground satanic movement to deconstruct civil society to deliberately eliminate the whole foundations of Christianity.”
The lawyer’s succinct response to this sounds like the words of a seasoned skeptic:
“Good luck proving that”
Episode 4 is mostly a summary of what’s been talked about in both seasons of the show so far. It ends with John challenging Brian, saying that Brian has never accepted an invite to talk with John or answer his questions in writing.
These second season episodes in general feel light on content - there’s a lot of John Campbell at a lectern looking serious and asking questions to the camera, but not much actual investigative journalism. It’s great that there are now 30 current and ex members who have been willing to speak to John and his crew, but more could have been made of this - allowing these members to paint a picture of just how controlling Brian is, and how the church has become very cult-like. I also think that more could have been made of the messages Brian imparts in his frequent sermons. Having watched a few of them myself, I know that they’re often filled with bad biblical teachings, pseudoscientific claims, and a lot of fear and hatred. Most of all I’d really like to see some decent forensic accounting done, looking at all the available accounts for Destiny church’s many legal entities, and how that money tallies up against the personal enrichment of Brian, Hannah, their children and the wider family. But, beyond briefly showing in episode 3 that the Destiny Church New Zealand Trust hasn’t filed an annual return in a while, and that its last return at the beginning of 2023 was for the suspiciously low income of just under $400k, nothing substantive about the money was mentioned.
Overall I’d say that, like with season 1, it’s great that someone’s shining a light on Destiny church. However I feel that this show is just illuminating the surface at the moment, and I’d love to see more information about the inner workings of the church. Maybe in time some key figures will come forward and supply that information, but for now I guess this show is a better option than just ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.