“The world we live in, whether we like it or not, is changing around and about us,” he said. “The world’s changing, and we want to stay relevant as a church, so that’s a vexing thing.”

Mr. Houston, as he has done in sermons, ruefully noted the experience of gay children growing up in Christian churches, saying that some feel rejected by their youth pastors or even their parents, and that as a result, some young people “literally are depressed, maybe even suicidal, and, sadly, oftentimes grow up to hate the church because they feel that the church rejected them.”

He said he lived by “what the Bible says,” and his spokesman said on Friday that the pastor personally agreed with traditional Christian teaching on sexuality. But Mr. Houston said he did not think it would be constructive to delineate a public position on same-sex marriage.

“It’s very easy to reduce what you think about homosexuality to just a public statement, and that would keep a lot of people happy,” he said, “but we feel at this point, that it is an ongoing conversation, that the real issues in people’s lives are too important for us just to reduce it down to a yes or no answer in a media outlet. So we’re on the journey with it.”

Some of Hillsong’s churches appear to be open to gays and lesbians. Josh Canfield and Reed Kelly, a gay couple featured on the current season of “Survivor;” worship and sing in the choir at Hillsong New York; Mr. Canfield is a volunteer choir director at the church.