A time-honoured Gilbert & Sullivan tradition has come under fire following a performance by Stuart Maunder and the Sydney Symphony last Saturday.

Maunder sang in the perennial crowd-pleaser The List at a G&S costumed extravaganza, in a rendition that contains a comic lyric about the Sydney-based mega-church that attracts more than 20,000 worshippers to its services each week. Within days of the concert, Hillsong’s lawyers sent an official letter to the Sydney Symphony requesting a copy of the lyrics.

The humorous song from The Mikado calls for substitute lyrics relevant to a contemporary audience as the character Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner of Japan, draws up a wishful list of victims “who never would be missed”.

The wide-ranging, topical targets of Maunder’s satire included “Twitterers and Facebook fiends” and “Justin Bieber’s ineffective dermatologist”. Politics is never sacred in Gilbert & Sullivan, and “councilors who on those lanes for bicycles insist” were flagged along with a Speedos-clad Tony Abbott and ”Canberra’s favourite red-head”, whose diphthong-drenched drawl Maunder incorporated into his delivery. Laughs all round.

And then the line that raised eyebrows within the Church community: “That Hillsong lot on television, all joyfully singing psalms, I wish they would desist, and their happy claps resist.”

“The List always...