Carl Lentz Refutes Description of Being 'A Disgraced Pastor' Amid Scandal

In the first episode of his “Lights On with Carl Lentz” podcast, former Hillsong NYC Pastor Carl Lentz refuted the notion that he is a “disgraced pastor” amid the scandal that followed his termination from Hillsong in 2020. Lentz, 45, was interviewed by his wife Laura and contended that he does not like being described as “a disgraced pastor” by the media when he was fired from Hillsong, The Christian Post reports.

“Every headline typically would say, ‘disgraced, disgraced pastor,’ or ‘pastor falls from grace, falls from grace, falls from grace, disgraced pastor.’ What’s funny about that is, God bless those people, they [media] don’t understand grace,” Lentz Lamented.

“Because you can’t fall from grace. You fall into grace. It didn’t make any sense to me. And I’m not mad at the tabloids who write … ‘disgraced pastor.’ Disgraced?” he asked with muted incredulity.

“You don’t understand what grace is. The opposite of grace. Grace is mercy and favor and forgiveness that you do not deserve but God gives it to you anyway. So if anything, I fell into grace. And if people could stop writing headlines like that, I would appreciate it because it’s inaccurate — disgraced pastor,” Lentz argued.

“I’m not a disgraced former pastor. I am a human being that made huge mistakes. Mine were public, everybody got to see them. And now, I’m a human being that’s trying to rectify my life and make wrongs right and to live completely differently. But disgraced, I am not,” he insisted. “I’m more filled with grace than I’ve ever been. Did I fall from grace? Absolutely not. I fell into it. And I’m really grateful for that.”

In November 2020, Lentz was fired for “leadership issues” and moral failures, including being unfaithful to his wife with multiple women. Lentz was also accused of manipulating former staff and volunteers and causing them mental distress, according to an internal investigation conducted on behalf of Hillsong Church by the New York City law firm Zukerman Gore Brandeis & Crossman, LLP.

Although Lentz says he understands people can feel “disgraced” by his scandal, he contended that it does not make him a “disgraced” pastor.

“You could say what I did was disgraceful. Maybe at times, sure. But I’m not disgraced because we’re forgiven,” Lentz said. “I have been able to feel God’s grace more than ever, I understand the thought, but I just wanted to get it out there. That doesn’t fit me. You can keep writing that headline if you want. But that’s not me. I don’t identify as the disgraced former pastor. No, sir. No, ma’am.”

Lentz noted felt like ending his life after the scandal broke. A day after the news broke, he also shared that he and his family were kicked out of their home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At the time, they had recently sold their home and were staying in a friend’s home.

“When all this stuff went down, we were obviously just shell shocked, really horrible. It makes me feel weird to even talk about it,” Lentz said.

“I got a call from the person who lives there. And he said … you guys have to leave because the owner of this place does not want to be associated with you,” Lentz recalled. “I remember we had to take everything we have in this apartment, put it on the street in Brooklyn. And then we got a U-Haul and a U-Haul van. And we’re just throwing stuff in there.”

Although he had trouble receiving help from his network, a friend in Connecticut allowed them to stay in their home.

Lauren Lentz also spoke on the podcast, sharing that she received specialized counseling for betrayal trauma and that when the scandal broke, their daughter Charlie was in a mental hospital for teenagers, where she ended up staying for eight weeks.

“I didn’t know that was even a thing [betrayal trauma]. I found a therapist that specializes in betrayal trauma and I didn’t realize the amount of work that I needed to do because I was a mess,” she said.

“When you’re gaslit the way you are in situations like that, it’s actually, it’s more than just trauma. It’s like torment, mental torment, physical torment on your brain,” Laura continued. “And so I had to unwind a lot of my own things that had gone on in my own head.”

Lentz commended his wife for standing by his side regardless of his infidelity because it gave them an opportunity to heal and improve their marriage. He added that she was never complicit in his personal failures and that she was not aware of his addictions until they became public.

“You had nothing to do with my hidden sin and hidden habits and hidden addictions. You did not know what was going on with me. And I know there’s been some confusing reports where people can try to piece something together and say, you know, Laura, was she complicit? Did she know? And that’s just not true. It’s not our story,” Lentz told his wife. “You didn’t know anything about what I was doing because I became really proficient at making my life work despite a lot of pain.”

The former pastor believes his sins were made public because “God had enough.” When his wife asked him how he felt preaching while keeping his addictions secret, Lent called it “torture”

“The way I can articulate living a life where you have that kind of secrecy, it is torture, for the person living — me. And it’s torture for the people that are not in the know, I don’t care who you are, what you’ve done. Nobody is created to live with lies,” Lentz said.

“If anything, we tell a lie, and we sit on it, and we learn to live with it. It’s like adapting to dysfunction. That’s what it’s like to live with a lie. And there is no there’s no burying a lie. We think that’s what’s happening. … I was really digging my own grave. And that’s a hard reality to face. But now, you know, I know the power of honesty in a totally different way. And that’s been a really powerful part of our healing.”

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Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.