As he continued his return to the spotlight Thursday, former Hillsong NYC pastor Carl Lentz, whose ministry was derailed by an explosive sex scandal in November 2020, admitted he’s a broken man recovering from a sex and prescription drug addiction, who is “changing” for the better.
He also revealed he and his wife, Laura, remain estranged from Hillsong Church founders Brian and Bobbie Houston because of how his relationship with the church ended.
Lentz, who was fired from his post at Hillsong NYC in November 2020 over “leadership issues” and moral failures, including being unfaithful to his wife with multiple women, among them a staff member at Hillsong NYC, declined to reveal how many extramarital sex partners he had in a recent interview with Byron Pitts on ABC News’ “Nightline.” He did confess, however, that the affairs were more than what was previously reported and copped to recovering from drug and sex addictions.
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“[Do] I say [I’m a] recovering drug addict, recovering sex addict? Sure,” he said.
When Pitts asked him “Why couldn’t you keep it in your pants?” Lentz said his affairs were not “a sexual thing” but a symptom of “deep brokenness.”
“Well that wasn’t the primary thing that got me in trouble. It wasn’t a sexual thing. It’s not like I was out looking to have sex or looking to commit adultery,” Lentz explained. “I had deep brokenness that manifested itself in a lot of different ways.”
That brokenness, says Lentz, led to him developing addictions “across the board” including an addiction to prescription drugs which got worse toward the end of his time at Hillsong NYC.
“I was prescribed a drug that I used to help with ADHD most of my adult life. Towards the end of my time in New York I started to abuse it really badly,” Lentz said.
Asked if he wants to change, Lentz, who appeared with his wife in the interview, said, “I’m changing.”
Details from an internal investigation shared with The Christian Post in 2022 that was conducted on behalf of Hillsong Church by the New York City law firm Zukerman Gore Brandeis & Crossman, LLP, alleged, among other things, that the former Hillsong NYC pastor manipulated some former staff and volunteers and caused them mental distress.
When asked about those allegations against him, Lentz said he did not know who the individuals are but offered to sit with them and apologize.
“I don’t know those people. It’s hard for me to speak to those situations. If I were to sit down and talk to these people and if my actions, if my leadership hurt them in any way, I’d love to apologize for it,” he said.
Lentz, who said he was sexually abused at around the age of 5 or 6, also dismissed allegations by his former nanny and church member, Leona Kimes, that he touched her sexually, repeatedly.
“With all that is within me, I say that account is wrong. It’s not true,” he told Pitts.
Lentz and his wife, who have been sharing insights about their time at Hillsong Church on their new “Lights On” podcast, also revealed that their relationship with the megachurch founders have been estranged since the scandal broke.
“I will always love Brian and Bobbie, no question. Love is a choice, I choose that. I choose to love them. My experience with Brian up until my epic failure was he was a hero to me. [He] really pulled me out of a crowd and just said, I believe in you, and gave me opportunity, gave me trust,” Lentz said in the second episode of the podcast released Wednesday.
“I never once felt like I went through any battles that he didn’t have my back. We got along really well most of the time. And then, as I got older, towards the end of my time at Hillsong NYC, we had difference of opinions a lot which he was always relatively cool with,” he continued.
Lentz explained that even though he takes full responsibility for the role his actions played in his downfall, he was very surprised by how quickly Brian Houston distanced himself.
“I think the hardest part of that was that the narrative was shifted so quickly from him being a second dad to me, proud of me, tight as a drum, to like this guy is a renegade, vagabond, always been doing it, like all this stuff started coming out, right,” Lentz said.
“And then, to find out that I wasn’t the only one that had some things that weren’t talked about. That’s what shocked us the whole time,” Lentz added.
A March 2022 statement from Hillsong Church Global and Australian boards published on the global megachurch network’s website said Houston formally resigned as global senior pastor in the wake of revelations that two women had made serious complaints of misconduct against him in the last 10 years.
Hillsong Church said Houston violated the church’s pastoral code of conduct by entering the hotel room of an unidentified woman for 40 minutes while under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs during the church’s annual conference in 2019. Houston and the woman both said they did not recall what happened.
“We saw this stuff going down, and we would see interviews and media and I kept thinking, I know, I know so much. They must not think I’m gonna say anything because this is outrageous. Like, I could, I could do one interview and put all this to bed and out a lot of people about a lot of things,” Lentz said.
Lentz and his wife said they felt Brian and Bobbie Houston would have protected them much more after the scandal and they were disappointed by how the couple treated them.
Laura explained that Bobbie Houston did reach out to her for several months after the scandal broke but she felt so betrayed she couldn’t respond.
“Bobbie did reach out a bunch for months and months. And it was very sweet. But because of what was happening in the media, I found it really hard to try and text back because it felt fake to me because of all the s— that they were saying,” she said.
Laura noted that when she finally responded with questions about why they had allowed false narratives to go unchecked in the media and failed to offer them any kind of protection, Bobbie Houston stopped communicating with her.
“I finally just had to say, and be really honest, as I found my voice, I had to text her, and I texted her what I did and just said all the things I had to say. ‘I don’t understand this. I don’t know why you didn’t protect us. I don’t know [why are people lying there],” said Laura. “You let them whilst on staff say things about me and my husband that aren’t true and you know aren’t true. And they didn’t protect us. And so, I said all of that. And that was it. I never heard from her again.”
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