Celebrity pastor Carl Lentz, famous for preaching to the stars at New York’s buzzy Hillsong East Coast, has been terminated from the position due to “leadership issues and breaches of trust,” specifically, cheating on his wife.
Religion News Service first reported news of Lentz’s ousting in an email sent to Hillsong members on Wednesday, citing “a recent revelation of moral failures” on Lentz’s part, but refusing to provide additional details.
“Please understand that it would not be appropriate for us to go into detail about the events that led to this decision,” Hillsong’s founding pastors, Brian and Bobbie Houston, wrote in the email. “However you can be assured that this decision was made in order to honor God and pastorally care for you, our East Coast family, Pastor Carl and his family.”
The specifics of those moral failures came from Lentz himself the following day, when the former pastor took to Instagram to confess his infidelity.
“I was unfaithful in my marriage, the most important relationship in my life and held accountable for that,” Lentz wrote in Thursday’s Instagram post. “This failure is on me, and me alone and I take full responsibility for my actions. I now begin a journey of rebuilding trust with my wife, Laura and my children and taking real time to work on and heal my own life and seek out the help that I need.”
Brian Houston also expressed his own distress regarding Lentz’s dismissal from the megachurch in the email, writing, “While I have no doubt in my heart that this is the right course of action, I must mention Bobbie’s and my personal sadness, as we have known Laura her entire life and Carl for well over 20 years.”
During his tenure at Hillsong, Lentz was known for his hypepriest personality, hipster aesthetic, and for baptizing Justin Bieber in an NBA player’s bathtub.
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