{"id":12722,"date":"2025-03-14T08:26:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T12:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=12722"},"modified":"2025-03-14T08:26:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T12:26:00","slug":"former-pastor-carl-lentz-shares-his-regrets-about-justin-bieber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2025\/03\/former-pastor-carl-lentz-shares-his-regrets-about-justin-bieber.html","title":{"rendered":"Former Pastor Carl Lentz Shares His Regrets About Justin Bieber"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mighty Pursuit \/ YouTube | Inset: DFree \/ Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Disgraced former pastor, Carl Lentz, is speaking out about his life after stepping down from Hillsong East Coast and the regrets he\u2019s had to face. Lentz joined the \u201cMighty Pursuit\u201d<\/a> podcast to speak about his life after stepping down from the church in 2020. Lentz had founded the church in 2010 and was known as the pastor to a number of celebrities such as Selena Gomez, Kevin Durant, and Justin Bieber. All that came to an abrupt halt, however, after it was revealed that Lentz had had an affair. He was fired for \u201cleadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures.\u201d Lentz quietly moved out of the spotlight and has accepted a position with Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Lentz\u2019s relationship with Bieber was well-documented during his time at Hillsong, with Lentz baptizing Bieber in NBA star Tyson Chandler\u2019s bathtub after he became a believer. Lentz admitted betraying Bieber\u2019s trust after the truth of his affair came out. \u201cI feel like what people like Justin that supported us and trusted us, when you are at a certain level of fame, the only thing you have with somebody is trust\u2014that\u2019s all you have. They don\u2019t need money. People don\u2019t need your opportunities, and so when that trust is violated, it\u2019s times 10, because that\u2019s all we had,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said he \u201chated\u201d that Bieber got dragged into the drama of his downfall and that he likes to keep responses to Bieber \u201cgeneral.\u201d \u201cWe had a great relationship. I knew him since he was kind of like a young, up-and-coming teenager. And to watch him now flourish as a man is awesome. But, you know, it\u2019s sad. I\u2019m sad that I broke that trust with him and everybody, really, but our relationship was special, and I\u2019m grateful that I had a chance to be a part of that chapter with him,\u201d he added. In a 2021 interview with Vanity Fair, <\/em>although never specifically mentioning Lentz, Bieber criticized pastors who \u201cput themselves on this pedestal.\u201d \u201cI think so many pastors put themselves on this pedestal. And it\u2019s basically, church can be surrounded around the man, the pastor, the guy, and it\u2019s like, \u2018This guy has this ultimate relationship with God that we all want but we can\u2019t get because we\u2019re not this guy.\u2019 That\u2019s not the reality, though. The reality is, every human being has the same access to God,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another person Lentz has acknowledged hurting is his wife, Laura Lentz. In a post in 2023, Carl acknowledged<\/a>, \u201cIt would have been so easy and understandable for her to have walked out and ended our marriage.\u201d He added, however, \u201cYet she chose the harder road. The one that has included so much pain as she has had to endure the consequences of my decisions.” He later added, \u201cPeople have asked Laura why she stayed with me. Including me! And I’ll let her tell her own story and give her own reasons and all of it is gonna help a lot [of] people. …\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disgraced former pastor, Carl Lentz, is speaking out about his life after stepping down from Hillsong East Coast and the regrets he\u2019s had to face. Lentz joined the \u201cMighty Pursuit\u201d podcast to speak about his life after stepping down from the church in 2020. Lentz had founded the church in 2010 and was known as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":12725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFormer Pastor Carl Lentz Shares His Regrets About Justin Bieber<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz opens up about his downfall, regrets, and rebuilding trust after scandal.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2025\/03\/former-pastor-carl-lentz-shares-his-regrets-about-justin-bieber.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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