According to The New York Times, Carl Lentz became well-known for being a popular pastor for Hillsong Church’s celebrity-heavy congregation and served as the leader of the church’s New York City branch. Lentz gained wider notoriety outside the church in 2017, after TMZ reported on the close relationship between Lentz and pop star Justin Bieber (above). From there, Lentz became a celebrity in his own right.
In late 2020 Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston announced that Lentz had been fired. Lentz himself revealed on Instagram that he had engaged in an extra-marital affair, telling his Instagram followers in a post, “I was unfaithful in my marriage, the most important relationship in my life.”
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Making matters worse for Lentz, in 2021, Leona Kimes, a church member and former nanny for the Lentz family, accused the disgraced pastor of sexual abuse, being manipulative, and bullying in a post on Medium, according to NBC News. While not named in Kimes’ Medium piece, she did confirm to Religion News Service that Lentz was the person she was referring to. According to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, Lentz denied her accusations. Since his firing, Lentz has laid low. His most recent post to Instagram — a platform on which he has over 600,000 followers — was in November 2020, when he announced his departure from Hillsong Church. According to a Daily Mail report from last November, the Lentzes have been engaged in couples counseling.
The three-part documentary “Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed” debuts March 24 on Discovery+. (The trailer is on YouTube.)
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