SHOCKING Revelations of Carl Lentz! Was He a Victim of Hillsong? Pastor Reacts

This is Carl Lentz's story. He reveals things that happened to him as a boy and how he was taught at a young age to keep secrets.

One of the participants being interviewed said at one point, you know, I knew what Christianity's stance was on LGBTQ issues, but I didn't know what

Hillsong's stance was. Think about that for a moment. Which raises an interesting question.

Can Carl Lentz be a victim in this whole mess? And I think the answer is, can someone like Carl Lentz become a pastor again at some point?

I think my answer is... Welcome back to another video.

My name is Nate Sala and this is Wise Disciple, where we're helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be.

As a pastor, I know what it's like to be in ministry and I've seen great successes as well as failures.

I've watched friends and people I know fall from ministry in similar ways to Carl Lentz. And so I figured, let's talk about the new

Hillsong documentary on FX. Now we did this before. So if you haven't seen the other video that I reacted to,

I encourage you to go check it out. I'll leave a link to that in the notes below. But I watched the new

FX documentary because Carl Lentz comes out and provides his own perspective.

He speaks quite a bit from his perspective about what happened. And now

I have some thoughts. So let's get into it. Now, first, before I jump in, did you know that Wise Disciple has a store where you can get cool merch and rep our ministry to those around you?

So if you go to wisedisciple .store, you can take a look at a lot of these cool shirts. By the way, I do all the designs for the t -shirts.

I don't know if you knew that. So I encourage you to go to the store and check it out. There's some cool shirts like the one that I'm wearing right now on the site, as well as you can get yourself a cool coffee mug that says

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos on it, or more. Lots of cool stuff here. All of it goes to supporting my ministry in this channel.

And I'm just grateful to those of you who have already gotten yourself some super cool merch. The truth doesn't go anywhere just because you cover it up.

The whole song is a megachurch, and Carl Lentz is the celebrity pastor. Carl is so charming.

People idolize him. There is a sense that pastors can be hot. He was so special.

It was cool. Carl was this mega superstar. And then he just disappeared.

You do not want to be in this chair. I cannot stress it enough.

So just a couple thoughts that I had in no particular order as I watched the documentary.

Now, I caught the first two episodes, particularly episode number two, because that's where Carl Lentz really opens up and speaks from his perspective, was episode number two.

The first thing that I noticed was this emphasis on the danger of performance, and how performance is wrapped up in the pulpit.

Howie Kahn, who is a journalist in the documentary, and he speaks in episode two, he says,

I don't know where the abuse of power comes in. I don't know where infidelity comes in. I don't know what point that started.

Performance can take over your life. This leads me to my first observation. I saw recently that Alan Parr came out with a video where he was explaining that he was stepping back from making the amount of videos that he was regularly producing.

I think he was doing two a week. He's stepping back to one a week. And he had some transparent confessions to make in that video.

And some of those confessions entailed getting caught up in the production and the reception of the videos that he was making.

He got caught up and twisted with regard to his feelings of value, of worth, and the views and the likes that his videos would get on his channel.

And I'm not saying it as well as he does. If you haven't seen that video, I encourage you to watch it because it's very telling.

It's very helpful. And I appreciate Alan's heart in doing something like that.

It's interesting because he's talking about what Khan is talking about in the documentary. And that is that pride is all wrapped up in the life and the work of a leader, particularly a pastor.

Pride is a very dangerous thing. I said this in the last Hillsong video that I made, but it's very easy to fall in love with your ministry for Jesus and the

Jesus of your ministry. And I've seen this firsthand. I've even been guilty of this myself at times.

I was speaking to a particular crowd a couple years back. Now, mind you, I'm a former high school teacher, so I'm used to interactivity.

I hate droning on and on for too long because I think nobody likes that. So I noticed throughout the talk that I was giving to that particular crowd that everyone was just sitting perfectly still the entire time.

Not moving, just staring at me. Afterward, I tried to do some Q &A and some interaction, but there wasn't too much of that.

And so afterwards, I just walked away feeling deflated. I thought that I wasn't engaging, that it went badly, that I wasn't very interesting.

I thought the crowd was bored and that I didn't do a good job. And I was wallowing in that for a good couple of hours, and it finally dawned on me, you know, my ministry and my efforts for the work of God's ministry are not contingent on what

I was looking for. You know, the engagement, the interactivity. Even though I strive to have good engagement and, you know,

I'll pose scenarios and questions. If you've ever had me come speak to your venue, you know this. I'll deal with the crowd a lot.

I'll talk to them, ask them questions, get them talking to me too. As much as I seek that out, the fact is

God can take my talk and use it, or he doesn't have to use it, you know. The biggest thing that I'm responsible for is my diligence and to obedience to the

Lord. And I learned a hard lesson that night, but it's a valuable lesson. I'll be very honest with you, it's very easy as a content creator on YouTube to have high hopes for videos, to hope that a lot of you will watch them.

And sometimes when that doesn't happen, you think to yourself, man, did I do something wrong? Am I no longer interesting or useful?

And I'm not suggesting that the answers to those questions are not yes, but the bottom line is there's a lesson for those of us who do this kind of thing.

We cannot find our worth and value in these things. Where we find worth and value is in the one who made us, and in our abiding with him on a regular basis.

That's it. And if we root our sense of meaning and purpose in our relationship with God, then we won't root it in other people and accolades and recognition and celebrity.

That's just a train wreck waiting to happen. Khan asked, you know, where did the abuse of power come in?

Where did the infidelity come in? I bet you that it easily found its way into Carl Lentz's ecosystem, so to speak, when he started finding meaning and worth in the size of Hillsong's attendance, in the recognition and the fame.

Because those things jumped up exponentially. Very, very quickly. Entirely, way too quickly.

And if there is no proper perspective on how to walk biblically through this kind of recognition and fame, and there is no accountability to keep public figures like Lentz in check, then it's very easy to start thinking that the rules do not apply to you.

That you have actually a special set of rules, you see, because you're a special kind of person, you know?

And that is a huge lie. Pastors and leaders need to constantly go before the

Lord and ask, God, am I doing what I'm doing today for your glory or for mine?

Would you help me to see the difference? Bring me people around me that will tell me the truth because they care about my soul.

Proverbs 27, 17 says, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

That's the kind of friend that you need around you. You need someone who will wound you faithfully.

Proverbs 27, 6 says, faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.

I have been so incredibly grateful that God in his infinite wisdom and grace upon me has surrounded me with people who either don't know what

I do here on YouTube, or they know, but they could care less. That has been such a blessing.

I had some major lies. He said, I have been unfaithful. Carl was fired by Wilson leader,

Brian Houston, but there was something larger happening at this church. People were putting things together.

Brian's unraveling was bound to happen. They were predicting something. What are they protecting?

Brian's pushing people to the limit. Hillsong culture is loyalty to Hillsong. There was a series of violent criminal acts against children.

There's a moment where Lentz in episode two said that church can be a phenomenal blessing, or it can be a sledgehammer of pain.

He goes on to say, the decisions that I made, the pain those caused, the betrayals involved, I did those things.

Those are on me. I take responsibility for those, and the rest of my life, I'll be making amends where I can.

It's also my job to try and figure out how the heck that happened. The documentary stays in some interesting places in order to invoke conversation.

Whoever made the documentary clearly is woke and a progressive. I don't mean

Christian, progressive Christian. They're probably a secular progressive person. You can tell just by the things that they focus on and highlight at length in these episodes.

For example, the documentary is concerned about the lack of representation of people of color in church leadership.

It's also concerned with Lentz's take on Black Lives Matter. It spends a lot of time on the issue of race in church and the implication of systemic racism within not only

Hillsong, but Christianity in general. A lot of implications of how backwards

Christianity is, it's floating all around the documentary. Why? Because, well, you see Christianity does not affirm

LGBTQ issues. A lot of church pastors did not participate in the

Black Lives Matter movement, but Carl did, and so you see this note keep getting played a lot in the documentary.

There's also this emphasis, and it's sort of coming out now in the trailer as I'm watching it with you, on Carl Lentz being merely a cog in the wheel of Hillsong.

This is all implied through the way that Carl is spoken about and also interviewed. At one point,

Carl gets compared to Lucifer in this weird take that appears to pit Lucifer as the victim of God's narcissism in the same way that Carl was the victim of Brian Houston's narcissism or something.

It certainly seems to bite a bit from Milton's Paradise Lost, where a lot of folks tend to see

Satan as the protagonist in the story there. Satan famously says in Paradise Lost, better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven, which for those of us who know better is just bizarre to see

Satan as a hero. It seems like Carl Lentz is getting a bit of that treatment in the documentary. He's tearing up a lot in the interviews, and believe it or not, you do feel for him and for the consequences of the decisions that he has made, but this all seems to add up to an implicit conclusion that Carl was a whole mess.

Certainly, he was a perpetrator as well. I mean, the documentary ensures that Carl confesses on camera, which

I thought was really good, but it's also implied that he's a victim, which raises an interesting question,

I think. Can Carl Lentz be a victim in this whole mess? And I think the answer is yes.

There is a picture given to us by the Apostle Paul in Romans 5 about the nature and the effects of sin.

In verse 12, Paul says, Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

There is this interconnectedness in the Bible of sin and how it affects people. So, you know, the sin of someone in my life can affect me, and then

I can in turn sin and thus affect other people, and the cycle just perpetuates. It continues to go on and on.

And in this dynamic, sinners are both victims and perpetrators. This is why the Bible teaches that everyone will be found guilty of their own moral crimes.

Why? Because even though they were born into a world full of sin, they also sin. This is

Carl Lentz's story, you know, and it's tragic. He reveals things that happened to him as a boy and how he was taught at a young age to keep secrets so as not to hurt family members and the people around him.

And so, it's implied that he learned those sinful lessons and took those with him into his pastoral ministry.

But my concern is one of imbalance. If we can show that perpetrators are sinners, does that mean that they are no longer perpetrators?

And the answer is, of course, no. So, while Lentz's story is tragic, he has a responsibility now to stop sinning and thus try to break the cycle of the very particular and specific sins that have run rampant in his life.

And that can only be accomplished by abiding in Jesus Christ, as John 15 teaches. Jesus says in verse 5,

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Apart from Jesus, you cannot overcome your sins. Apart from Jesus, you cannot put to death the deeds of the flesh, as Paul says in Romans 6.

But in Christ and with Christ, we can. It's interesting because the abiding aspect of the

Christian, particularly the pastor, is entirely lacking in this documentary, which

I think explains a lot of what led to the downfall of Lentz and those in leadership at Hillsong. There's this recurring theme of doing the daily grind, you know, working and working, driving the car of ministry 100 miles per hour.

In that dynamic, how can you abide in Christ? How can anyone? When it says that Jesus every morning went away up a mountain as part of his regular practice and spent time with the

Father, that means that the expectation is on us to do the same thing. Which, by the way, right now the focus is on Carl Lentz and pastors, but this is true of all

Christians everywhere. So, you know, quote -unquote regular Christians that are, you know, the congregants are not off the hook in terms of what is expected or required.

By the way, if this video is getting you to think critically or just helping you in general, would you consider liking and subscribing to the channel?

I would really appreciate it and it would help more people to know about what I'm trying to do here for you at Wise Disciple.

I appreciate you guys doing that. So, I'm reading Gregory the Great's book on the Book of Pastoral Rule.

By the way, don't look too far into that. Still a Protestant. But he makes the point about knowing the difference between being a

Martha and being a Mary. There's a story of Jesus teaching at Mary and Martha's house.

This is in Luke chapter 10. It says in verse 38, he, Jesus, entered a village and a woman named

Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister called Mary who was also seated at the Lord's feet listening to his word.

But Martha was distracted with all her preparations and she came up to him and said,

Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the preparations alone? Then tell her to help me.

But the Lord answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary.

For Mary has chosen the good part which shall not be taken away from her. So, Martha is running around driving her car of serving the

Lord at 100 miles per hour and she finally has the nerve to go up to Jesus and get on this case for letting her sister,

Mary, sit at his feet and learn from him. And Jesus says, only one thing is necessary, which is to spend time with him, which is to sit at his feet and learn from him.

In other words, to abide in him. And Mary has chosen that. She's chosen the good part and Jesus is not going to take it away from her.

That's the lesson pastors and church leaders are missing. So many of them are missing this and I see this on a regular basis as I travel around and meet with pastors around the country and it saddens me every time.

They spend way too much time doing things for Jesus and almost no time being with Jesus.

But being with Jesus is the necessary component. And if we do that as pastors and Christians, not only will we thrive in healthy ministry, but we'll also avoid the pitfalls we're seeing with these big mega church celebrity style leaders who fall.

Just about every single one of them are making the same mistakes and having nobody around them to truly hold them accountable. Cover up your father's sex abuse.

They had meetings about not telling anyone. It's child abuse, labor abuse, sexual assault.

We are fearful of what is ahead. I've never seen anything like this. This is a church we're talking about.

One of the other things that I noticed, and it becomes apparent as you watch the documentary, which is ironic because I'm fairly certain the documentarians are not trying to highlight this or showcase this on purpose, but as Christians we know better and we can see this right away.

There is a real danger when the church and its leaders do not speak boldly and take clear stands on issues of morality that God makes clear in his word.

One of the participants being interviewed, who is a former member of Hillsong, said at one point, you know,

I knew what Christianity's stance was on LGBTQ issues, but I didn't know what

Hillsong's stance was. Let that sit. Think about that for a moment. If Hillsong is a

Christian church and you know what the Christian stance is on LGBTQ issues, presumably because it's exactly what the

Bible teaches on the subject, then what's the mystery about Hillsong? Should there really be a lot of folks scratching their heads on this one trying to figure out what the answer is?

I mean, Hillsong's stance should be Christianity's stance, right? It's funny, that comment was very helpful because I think it starts to reveal that in some people's minds,

Hillsong did not align with Christianity. And even some of its own congregants sensed that.

There was an LGBTQ congregant who was trying to articulate how he felt about being a part of Hillsong when he was a member.

And by the way, all of these people now are no longer part of Hillsong. They've left that particular church.

But he said, you know, what we're hearing sounds to us like you're on our side, right?

He's talking again about the leadership of Hillsong with regard to the LGBTQ community.

He says what we're hearing sounds like you're on our side, that you're actually with us. You're telling us that we belong.

And that's the point. Hillsong was not speaking for the LGBTQ community.

So where did he get this notion? It's because they were not saying anything at all, ladies and gentlemen, which in a lot of ways is just as bad.

James 4 says if you know the right thing to do and you don't do it for you, it's a sin. As a matter of fact, I mean, this reflects other passages in the scripture, right?

Proverbs 3. As a matter of fact, Paul shows us in Acts 20, verse 27, that pastors and leaders need to preach the whole counsel of God, which entails

God's design for human beings and sex. To say nothing, in my opinion, is to say something. And clearly

Hillsong was refusing to boldly preach the whole counsel of God. I bring this up because I know of a lot of churches that refuse to teach certain books of the

Bible. They will avoid certain passages and sometimes whole books of the Bible, which means they are not preaching the whole counsel of God.

You know the best way to avoid this mistake? Teach verse by verse through the scripture. Come on now, somebody can amen me there.

I think as I close, the question that I'm left with is, can someone like Carl Lentz become a pastor again at some point?

By the way, what do you think about that? Let me know your answer in the comments below. I'd be very interested to see your take on this, your responses.

I think my answer is, it depends. And I think it depends on several factors.

First, no fallen pastor can restore themselves, right? So if you fall, restoration then is the response, right?

Forgiveness and restoration. But a pastor can't restore himself. That requires a community of church leaders to surround a fallen pastor and restore them in measurably spiritual ways.

I say measurably because what is required for anyone to be restored after failing morally is ensuring that they are abiding in Christ and bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.

These are all measurable things though, you know, they can be objectively verified if there is a community of leadership around the pastor being restored.

If for a period of time a fallen pastor walks that difficult road of repentance well and comes out the other side bearing fruit and keeping with that,

I think that there may be a chance that he could return to leadership. I tend to lean towards making it extremely difficult for a pastor to return to what they were doing originally, especially not without serious safety measures and checks and balances in place to put them under a series of, like, accountability partners and other measures, right?

And the reason I say that is because it's dangerous. There's something that happens to you when you sin in specific ways and I think a lot of us just do not appreciate how deep that something goes, the effects of sin.

Imagine putting a man through AA and when he finally comes out the other side telling him, now go be a bartender, this man is stepping right back into a very dangerous scenario with, like, new tremendous sensitivities that could easily lead him to fall again.

So it depends. I don't think that it should be easy by any stretch of the imagination for someone like Carl Lentz to return to the pastorate.

Those are my thoughts. Definitely check out the documentary if you get a chance and let me know what you think about it, you know.

I encourage you to watch it. Some more episodes are premiering soon as of this recording.

Episode three and four should drop soon and it should get deeper into Carl Lentz's story. Here's a warning though with this documentary.

If you are going to watch this, don't watch it for the spectacle. Don't watch it and tut -tut and wag your finger at someone else, right?

Watch it to understand what not to do. Watch it to learn the lessons from the mistakes of the fallen so that we ensure that our relationship with God is close and clean.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot coast for a single day. We must abide in Christ and submit to his work in us day by day.

If we forsake these things, sin is crouching at our door ready to devour us and those around us.

So be warned, be filled with grace and forgiveness, and watch the documentary to learn.

There's a lot of lessons. There's a lot of good lessons. If you're a pastor, watch the documentary and take notes.

I think it's going to be beneficial for you. Well, that's all the time that I have for this episode. I appreciate you joining me for this discussion.

Guess what? We got a lot more videos coming up for your consideration, so stay tuned. But in the meantime, I will say bye for now.