Hillsong and megachurches like it have been paying off mistresses for years. There's a very powerful dynamic going on when people are constantly weeping at your feet during the heightened concerts they hold, and you are their connection to God. It has an effect on those in power. Those hot, sweaty nights in church among a young, overly fertile crowd leads to a highly charged sexual environment that is undeniable.
Usually, the affairs pastors have are not planned and are merely encounters followed by guilt, shame, and a quest for forgiveness with all kinds of promises that the encounters won't reoccur. This result is innumerable pregnancies, and rashes, that need to disappear.
I know this because women, mistresses, and male lovers, as well as pastor's ex and current wives have written to me for years telling of the abortions that were forced upon them by an anti-abortion preacher who calls the junior pastor and his jezebel into the office for counselling only to hit them with a medical referral.
It was more than ten years ago when a pastor’s ex-wife told me of her fear of her husband because of the life insurance policy he threatened to cash in on her. And he wasn’t one of the biggest names.
The Carl Lentz story is not shocking, but it is surprising.
All his peers are doing it. Some get caught.
But why now? There's loud chatter that his "moral failures" have gone on for many years. (Trust me, they'd have a form ready now on letterhead in every Hillsong office worldwide for pregnant mistresses to fill in along with the morning-after-pill and some Amoxicillin.) Even Carl promised his (most recent) mistress that ‘he paid good money’ to keep her out of the press.
So who or what can't the machine stop from exposing Carl's wrongdoings? Hillsong NYC is a particularly abusive arm of the machine. That’s nothing new, it turns out. So what happened so ‘recently’ to upset Brian? So badly as to let go of this Golden Goose Lentz?
It’s more likely the ‘leadership’ and the ‘trust’ issues since Brian Houston is himself, the greatest moral failure of the Hillsong enterprise.
It’s now understood that his wife, Laura, discovered the photos between Carl and his side-piece on the work computer. Really? Is Carl Lentz as stupid as Gavin Rossdale with Gwen Stefani?
This story doesn’t make sense. Because this is a huge loss to Hillsong and the Big Boss, Brian Houston.
After all, Carl Lentz was a dream come true for Brian. He arrived in 2000 at Sydney’s Hillsong College and by 2003, he was married to Laura Brett, the daughter of Kevin, an old pastor mate of Brian’s from New Zealand who says Brian was 14 years old when Kevin first met him. This is a SUPER CLOSE network of people.
Brian and Bobbie Houston gave their younger son Ben a church in L.A. They gave their eldest son, Joel, a band in the end, but it’s important the organisation’s main franchises stay in the family. So they sent Carl Lentz with Joel Houston to New York to have a church.
What a simple start, just ten years ago, with such beautiful lighting. Life got better and better for Carl or so it seems. But there’s a catch.
Sure, Carl and his family may have been living the high life and rubbing shoulders with the A-listers, but every single moment of that was dependent on Brian Houston's approval, on keeping Brian happy, on keeping on bringing in the big money and the big names. Carl never really owned anything, which is why his book “Own the Moment” makes sense. The moment was all he could ever hope for.
In his own way, Carl Lentz may be a victim of the Hillsong machine. Did Brian Houston need to inform the entire world of Lentz’s personal and professional failings, BEFORE an investigation took place? Did he really think the greater evangelical world would accept those vague statements, or was it a deliberate method to humiliate his former favourite rather than have his ‘restoration’ take place privately, which would have been entirely possible?
The facade of care for Lentz’s wife and family falls down pretty quickly when you consider the many different ways this could have been handled. This will be the Lentz story that goes down in history, and Brian, ever keen to deflect the attention away from his harbouring a paedophile for 5 years, funding his life until he died, and lying to the anyone who will listen about how he told the truth immediately, would be EVER SO KEEN for everyone to LOOK AT WHAT CARL DID, instead.
It's interesting as well that the focus has been on his "moral failures", with an exotic girlfriend in the media as a distraction. Isn’t it convenient that she was ready within a day to talk to the media? Ranin Karim states that Carl Lentz visited her and they had sex the day after his Instagram confession. Which was 6 weeks after Laura Lentz supposedly found the pics at work and confronted her husband.
If Carl and Ranin only ‘broke up’ that day, the ‘affair’ kept going for another 6 weeks after Laura ‘first found out, while quickly selling the house.
It’s not adding up.
Leadership and trust issues are going to be much more interesting, but we're all too busy staring at his mistress's tattoos to think about what went on behind the scenes.
Brian’s ego is insatiable and fragile. Whatever Carl did to upset that is what’s at the heart of this. It’s going to be a long time before he gets to speak, though.
Carl’s surely become well-acquainted with the Non-Disclosure Agreement he signed all those years ago.
There’s NO WAY that the Global Senior Pastor Houstons didn’t know about Carl’s activities. No one's falling for that old line again.