Reflecting on Lentz’s Return to the Public Sphere
Monetizing one's pain and church movements’ lack of accountability.
Watching the two episodes of the "Lights On with Carl Lentz" Podcast featuring Carl Lentz, former Hillsong New York Lead Pastor, and his wife Lauren made two things jump out at me.
The first was well articulated by a friend who commented on how media people even find ways to monetize their own pain.
The story of the Lentzs’ is well publicized – pastors at Hillsong New York City, friends of celebrities, until Carl blew up his life and got fired for it.
You can see ABC’s eight-minute piece on them talking about Carl’s infidelity coming out below.
Monetizing their own pain
That the Lentz’s have done a lot of work on themselves and their marriage is undeniable, although I have to wonder at the wisdom of stepping out into heavy media engagements with the likes of ABC and the very raw two episodes where they go through heavy trauma from four years ago.
I got the hero-coming-back-from-the-dead feeling as I watched the podcasts, which is what good TV does, but I’m not sure it's what they need, or us for that matter. A moderated conversation by the likes of ABC’s Byron Pitts, a Christian and hard-hitting journalist, might have been a better option.
There is also the fact that the podcast is connected to The B-Side, where people associated with Transformation Church, like its oversight pastor Tim Ross, are building a platform of content creators, which includes Grammy Award-winning artist Lecrae and Carl Lentz. Lentz has also been on staff at Transformation Church as a strategist. It's not wrong that it's commercial, but mixing commercial and relational healing might be tricky road to walk for the Lentz’s.
"Lights On with Carl Lentz" Episode 1
Time: 1 hour 2 mins
Church movements’ lack of accountability
The other part I think was notable was when the Lentz’s talk about Hillsong Church.
The Lentz’s talk about how their whole life was Hillsong Church but allude to the nonsense that snowballed after that, which ultimately led to founders Brian and Bobbie Houston leaving the organization.
They welcome Hillsong being scrutinized and say that it needs to be. They unpack the NDA they had to sign as well and how the leadership at Hillsong was failing.
"Lights On with Carl Lentz" Episode 2
Clip Time: 12 minutes. Episode: 1 hour 7 mins
Carl unpacks the nature of his relationship with Brian Houston and the type of relationship they had on the leadership at Hillsong. They relate a culture that lacked accountability and how leaders with decades of experience left without much explanation. It’s a tragic example of how the global church needs better governance structures.
Takeaways
What’s clear in the Lentzs' telling of their story is that they were unhealthy at Hillsong. How different would their lives have been if they had had the accountability structures in place to unearth their dysfunction before it blew up? And if there had been leaders to work with them or even step them down to help them to heal before Carl was unfaithful, it may have saved their marriage and children a lot of pain and suffering.
And so, while I am not sure of the wisdom of the Lentzs' approach to sharing their stories in this format, I do think these kinds of stories are worth hearing and that the church does need leaders who understand these types of scenarios and how to deal with them with compassion and wisdom.
I watched the episodes again with my wife and we really benefitted from the experience and so I am grateful that these conversations are coming to the surface, my opinion is more around the presentation of the story and the channel to market.
In my previous post, I spoke about four areas the church needs to address: financial pressure points, scale and leadership, theology, and discipleship. All four were at play in the Hillsong context.
The church increasingly needs to think about leadership and accountability in scenarios of scale because the fallout and damage done from stories like this are significant. Hillsong lost 9 out of its 16 churches after the two scandals with additional fallout globally.
Why Isn’t Church Working Anymore? series:
Here’s why this series of posts came about:
My first post in the series tackled some of the challenges congregants and some pastors may be experiencing.
The second tackled some of the trends from more of a church leadership perspective.
The third was on some systemic reasons for the challenges mentioned in posts one and two.
The fourth was some ideas on what to do about some of these challenges.
Great post!