Carl Lentz has spoken out for the first time after a difficult 20 month period since his sacking from Hillsong New York City.
As the FX docuseries The Secrets of Hillsong, is just over a week from launching, Lentz has spoken out for the first time in length after his name has been featured in the media for all the wrong reasons.
Taking to Instagram, Lentz, who was fired after admitting to an affair with a Muslim woman, talked at length about the period he has been through.
“For the last 3 years my entire focus has been fighting for my wife and my kids, my family has been my only priority,” he said. “In order to do that, seeking sobriety and healing had to run parallel with those goals. Honestly nothing else mattered. None of the noise, the lies, none of the half truths that were said about me and or us, mattered.
“All I wanted was to prove to my wife and kids that I could show up for them like I had never done before. Although we have a long way to go, with a lot of work, a lot of honesty and a lot of prayer, we have found ourselves in a beautiful, happy and deliberately honest place.
“So much so that we not only celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on May 5th but we got to do that in the purest way. Unfortunately that came through a lot of humiliation, embarrassment and heartache.”
Lentz said that part of the healing from that heartache led he and his wife, Laura Lentz, to the decision to be part of a documentary that “we do not control, that we don’t have any say in and that we haven’t even seen yet.”
“We’ll see it when the world does. We were not interested in blame shifting or responsibility deflection, we focus on my mistakes and the context for what transpired,” Lentz maintains. “I can honestly tell you that when you get to a place of honesty and freedom in your life, when you’ve gone through hell and you realize God is still with you. It is so freeing.
“It’s the freedom I wish for all of the many people that I know that are called by God and wrestle with secrets and the feeling of not being worth. Trust me it led to some dark places.”
Part of this has been the news that he has joined the staff of Tulsa’s Transformation Church, but not in a pastoral capacity.
“Even though I’m at an amazing church that loves and supports us, I’m no longer in ministry,” he said. “Im (sic) not preaching, not overseeing people, my role is to help give perspective and insight where I can. I can also say that’s what gives me joy and hope is knowing that what I have been through, what I have made it past can help so many others.
“I’m not the first man to be in this situation and I won’t be the last, but I can promise you I’ll be the guy standing with his arms open wide for anyone who’s been on this path of addiction and destruction. I can say I understand it and my relationship with Jesus in a way that I couldn’t from the pulpit.
“Repentance and life change is proven over time with consistent choices and that’s a road I look forward to.
“It truly makes me wonder if this is what all of this pain was all about. From the lows of where I’ve been, to the grace and forgiveness that God has granted me, I have something to share and so does Laura and my kids.”
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