Carl Lentz recently offered his thoughts on fallen pastors returning to public ministry, urging caution and emphasizing doing the work necessary to heal.
Lentz, who was once known as a pastor to celebrities and professional athletes as head of Hillsong New York, was removed from his position in 2020 after it was revealed that he had been involved in an extramarital affair.
Following his firing from Hillsong, Lentz was accused of abuse. Lentz has denied these allegations. He has not been charged with a crime and no lawsuit has been brought against him.
Lentz’s recent comments about fallen pastors returning to ministry came in the context of an interview on Lecrae’s “Deep End” podcast.
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During his conversation with Lentz, Lecrae recounted in an interview he heard in which Ralph David Abernathy, a civil rights activist who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was asked whether those close to King knew that King was engaged in extramarital affairs.
“Of course we knew,” Lecrae recalled Abernathy saying.
Lecrae said that when Abernathy was asked what he did with that information, Abernathy replied, “Well, we tried to tell him; we counseled him. We got him some help and then he stopped.”
“And there are congregations around the world that have some sense of, okay, we gotta get you to step down, we gotta do some repair work on you and you’re going back to work,” Lecrae said before asking Lentz, “Do you feel, in some sense, like a scapegoat?”
“Because so many pastors have fallen…Do you feel like, in some sense, you’re the poster child or the scapegoat for all of this?” Lecrae asked.
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“No, I don’t feel like that,” Lentz said. “I will say that if you have a scandal or disaster, and you want to come back into a ministry role anywhere close to the [same] timeframe, I would ask you to reconsider.”
