'Where Feet May Fail': After Carl Lentz Affair, What’s Next for Hillsong Church?
Brian and Bobbie Houston. Screenshot from Vision Sunday service.
NEW YORK — After logging onto Hillsong’s Sunday morning online service through the church’s website homepage, viewers encounter charismatic Christians in their 20s and 30s singing and dancing, sporting tattoos, man-buns, flannels and beards.
Eyes closed and hands outstretched, they beg for God’s presence — rocking and swaying to the piano and guitar chords. Their most popular song, streamed nearly 250 million times on Spotify, coos, “You call me out upon the waters/ The great unknown where feet may fail.” The song describes the moment in the Bible when Jesus walked on water and called his disciple Peter to do the same, with faith, but Peter began sinking.
The Australia-based Hillsong Church is acutely aware of human weaknesses, especially after its former East Coast celebrity pastor Carl Lentz’s marital infidelity became public. But Hillsong’s leaders are determined to carry on its global mission to keep building up its church communities and reach more people searching for meaning in their lives.
Moving Forward
The church announced it will appoint Chrishan and Danielle Jeyaratnam, a newly married couple, in place of Carl and his wife, Laura, as the head pastors of Hillsong East Coast.
After worship on a recent Sunday, New Jersey pastor, Matt Bartgis — a familiar face among Hillsong East Coast attendees, led the virtual congregation of 8,000 in prayer and then handed off to Chrishan Jeyaratnam — the newly announced Hillsong East Coast pastor who viewers saw standing on a beach in Perth, Australia.
Hillsong’s New Jersey pastor, Matt Bartgis, is a familiar face to East Coast church members. Screenshot from a recent online service.
The couple will be moving from Perth to the New York location to carry out the church’s mission announced for the year during “Vision Sunday” on Feb. 14 — to rescue, restore and rebuild. They aim to model their church upon the “one house, many rooms,” verse in John 14.
“I am believing that this will be a year of rescue, restoration and rebuilding,” Hillsong founder Brian Houston said during the Vision Sunday service. “Rebuilding when it comes to the church itself and not just our church but churches all over the globe. God is a rescuer — he brings deliverance. I believe this year, we’re going to see God rescue people.”
The Vision Sunday service was a 100-minute program that includes announcements for leadership across Hillsong Church’s global locations — reaching 30 countries. Aiming to rebuild trust, the video centers around Brian and his wife, Bobbie’s, reactions to Hillsong-produced videos of members of the church from 2020.
“I’ve always felt that church is about God and people. Loving God, loving people and loving life,” Houston said. “I don’t think that’s changed at all.”
Several members of Hillsong leadership and staff declined interviews with Religion Unplugged, including the media team and Hillsong staff at the Manhattan campus.
Rocked By A Scandal
Lentz is credited with leading pop singer Justin Bieber back to his Christian faith. Singer Selena Gomez also attended while Lentz pastored, but both Bieber and Gomez have since said they left the church, with Bieber expressing his Christian faith in other places. Lentz, a basketball player in college, was also reportedly a friend to sports stars such as Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Celebrities such as Marla Maples, Donald Trump’s ex-wife, proudly attended the Hillsong services alongside hundreds of other fashionable and diverse members at the Lentz-lead Hillsong campus in New York City. Lentz and his wife also built a large Hillsong branch in Montclair, N.J., where they lived among many media and creative industry celebrities such as Bobby Brown, Stephen Colbert and Steve Higgins.
Hillsong Church has been criticized for a lack of accountability. Rumors about Lentz’s problematic behaviors with women circulated around the church in 2017. Brian Houston told the New York Times that the church’s legal counsel looked into the claims and found no evidence to support them. Critics also accused the church of preaching the “prosperity gospel,” that having faith in God will reduce your suffering and increase your financial wealth.
Houston announced Lentz’s firing Nov. 4, citing “leadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures” in an email to church members. Lentz confirmed he was unfaithful in his marriage on Instagram, and his girlfriend of five months talked to several media outlets to spill details of their affair, including that Lentz approached her in a park to ask her out. She also alleges he told her he was a sports agent and didn’t tell her he was married.
A Critical History
Hillsong Church has been criticized for a lack of accountability. Rumors about Lentz’s problematic behavior with women circulated around the church in 2017. Brian Houston told the New York Times that the church’s legal counsel looked into the claims and found no evidence to support them. Critics have also accused the church of preaching the “prosperity gospel,” that having faith in God will reduce your suffering and increase your financial wealth.
Despite the controversy surrounding Lentz, Hillsong continues to captivate modern Christians all over the world — with Hillsong UNITED having 3,956,340 monthly listeners on Spotify and more than 2 million albums sold since 2017. Although, the congregation is receiving critiques from many ministers and parishioners alike, in and out of the city, for the celebrity-status and idolization of its head pastors.
Critics often credit this sort of behavior and scandal to the lack of accountability within megachurches that identify simply as “Christian churches.” Without a hierarchical structure to regulate the church’s activities, they suggest scandal is more likely to plague the community.
“I don’t think it's surprising at all because megachurches today tend to be non-denominational,” said Dr. Ben White, theologian and professor at The King’s College. “They don’t tend to exist in larger structures that create accountability.”
Unlike an Episcopalian church for instance, Hillsong does not have networks of bishops or regional moderators. If a scandal arises like the one Carl Lentz was involved with, in a larger church denomination, the problem is more likely to be reported, White thinks.
“Those megachurches often actually pursue a type of independence that allows them to do whatever they want, so it kind of exists inside an ecosystem,” White said.
A Congregation Adapts
Despite the affair, Hillsong East Coast seems to be holding onto support from many young Christians in the New York and the New England area.
“You feel in the presence of God at their services and they make me feel at home,” said Jared Pareida, a senior at Pace University in New York City. He has been attending Hillsong East Coast since September of 2017. “Had I not found Hillsong NYC, I’d be at a dead end with my faith these last four years.”
Though, Pareida does agree that Hillsong has fundamental changes to make to restore the legitimacy of its leadership to the church body. “I definitely think there needs to be rebuilding of trust for the East Coast leadership team, since the scandal involving our former pastor,” Pareida said.
Other members of the Hillsong community find themselves following their famous counterparts like Justin and Hailey Bieber in leaving the congregation — feeling discontented by the way that church leadership handled the scandal.
“I think that I am taking some necessary time away from Hillsong at the moment, but hope that it is not forever,” said Greta Hanten, a longtime member of Hillsong and student majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at The King’s College. “I felt as though the way the church handled Carl Lentz’s scandal was more about preserving their public image than taking care of the members of the congregation.”
Hanten is not alone.
Much of Hillsong’s engagement on Twitter comes from those who follow the church’s music closely, not necessarily the messages delivered during sermons.
Sabrina, a woman based out of New York City who frequently engages with Hillsong on Twitter, said she would not consider herself to be a member of the congregation.
“I just like their songs, I don’t follow them as a church,” she said. “I am pretty skeptical about all the ‘mega-churches’ but Hillsong has great worship songs — that you can’t deny. I just pray they are not leading people on the wrong path. The Truth is in the Word.”
Hillsong’s style of music is often what attracts many of its followers, though many modern theologians find fault with the church’s methodology.
“I have nothing against guitars, drums, anything like that. That’s great, I’m fine with that. But, pop culture churches also tend to move in the direction of a rock show, so they dim the lights, the music is very emotional, but what happens when you dim the lights and encourage people to close their eyes and dance,” Dr. White said. “When it becomes this rock show theme, Christianity can become very individualistic, it’s about you and your feelings and your experience of the service rather than about standing with a group of people around you that you can plainly see and singing together.”
Houston has stepped out of the immediate spotlight, for the time being, distancing himself from the sex controversy an ocean and continents away. During the Vision service, Houston said he will be allocating many of Lentz’s roles to others holding leadership at Hillsong East Coast and beyond.
Mattie Townson is an editorial intern for Religion Unplugged and a journalism student at The King's College in New York City. She is the Managing Editor for her school’s newsmagazine, The Empire State Tribune Magazine.