Carl Lentz says he doesn’t discover with ‘disgraced pastor’ label

Former Hillsong NYC pastor Carl Lentz and his wife Laura have opened up in regards to the terrible mental toll his cheating took on their family and the long and difficult healing process they’ve been on for nearly 4 years.

In the first episode of their recent “Lights On” podcast, the couple, who’ve stuck together despite his adultery, talked for around an hour in regards to the fallout of his headling-grabbing firing in November 2020. 

Carl said it was a “horrible” time and that even after a couple of years, it still feels “weird to even discuss it”.

They lost their home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the day after the scandal broke and each Laura and one among their daughters needed intense therapy for betrayal trauma, with their daughter staying in a mental hospital for teenagers for eight weeks. 

“I discovered a therapist that specialises in betrayal trauma and I didn’t realise the quantity of labor that I needed to do because I used to be a large number,” said Laura.

“When you are gaslit the way in which you’re in situations like that [ …] it’s greater than just trauma. It’s like torment, mental torment, physical torment in your brain.

“And so I needed to unwind numerous my very own things that had gone on in my very own head.”

Carl, 45, said he struggled with a torment all of his own since it had been “torture” to live a double life for thus long and conceal “so many lies”. He believes his scandal got here to light because “God had enough”. 

“The way I can articulate living a life where you have got that sort of secrecy, it’s torture [ … ] and it’s torture for the those who usually are not within the know. I do not care who you’re, what you’ve got done, no person is created to live with lies,” he continued.

He described living with lies as “adapting to dysfunction” but “there is not any burying a lie”. 

“I used to be really digging my very own grave. And that is a tough reality to face,” he said. 

Through their healing journey, he says he has experienced “the facility of honesty in a completely different way” and that this has been “a extremely powerful a part of our healing”. 

He rejected any suggestion that his wife was one way or the other at fault for his cheating, telling her, “You had nothing to do with my hidden sin and hidden habits and hidden addictions. You didn’t know what was happening with me.”

He went on, “And I do know there’s been some confusing reports where people can attempt to piece something together and say, you recognize, Laura, was she complicit? Did she know? And that is just not true. It’s not our story.

“You didn’t know anything about what I used to be doing because I became really proficient at making my life work despite numerous pain.”

Despite the scandal, he also rejects the label of “disgraced former pastor” and says that individuals who define him like that “don’t understand what grace is”.

“Grace is mercy and favour and forgiveness that you just don’t deserve but God gives it to you anyway. So if anything, I fell into grace. And if people could stop writing headlines like that, I’d appreciate it since it’s inaccurate,” he said. 

“I’m not a disgraced former pastor. I’m a human being that made huge mistakes. Mine were public, everybody got to see them. And now, I’m a human being that is attempting to rectify my life and make wrongs right and to live completely in another way. But disgraced I’m not.

“I’m more stuffed with grace than I’ve ever been. Did I fall from grace? Absolutely not. I fell into it. And I’m really grateful for that.”