Christian Living · Grace With A Backbone

Carl Lentz Now: A Fall, A Family, And The Long Road Back

He helped build something real in New York, and then he broke trust in a way that hurt a lot of people, starting at home. Here is where he is today, and what the church owes a fallen leader and the family standing next to him.

By Apostle Johnny Ova · Sound of Heaven · 9 Min Read
The Short Answer What Happened The Good Was Real Name It Plainly What Restoration Is Laura And The Kids Look In The Mirror Where This Lands
The Short Answer

Fallen, Honest, And Not Finished

Straight Answer

Carl Lentz was fired as lead pastor of Hillsong NYC in November 2020 and publicly admitted he had been unfaithful to his wife, Laura. Today they are still married, he hosts a weekly podcast about healing after betrayal, they have written a book together on overcoming infidelity, and he says he has no plans to lead a church again.

Here is where we land. God did real good through him, he did real damage, and the church's job is to help restore the man and protect his family, not cancel him and not rush him back to a stage.

That answers where he ended up. The bigger question is about us: what do we do when one of our own falls?

The Public Record

What Happened, In His Own Words

Carl Lentz is a real man with a real wife and kids, and the internet is full of rumor about him. Everything here comes from his own public statements, Laura's, and established news outlets. Nothing else.

2010
Hillsong NYC Launches

Carl Lentz and Joel Houston launch Hillsong's church in Manhattan. Within a few years it is one of the most talked about churches in the country, known for young crowds and famous faces, Justin Bieber among them.

November 2020
Fired, Then A Confession

Brian Houston tells the church Lentz has been dismissed over “leadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures.” Lentz posts that he was “unfaithful in my marriage, the most important relationship in my life.”

2021
Laura Speaks

Six months later Laura returns to social media. “i don't want to judge others nor do i want to be judged,” she writes, as NBC News reported.

2023
A Documentary And A New Role

Carl and Laura both take part in FX's The Secrets of Hillsong. That same year, The Roys Report notes, he joins Transformation Church in Tulsa as a strategist, saying plainly that he is not in active ministry or overseeing a congregation.

2024
“I'm Not Starting Any Church”

On ABC's Nightline and the RELEVANT podcast he talks openly about recovery. Asked about planting another church, he says, “it's not even in the conversation.”

2025 To 2026
Lights On

He hosts a weekly podcast, Lights On with Carl Lentz, now centered on couples recovering from betrayal. He and Laura write Overcoming Infidelity: 10 Conversations to Help Heal the Hurt, released by Simon and Schuster on October 20, 2026.

His firing statement did not dodge. “This failure is on me, and me alone and I take full responsibility for my actions,” he wrote, as Religion News Service reported at the time. Whatever you think of everything since, that is the right first sentence for a fallen leader to say.

Honor Where It Is Due

The Good Was Real

Some people want this story to be simple. He was a fraud all along, so nothing he built counts. I do not believe that, and I do not think the Bible lets us believe it.

Hillsong NYC put the gospel in front of young New Yorkers who would never have walked into a traditional church, and people met Jesus in those rooms. Lentz said it himself in a 2024 interview with RELEVANT: “The whole picture of Hillsong, New York City [was] amazing. I'm proud of it.”

People Met Jesus

A failure years later does not undo a single real conversion. Those people were saved by Jesus, not by Carl Lentz, and Jesus has not changed.

Jars Of Clay

Paul says we hold this treasure in jars of clay, so the power is clearly God's and not ours (2 Corinthians 4:7). God has always worked through cracked pottery. Every one of us is one.

Gifts Are Not Character

Saul prophesied among the prophets while his heart was going wrong (1 Samuel 10 and 19). A gift can keep working on a stage while a life is coming apart at home. That is a warning, not a compliment.

Both Are True

He did amazing things for the Kingdom, and he made an awful mistake. Holding both at once is not being soft. It is being honest.

Takeaway

The good fruit in his ministry was God's doing. The damage in his life was his own. Do not let the second erase the first, and do not let the first excuse the second.

No Spin

Name The Failure Plainly

Honoring the good does not mean shrinking the bad. He broke his marriage vows. He broke trust with a church that looked to him and with the staff who served beside him. Most of all he broke trust with Laura and their three children. The Bible does not treat adultery as a small thing, and neither should we.

Lentz has not minimized it either. In his 2024 Nightline interview he called himself a recovering addict and said, “I had deep brokenness that manifested itself in a lot of different ways,” as The Christian Post reported.

In the years since his firing, more accusations surfaced in documentaries and interviews, including from a former employee of the family. He has taken responsibility for some of what was described and flatly denied others, including any abuse. Those matters belong to the people involved and to proper processes, and I am not going to retry them on a church blog.

What Celebrity Christianity Does

It either covers it up or cancels the man. Quietly move him along, call it a season of rest and put him back on a stage in eighteen months. Or turn him into a punchline forever. Both are about image. Neither is about healing.

What The Body Of Christ Does

It tells the truth, lets the consequences stand, cares for the people who were hurt first, and then walks with the one who fell toward real healing for as long as it takes.

“So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!”

1 Corinthians 10:12

That verse is not about Carl Lentz. It is about the person reading this. Pride makes us think his story could never be ours, and pride comes before the fall for a reason.

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Galatians, Corinth, A Beach, A Psalm

What Biblical Restoration Actually Looks Like

The word restoration gets abused in church world. Sometimes it means getting a gifted man back behind a pulpit as fast as possible. That is not what the Bible means by it.

“Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

Galatians 6:1-2
GreekKatartizoκαταρτíζωGalatians 6:1
Basic sense

To mend, to put back in order. Matthew 4:21 uses it for James and John mending their nets.

Medical use

Elisabeth Johnson, writing for Luther Seminary's Working Preacher, notes that the verb “is often used as a medical term, to refer to setting a bone or joint right so that proper healing can occur.”

What it means here

A broken bone is set carefully, held still and given time. Nobody sets a bone and enters the patient in a marathon the next week.

Johnson puts Paul's point in one line: “The goal of dealing with the transgressor is not punishment, but restoration and healing.” Scripture gives us three pictures of what that looks like.

Corinth: Enough Is Enough

A man in Corinth had caused real grief and the church disciplined him. Then Paul wrote, “The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (2 Corinthians 2:6-7). Discipline that never ends stops being discipline.

The Beach: Peter

Peter denied Jesus three times beside a charcoal fire. After the resurrection Jesus met him beside another charcoal fire and asked him three times, “Do you love me?” Jesus did not pretend the denial never happened. He walked Peter back through it, then said, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17). More on that in why Peter denied Jesus.

The Psalm: David

After Nathan confronted him over Bathsheba and Uriah, David prayed Psalm 51: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” God forgave him, and the consequences still ran through his family for years (2 Samuel 12). We tell the whole hard story in the sin of David and Bathsheba.

Where We Stand, Plainly

Sound of Heaven believes fallen leaders can be restored and that the church should help do it. I hold that personally about Carl Lentz.

Restoration means three things. Repentance owns the sin without excuses. Accountability means real people with real authority who can say no. Healing means the deep work, including counseling and recovery, that prayer was never meant to skip. Lentz has said Christians have “sometimes neglected logic, neglected science, neglected therapy, neglected help,” in an interview with Rolling Stone, and on that point I agree with him.

Restoration is not a cover up and it is not a fast return to the platform. Restored to Jesus, to his wife and kids, and to a church family come first, and they can take years. Whether anyone ever leads again is a separate question, answered slowly by people close to him, not by fans or critics online.

We refuse both errors: the church that hides sin to protect a brand, and the church that shoots its own wounded.

In John 21, how many times does Jesus ask Peter, “Do you love me?”

Once, and Peter answers right away
Three times, once for each denial
Seven times, a number of completion

Three questions for three denials, beside a charcoal fire like the one where Peter warmed himself the night he denied Jesus. Restoration did not skip the failure. It walked straight through it, and it ended with a calling: feed my sheep.

The People Nobody Mentions

Laura And The Kids Carried This Too

Most of us talked about Carl. Very few of us stopped to think about Laura, or about three kids whose dad's worst moment became a headline, a meme and later a documentary. They did not choose any of it. They paid for it anyway.

Laura's own words are worth hearing. She told ABC's Nightline, “I stayed because I loved him.” In the FX series she said that when her kids asked why she stayed, she told them, “because I see your dad trying and I see him changing,” and she was honest that if she stopped seeing that, she would leave. That is not denial. That is love with its eyes open.

Carl has said it plainly too. In a 2023 birthday post he wrote, “It would have been so easy and understandable for her to have walked out and ended our marriage. Yet she chose the harder road,” as The Christian Post reported.

If Your Family Has Lived This

If a leader's failure, or a spouse's, has crashed into your home, you are not a footnote to someone else's story. Your pain counts on its own, and it deserves care of its own.

Staying is not automatically holy, and leaving is not automatically failure. Safety comes first. Whatever you decide, you deserve a church that walks with you instead of picking sides for sport.

If you need someone to pray with you, send us a prayer request. A real person will read it.

Takeaway

When a leader falls, his family falls with him. Any restoration plan that forgets the wife and the kids is not restoration.

Turn The Lights On Us

Celebrity Church, Guarded Hearts, Wounded Leaders

It is easy to make this all about one man in Manhattan. But Carl Lentz did not invent celebrity Christianity. A lot of us helped build it. We shared the clips, chased the famous churches and treated pastors like influencers. In my opinion, this is the problem: we put people on platforms that are reserved for God.

Stop Building Celebrities

Jesus washed feet and slipped away from crowds that wanted to crown Him. The more famous a leader gets, the fewer people around him are willing to say no. If you love your pastor, do not idolize him. Pray for him and be honest with him. Humility is protection, not decoration.

Guard Your Own Heart

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

Proverbs 4:23

Nobody falls in a day. Lentz said it in that 2024 interview: “I didn't get there overnight, so it's not going to get healed overnight.” Falls are built from small secrets, isolation and exhaustion. Tell someone the truth about your struggle before it costs you everything. Repentance is a gift you can open early.

Treat Fallen Leaders Like Family

Do not gloat. Do not consume someone's collapse as entertainment. Pray for them by name. Jesus taught us how to judge, and contempt was never part of it. Welcome a repentant leader into a pew long before anyone talks about handing back a microphone. And remember that forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. Forgiveness can be given today. Trust is rebuilt over time.

Takeaway

The church that builds celebrities will keep burying them. Build disciples instead, guard your own heart, and treat the fallen the way you would want to be treated on your worst day.

Where This Lands

Jesus Restores People, Not Platforms

Jesus does not cancel people, and He does not cover for them either. He met Peter on a beach, told him the truth, and gave him a future. That is the pattern for every one of us.

I am cheering Carl Lentz on. Not to return to the stage, but to see him thriving as a man of God who is an incredible husband to Laura and a great father to his children, honoring God with the way he leads and loves his family. His mistakes carry long term consequences. No mistake is greater than the grace of God.

For related reading, see how God's grace works, what Jesus meant about forgiving seventy times seven, and what Sound of Heaven believes. And if you have been hurt by a church or a leader, come see us and see whether this family is different.

The Whole Thing In One Line

Carl Lentz did real good and made an awful mistake, and the church should help restore him through repentance, accountability and healing, never a cover up or a rush back to the stage, while remembering the wife and kids who carried it with him.

Praying For Someone Who Fell?

Maybe it is a leader you trusted, a spouse, or you. Send a prayer request and a pastor at Sound of Heaven will pray with you, with no lecture attached.

Questions People Ask

Questions About Carl Lentz And Restoration

Where is Carl Lentz now?

As of late 2026, Carl Lentz is still married to Laura and hosts a weekly podcast called Lights On, which now focuses largely on couples recovering from betrayal. He and Laura co-wrote Overcoming Infidelity: 10 Conversations to Help Heal the Hurt, released by Simon and Schuster on October 20, 2026. In 2023 he took a role as a strategist at Transformation Church in Tulsa, and he has said he is not in active ministry and has no plans to start a church.

Why was Carl Lentz fired from Hillsong?

Hillsong dismissed Carl Lentz in November 2020. Founder Brian Houston told the church the reasons were leadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures. Lentz then posted a statement admitting he had been unfaithful in his marriage, saying the failure was on him alone and that he took full responsibility. He had led Hillsong NYC since he and Joel Houston launched it in 2010, and the firing became national news because of his celebrity friendships.

Are Carl and Laura Lentz still married?

Yes. Carl and Laura Lentz have stayed married since his firing in 2020, and they have spoken publicly about the long and painful work of rebuilding trust. Laura told Nightline in 2024 that she stayed because she loved him, and she has said she stayed because she saw him changing. In 2026 the couple announced a book together on healing after infidelity. They have three children, who have walked through all of this with them.

Can a pastor be restored after an affair?

Yes, a pastor who falls can be restored to Jesus, to his family and to the church family, and the church should help. Galatians 6:1 tells believers to restore a fallen person gently, and Jesus restored Peter after his denials. But restoration means repentance, accountability and healing, and it takes time. It is not a cover up and not a fast return to the platform. Whether someone leads again is a separate question that trusted people answer slowly.

How should Christians treat a fallen pastor?

Tell the truth about what happened without turning it into entertainment. Pray for the leader and especially for the spouse and children, who carry consequences they did not choose. Support the people who were hurt. Refuse both the cover up and the pile on. Welcome a repentant leader into the pews long before anyone talks about a microphone. Galatians 6:1 adds a warning: watch yourselves, because anyone can be tempted. Humility is the right posture.