Dan and Delali travel to Florida, where Carl Lentz now lives, in an attempt to hear from him for the first time since his resignation from Hillsong. As Delali seeks closure, she and Dan reflect on their journey and discuss recent developments, including Carl’s first public post since leaving Hillsong, Brian Houston’s upcoming court case and Hillsong’s attempt to reshape their image with new music.
Dan and Delali travel to Florida, where Carl Lentz now lives, in an attempt to hear from him for the first time since his resignation from Hillsong. As Delali seeks closure, she and Dan reflect on their journey and discuss recent developments, including Carl’s first public post since leaving Hillsong, Brian Houston’s upcoming court case and Hillsong’s attempt to reshape their image with new music.
Watch Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed on discovery+. Go to discoveryplus.com/hillsong to start your 7-day free trial today. Terms apply.
Find episode transcripts here: https://hillsong-a-megachurch-shattered.simplecast.com/episodes/ep7-broken-silence
107: Broken Silence TRANSCRIPT
DAN VO: [00:00:00] This episode may contain explicit language and themes such as sexual assault and violence. Listener discretion is advised.
DAN: Here we go, that street.
DELALI: I have a knot in my stomach.
DAN: That's their house. The garage is open
The garage door is open.
DELALI: They're definitely there. They're home.
DAN VO: I'm Dan Johnstone, and this is Hillsong: Megachurch Shattered from Discovery.[00:00:30]
DAN VO: After hearing more about the painful experiences of Delali and Janice, while at Hillsong NYC, I was more determined than ever to find Carl Lentz and speak to him face to face. In the wake of his public scandal, I knew that he and his wife Laura, had relocated to Bradenton, Florida - a city with a population smaller than 4% of Manhattan’s. So Delali and I packed our bags, jumped on planes, and met [00:01:00] to the Sunshine State.
AQ: Please remain seated with your seatbelts fast until the seatbelt sign is turned off and keep the off clear all carry on items.
DAN VO: This past spring, Carl’s wife Laura had reached out to Delali on Instagram, so she had a direct line of communication that we wanted to use to try and arrange a meeting. Delali messaged Laura the day before we'd left, and if she respond, we’d be close. Laura's very active on Instagram, so we're hoping that we'd get a quick response.
DAN: Has she seen your message?
DELALI: No.
DAN: It’s unseen.
DELALI: Mm-hmm
DAN VO: But after 24 hours, she hadn't seen Delali's message. I also had a new cell phone number for Carl…
DAN VO: but our calls went unanswered. While Delali and I waited for a response, we explored Bradenton.
DAN: I feel like we should find a local and be like “where can we see a manatee, also do you know Carl Lentz?”
DAN VO: Driving through the city, [00:02:00] I couldn't help but wonder, why here of all places? What was it about Bradenton that attracted Carl? I had a hard time imagining the celebrity pastor away from his cheering crowds and enjoying the quiet life in Florida. But as we drove around, we stumbled upon what I have to speculate, may have drawn him there - Bayside Church. It was so sprawling, that when I drove through it I didn't even realize I was [00:02:30] on a church campus.
DAN: So despite the, what feels like a five mile drive, just to get into the church, I just wanna make a note that there are multiple exits and entrances from the church, but it's so big, and there are so many people that the sheriff, there are four sheriffs navigating traffic. And not even traffic from like a difficult point of entry or exit, like there's just a T junction and there are sheriffs everywhere shepherding you [00:03:00] out. Pretty wild.
DAN VO: What I didn't know then, but I know now, is that Bayside actually has several locations in the Bradenton area, a city with a population of under 60,000, after first opening its doors just a decade ago. It was a quickly budding Megachurch. Delali and I actually went to a service at Bayside that day. And it felt like being at Hillsong.
DAN: We've been wondering why Carl moved here, Um, this particular part of Florida, it's not particularly known, it's kind of tucked away,
DELALI: Mm-hmm
DAN: but when we drove onto that campus, it was enormous. And I see…
DELALI: So you've never been to like a big church that [00:03:30] owns like a big chunk of land and…
DAN: Not really, driving towards it, we came in that one entrance, there was almost like a mile and a half long. And then to see everything in one place, there was like,
DELALI: what do you mean by everything in one place?
DAN: Well, there was the auditorium, which is a big stage and, and screens and everything. But then there was a side room for meetings that was big. There was a youth center for youth activities. There was a reading [00:04:00] room, there was a daycare, there was a college section, there was a connect section. There was a technology section. There was, it felt like I was in a mini, like a mini, it was the size of a mini mall.
DAN VO: I had never seen such a large church campus in my life walking around with Delali. I couldn't help but wonder if this is the real reason Carl relocated here. A place he had no roots, no family. A place that was a far cry from the big city he once reigned in. But a place with a young and rapidly growing megachurch. It felt like we were at [00:04:30] the heart of what Carl was looking for when he moved here. Another huge outcrop of the church to command.
DAN VO: Delali and I waited on pins and needles that day, checking her DMs, what felt like every five minutes.
DAN: She still hasn't seen your message. Right.
DELALI: Not as of, as of a couple of hours ago. Nope.[00:05:00]
DAN VO: But no response from Laura ever came. By evening, her message still hadn't even been viewed, and we began to wonder if it ever would be. For the next two days, Delali and I drove around Bradenton, hoping that by some divine intervention, we'd see Carl or Laura in a chance encounter. But that chance encounter never came and Delali never heard from Laura. So with two days left in Florida, we decided to try and up the odds by driving to [00:05:30] Carl's house.
DAN: Ok, we are currently in an adjacent street to Carl Lentz’ address, and we're gonna drive by and see if he's there.
DAN VO: We hoped that we might happen to catch Carl coming and going. Or maybe he'd be outside on the porch, or playing basketball, or doing yard work. That we may be able to park and approach him, and that he might be receptive to our [00:06:00] encounter because there was a familiar face.
DAN: Here we go. It’s that street.
DELALI: I have a knot in my stomach.
DAN: That's their house.
DELALI: I see that.
DAN: The garage door is open. There's a golf cart inside. There's a sleek looking SUV type crossover thing.
DELALI: And a basketball hoop, which is very…Carl. [00:06:30]
DAN: Okay. So I'm gonna turn around and I'm gonna go back but they're definitely there.
DELALI: They're definitely there. They're home.
DAN: What I think is wild is that we've driven past a hundred houses and that is the only house where the garage door is open.
DELALI: That's true.
DAN: as if like they're in the middle of something and I want to turn around and come back. Oh it's in an SUV, it’s a black old black Mustang type thing. The front screen door is open[00:07:00]
DELALI: well, there's definitely somebody in there.
DAN: There's so little cars on the road that I feel like if we did any more passes, I feel like we might just, um, draw more attention to ourselves, which isn't the plan.
DAN: I know we didn't do anything, but that was exhilarating. I've been reporting on this person, um, and I've seen the witness marks of this person through the [00:07:30] voices of others. And then, now, I've seen his golf cart.
DAN VO: It was surreal being so close to this figure that I've learned so much about, seen so much of and reported on for so long from a distance separated by thousands of miles. And now the only thing separating us was his front door.
DAN: maybe I just park the car up the street and I just walk and I knock on his door. I feel like I'm here and depending on how tomorrow goes, I think… [00:08:00] I want to make contact in some way.
DAN: I mean, I'm feeling really nerve wracked about it, um, but I do… I owe it to some people that I said I would try.
DAN VO: I decided that I'd come back in the morning and I'd make contact with Carl, by any means necessary.
DELALI: If you were to see Carl tomorrow, sit in front of him, what, what would be your first thing you would tell him? First question first? [00:08:30] Anything? What would it be?
DAN: How do you live with yourself knowing how much you shamed others for doing something that you did yourself?
DELALI: Oh, shit.
DAN: Because of the voices that I've heard, because of the stories that I've heard, because of this chorus of hurt of pain of disillusionment. How can you expect me to live with the tenets that you preach to me, when you cannot show me that you live by the tenets yourself. That is fundamental issue [00:09:00] I'm having with Hillsong and the Carl situation. Is, you are the body, you are the guiding light, you are the person that has parables sent to my inbox every day. You are the person that quotes the Bible. You're the person that stands up with the stage with the backing music, telling me to give your money to this church, because this church is what will set you free. And it is not setting you free from a stress. It is setting you free from eternal damnation. It is your entire existence. And [00:09:30] when you cannot do the simple thing that you are telling me to do, the hardest things that you're telling me to do, then I lose respect for you, and I think you are not a shepherd you are a Hawk. I think you are using the energy, the optimism, the naivety, and the power of youth to further something that you don't even exercise yourself. I dunno how to reconcile that. And I think that's [00:10:00] what I'm sort of getting at in wanting to talk to Carl, because I want to argue with him. I, I generally want to, I want to remove the platitudes of the Bible and verses and, and, um, parable and just get to the nuts and bolts of it. This is not about Christianity. It is not about faith. It is about what you're saying, preaching doing and believing to other [00:10:30] people…
DELALI: mm-hmm
DAN: and when push comes to shove, how you are actually exercising what you're praying, saying, doing and believing.
DAN VO: I was ready. After nearly two years of following this story and this man, wading through the depths of his hypocrisy, his apparent hunger for power and control, and hearing the countless stories told by the people he hurt, the people he abandoned. I was ready to finally confront him. Tomorrow, I would knock on Carl's door and I would confront him.[00:11:00]
AD BREAK
DAN: I woke up this morning and came to a decision, um, based on what we were talking about last night, based on the fact that we drove past their house. Um, and outside of a chance encounter, I feel uncomfortable directly walking into their private space or even inviting myself into their private space. I'm not part of the paparazzi. [00:11:30] I'm not a journalist. And I'm not looking for an expose of any kind. From the beginning, this has never been a, like a gotcha story. It's never been a story about trying to make people feel uncomfortable. I really, really, really wanna speak to Carl. I really think I could have a decent conversation with him. I think it could provide a lot of healing for other people, I think it might even provide some healing for himself. But I think I I need to be true to who I am as a person and what I believe in. And I believe that [00:12:00] going onto his property and knocking on the door is crossing a line. And it's not a line that I want to cross. I think haphazardly meeting them in a public space is very different. But, I ask, would I like it to be done to me for any reason? And the answer is no.
DAN VO: I had good reason to go to any length to solicit a response from the man who had trespassed across so many boundaries of his parishioners, casting judgment and control over their life choices and intimate decisions. I had every right to reciprocate the same lack of respect and boundary that he showed the people he hurt and he confused. And I [00:13:00] wanted to so badly, but I realized that if I did, I'd be no better than him.
DAN: I know some people are gonna be disappointed with that. And they're gonna question me on that, but I have to remain true to who I am. So that said, I've decided to write Carl a letter. Um, and I'm gonna mail it to him. And then it's up to him whether he wants to reach back out. Now I've written letter’s to him in the past. I've written through Instagram, email, um, various phone numbers, but this is a handwritten [00:13:30] note. Um, and I would read it to you,
DELALI: Okay,
DAN: Dear Carl, I hope this note finds you well. my name is Dan. You may or may not be aware of me, but I've spent the past few years living in the stories and voices of Hillsong and directed the three-part series released on Discovery Plus. like so many stories, especially of this M. We can hear the narrative, but often without all the words, the meeting can change and lack essential elements to promote [00:14:00] healing, understanding, closure. For that reason, I would very much love the opportunity to talk with you in any capacity and look forward to it in due time. I also put my phone number on there, but I didn't read that part out loud.
DELALI: How do you feel
DAN: I feel like this is the best path forward.
DAN VO: I didn't expect Carl to respond to this, but at least I knew with certainty that he would see it. He would open it, hold it, read it, and hear it. I thought this would give us the best, maybe the only chance to get some meaningful response from him.[00:14:30] Delali and I packed our bags, drove to the airport, and went home.
DELALI: Any last words?
DAN: This isn't the end. It might not even be the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.
DELALI: All right there. You have it.
DAN VO: Carl never responded to my letter, but not even a week after it delivered to his house, Carl posted a [00:15:00] lengthy message to his Instagram followers. His first public message in nearly two years since the moment he announced he was leaving Hillsong.
DAN: Carl Lentz showed back up. Also, almost a week after my letter was dropped at his door. I'm not saying there's any connection, I'm just saying… pretty close.
DELALI: How do you feel about that?
DAN: The proximity of letter to public statement - [00:15:30] I don't think it's a coincidence, but I don't think it is directly related. I think it is a sense of them saying like, Okay, this is gearing up again. We should probably say something before someone says it for us.
DELALI: Mm
DAN: How I feel about the post itself deeply, deeply disappointed. His post says it's been a challenging road, but we are alive. We are at peace, and thanks to the grace of God, we are together. All caps. Not sure what the future holds for us. We do know that we face it [00:16:00] as a family. And for that I am so thankful. My deepest thanks to our friends and family that have shown us unconditional love and grace when we have desperately needed it. Forever grateful. We are hopeful about what is ahead. Thanks, and he mentions the photo company for these pics. Like, all those things it's like, yeah. Uh, okay. I understand that. Glad all that is well. But what about the other stuff?
DELALI: Yeah.
DAN: Because you can't, [00:16:30] you can't spread the blame on this. They didn't have any part to do with what happened. You did. And, you are now saying that we are collectively dealing with it. And great, you've kept your family together and I'm happy that everybody looks happy and they seem to be in a good place. But there are many other people that don't have that luxury.
DELALI: yeah.
DAN: He could say, this road has been really hard and I am still on it on my [00:17:00] own, but along the way my family have been helping me and they're doing great. He could even separate himself to say that I still have a way to go.
DELALI: Yeah.
DAN: Instead, he's like, man, we're all in this together. You know, look, I'm happy, I'm happy the family together. I'm happy that he is happy. I'm happy that they, they reconciled and figured it all out. It's great. Um, that's not what people were asking for. There is not a single ounce of humility towards any of the people that he hurt. [00:17:30] There is only self aggrandizing.
DELALI: He is so eager to go back to his glory days, to the days where he preached, you know, sweat dripping, dripping from his face and people were clapping and yelling and you know, people were just really kind of enamored by his charisma. He’s so ready to go back to that it almost felt, feels like, he's been craving that. And I was actually having conversation [00:18:00] with a friend about this and she said to me, nobody was rooting for their marriage to fail. Nobody was like, Ah, yeah, I hope you and Laura I get divorced, whatever. People were ready to forgive him. People were ready to root for him, again.
DAN: Yeah Nobody was rooting for a failure. The family being in crisis is awful. And do we hope they make it through? Of course, it's a family. Those things you can want outside [00:18:30] of what you want to hear from him. He showed zero change, zero humility, zero responsibility, and zero understanding of what it was that he actually did. It's almost like the post is, we are a victim of something and now we're getting through it, but that's not what happened. And yeah, honestly, I'm just like… I'm remiss that I gave him so much [00:19:00] grace and and, and power. When, reading this I'm like, Bro, you need to redo it.
DELALI: Yeah. His mishandling of, of the power that he had hurt people. And there's no way, as you said, there's no way that he couldn't hear that. Cool, you're gonna be okay. What about those who are you know, spiritual orphans who kind of don't know what [00:19:30] to do with their spiritual lives now? What about them? And for me, you know, if he is going back into, um, preaching the Bible, he's going back to like leading people, then who's to say that he's not gonna do the same thing again, [00:20:00] you know, to other people? This is what I believe, and I might be wrong, but his comeback is not gonna work. I don't think it's gonna work. He may try, um, you know, to kind of go back to that day where everybody was just following him and everything that he said, everybody did, you know, he would say, jump and somebody would say how high? We're not gonna go back to that era. I don't believe it.
DAN VO: We may never see Carl with the power that he once had. But his Instagram post got [00:20:30] nearly 60,000 likes in less than 24 hours. There are a lot of people that, despite everything, are eager for his return to the stage. But my hope is that more people can begin to see this post for what it is: a strategy to avoid truth and accountability, and to play the victim. A strategy that coincidentally, his former boss and mentor Brian Houston, has been using himself.
DAN VO: In January of 2022, Brian Houston announced that he would be temporarily stepping down as global senior pastor of Hillsong [00:21:00] amid federal charges of failing to report his father's pedophilia to authorities.
BRIAN HOUSTON CLIP: These allegations came as a complete shock to me, and it's my intention to vigorously defend.
DAN VO: In this announcement, he doesn't mention the many victims of his father and their shattered lives. It's entirely focused on his own challenges as a victim himself.
BRIAN HOUSTON CLIP: We've talked about the effects of the situation with my father going back many years up to the current legal [00:21:30] case and the impact this has had on me emotionally. And Bobby and I certainly value your prayers in these challenging times. I'd like to encourage you to just lean in more than ever this year. Let's make it a big win. Let's decide that we are gonna give our biggest support, uh, spiritually, physically. Lean in financially and in every other way.
DAN VO: Brian frames his announcement as though he's under attack and in [00:22:00] need of support. He urges congregants to double down on him and Hillsong. And according to Tanya Levin, the announcements sounded very familiar. Tanya Levin was a member of Hillsong Church in the very beginning days. She's now an activist who has devoted her life to exposing Hillsong's wrongdoings, writing two books and hosting her podcast "Leaving Hillsong" where she brings together ex-evangelicans to discuss their experiences around their leaving the church.
TANYA: Yea, when he made that very first announcement that his father had committed a serious moral failure, he called it. [00:22:30] He referred to it, you know, there was sort of an incident 30 years, uh, that was the understanding that, you know, nothing much had happened it was all in the past. Um, and at the conclusion of Brian's speech of, you know, this serious moral failure that he didn't actually specify, he immediately turned the attention to himself and his family. They make themselves the victim it's just been a continual [00:23:00] narrative and it will continue. I don't think we can hope to see it change.
DAN VO: Just weeks ago in November, 2022, Brian once again played the victim - this time regarding his own indiscretions involving inappropriate behavior with a female staffer and Hillsong conference attendee - the same indiscretions that forced his resignation from Hillsong earlier this year.
BRIAN HOUSTON CLIP: In the statements and announcements made, there was enough [00:23:30] detail to pour ultimate shame and humiliation on me. But enough ambiguity to leave people to make their own conclusions about what did or didn't happen. Frankly, in many cases, those conclusions are wrong. The narrative that I'm an alcoholic is false. In fact, I've been told by an expert therapist that I do not display the behaviors that are typical of an alcoholic. I think the hardest part to understand for [00:24:00] Bobby and I, and the most difficult part has been the loss of relationships.It's been quite heartbreaking for us both as some people have just disappeared out of our lives.
DAN VO: Brian's statement was defensive, minimizing, resentful, and he never once mentioned the two women that he was inappropriate with. It felt like a desperate plea to hold onto any loyalty he still has in the Hillsong community.
BRIAN HOUSTON CLIP: So God bless you much love, and as someone once said, the best is yet [00:24:30] to come.
DAN VO: But for Brian, that might not be the case. In fact, [00:25:00] it's possible that the worst is yet to come. Brian Houston's trial for the charges of failing to report his father's pedophilia is now set for December, 2022. Brian has pled not guilty, but if he's convicted, he could face up to five years in jail. Despite the upcoming trial, Brian also seems to be setting the stage for a comeback. Between August and September, he completed a US ministry tour preaching to large audiences at several megachurches across the States. If he does avoid conviction [00:25:30] and returns to ministry, it seems as though he'll have a congregation to preach to. But at the moment it also seems as though it won't be at Hillsong.
DAN VO: So where does Hillsong go from here? Coincidentally, since separating from Brian Houston to forge a new path for the future, the path that it’s traveled thus far looks strikingly similar. Hillsong is also on the defensive faced with serious allegations. In August, an adverse action lawsuit was filed against Hillsong by a former finance employee, Natalie [00:26:00] Moses, who claimed they unjustly suspended her. In her lawsuit, she alleges that Hillsong engaged in serious financial misconduct, including misappropriation of funds and tax fraud. Hillsong has denied any wrongdoing, and will defend itself in federal court in 2023.
DAN VO: Meanwhile, like Carl and Brian, Hillsong is also attempting to resurrect their brand with a PR push of their own, releasing two new albums in 2022, featuring both new Hillsong epics [00:26:30] and reprised classics that seem to allude to their exposed darkness and dirt in the church, while offering a message of hope, trust, and a new start. But how can people know if they can really trust Hillsong. How can people know if it’s really going to change? From the outside, much of it looks and sounds the same. If it looks like the same old Hillsong and sounds like the same old Hillsong, it's probably, the same old Hillsong.
DAN VO: I thought this is where my part in this story would end. But then, on Wednesday, October 19th, I got an email from a Google account entitled Hellsong. The email read, please keep the protection of victims above all else. And attached was the full, unredacted version of the 51 page [00:27:00] investigative report of Hillsong NYC and Carl Lentz, which has never been released in its entirety.
DAN VO: Look out for a special episode of Hillsong: A Megachurch Shattered, where we dive into the exclusive leak of the Hillsong NYC investigation report, and tune in to an all new episode of the documentary series Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed, airing December 29th on TLC.