![]() Around October, his texts with Karim, which downloaded from his iCloud to his computer, were discovered by his wife and another Hillsong employee. til the wheels fall off!!”īut now the wheels, as the old adage goes, have fallen off. In an Instagram post, he wrote of Lentz: “He’s the biggest Brodog, ride or die. Bieber later introduced Lentz to Kendall Jenner. Pastor Carl steered him through an attempted rekindling of his relationship with Selena Gomez in 2017. They had fun, too – they hit up the Louis Vuitton x Supreme pop-up shop together in Sydney. ![]() Lentz helped to rehab the star in 2014 following a world tour of pissing in a mop bucket, emerging from a Brazilian brothel under a bed sheet and the abandonment of a pet monkey in Germany. He baptised Justin Bieber in the bathtub of Chandler’s home in New York in 2015 when the pool in his building was closed (it was 2 am).īieber met Lentz in 2008 and they quickly struck up a bromance. The non-sports celebrity connections were there, too. It also quotes him as saying: “There are only two times when I’m talking: balling and preaching.” Other ballers taking his spiritual advice were 10-time NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony and Houston Rockets centre Tyson Chandler. The sports agent fib wasn’t too far fetched, since a 2013 interview with Lentz revealed him to be the speed-dial pastor of basketball player Kevin Durant of the Brooklyn Nets. Justin Bieber and Carl Lentz at a celebrity charity basketball event in 2017. I was a drug to him,” Karim told The New York Post. Yet the pair fell into an intoxicating spiral of frequent FaceTime conversations, twice-weekly tequila tastings and impassioned arguments about Christianity. Other red flags include, but were not limited to: Lentz telling her that he was an unmarried sports agent that he frequently worked with celebrities that, per Karim, “the most beautiful women come from the Middle East.” “That, for me, was a red flag,” Karim said. Upon leaving the park, he asked for her number and entered it into his Notes app. “I thought: he’s single, he’s a good-looking man, why not?” “I was telling him everything,” she told The New York Post. On a sunny Friday in May, he gestured for Karim, then a complete stranger with nowhere to sit, to join him in his circle. One of those drawn to its fame was Lentz, a man who had been married for 17 years to another Hillsong pastor, Laura. It became famous during lockdown as the only park to draw white chalk circles on its astroturf so people would know how far apart they should sit. ![]() The two met at Domino Park, which borders the East River on the Brooklyn side. Was it his winsome attitude or his Maroon 5‑esque V‑neck and aviators that endeared him to Ranin Karim? Karim, a 34-year-old fashion designer, is the woman with whom Lentz reportedly had a six month affair from May to November this year. By Kardashian-Jenner extension, its spiritual network and marketing strategy has seemingly indirectly inspired Kanye West’s Sunday Service. Its celebrity contingent is like a Hollywood spiderweb: Justin and Hailey Bieber are at its centre, with silk threads extending out to Kylie and Kendall Jenner, Chris Pratt, Selena Gomez, Nick Jonas and Kourtney Kardashian. The word of God is spread via inhouse “worship band” Hillsong UNITED, in tunes like Oceans (Where Feet May Fail), So Will I (100 Billion X) and Lead Me to the Cross. Hillsong has its own record label that’s sold at least 16 million albums of Christian music, generating over $100 million in sales. Founded in Australia in the 1980s, it’s been described by Tom Wagner, author of The Hillsong Movement Examined, as a “confluence of sophisticated marketing techniques and popular music”.Īfter it came to the US in 2010, its pious jingles and achingly hip reading of the scriptures attracted regular crowds – 100,000 each week – to sing along and wave their hands at its services. Hillsong is an evangelical Christian megachurch with an unusually large congregation spread across several countries. If you have somehow avoided Hillsong until now – meaning, until its star pastor Carl Lentz recently admitted to an adulterous relationship and was subsequently fired from his position – then let me explain. Their faith had been wavering, or non-existent, until a recent religious scandal involving a “hypepriest”, a New York fashion designer and the Biebers renewed their collective trust in how God provides when you least expect it. They mumble along to rote creeds and doting hymns with the same amount of faith reserved for clicking Captcha squares to confirm that they’re human. ![]() ![]() They fill up church pews only at Easter and Christmas. Many of my friends are, like myself, what I like to call “religious tourists”. ![]()
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