In this episode, Bryce talks with Carl Lentz about redemption from Sin.
Chapter 1: Who is Carl Lentz and why is he a special guest?
What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Bryce Crawford Podcast. I'm Bryce, and today, a very special guest. I'm super excited about this episode. Got Pastor Carl Lentz with us today. How are you doing?
So excited to be here, bro. Let's go. You're awesome. It's so cool just to even be around people that are as genuine and faith-filled as you because, unfortunately, it feels like it's kind of rare. So just to be able to see you from far and meet you, man, it's already really encouraging. Can you cover up your tattoos before we finish?
Because I don't feel like God can move in an environment with visible tattoos.
Really?
No, I'm joking. Even the dog knew I was joking. He was barking. You looked at me so sincerely like, oh, my gosh. Amazing, amazing work. I love it.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you're here. I'm super excited. I want to like, well, first, I want to talk about your story, but I don't want that to be the highlight of the podcast because I feel like. And I just want to hear from your perspective because there's so much stuff out there. But I don't want that to be the main point because I feel like it's everything that people always ask you.
And there's more to you than that. You know, like, like, yeah, it's like, I don't know. When I look in today's society, I feel like just with anything in general, when Jesus says, I love your neighbor as yourself. Nowadays, across the board, I feel like I'm always asking, where's our neighbor? Like, we just never care about our neighbor. We never love them. We just can't look past the things that
that people have done. And then like, even, even before that, like I'm reading scripture this morning and Luke six, and he's like, he's talking like, yeah, like, you know, you guys want to return evil for evil. You guys want to judge people. And with that, when you got a log in your own eye and I'm just like, man, what are we doing? Like, there's more to us than just the faults we've done.
Like if people looked at me for everything I'd done wrong, then I don't know. Like I wouldn't be sitting here, you know, but I think there's a lot of cool. I've been so encouraged by you for years. I've been listening to you for a long time. I became a Christian when I was 17. And when I was 17, I was listening to a lot of you. I was listening to I read this book.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of redemption from sin?
Did you feel, like, a lot of pressure, I guess? Like, I'm not necessarily saying, like, oh, I have a platform, so I've got to, you know, stay, like, I got to... What you're saying a lot of people do, like, hide it. I mean, more so just in general from people, like, to deliver to people. Like, as Hillsong's growing, you guys are, like...
accessing Instagram, YouTube at a very, like no one's really doing it. Everything's growing. Did you feel like a pressure from people to like be there for them? Because I feel like whenever you're in a position of authority, people are always grabbing at you. They're always grabbing at you.
And it's just like, how did you navigate the pressure to stay in your lane and still have intimacy with Jesus despite people grabbing you on a rise?
I mean, it's a journey. You learn how to manage it, I think. I mean, what we know now about mental health is so huge for ministers, for pastors.
It's part of my passion moving forward to make sure that, you know, guys who are behind me, even age-wise and even not, even guys who are my age and beyond, there's still some of these principles, but learning how to create boundaries, learning how to protect yourself, learning...
How to not be a codependent Christian leader because codependency can be a real weakness is when you try to manage other people's expectations and control their emotions. It's really close to empathy and kindness.
So empathy and kindness, if you don't know how to regulate it turns into major codependence where you end up trying to please everybody all the time and I really struggled with that I think. When you're a young pastor, you just want everybody to relax and chill. It's like in a church that gets bigger, the number of people who are unhappy gets bigger.
And if you don't have your mind set on what that means, it can throw you. And for me, that was an area I didn't really prepare for. So I felt often like I was...
not doing a good enough job for somebody every day so you have a great sunday and there'd be one person hey i you know i had a bad experience with this volunteer okay and there'd be another person hey we don't have anything for young moms in in in the bronx yeah we don't that sucks hey we need to have a youth ministry that meets in every borough yeah the list goes on and if you don't know how to frame it right that stuff will eat away at you because that's also part of the job is managing that so i didn't pressure is the wrong word i think um
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Chapter 3: How does Carl Lentz view community and loving your neighbor?
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
I got to get you one. I mean, if I summed up what happened, I think when I when I got caught. You know, in a. a life and pattern that became really clear quickly, it began a domino effect. Meaning, if you get caught lying, it's fair to go, what else is this guy lying about? And then you start looking around and say, who does this guy know? And are they guilty of the same?
And then this ripple effect goes and everybody starts running for cover. So you find out that some Christians love to preach and talk about the hard times, but we don't love to live in them. You find that out. Hopefully you'll never find that out from the wrong angle. Um, but by and large, man, people, they run, they run from problems. They run from, from things that are ugly.
And my situation was very, very ugly. So it just began a slow breakdown. I mean, people want to know what happened. I, you know, I had, there was infidelity in my marriage and
i got caught and it was a chance for me to really get clean and get honest so it's like yeah and even though parts of what we're told were very false to fight some of those details would be so stupid like who wants to be the guy who's like no no it wasn't on tuesday it was wednesday it's like dude we're talking about robbing a bank who cares what day it's on right like yeah that's what it was like for me to have to learn how to accept the decisions that i made put me in a position
to have a lot of things be said but if people want to know what what really happened at Hillsong New York City um human human leaders and and are there aspects of the way that church is done that needs to be assessed and changed for sure that should happen anyway um but it wasn't as complicated and spectacular as some people tried to make it out it just wasn't and it was too juicy of a story for people to not just let it be what it is which is
I had some serious issues in my life. And when you're a leader, they're going to come get you at some point. And that's what happened to me. And then, yeah, it exposed more about the greater Hillsong movement in a bunch of different ways and just started a ripple effect.
But that's, you know, the effect on my family was the hardest part of all this because they had nothing to do with my sin and my choices. And that's what you find with sin, bro. It's less about you and more about the impact it has on other people across the board. Yeah, it affects you, but what we fail to realize sometimes is we're so selfish when it comes to the stuff we're dealing.
I'm sinning, and it's making me feel like this, and God's mad. It's like, yeah, and your sin impacts other people. So for me to have to see that living color with my own kids, man, it was not easy. It was not easy. It's something that for a while I didn't think I could get through. But my wife gave me a chance to figure out if I could fix some of the things that we now knew were broken.
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