Four Big Takeaways From The Secrets of Hillsong’s Carl Lentz Interview

You might recall many of celebrity pastor Carl Lentz’s trademarks—the tats, the skinny jeans, the mentor relationship with Justin Bieber and other big names—before his late-2020 ouster from Hillsong Church and news of his marital infidelity. Or you might not remember much about Lentz, or Hillsong, or that Carl’s expulsion as one of the lead pastors of Hillsong’s New York City branch was only the first visible crack in a dam holding back allegations of abuse, corruption, and cover-ups against the international megachurch and its Sydney-based power elite, because two-plus years can feel like 10 in post-COVID time. Fortunately, The Secrets of Hillsong has you covered.

Directed by Stacey Lee (Underplayed), based on Alex French and Dan Adler’s reporting for Vanity Fair in “Carl Lentz and the Trouble at Hillsong,” and coproduced by Scout Productions and Vanity Fair Studios, The Secrets of Hillsong traces the church’s beginnings, its rise and expansion, its troubling culture of alleged abuse and cover-ups, and Lentz’s rapid rise and fall. French and Adler’s February 2021 report is a great place to start for background, and the reporters are on camera to help set the scene, along with former Hillsong congregants, experts on spirituality in culture, Australian senators—and the once-ubiquitous Lentz himself. Secrets sees Carl—and his wife of 20 years, Laura—sitting for their first interviews since the scandal sent them into functional exile.

The Lentzes breaking their silence isn’t the only reason to make room for Secrets in your weekend-viewing schedule. Is it the main reason? Let’s run down the biggest draws in The Secrets of Hillsong’s first two episodes.

Carl goes on the record. The Lentzes’ interviews for Secrets are the couple’s first since their exit from Hillsong pastorship in the autumn of 2020, and that prodigal-son-tinged exclusivity is a big part of the docuseries’ allure. What will Carl say? What could Carl say? 

Well, he says plenty, and I’ll look at the substance in a moment, but Secrets has a solid handle on another major component of its own appeal, namely Carl himself—whether he’s giving a present-day interview or appearing in older footage. In the aughts and 2010s, Lentz was everywhere, and the series’ first two episodes unpacks how that came to be. More than one former Hillsong congregant interviewed for Secrets describes Lentz’s irresistible charisma, remembering his megawatt charm in sometimes regretful tones, and the fact is, whether you buy into Carl’s hipster gospel or you think it’s shtick, your eye goes right to the guy.

The Secrets of Hillsong understands that its brief isn’t only seeing what Carl has to say, or updating French and Adler’s investigative file. It’s also to acknowledge, and even invite, the schadenfreude the Carl Lentz/Hillsong scandal—and all the celebrity-church scandals like it, going back at least as far as the disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson almost 100 years ago—evokes in the culture at large. Carl baptized Bieber in NBA player Tyson Chandler’s XXL bathtub; this isn’t a guy who doesn’t want people to pay attention to him. At one point in his interviews with director Lee, Carl adapts the serenity prayer to ask for the strength to get through the documentary. Whether a viewer sees such a moment as goofily profound or profoundly goofy will, of course, vary by person. But whatever one thinks of Lentz, as usual, he’s eminently watchable.

Carl gets specific about his past. I’ll avoid spoilers, but Carl tries to unpack the reasons—not excuses—for some of his bad acts, including the extramarital affair that brought his house down, as well as the “compromising position” his wife Laura had earlier found him in with the family’s nanny, Leona Kimes. Carl points to unhealed trauma from his childhood as a catalyst for his acting out. (He also faults, to a lesser extent, getting married too young, not exactly an endorsement of Hillsong’s “purity-forward” approach to intimate relationships.)

And there’s the fact that there still is a Carl and Laura. Laura Lentz’s presence is notable on its own, but the fuller portrait of the Lentzes’ marriage presented in the series is full of subtext—especially via the background Secrets outlines on Hillsong’s earlier years, and Laura’s parents’ close friendship with Hillsong founders Brian and Bobbie Houston. Secrets illuminates the ways Laura’s upbringing may have led her into marriage/super-couple status with Carl. Laura’s own exhausted “I lost everything” as she remembers the last months of 2020 makes it clear that she didn’t see any roads leading out of that setup. As with any other marriage, much of the decision-making remains personal. 

The Lentzes’ secrets are the least of Hillsong’s issues. Carl Lentz is a fascinating figure, but he’s the tip of the mess-berg at Hillsong (though testimony from former New York branch congregants, such as Ashley and Mary Jones, Janice Lagata, Abby Fitzsimmons, and Ajanet Roundtree, paint a detailed picture of the culture during Lentz’s time at the church). Secrets puts Carl’s scandal in context with descriptions of Hillsong’s larger history of sexist cronyism, not to mention allegations of sexual abuse (including assaults Brian Houston’s father, Frank, confessed to decades ago, though he was never charged with a crime) and cover-ups (by Brian, awaiting his fate in his native Australia in a criminal case surrounding his alleged concealment of his father’s predatory behavior).