The Secrets of Hillsong: An Open Letter to the Director

Hi Stacey.

Well… that was something. And it feels like the polite thing to do would be to ask what happened and be open to your perspective. But I’m tired. And I don’t want to. I respect your perception of Hillsong & the Lentzs the same way you I think you respect mine: I acknowledge that it exists and it’s valid to you, but I don’t actually give a fuck because it doesn’t jive with my narrative. And that’s fine. At this point, I think I might understand what happened to you more than you understand what happened to me or any of the former Hillsong NYC congregants that you spoke to. We’ve already lived through the part of the story where we were swayed by the charms of the Lentzs… nope, correction: the charms of Carl Lentz (on her own steam, Laura has never swayed anybody in the history of being swayed), but you haven’t gotten to the part where you’ll have to grapple with the reality of what damage you helped them do, with the best of intent. So that’s something to look forward to. Enjoy.

So many articles, journalists, directors, documentaries, outsiders – it’s hard to keep track of who was trying to sell what to us (and sell us to what) but yours was the spiritual abuse angle, right? You wanted to tell a story to help people understand the dark undertow of evangelicalism? Well… do you understand it now? That’s rhetorical. I know you don’t. Because it turns out that evangelicalism isn’t a thing. Not really. It’s just part of a costume worn by a religious amalgamation of capitalism, anti-Blackness, homophobia and misogyny.  

It’s a hat on a hat. It’s ridiculous. We know! A bunch of grown-ass adults hurt that their leader cheated on his wife? It’s so silly. And not at all what happened. We weren’t that kind of cult.

As I have said MANY times before: I think/feel about Carl and Laura’s marriage, the same way Carl did up until (at least) 2020: It does not concern me and I don’t care. Did he violate a standard of Christian morality? Yep. Were we surprised? Well… define “surprised.” You have the footage, so only you can confirm or deny for sure, but I’m pretty sure you asked that question and I’m pretty sure my answer was that when the news broke, I was surprised in the sense that I didn’t wake up expecting Carl Lentz’s downfall to happen that day, but I wasn’t surprised that it happened. And I wasn’t surprised infidelity was part of it. That’s surprisingly mundane for an evangelical preacher. I know there are people out there who were absolutely gobsmacked by it (bless their hearts), but that’s not my testimony. It could have been an interesting angle, though – an exploration of the statistics surrounding infidelity among evangelical leaders. You could have asked Carl what it felt like to preach purity culture to single adults and lifelong abstinence to those “struggling with same-sex attraction” while being unable/unwilling to temper his own sexual appetites. And then maybe asked him for his own true and current thoughts on purity culture and LGBTQIA affirmation. But that might have made things awkward for him, to either become unpalatable to the secular world by admitting that he is a regressive homophobe or fuck up his bag in the evangelical world by admitting that he’s not. Oof. Poor Carl.

This documentary was the one that was supposed to focus less on the salacious bits, to get underneath the surface. And I think you all really intended to, but I think you were arrogant. You knew the right things to say and maybe you even believed it on paper – “Cults can happen to anybody!” But secretly, maybe even to yourself, you thought we were stupid and the story would probably be pretty easy to untangle for someone not stupid. But surprise! Now you’re stupid too. And you don’t even have the fear of God to fall back on. You didn’t have to wrestle with whether or not Carl Lentz was God’s representative in your life, with wondering if disagreeing with him was disagreeing with the will of God, to grapple with what it said about God and God’s thoughts and plans for you if it was true that Carl platforming (and payrolling) one mediocre white man after another was just him doing exactly what God wanted. I don’t even know what there is to fall for about Carl Lentz minus the power of God. (Honestly, the fact that y’all got got in 2023, does make me feel a little better about being fooled a decade ago. We fell for Carl’s schtick at the height of his powers, y’all fell for the Party City Florida Man version. We are not the same. 😹) And in those first two episodes you did get close to maybe touching on those parts of it, but I might still be giving you too much benefit of the doubt. I thought you were leaving room for people to see for themselves how weaksauce his justifications were, but it’s possible you thought that was a slam dunk for him. The wealthy white man didn’t use his power to make any significant changes within the organization he ran, but he sure did run his mouth for the cameras and that’s gotta count for something. Right? Because if it doesn’t… what does that say about you? (And by “you”, I mean all the privileged people who had a hand in the production and saw bits of themselves in Carl Lentz.)

In the end, I believe you sympathized with all of us, but you empathized with Carl & Laura. And you got played. Or maybe you just got played. Maybe you hooked that big fish and then got dragged too far out to sea to find your way back. The devil is in the details and it’s possible that you let the Lentzs have too much say in the paperwork. Maybe you weren’t even allowed to ask obvious followup questions. Like…

When Laura Lentz said she lost everything, maybe you weren’t allowed to ask her to define “everything.” Maybe you weren’t allowed to ask her to define anything. It’s always “Was she fired from her job or did she resign?” And never WHAT WAS HER JOB? What did Laura Lentz do for/at Hillsong NYC? And this is not completely rhetorical, I’d really like to know. That could have been an interesting angle – not only did y’all breeze right on by her punching her nanny, you breezed by the fact that she had one. For what? WHAT WAS HER JOB? There could have been a whole episode on the roles of women in evangelicalism and the different ways all the baked in misogyny effects women (and men!) based on their class, age, race and marital status. You could have asked Laura what it was like to punch her nanny and then announce the next Sisterhood event. Or maybe you couldn’t. Maybe you were only allowed ask about how the Houstons hurt her feelings. Because that was the only new information they confirmed. And it was a snooze-fest. Is it sad that Laura was cast aside by her spiritual leaders? Yeah. RELATABLE CONTENT. You could have asked her and Carl how they handled things differently and better with the thousands under their care. (Spoiler alert: They didn’t. Not really. Carl & Laura got severance packages for their troubles, the Hillsong NYC flock just got severed for freeeeeeeeee.)

And speaking of that nanny, you could have asked Carl (or maybe you couldn’t) to define his understandings of power dynamics and consent and to account for the way he handled those things – not just in his situation, but in the MANY instances of violations that took place underneath him, on his watch. But that might have made things awkward for him moving forward in evangelicalism – it would have called out too many of his former and future peers, and it would have made him admit that he is not good with power and shouldn’t be trusted with it moving forward.

There were two quotes in the last episode that I think sum up this whole debacle and could have saved us all a lot of drama and rehashing of trauma if you had just started and ended with them. #1: Alex French said “I think Carl has paid for what he did.” And I think that must be nice. To decide actions that had no effect on you have been sufficiently neutralized. It is a gift of the audacity of white maleness: Carl said it, Alex believes it and that should be good enough for the rest of you. And it is. If we’re just talking about Carl’s marriage, 👏🏽 but 👏🏽 we 👏🏽 weren’t. That is not what we signed up for. If that had been the pitch, most of us would have politely declined. And if anybody rewatches the docuseries, I hope they pay attention to who had anything (good, bad or neutral) to say about Laura Lentz and/or the Lentz marriage and notice that it is pretty much just the Lentzs, their family and the talking heads – WE DON’T CARE. WE DON’T CARE. WE DON’T CARE and we never did. It was never about that. Carl Lentz was not a bad leader because he was a bad husband, he was a bad husband (and leader) because he was a bad person. And as far as I can tell, he still is. 

“These are the people that matter.” That’s the second quote and that was Carl re: the four people who share his last name. I have nothing to say about the Lentz kids, they were born and raised in this mess and will have to work out their evangelical trauma in their own time, just like the rest of us. It’s lucky for Carl and Laura that they are still young enough to fall under the banner of “Think of the children!” and it’s nice that Carl is. Now. And I don’t think he’s lying when he says those are the only people that matter to him, I just don’t understand how that’s not a red flag. Let’s pretend for a moment that his only faults and failures were how he handled his marriage. And that’s really what the rest of us were up in arms about and docuseries-level wounded over – we’re not in his family, we’re not people who matter to him, we were just thorns in his side, put there by evangelicalism. He was a good man, led astray by a powerful institution. So he cast all of that (and all of us) aside to focus on the family. Fine. And yet… he’s gone back to evangelicalism. He and Transformation Church are playing word games – he’s on staff, but not in ministry… he’s a… strategist? Based on… his success? In evangelicalism? The thing that drove him to hurt the only people that matter? So now he’s going to… advise them? On how to… strategize? On… marriage? Because it can’t be about evangelicalism, he botched that and nobody matters to him, so… WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

And that’s rhetorical, I already know the answer and I also don’t care. Evangelicalism is a scam and Carl Lentz is a scammer. Made by and for evangelicalism. It’s all he knows, and he’s too lazy and has tastes to expensive to learn a real skill and get a real job, so… Proverbs 26:11. 

And also Ecclesiastes 1:9. But not for every part of this story. I think this docuseries will be the last time for a long time, if ever, that ex-Hillsongers and/or exvangelicals trust outsiders with their stories. The religion is breaking apart and it’s institutions are hemorrhaging and a lot of us have long since stopped caring to try and stop the bleed. I won’t say it was a mistake to be part of this project because it’s not our fault that we believed what we were told only to be let down when the priorities of the powers-that-be shifted. (Been there, done that.) I certainly wish things had ended up differently, but now that we’re here… I am so proud of us. Not you, but the people you used to season Carl’s lil redemption fiction; the people who risked so much after already losing so much to share their stories in hopes that someone else would recognize the bullshit and get out. There has been a lot of frustration, a lot of angst and anger and tears over the editorial choices made in that last episode, but also a lot of laughter, a lot of commiseration and so much connection and reconnection. The thing you missed in making it all about the surface of the Lentz marriage, was the depth of the belief, the hope, the goodness that tied so many of us to that toxic institution for so long. It wasn’t belief in Carl, it for damn sure wasn’t belief in his mid-ass marriage, it was belief in being part of something bigger than ourselves that (we thought) was making the world better. And we still believe in that. But now I know there is nothing bigger than ourselves. 

Evangelicalism is all about numbers, numbers, numbers in its quest to be about “others” which sounds so noble, but… we are others. And we don’t need saving. We never did. I hope participating in this docuseries is the last evangelical misstep I make, (but it probably won’t be, the programming is strong) a bigger platform seemed like an effective way to get the truth out there, but an evangelical clown once said “The truth doesn’t go anywhere just because you cover it up.” and I’d like to add that it also doesn’t mean less just because it’s quieter. Not everyone wants to or is ready to deal with the toxicity of evangelicalism, but when they are, we’re out here. Finding our own ways to tell our stories and to heal. 

I appreciate you for the parts of the experience that made it possible for me to hug and spend time with people I usually only get to see in my DMs. I loved getting to see people I love looking AMAZING on TV.  And I love the continuous confirmations that we were right to abandon that ship and that Hillsong wasn’t right about any of us. I don’t know what final outcome you all settled on as the goal, but I hope you succeeded. Even if it was this exact travashamockery – after all that time, effort and money, I’m glad somebody was pleased! Congrats!

Anyway, life goes on and I imagine you’ve probably got a lot of emails and DMs and tags and text messages to catch up on, so… all the best. Good luck and godspeed.

xx janice