Why Spiritual Leaders Fall and What to do When it Happens

In 2020, Pastor Carl Lentz of the international mega church Hillsong, New York was fired when reports broke out of an extramarital affair. Lentz had long been in the media spotlight as a pastor to the stars like Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez and, most famously, Hailey and Justin Bieber. Now, 3 years after his very public fall from grace, there are now not one but two high profile documentary series have been released, revealing in his own words what led Lentz to fall into his moral failures and digging deeper into greater levels of scandal and cover-up in Hillsong’s history. As tragic as all of this is, Lentz is only one of countless stories we’ve heard in recent years of large platform, spiritual leaders in the Christian faith who have fallen in some major ways. Are these failures evidence of the failure of the Gospel, itself? If not, what is the root, what do we do when our leaders fail and how could all of this be prevented from happening again?