Carl Lentz on What Really Happened Behind Closed Doors...

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Collins. Was once one of the most popular
preachers in America. This evening he's just like a
lot of us, as the old Saints would say, a Sinner standing in
the need of praise. That was a significant chunk of
trust that that fell with me. There was a lot of people that
were personally impacted. A lot of my community was was
that how do we process this thing?

(00:23):
If I were to compile all the stuff that's been said about me
that isn't, that isn't true, or that I care about it is what it
is. Let me just set the record
straight. One of the videos I said a
couple things about you that were inaccurate.
And they were like, well, he used to say that he, you know,
prepared his sermons while playing basketball.
And we can tell. And I was like, you can tell.
How have you processed everything that happened to

(00:45):
Hillsong after the fact? Turbulent times for the
celebrity church. Hillsong high profile leader
Brian Houston, who founded the hugely successful organization,
has now stepped down from its multiple boards.
My church is better than your church.
Would you shut up? How many funerals have you been
to? That's.

(01:05):
I do feel like sometimes when people criticize small level
things, they have never been around big level problems.
You lose a couple of people to some overdoses, and you lose a
couple people in the in the middle of the night.
Why do you have so much time to parse through church preference?
Let's try try to show some people a different version of
the Jesus that they apparently do not know.

(01:27):
Bruce LON OK, before we get intothis video, guys, if you know
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(03:12):
description. Let's jump into this
conversation. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
today's guest really needs no introduction.
Someone that has been around theChristian space, someone that's
had an impact and influence on me over the years, someone that
has his own podcast and has evolved.
The one, the only, ladies and gentlemen, Carl Lentz.

(03:33):
My brother, pleasure to be here.Are you doing sound effects?
I'm doing sound effects. You can't hear them though.
That's all right, man. Thanks so much for being here.
So it's an honor. I, I'm out the pressure of just
kicking it with you today. And it's been, it's been so cool
to get to know you in a relational context, even though

(03:54):
we've been keeping up with what you've been doing for years.
I told you about a decade ago, I, I went to Hillsong NYC.
It was a Sunday that rich was preaching there.
You weren't there and got to seesome of what was happening.
So know quite, quite a few people that came out of the
church that said very positive things about the church.
And then there's obviously the impact of what happened almost
five years ago to the date, watching you walk out of that

(04:19):
and walk through that and, and walk towards healing and, and
all the stuff you're doing now. And so I've, I've been saying
this for a couple years now. It's like, man, I really want to
make an effort to talk to peopleand not about people.
And so you're one of the people that like, I want, I was excited
to talk to because when all of that happened, there was a lot
of people that were personally impacted, even though they

(04:40):
didn't know you personally. And a lot of my community was,
was that, you know, was like, how do we process this thing,
you know, and that was the beginning of some of the initial
videos that I made reacting to just trying to help people
process. But then also a part of feeling
like, man, here are these guys that are impacting culture the
way I feel like Christian should.

(05:00):
And kind of the leader of this crew has this moral feeling, you
know, and, and, and, and being being impacted by it.
And so anyway, thank you for being here.
Yeah, man. Appreciate you being here, I
respect. You, I, I, I told you a little
bit of my, my Rd. of exposure toyou and what you do very little.
And I love it when people do have the courage to just reach

(05:23):
out to people. And I know you did that.
Yeah. I was looking through my DMS and
even back in the day, before I even was, was, you know, knowing
we were going to have a relationship.
I saw a message from you and I always respect that.
I think it's people have the right to say whatever they want.
I do like your virtue of courage, though, which is, let
me just check, you know, whethera person responds back.
But I, I think that's cool aboutyou, that even for your, the

(05:44):
people who love you to know evenfurther, you know, you're a man
of your word. It's, it's, it's one thing.
There's a lot of people who don't do that.
They don't have the courage to do that.
So I respect that about you. Well, let me just set the record
straight. One of the videos, I said couple
things about you that were inaccurate, specifically you
coming up with sermons on the basketball court.
I don't know where I read that. And I just asked you just now

(06:05):
and you were like, man, that's one of the things you said.
I I I I got this video sent and I I you.
Were what was the video you got to?
Remind, I do not remember. You don't know at all because I,
I, you know, once you break fromsocial media, you know, it's,
it's, it feels good. And then when you dip back into
it, especially if it's critical about you, you're like, This is
why I left. But it was just like, yeah, I

(06:26):
think you started by saying something relatively kind.
And then you're like, but he used to say that he, you know,
prepared his sermons while playing basketball.
And we can tell. And I was like, you can tell,
like, if you don't like what preach and say, But I do.
And I didn't prepare it on a basketball court.
I spent, you know, a good portion of my adult life in
shadows preparing sermons. So that's something I hold dear.

(06:48):
And I don't think it's too seriously, but that was
something I remember. And then the guy next to was
like, yeah, he also said that God spoke to him, that he has to
be cool to reach cool people. And I was like, man, that's the
dumbest thing I've ever heard. Not only have I never said that,
but anybody who does say that, that's weird.
So. But man, if I were to compile
all the stuff that's been said about me that isn't true or that

(07:11):
I care about it is what it is. So I I got no, no, no beef
brother. OK, none.
OK, well, I appreciate that. So man, where do we begin this
conversation? Man, wherever you want.
Did you ever expect to be in a place?
Let me I'll I will preface this by saying I had a conversation

(07:32):
with Laura and I said I think that the the interesting shift I
see in culture, it could be thatGod is expanding the profile
microphone meaning for so long it was church, it was pastors.
I've got young people in my house and to see the rise of
TikTok influencers and maybe even Youtubers like yourself.

(07:54):
I think it's significant. I think Bryce Crawford, I can
name a bunch of people, but it used to be people look to
pastors to to be the pin like that.
The point people for culture andfor spiritual thinking, and
that's changing. And I think there's a beauty to
that. There's a definite issue to that

(08:14):
as well. But I like to lean into the
beauty of it because the word isgoing to get out, the gospel
will get out. And although I take issue with
some of the ways it's done, I think the potential for
everybody to have a voice and you not have to go through the
church paces to be considered a voice.
I think it's overdue. So I like to watch, you know,

(08:36):
you people like you, you're different and I think that
you're continually trying to become a better version of
yourself constantly. I don't think everybody's like
that. I think you're going to keep
growing and it's impacting people, but that's what I I see.
So did you ever think that your podcast or your YouTube channel
would be looked at as a as a point of reference for people to

(08:58):
go, this guy's my anchor. No, no.
How does that feel? That sense, man, no, how does
that feel? It's a lot of responsibility.
It's a lot of weight. It's a lot of it's a lot of
like, yeah, it's a lot of responsibility.
It's a lot of you know what it is It's one thing to do it on
the Internet and see comments and numbers and it's and it can
just all become just math and data.

(09:19):
It's another thing when I'm do when I did these book launch
events and spoke at some churches and a line couple 100
people that all want to meet. Take the picture, right.
Tell me there's life story, get prayer.
That's when it's like, Oh man, this is sacred ground.
Like I I this is this is holy, holy, holy ground.
And and that's been a good anchoring.

(09:41):
That's a great anchoring for me to know the impact.
I always say this. I said, I just said this to Jack
Hibbs and he connected it to to Greg Laurie and I want to know
what you think about this. And I've said this multiple
times. I said this is Tim Ross.
My theory is this, for the longest, within the context of
the evangelical church, if you had a gifting and you were a
communicator, your pathway was very limited.

(10:02):
You could either be on the worship team, you could be a
youth pastor for a while, or youcould be a church planter.
And I feel like what's opened upwith Web 2 point O YouTube,
TikTok, Instagram, is that there's a lot more options now
for people and for someone like me that if I'm, if I'm fully,
fully transparent, I am not a shepherd.
Like someone comes to me and it's like, bro, like I'm

(10:23):
struggling. I'm like, I'm having sex with my
girlfriend. I'm like, stop having sex with
your girlfriend. And then you come back to me a
second time. And I'm like, we're not going to
keep talking about this. But there's, there's dudes that
got that wiring where they're inthe mud with people and they're
and they're walking people through.
And I, I knew that I've never had that wiring as like a
shepherd. So a part of me believes this
and I would like to hear your thoughts is I feel like if

(10:44):
Someone Like You who has a clearamazing communication gift, you
could tell a story. You're a great orator.
If you were starting today, if you were, when I really jumped
into this, I was 3035 years old.If you were starting today, and
I'm not going to say any other names, but I'm just going to ask
you, do you feel like you may have landed into doing something

(11:05):
like this where you're more of aspeaker author type of guy and
less of like a local church planner type of guy?
Great question. I love I love the the people
part of it, and that's actually where my wheelhouse always was
and that's that's missed a lot in the commentary because people
don't know that's all right, Butwe you know, the narrative with

(11:27):
guys like me sometimes can be the upfront guy, but anybody
knows us knows that may we were.I actually was built for the
everyday The Walking with. The the shepherding part.
Yeah. And I would also push back that
you're not a shepherd. I think that if the season came
where you needed to do that, thecapacity would start to develop
because you're more of a shepherd than you know right

(11:48):
now. It might not be.
I always, I always ask you, whatdo you mean by shepherd?
Do you know how many different types of shepherds?
There were a lot. And I think that we've always
had these dogmatic bricks of descriptional vocations that we
give people that is pigeonholed a lot of people.
So I, I think I, when I first got started in ministry, my the

(12:10):
first guy, Steve Kelly, pastor of Wave Church in Virginia
Beach, who I love dearly and radically changed my life.
I got, I really met Jesus, you know, under his leadership.
He was the first guy that I everanswered an altar call for, for
real. I answered a couple brother, you
know, 10. It takes a while.
Sure, I was the guy every Sundayhad my hand up.
Yeah, I mean better. That guy than the other guy, I

(12:31):
always say better get saved every week than never at all.
So take your chances. One of these weeks it's going to
hit. But yeah, he he just saw
something in me and but it wasn't the charismatic preaching
stuff, it was the people side. And that's how I fell in love
with doing real ministry was theability to do life with people,

(12:52):
protect them, serve with them, cry with them, fight with them.
So, yeah, I loved it. And then preaching came
secondary. Like, I never preached when I
was at Bible college at HillsongChurch ever.
The first preaching thing I everdid.
Bobby Houston said. Carl, can you speak about
evangelism at the women's meeting?
And this is this is, you know, early 2 hundreds Hillsong

(13:13):
Church, Bobby Houston has this cracking women's ministry.
I've never preached in my life. And I got up there and I
remember I brought a fishing rodand I was going to talk about
fishing to reach people. And I put the fishing rod down.
I didn't know there's a mannequin behind me.
And it went like in the this part of the women's mannequin
thing. So everyone's laughing.
I'm like, man, I'm funnier than I thought.

(13:34):
And I don't know if it was good or bad, but I do know that that
was the first time I remember that God shows up when you're
when you're way out of your league.
And it registered deep in myself.
So I never feared any moments because I was like God, God's,
I'm never going to put you in a spot and just leave you high and
dry. So all that to say, I love, I
love both to this day. And I feel like I was a good

(13:56):
hybrid. Yeah, Yeah.
So if you were starting today though, do you think you would
have went to trajectory of a local church pastor versus?
Maybe of an that's a good weather.
Speaker type of. Guy I wouldn't have, I think I
would have went straight to the pod brother, like because so I
do all that like I why? And here that's the danger
though. So when I see young, young

(14:17):
people speaking super definitively, that's where I
have some pause and I go, cool, let's maybe slow down, maybe
maybe phrase it in a way that's not so definitive because you're
23. So it doesn't mean what you're
saying is not true. It just means you have
absolutely no life experience tobe able to stand on.
That doesn't mean it changes thetruth.

(14:39):
But I always talk to young preachers about the posture.
I can deal like I'm 47, Laura and I come sit in your church
and you're a 30 year old pastor.I got all the time in the world
to listen to you. And I would love it if the
posture was you're not quite certain because how could you be
certain about some of this because you've never lived half
of what I've already lived. But I want to hear the truth,

(14:59):
the way that some people presentit.
I think they're doing themselvesno favors by by preaching in
such a way where it's like, I know what I'm doing.
I want to hear from preachers who say, I'm not sure about a
lot, but about this, I've got a read on.
Let me share all day. But it's the people pointing at

(15:19):
cameras that it's like, hey, man, like you're, you're talking
about parenting. You don't have any kids.
So let's let's go ahead and say that too.
Just couch it with that. So that that to me, I love the
fact there's a new inroad to influence spiritually and it's
not through the church. And what are the benefits of
being in a church? Is there's going to be people
around you that can, you know, speak some wisdom and and give

(15:41):
you some guardrails you desperately need.
So I I hope there's a cool balance in the future.
Do you think one of the reasons why people were so impacted, if
I'm just being myself, a guy like me, I'm in the music world
at the time, I'm traveling, I'm doing shows, I'm, I'm working
with secular labels, but playingat secular colleges.
And I think what, what resonatedwith what you guys were doing is

(16:04):
specifically Hillsong, New York City.
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this.
The, the, the, there is a, there's that we, we have one in
culture like we have folks in culture.
This is what we need. But but, but, but a part of that
could have been as I'm just processing is that man, did we

(16:24):
want a Saul? Did we want a king that was
taller, more charismatic? And now we have right, Because
what is the equivalent of a kingtoday, right?
Wanting to be like the other nations, wanting to be like the,
the culture around us is a celebrity.
And so I, I would say from getting to know you, I don't, it
doesn't seem like you pursued celebrity, but you got
celebrity. And then that celebrity was
probably reinforced by Christians who were excited that

(16:47):
like, yeah, Carl's doing it. He's with the athletes, he's
with the entertainer, he's in New York City.
And then when the when the when the struggle comes, when the
fall comes, when maybe you needed to perhaps take a break
sooner. And maybe that could have
prevented, right? That that that perhaps there was
a culture that kind of promoted that.
And that's why some of us were so devastated, though, that the
fall happened. Great question man.

(17:10):
You got you got a future in this.
Great. Question.
Thanks. I think like the celebrity
thing's always funny. People project when they give
those criticisms because, you know, the lowest level is like
back in the day people were like, oh, Hillsong Church is
trying to be cool. I always say, no, we weren't
trying. We just were.
We just were. That's just who we were.
Don't get mad. Like we're not trying to be

(17:31):
anything. If anything, there was a huge
swath of time there were culturewas emulating what we were
doing, not vice versa. And God always blesses who you
really are. So I think there was an element
of that that I always totally held correctly.
Like, first of all, we knew people who are real famous.
There's Christian fame, church fame, and then there's real

(17:52):
life. We were never, we were never
confused on that. So I, we never really bought our
own mail. We never really bought into any
of that hype. We had no control over it.
So like, what makes somebody a celebrity pastor?
What do you mean by that? Like imagine if you go to a
church and your pastor is as cool as your pastor is.
I love your pastor, Jeff. Let's just say rhythm.
God breathes on it. And now it's 345 times the size

(18:16):
in a month. And then you start hearing
chatter about Jeff. Jeff doesn't hang out with the
people anymore. Really.
He hangs out with the same people.
There's just 10 times more and you don't know it.
And now the narrative gets skewed.
That's always going to be part of it.
But I always held it brother with and I still do to this day
because I can see it when people, you know, I, I talk to
people all the time. They'll come up, say kind things

(18:38):
and I can hear the, the heaviness of the heart of like,
man, I really loved you. And when you fell, it was hard.
And I know I did represent somebody who's in the thick of
culture without conforming. And then when all that stuff
happened, it's like, man, maybe none of that stuff is possible.
Maybe it's not real. And that's part of the
consequence of making choices like I made is that it puts some

(19:01):
stuff that's not in question back in question.
And that that was hard. It's still hard.
I've had to really over the years work on holding that with
grace because I cannot change it.
But I'd like to tell people, no,man, it's it's absolutely
possible to invade culture with the gospel.
And when it is possible, I made little decisions along the way
that had nothing to do with fame, nothing to do with

(19:23):
celebrities, had to do with my own character.
And you don't know what you don't know.
And so I, I overlooked some things, I hid things, I didn't
get honest about some things andthey weren't always big.
It's just this little trail thatyou start going off of like no
one wakes up in a explosion, youknow, just wake up with your
house on fire. Like that thing was burning for

(19:44):
a while. So but to to your point, yeah, I
know that a lot of people hurt because especially if they were
supporters, like they hear criticism about our church, that
church didn't like that. And then if you want to make it
me be that guy who ended up being that guy, OK, I can't say
no, I don't believe that's true.But all the evidence points to,

(20:05):
yeah, I told you those guys can't be for real.
They can't be. You can't do that.
You got to do it like this because you end up like that.
And it's like, that's not, that's not the conclusion you
have to draw from from that partof my story.
That's not even that's a part ofmy story.
I'm living my story right now. But that New York chapter I
choose to believe. And I know factually that.

(20:25):
The inspiration that it did givepeople is still going on to this
day in in a good way. If anything, they can do it
better. But to run from culture, we
represented a church that was like, Nah, this is we've got the
goods, we know Jesus. And so that was our mentality
going into New York was not to have a big church.
Not that just we're going to go serve the city the best we can

(20:47):
and what happened happened, but chasing celebrity, wanting to be
famous, all that stuff, man, it's so it's as hollow as it
sounds, not real. Yeah, I remember hearing a quote
that said, you know, you don't chase, you don't chase fame, you
chase faithfulness. And if fame comes as a byproduct
or if success comes as a byproduct, then so be it, right.
And so you choose to be effective, you choose to be

(21:08):
useful, you choose to help. And then whatever comes of that
comes of that. Yeah.
And so in, in in the same way with whatever I've been doing on
YouTube, it's it, it's never been.
Let me chase the numbers. Because you, you don't have
control over those variables. You don't have control over the
algorithms. And if your take is what people
want from you, but you just do the inputs and God gives the
outputs how he gives the outputs.

(21:29):
OK, I got I got a couple different directions.
I want to talk about the the cultural, the impact that side.
But you also said a bunch of little decisions.
And again, you've you've talked at length with about your story.
So I don't want to get into it, but there's a postage I think of
in Song of Solomon, the little foxes.
What translation? Oh, I think that's the NIV
isn't? It I only read the NLNLT.

(21:50):
NLT, OK. NLTV.
NLTV the little foxes, the little foxes that eat up the
garden, right. And so as someone that like I've
experienced sexual assault as a kid, I struggled with porn into
my into my adult years into my marriage, right?
And, and having to wage war on certain aspects and not even
really knowing how messed up I was until I was like, man, I, I

(22:13):
got pretty wild intrusive thoughts sometimes.
I need to unpack this in therapy, right?
I've almost started going to therapy before I quite
understood why I needed it. But I'm so glad that I went
because I think if someone's coming from sexual trauma, if
someone's coming from being promiscuous in their childhood
or, or being violated in certainway, you can make those little

(22:34):
decisions. And so for you, you've opened up
a bit about your own sexual trauma in your childhood.
And then that slowly compounds like, how'd that work?
What was it? And, and how did it go from like
maybe something private and small to now it's this big thing
that. That so any, any sexual abuse
changes your, your brain chemistry.
So that happens when you're young, you know, you got a lot

(22:57):
of work to do and it's not my fault.
It's not anybody's fault that's listening that's been abused.
It is your fault. Or is your responsibility now to
do what with it? It's not, it's not enough for me
to be like, oh, I was, you know,this.
But I had a template that was built around secrecy.
I was abused in such a way wheremy brain registered sexual
things with closeted secrecy. Can't tell anybody, but it's

(23:18):
exciting. I don't know why when you're 5-6
years old, you don't know what'sexciting, but your brain
registers. So over the years, you know, I
lived a life of sexual recklessness before I was about
19, before I really, really started following Jesus.
Those patterns do not shift because you get saved.

(23:40):
They just don't. I actually heard, I don't know
what podcast it is, 2 girls. They're pretty big right now.
Girls Gone Bible. Yeah, maybe.
I think they're they might be genuine, but she was like, I was
delivered from this in a day here's and I was like, wow, OK,
like that's what I'm talking about.
Like there's so much room for other people's stories to be

(24:03):
given weight in regards to how much time it might take to heal.
But I say all that to say, I didn't really know at that time
what sexual patterns were. And over the years, you do a lot
of willpower, a lot of praying, a lot of genuine seeking of God.
And there are good seasons. But if it's a pattern, it's not
going to go anywhere. It just might be in a down

(24:23):
cycle. Over the years, I would find
victory much similar to anybody listening.
Everybody knows what your spiritual victories and losses
can feel like. It's no different if you're a
pastor. It's just the stakes had risen
and and the more hidden that stuff was in my own life, the
more painful it became. And that stuff just grows.
So it was never like a I'm just going to live with this.

(24:46):
It was always, I'm going to get this right.
And that's a lie you tell yourself when you're dealing
with addiction. First lie you talk to yourself
is the one that you're going to get this figured out.
When I went to rehab, I was surrounded by other men that we
all had a plan to get it right before rehab, every single one
of us. And you just sit there, look at
each other like we're idiots. You can't win some of these
fights on your own. And and when you meet Jesus, you

(25:08):
know, you get a clean slate. You're going to need people now
to help you write on that slate.And I think that's the piece now
that we're seeing come to life. That's so beautiful because the
days of telling people had an altar, you know, Hey, new day is
here. True.
You're delivered true. Let's talk about brain
chemistry. Let's talk about habits.

(25:29):
Let's talk about trauma. Let's talk about what you've
been through. Both of these can come together.
It's not less, it's not more. It's part of life.
And I think that that just wasn't a thing when I was 2223.
It wasn't. And so that that my story is not
spectacular, brother, in that I just I had things in my life
that could have been quelled. And on top of that, God was

(25:52):
very, very gracious to me always.
I always had opportunities to behonest about the little things
and I didn't take them sometimesand I made-up reasons why that
sounded good to me. And I spiritualize them even.
But that's the truth. I mean, even now as people are
listening, there's probably somesome things that you can get
honest about now and get not only through it, but you can use

(26:15):
it for your gain the rest of your life, or you can hold it.
And you never know what that's going to become.
Yeah. So anytime you don't share
something deep like that, yeah, you got to look at it as a time
bomb. Yeah.
And I was a walk. I was walking around with many,
many time bombs. And they all went off.
Yeah. Yeah, could you point at Mike
just a slight slightly towards there you go.
Yeah, No, I, I think, I think that's spot on.
And I think, you know, I think for some people it does.

(26:36):
It is instantaneous. For some people it can be and
the holy shit can do and just ZAP you.
And absolutely. I think for others, man, it, it
is work. I mean, I meet with a group of
guys every Saturday and we, we go around.
I got this from Jonathan Precluda, the three questions.
What have you done this week to feed your spirit?

(26:57):
What have you done this week to feed others?
And what have you done this weekto feed your?
Flesh. I like that.
And I think just asking those questions, yeah, because then it
could be before it turns into porn or it turns into a
flirtation or right. It's like, man, I was looking on
Instagram and I saw an attractive girl and I lusted
out. Like you start nipping, nipping
it in the bud. And then and then it's like, OK,

(27:19):
what's the OK? Well, now I don't have Instagram
on my phone. Or even self diagnosing that guy
and I was lusting. Says who?
Let's wait a second. Let's talk about what you did.
Let's talk about what this is sothat even that is a is a symptom
of probably some deeper community needed because a lot
of the guys that you and I wouldmeet with they've already in
their minds diagnosed what they have tell.

(27:39):
Me, tell me, tell me. More like I'm packed out of it.
More that right there. I'm battling with lust man.
I hear like on this TikTok thingthat I am sent to check some of
the rhythms. I most Christian commentator
guys, they want to talk about lust and to me I go cool man.
It's also OK to branch out a little bit and talk about what
goes into the systems before what lust is.

(28:02):
There's a lot going on. It might not be that.
It might be something as simple as you know the rhythms with
which you sleep, different things that you're adding to
your like. Lust is such an easy thing to
point at, criticize and feel badabout and get saved from.
Harder is the everyday habitual work of renewing your mind day

(28:23):
by day, digging day by day, but just feels better to be able to.
Here's my symptom. Somebody give me an answer.
I don't know, man. I think it's a walk.
I think it's a journey. I, I, I, I've thought of it this
way before and, and, and I'm sure somebody will will push
back on comments. Somebody will push back on
comments. There's some people that have an
addiction to food and it's not good and it's and it's from a

(28:47):
place of man. It's like deep, it's like
security. You didn't get food as a kid,
something like like that, right And then.
People lack of discipline. Yeah, lack of discipline.
But then there's other people that are like, it's sweet, it's
salty. It's, you know, it's all these
things that's that's engineered in our food, right?
And it's not super deep. It's like you just like salty,

(29:09):
sweet, crunchy food. Your blood sugar clicks like
your blood sugar. Clicks and so you're just over
consuming something without the same stronghold as someone that
like actually has a eating disorder.
So to your point, I definitely think that there are dudes that
are, that think they're dealing with lust.
And it might just be like, bro, you live in a world where

(29:29):
there's a lot of attractive women and they're everywhere.
And men tend to be more visuallydriven.
And so they like the human body form in a woman.
And so it's just it, it could bejust that deep like you or
you're stimulated because there's an attractive girl
there. And that in and of itself is,
is, is that's that's actually normal.
Be careful what you name tell guys I hey man, I struggle with

(29:51):
anxiety. Hold on, man.
Like the moment you give it a title, now there's weight to it.
So I'm very slow to do that. That's why it, like I, I went
through a lot of addiction recovery stuff, but I definitely
talked to my, my, one of my leaders and I said, Hey, I'm no
longer going to say this before the meetings because I don't, I
don't want my brain to connect with the confession that some of
you guys make and that's your own journey.

(30:13):
There's a place for it, but I'm not going to say I'm a this
because I don't believe that's true.
So the moment that hey, man, I, I deal with lust, OK, cool.
What else might be true? You're working really hard.
You are attracted to women, bro.Welcome to being a man.
Welcome to having a body that's working.
Welcome to having testosterone. You're.
Surrounded by this type of person right now, and maybe you

(30:36):
are now learning what you're going to need to become a man of
integrity. This is the same situation held
two different ways. This feels better to the
legalistic Christian than what Imean.
You got to tell he's a luster. No, you probably are projection.
So you love to label other people with it, But what if
we're not, we're not ready to goto lust yet.
Like why do we have to go there?Why would we get all that?

(30:56):
All the power to that? What if we go to this?
It is obvious that everything inme right now is sexually
activated and I'm tempted a lot and I'm dealing with this.
Cool. What would it look like to live
a life that was free, peaceful, healthy and godly?
Let's talk about this for a little.
Before you know it, the conversations way over here.

(31:17):
We're living in grace. There's power here rather than
lust. You got to, we got to pray, got
to watch your back. You definitely can't be on the
worship team for at least three weeks, depending on how long the
rabbit trail was he went on. How long was it a dark hole you
were into? OK, cool. 5 weeks off the state
like that is the way church has handled things like that.

(31:37):
So of course people are going toput a lot of weight on it.
I just think it's a better way. Yeah.
No, I think, I think that's helpful and I think more
conversations to think about this is probably better than
less conversations. I, I talk a lot about the law of
replacement where you know, where we know the things to
remove. Like when I came to faith in
Jesus at 17 years old, I knew that like, oh man, I can't keep
sleeping with my girlfriend. I can't keep looking at porn.

(31:59):
If, if something were to happen and we were to get pregnant, I
can't, I can't get an abortion right.
I knew the things that I, I couldn't do anymore, but there
wasn't a lot of conversation of like, and now you get to, and
now you get to move in these areas.
Now you get to man your body is pumping for the testosterone at
1718 years old, you get to go tothe gym and and and channel some
of that testosterone you. Get to be excited about having

(32:21):
sex someday. Right, you, you get to work
these things out and there isn'tenough conversations about the
law of replacement. And when I found in my, my own
journey is the more I, I, I added good things to do the,
the, the easier the bad things fell away.
And, and it was like, man, the more I went to the gym, the more
I woke up early, the more I, I didn't stay up late.
It was like I, I, I found that these patterns slowly drifted

(32:45):
and it didn't have to be these, these, these massive moments.
And the and so I think there's less, there's not as much
conversation about like replacing healthy virtue.
Only in the church because you just spoke directly to the most
relevant and modern you know, rehabilitation talk is to.
Here's how it typically works with any addiction.
So you fight to get sober. That's not really the fight.

(33:07):
The fight is to live a sober life.
And if guys don't have somethingthey're building to, they
relapse at double the rate. This is the same thing in
Christian living. That's why you get someone to
get saved. And for the first five months,
they are the judge and the arbitrator, and they like
telling everybody else what theydid wrong because all they know
to function is what they need tofix.

(33:29):
Everybody else living a beautiful, godly, powerful,
joyful, grace filled life that'sforeign to people.
So it's easier to look back and look at what you're
deconstructing than it is look forward and say, what might I
build? And so you just nailed it.
Like from, from my, my life wasn't about stopping doing the
wrong things. It was the beginning of living a

(33:50):
completely healthy life across the board.
Like it's not that I don't want to stop things.
I understand that. But let me see what happens when
I build and things can drop off you that you've been trying to
pray away for years because you actually got a taste of life.
And I think that's the model of Jesus.
Walk with me, with me. And on this journey,
transformation is all around youthat to me, I there's evidence,

(34:15):
you know, in my life and in the live lives of people I've helped
lead for years. That works a lot better than the
shame based pointing of the finger diagnosing sin.
Here's your answer. I I think people are are
starting to turn their own lights on to the fact that maybe
shaming myself into grace has never been God's plan.

(34:37):
Yeah, that's good. That's good.
Yeah. I mean, we could talk about this
stuff, man, because it's. So it's a lot of what I explore
in my book. God, the ambition of like, hey,
man, remove, but then replace, remove and then replace and
replace it with good stuff. And for every vice, there's a
beautiful virtue on the other side of that vice, you know?
So for sure, let's let's talk about culture and kind of that
line between like at what point when your guys's journey is

(35:00):
Hillsong? And do you feel like, was there
ever a time where the line was crossed too much into appeasing
culture or appearing like culture versus saying, hey,
we're going to build better culture through some of the
virtues that we have to be a distinct people.
And so we're in the world, but we're not of the world.
That means that, man, you know, you can dress cool and the music

(35:21):
can sound fire and the preachingcould be good, but there's still
there's still these distinguishable things that
really distinct us as people. And so like that line, I guess
what I'm getting at is the idea of like the attractional church,
right, right. Like then I came to faith, it
was seeker friendly, then it became attractional.
And now it seems like there's this desire to move away from
the attractional and to say, no,we want verse by verse teaching.

(35:43):
We want, we want high church, wewant art, we want beauty in
church, right. And there's a lot of folks
becoming Catholic and Orthodox and, and that desire, so they
they kind of look at our style of church or whatever you would
call it, you know, and kind of scoff at it.
Like all you non denominational evangelicals over there.
You guys just take warehouses and buildings and convert them
into churches. But I guess the, the, the, the,

(36:03):
and I think there's actually, there's beauty in that.
I think there's beauty in the taking a strip mall and making
it into a church, right. But it in in terms of Hillsong
in those days, 10/12/13 years ago, do you feel like there was
ever a time where you guys kind of crossed too much and being
like the culture that you weren't distinct enough from the
culture? No, no.

(36:24):
I think there's room for growth and improvement in all you do,
but we were distinctly set on who we were in some way and
there's some things that are just non negotiable.
So I like the premise of like, how many things can I do that
are obviously different? That's a fun way to live because
church wise I I never know what people talk about when like I

(36:46):
never the attractional seeker sensitive is always so silly to
me to to pigeonhole things like that.
Like what? What do you mean the seeker
sensitive? What do you mean?
Like do you mean considerate of people that don't?
What was it Brandon Lake who gotI guess he said something
beautiful about I want to write songs for the guy in the back
for Bubba and people really freaked out about that.
I'm going how like the pushback culture is so funny to be so

(37:07):
like, let me get this straight. So Brandon Lake is wrong for
wanting to consider my friend that I bring that might there be
a song that resonates with a guywho doesn't understand church
lingo? This is wrong.
I've never understood that wholeway of thinking when it comes to
the stylistic church wise. But as far as us, man, I really
think we did a good job of beingdistinctly in it, not of it.

(37:34):
There's obviously some some areas where everybody can get
better. But I mean, we're human.
But no, I think we did good there.
I, I don't, I don't, I don't seethat.
I don't look back at that go. We would have done that
differently. I think personally, what's going
on inside that nobody can see. That's what you watch for,
because you can go somewhere andmake sure you're not, you know
of it, but you're in it. But you go home and you harbor

(37:55):
the thoughts and you think aboutwhat might be and you, that's
the stuff that makes a difference in your life.
So I think that's the shadow. Work is way more important when
it comes to, you know, what kindof life you're living than what
people might see in the public. Okay.
Do you have any distinct examples of what you mean?
Because I, I'm trying to think of like the church itself.

(38:15):
We got some services and we havethis like we're never we did
nothing. That would be remotely
controversy on my mind. I'm talking about outside of the
four walls of the church. What was that church culture
like? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, yes, outside of the four. So I could give you one example.
But I guess what, what, what I'mgetting at is like, I think that
I think people are today desiring to have the bar raised

(38:39):
towards something greater than themselves instead of having the
bar lower to say, we're going tomake this on ramp as easy as
possible. And so the, the, the and, and,
and to be fair, I'm not talking about your preaching someone in
general. The talk isn't, is less centered
about you and God has a plan foryou and God has good things for
you and more about, Hey, God, like you're not the main

(39:01):
character of this story. I love that God is the main
character of this story. You need to get on in line with
God. And that may mean you got to die
to yourself, to be born again, to walk in the fullness.
And by the way, that fullness might come with suffering and
persecution, depending on what you do and where you are.
That that that's kind of what I'm getting at with regards to
that 'cause I can't point to anyspecific sermon of yours.

(39:23):
I have an example that I'll bring up in a second, but that
that that's kind of what I'm getting at it.
So it's just like, hey, let's not use words like
sanctification and preaching. That's to that's to let's not
say the Bible says again, I'm not saying you said this.
I'm saying this. This was deep and wide like this
stuff. I like Andy Stanley like this
is, you know, hey, we're not gonna say.
The Bible says we're not gonna say.
I did the opposite not to cut you off.
I'm sorry. No, I did the opposite.
Like I, I like redeeming and making clear those terms.

(39:46):
And that was the one of the biggest misnomers about us is
that like the cheap shots from the cheap seats would be that
church grows because the reason,one of the main reasons our
church was incredibly influential is because we we
preach very clearly about Jesus period.
We didn't mince words. We did not say sin.
We did not use words like sanctification, but we would
explain it like, I just went to a church recently and I just was

(40:09):
like, it was cool. But I was like, there's just no,
they went from a song right intoa giving proclamation right into
and I love ritualistic things. Like one of the things I loved
about New York was dipping into Catholic churches, and I would
just sit in the Pew. And the reverence and the peace
and the calmness, like, I love that aspect of it.
And I think there is a deep needfor some of the most pure, easy,

(40:35):
non bells and whistles, part of our faith that continue to rise
up because people do need it. But I don't think it always has
to be an either or thing. I think it's OK to make what
cannot make sense to some. Make it clear.
Yeah. Yeah, I just talked to a group
of 6 to 12th graders at Calvary Chapels Halloween Jam.
They did like a Halloween thing and a lock in for the kids and I

(40:58):
talked to and I talked to them and I said, Hey, like, I'm going
to talk to you guys like you're adults.
I'm not going to talk to you guys like you're kids.
What my own son sitting in thereand and I talked about like
sanctification, but I said sanctification means this.
It means cooperating with the move of God in your life.
You know, and justification means this.
It means that you're justified because of what Jesus did on the
cross. We so I'm I'm with you.
I think, I think there we absolutely should use those
terms. I guess coming back to the

(41:18):
Brandon Lake example, like I think there's nothing wrong with
making Christian things distinct, distinctly Christian
and unapologetically. And I don't remember like what,
because I think his songs are overtly Christian.
They are like heartfelt Hallelujah is a because a lot of
people don't know Hallelujah means.
Right, that's that's one of the words I would always stress with
our worship leaders. There are some words where you

(41:40):
have to take time to explain. Otherwise it's silly.
Hallelujah is one of those words.
Explain it. I used to explain Amen every
week When you hear people in ourchurch say Amen, it's a fancy
word. It means let it be.
Boom. Now you just make somebody feel
less alien like doesn't mean I'mnot going to.
We're not protect, you know, we're teaching you as we go.
That was always our thing. We're not going to change, but

(42:01):
we're definitely going to give you space to be a part of this
journey and not make you feel like an outsider looking in
because that nobody can learn like that.
So I don't have to sacrifice truth to make it clear and
relevant to people who need it. Otherwise Jesus, I mean, just
take him out of the Bible. Like what do people think Jesus
was doing when he's like faith? Like, I don't know, mustard
seed? Like, why would he do this?

(42:23):
Because he was passionate about people connecting and
understanding. You know, even the visual aspect
of things is beautiful. Like I don't, I think the
backlash to flashy preaching is like, I want expository verse by
verse cool bro, do that. That doesn't mean it's better.
Like I don't want these illustrations cool.
Well, 70% of humans learn that way over that way.

(42:45):
So OK, cool. That's that's where I get a
little bit in my old 47 year oldstate, hot and bothered when
people start getting their preference mixed up with the
spiritual principle. Do not get that twisted if you
don't like that, doesn't make itright or wrong.
It just means go to a different church bro.
Yeah, relax. Yeah, I mean, I think it's The
funny thing about I love expositional preaching.

(43:05):
We've been in Acts all year, like first by verse, but there's
still an opening image. There's still three points.
Of course. There's still a structure to the
talk where you're not just absolutely.
And this guy's like a pull out of like I was at a priest at a
Calvary Chapel in Port Saint Lucie and I pulled up the pastor
sermon and man, he's just jumping into Matthew and he and

(43:25):
he's cooking like he's he's getting it.
And so there are guys that have that sort of gifting.
And again, we love expositional preaching.
So, but even in the scriptures, a lot of the what the epistles
are, is Paul answering questions, you know, is, is
like, Hey, there's this thing happening in Corinth and these
guys are, and so he's just answering their questions,
right. And I think even a lot of what
the YouTube stuff that I do, it's really just answering

(43:46):
questions like people for every video I've ever made about every
pastor, it's because a bunch of people are saying, how do we
process the Carl Lynn's thing? Man, I'm really struggling with
it. It's like, well, this is how I'm
processing. I don't know, man, it's crazy.
We got the Ravi situation and the Carl situation, and this is
a heartbreak and he's it's you know, and so it's like, it's a
lot of the YouTube is that is like just answering questions,
right? Hey, me and Carl from the

(44:09):
future, and we just wanted to clarify one thing.
Your teaching, especially this stuff I heard from a decade ago,
did have and a lot of times was expository.
You would take a chunk of scripture, but the difference
was that you would just open with an image.
You would tell a story. You would you would tell a
testimony. I know you wanted to speak on on
that as well. Yeah, no, we were talking about

(44:32):
the way the way that you and I were talking about some of the
people that like expository preaching is different than
expository preaching and that's a huge differential.
I think it's beautiful. It's needed.
It was my favorite way to communicate.
I still think it's probably the most sound way to communicate
the clear gospel is to let the text do the talking.
And we did it in such a way where it it really came alive in

(44:53):
a cool way. I I, I think it's powerful.
And so are are we were talking about more about the spirit with
wish somebody holds their view. And so sometimes the way
expository preaching is like that guy's wrong because he
doesn't do what that particular method.
And that's what we spoke to. It's not right, it's not wrong.
It's just what what's what's there, what's working, what's

(45:15):
effective, what's comfortable for that communicator do it.
But someone else doesn't have tolook bad, so your way can look
better. I appreciate my church a couple
weeks ago and we're going through Acts pastor.
Did you do an expository or what's the No, you're one of
those guys. No, Don't you do an
illustration? I did an illustration.
I don't want to hear guys like that.
I want to hear just the Bible. Just the Bible.
No illustrations. I none.

(45:38):
He won. He wouldn't shallow.
He wouldn't let me open. He wouldn't let me preach good.
The part of Acts that came up, he's like, you could just do a
one off and I'm like, no, but I want to preach this part.
He's like, no, I got it. I'm keeping up for myself.
Hilarious. As long as you didn't do any
illustrations that made sense. Yeah, you can't have that.
So we open open. So I, I, I talked to it's about
identity in Christ and I land atthis place of identity is

(46:02):
cultivated through community. And I basically get to like,
Hey, you know, one of the beautiful things about a church
is that you can do life on life multi generationally, someone a
season ahead of you, someone a season behind you, all that sort
of stuff. And I said, one of the things
that we have to do better as a church is like, Hey, no one
should be coming in here and feeling like a stranger.
Some of you guys come in here week after week.
You sit in the same place as youdon't speak to people, you don't

(46:23):
say hello. We need to get better at like
meeting someone. That was the big challenge.
It's like, before you leave today, I want you to meet
someone, say hello to someone. There's older Saints in this
room that could be that one relationship you need.
There's younger folks in this room that need to come over to
you house and just hang out. You don't need to make dinner.
You don't got to get fancy. Just let them coming out.
So I do this whole talk and we we unpack it on the If I Had
More Time podcast, which you sawthe set of that and we were

(46:46):
like, man, like, yeah, we got tofigure this out.
We got to help our people not beso culturally inept because of
Socal culture where you can livenext door to people and never
know their name. You, you could be around people
and everyone's coming and going and everyone's on the move and,
and and they're not friendly. We got to do better hospitality.
The church grew because of hospitality in the first, the
first 100 years. So we, we, we were like talking

(47:08):
about it. And then my wife comes home and
she, she leads a women's group and she goes, you know, we have
to stop and spend 20 minutes explaining to two women today
why they couldn't have sex outside of marriage anymore.
And one of them is a new, she just got divorced.
She's single. Another one.
And they and they were full on talking about how they were

(47:28):
going to go and they were excited to not have the kids and
they were going to go hook up this weekend and this.
And like we have to stop and tell them how and literally walk
them through scripture on like, why you can't have sex outside
of marriage anymore, right? And so here I am talking to my
pastors and elders about we got to get better at hospitality.
Meanwhile, there's women and menin our church that don't know

(47:49):
that like, you can't, you can't smash your girlfriend anymore,
bro. Like you, you can't go up and
hook out, hook up anymore on theweekends.
Like you, you can no longer livethis way, right?
And these aren't just casual attenders on a Sunday.
Been there for a while. They're in a small group.
They're like, in a group, which is beautiful that like people
are getting saved and they're saying, I want to plug in, I
want to be a part of this. It's beautiful.

(48:09):
So I, I say all that the same. What I think that there are
aspects that we do need to address from the pulpit.
And I know you, you did. But there was one specific
moment, and I don't want to put words in your mouth where you, I
think we're on Oprah and I thinkshe asked you either about
homosexuality or abortion or both.
The View was it The View? I was asked about abortion.

(48:30):
Let me tell you the story from my angle.
So I, Paula Faris, great friend,Laura and I at the time, she was
part of our church host on The View and I was, I had a book out
and she's a friend. She was like, definitely, come
on, it'll be cool. Like I'll make sure that I can
get crazy. She got hurt.

(48:51):
I think she slipped on ice goingto the studio that day.
I show up to The View and it's everybody but Paula and I knew
that they were somebody was going to try to use one of those
hot button things to derail the whole thing.
And two of the hosts really cool.
One host was not cool, knew right away, just was waiting.
And her big thing was like, how do you handle abortion in your

(49:13):
church? And I could tell by the way she
asked it, you know, this was nota genuine question.
She was looking to looking to, to, to try to catch me or, or
land a point she had and I wasn't there for that.
So I said, she said, if I'm a woman in your church and I come
to you and I say I'm going to have abortion, I'm going to,
what do you say? And I said, well, my first
statement, if I recall this correctly, my first thing would

(49:34):
be what's your name? I would ask the person their
name. And that was kind of where I sat
there. And my point was, I'm not going
to use this time right now to get in a debate with a person
who's not interested in a conversation and have this thing
go left. I had what people fail to
understand as I just did an article in GQA couple weeks back

(49:57):
where I clearly state our every stance about abortion,
everything we believe proofs in the put have been there.
In this particular moment, I didnot feel led to go down that
road. So I I was like, we have our
thoughts on abortion. People in our world know who
that it but it if a woman came to me and Laura and asked for
our help, we would love her. We would get to know her name.

(50:18):
We would show her what we believe, you know, the Bible
says and but it wasn't if peoplereally got up in arms,
Christians, a certain type of Christian and accusing me of
whatever. So that that moment to me was it
was a very specific context. Now, I'm not going to go right
there. I didn't want to do that right
then. Didn't feel led to wasn't wasn't

(50:39):
my assignment on that day. And I still spoke to the truth.
That is a great answer. What would you tell a woman who
wants an abortion? What is your name?
Where are you from? Yeah.
What's your story? Yeah.
Did you recall saying something to the extent of these are
private conversations and we have, we don't talk about these
hot button issues from a public standpoint or something like it?

(51:00):
Was I think I've said something like that in a media moment?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So, so I guess the the the question around that culture,
right. And and the top down culture is
like is there is it more advantageous to just tell
people? Yeah, man, like, no, like you
cannot have an abortion if you're going to follow Jesus.
You cannot practice homosexuality if you're going to
follow Jesus. Now that doesn't mean that God

(51:21):
doesn't love the person that same.
Yeah, that doesn't mean that Goddoesn't care for the person and
is empathetic to the person thatyou know, is, is in the
situation where she feels like the the the logical option is to
kill the baby though those two things.
And it's not just you like I, there's someone else that I'll
tell you that doesn't want to come on and talk to me because
they're afraid that I'm going tobring this up, you know, and I'm

(51:43):
like, what isn't clarity kindness, you know, like, like
people should know where we fallon these.
Things you're not wrong at all on that logic train.
That's my response. My in that moment, a template I
always used. There was a guy named Jesus from
Nazareth and he often would answer questions with other

(52:04):
questions. And I love that about that man.
And I feel like there is room inour world to feel confident in a
decision you're going to make inthe moment.
I'm confident in my in my stanceon abortion.
I'm not worried about what people might think in that
moment. And if you want to judge me off
of a clip from the view, go for your life.
You didn't know me anyway. You won't know me past this.

(52:27):
So I think both things are true.It is very effective and godly
and often needed to say exactly what's clear right away.
And there are times where maybe the most effective thing to do
is to keep a conversation going to land that with more power
later. And I've, I've, I've lived in
both those worlds at times. But 99% of the time, brother,

(52:49):
I'm, I'm unless I felt a complete pull like I did in that
moment to not not be her puppet because I wasn't going to be
able to answer it beyond what she was waiting for.
And she was going to make a big spleel about how she hates
churches. And because we believe this.
And I wasn't there for that, I wasn't going to let her have
that moment. So I chose to go a different
direction. But I'm confident in my record.

(53:09):
Yeah. And and it and it is important
context to say you did had just addressed it absolutely a news
article prior. Would you say those are topics
that were addressed from the pulpit in terms of the unborn?
I would do more now. Yeah, for sure.
OK. I would.
I would be, I would be clear. I will be clear.
I will be clear on. But I'm 47 now, brother.

(53:31):
Do you feel like, do you feel like that's a part of you that's
grown and evolved? No, I think that.
I think that it's just, it's just how I feel right now.
I, I look back on the, some of the most hot button stances and
we, we were clear. We really were from sexuality to
abortion to politics, like we, we were in New York at a very
crazy hot button time with all that stuff swirling.

(53:53):
And I'm proud of the, my team, proud of where we stood.
And I wouldn't, I wouldn't change anything.
I think hindsight when you grow,you get older, you look at
you're like, man, you know, where, where was I leaning and
why? That's my question for my 35
year old self. What was the biggest motivator?
Was it fear? Was it exhaustion?
Was it trying to be right? Those are the questions I know

(54:15):
that I would ask a young pastor.Now, forget about what you're
going to say. Who are you?
Who are you as a man? And what does that man preach?
And so, yeah, I think, I think I'm open to us.
Maybe, you know, doing more on some of those topics.
But then as soon as I say it, I'm like, Nah, man, that we did
the best we could at that time for sure.

(54:37):
Yeah, that's an interesting, Yeah.
That, that tension that you're holding is interesting to me,
you know, because, because if I'm honest with you, my, I
guess, ideological, our world, Idon't know what you would call
it, but my, my journey was I'm coming out of predominantly
black neighborhoods. I'm coming into hip hop spoken
word poetry in the mid 2000s, which was like before woke was a

(54:59):
term. It was, it was conscious.
And that, and, and that's where I, I cut my teeth learning
coming to communicate in predominantly non Christian
spaces. So I had this poem that was,
that was very, it's called, I'd like to apologize.
I like to apologize to any person that was hurt by a
certain individual to claim to divine purpose, but implied you
were worthless. I'd like to and it was about

(55:19):
apologizing on behalf of Christianity, right.
And so I do this poem and and all the the the very far left of
spoken word, people would love it.
And then there was this atheist there that kept antagonizing me.
And so I came up, I did another poem and it was called I'm done
apologizing. And it was like, I'm not like
bursting his murder. My y'all are tripping.

(55:41):
My heart leans towards my only. The only apology sermon I've
ever resonated is Conor McGregor.
I would like to apologize. For absolutely nothing.
I love that. Oh, man, the way he said.
That's so good. Where's my belt?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I I think what what were?
You yeah, so I was going with that is like my my own
ideological journey has has has shifted and and I find myself

(56:05):
here. This is why I find myself I was
AI was I was left-leaning centerleft, then libertarian Andrew
Yang then I was like man seems like police need some more
checks and balances. Let's bring in body cams
specifically we were advocating.Seems logical.
For for a campaign called 88 Can't Wait, which was like

(56:27):
specific things that police should have limitations and what
they certain kind of chokeholds,whatever.
And then post 2020, post George Floyd, I found myself holding
more or less the same views. I've always been pro-life,
right? Always felt like systems should
require accountability, But thenI found myself forced into the

(56:47):
right and I had somebody sit down with me, a dear friend of
mine. And I put out a video right
after Roe V Wade got overturned.And I said something to the
extent I said, you know, I find it ironic that the same people
can't define what a man and a woman is also telling me they
can't define what a baby is, youknow, and it was in the light of
like everyone's acting like the sky was falling because of Roe V
Wade. And I said, I just, I just think
this is disingenuous. Like you guys just, it's not,

(57:09):
it's, it's a, it's a warped worldview.
And so I found my, my, my one ofmy closest friends sat down and
said, why are you in the far right now?
You've gone far right and I go far right.
Like the far right hates me. Like these gropers, Nick Funtez,
Andrew Tay Tucker, like those folks hate me.
They want nothing to do with me.This is just basic Christianity,
you know? And, and so as my own journey

(57:30):
has shifted, there are aspects where I go, man, did did we, did
we get duped with some of the BLM type?
Defund the police activism. I was, I was there with you.
We went and did, I went and protested, right?
My, my son is black, right? And I, but, but I, but I look

(57:52):
back in hindsight and I go, man,there's a couple of dozen people
that were getting killed by police that were unarmed.
Awful, tragic, terrible. Let's get body cameras, let's
fund the police better. And then there's hundreds of
millions of police interactions that go without any issues.
Did we get kind of duped in something?
I know you were a part of some of those.
And I'm, and I'm saying this is by the way, this people hold

(58:12):
this over my head till this day.Which part?
But you, you were a Lib. You, you, you donated money to
Andrew Yang. OK, You know that's what came
people. Can't grow and change.
Who would find that person? Bring them up in the chat.
That would be The funny thing islike, wouldn't it be good for me
to have grown? Why, is that an insult?
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
You used to be different. Now you've grown.
OK, cool. Yeah.
Did we get duped? No.
Did I? Do I recognize now how close and

(58:35):
how murky it was? Yeah.
And I, and I say that from a place of like I was never about.
I mean, first of all, I don't trust stats, right?
Like, I think it's so funny whenchurches use stats for like,
church growth stuff. I've never been surveyed a
single time. One time at church, I did all
day at Hillsong, New York City. Anybody ever been interviewed by

(58:55):
Barna? Nobody ever.
I don't know where they're getting these stats ever.
Outreach magazine. What?
But when it comes to some of that stuff, I stood with my
friends and their experience, whether they were right or
wrong, that was my heart. So it's like, if my friend feels
like this, like I had a dear friend in New York who in the

(59:15):
thick of it, you know, and he was, he had such a horrific
experience with police that I stood with him.
I, I don't know, man, I can't, Idon't know, I love you.
And this is where you're at right now.
I'm standing with you. That got great quickly for sure.
We talked about this at lunch. Like, you know, people had an
activist heart. If it wasn't measured or

(59:36):
anchored, you get stolen by a side so quickly.
And I think, you know, we, we did our best at that time.
That would be the one area whereI was like, this is, you know, I
remember meeting with 9 disgruntled people in my office
this one day and in the stuff that they were saying, I went

(59:57):
wait a second, are y'all basically I realized, Oh my
gosh, if we go here at all, it means all of this.
I remember that day vividly. My office going, I'm not going
to get sucked into this like I, I've reached my limit where I
can no longer I'm get hit by both sides anyway.
But it was confusing. That and and and you guys did
get hit by both. Sides.
We got hit by both sides before we landed.

(01:00:19):
Yeah, because when when the the Hillsong, one of the Hillsong
NYC documentaries that came out,I don't remember which one, but
it was the one you were in. Yeah.
All of a sudden it turned into they're protecting systems of
white supremacy and all. And I'm like.
Yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't geared at us as much as it was
the bigger picture, but. But it was from a Hillsong, a
former Hillsong, New York person.
Yeah. That was saying this stuff.

(01:00:39):
And I'm like, wait a minute. Because the.
Because the critique in the evangelical circle was that you
guys were too little, too much and too, too progress.
Yeah. Like I always thought that was
cute. I always I was told that's a
beautiful sign of great leadership is when you frustrate
the same amount of people the same way with the same issue.
So it's like, OK, if if racism is an issue and all you are mad

(01:01:02):
and all you are mad, then I'm probably pretty close to being
right here. And I think that's a good way to
think about look around the issues in your life and go, you
know, who likes me, who doesn't can find out a lot about the the
things that you believe by who criticizes you.
And but to your original question, very close to getting
duped on some stuff for sure. Yeah, yeah.

(01:01:22):
Well, and, and here's the sad part, is like, man, racism an
issue, I would say it's always been an issue.
The human heart has always is ita systemic issue that's that's
corrupted America down to the bones?
I don't I don't know about that.I think that bad laws have bad
consequences. I think the war on drugs 94
crime bill, bad consequences definitely impact to my in laws.

(01:01:44):
You know, my mother, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law
in and out of jail because of some of those harsh on crimes
bills. And I've seen the impact of that
and my sister-in-law. So I yeah.
Is it the is it the most important like issue that we
need to all pause for? I don't I don't think so.
I think there's other stuff that, you know, that's really.
And so it's one of those like, man, I'm, I, I, I, I, I feel

(01:02:08):
conflicted about it in hindsight, if I'm honest.
You know, I'm and I'm, and I think that people being clear on
it now, because here's the, here's the unfortunate part now.
And I don't know how much you you tapped in, you're tapped
into this, but now there's an actual arm of the right that's
like actually overtly racist. Clearly racist, and they're
clear. And it's not.

(01:02:28):
No, they're not covertly. Racist we are.
Yeah. No, we're racist.
Yeah, we're racist. We're going to say to your face,
we're going to drop the N word. And then you have the mainstays
like a Tucker Carlson that people think, is this like
progress? Not progressive, but like a free
thinking person platforming, youknow, a Nick Foon says.
And it's like, man, this is getting dark really fast.

(01:02:48):
OK, Can I ask you something about platforming?
Sure, sure, sure. Never understood that word.
Yeah, because I see Tucker Carlson having a conversation
with the guy and you get to, I get to make my call about Nick
Fuentes, not Tucker Carlson. So I always think that's a very
victimy thing. Like how can you platform
somebody? Don't watch bro, Don't watch so.
So that's that's a great push back.

(01:03:10):
So this is how I would say, I would say I don't, I don't think
there's any issue. There's there's nothing wrong
with having people on that you disagree with if the entire
conversation is a softball conversation that sucks, that
sucks. And I watched that conversation
and I felt like I felt like I'm asking you harder questions and
you're asking me harder questions and this conversation

(01:03:30):
that's different. We just spent three hours
together. That's a good thing.
And and right. So I think that's The thing is
like you, you, you push me, you push back on some stuff I've
said, I push back on some stuff you said.
I think that that conversation was just the complete most
gentle kid glove That sounds weird version that I go man no,
he said some really wild stuff which.
Leads you to make the easy inclination.
You must agree, because this is like a this is like a

(01:03:52):
promotional thing. I got you, yes.
And even in this conversation, like we're able to nuance our
own stuff and you're able to say, man, yeah, kind of this
thing. Yeah, for sure.
I don't know about this. And yeah, there was none of that
in that conversation. There was no, hey, man, you, you
drop the N word pretty flippantly.
You've said like, you know, somewild stuff about Jews and Hitler
and stall. Yeah, like you.
So that's what I mean. So yeah, I don't.

(01:04:12):
I love conversations that have tension and conflict because I
think that's how we learn and that's how we grow.
I think why I resonate with you on some level is I, I would, if
I look back at that time and I wasn't conflicted, I would be
ashamed because it wasn't an easy thing to understand.
So the people who were so resolute, they always made me,
I'm like, what? What are you like, have you not

(01:04:33):
thought this through at all? Like you are clearly on this
side. You're clearly on that side.
Is it that clear? Like, so to me, I like sitting
in the seat of like, I mean, long, agonizing nights.
Like you're, you're brilliant, beautiful pastor who knows that
the wrestling he's had to do leading this church, right?
That is a lane that people will not understand.

(01:04:56):
And it's a heavy, beautiful partof the burden of being a pastor.
And I feel like on that one, I, I, I serve my time in that I
carried it with as much reverence as I could.
And it just was complicated. And I, we did our best.
We, we, we LED through it very humanly.
Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate, I appreciate
you saying that. And and I will say this, I and,

(01:05:17):
and again, I not to keep reiterating this, like I think
coming out of the situation I came out of, I've, I've grown to
appreciate what pastors do. And I understand that what I do
is different than what you were doing.
I recently got to shoot with Navy Seals and there's and
there's levels to it. I'm from Virginia Beach, VA
brother like there's. A guy like me that's like I'm

(01:05:40):
going to get my concealing carryand like what gun should I have?
You break up a bar fight with Navy Seals.
How's that? Hey guys, anybody want to go get
some fresh air? That's how.
So, so I say that to say like, Ithink there's levels to it.
And I think what with the, the pastors in my opinion, are the
Navy Seals, the missionaries arethe Navy Seals of the Kingdom.
Interesting. And and and and what I do is not

(01:06:01):
that. Well, let me say something about
what you do because I feel like the commentary, this is
fascinating to me. I'm not saying this is you, but
there is a case to be made that now it's a viable calling to not
be a you don't make the content you commentate on other people's
content. That to me is very interesting.

(01:06:24):
So now you don't have to do anything.
You don't have to play in the game.
You don't have to fight the fight.
Your whole job is to watch otherpeople do it.
And now you're known for commenting about their life.
That is something to be reckonedwith.
And, and, and there are people who do it well because they own
that. It's similar to where some of
the NBA players will push back on a analyst that's never

(01:06:45):
touched the court. There's some people I've seen
criticize me or criticize any pastor.
They have never in their life tasted or walked in those shoes.
Just say that before you give your head heavy-handed
criticism. It's, I mean, it's, it's, it's,
it's baffling to me. And I'm not saying that people
are doing the right or wrong things on the pastor side, but I

(01:07:07):
am saying there is something to like, I live my whole life as a
pastor. So when I speak to pastoral
journeys, it has a different weight.
A 30 year old TikTok guy who's got half a million people who's
going to make comments about pastors.
OK, man. Understand though, how how big a

(01:07:27):
step that is for you might mightbe worth a little bit of
reverence and a little bit of usbecause you don't know.
And I remember even during our journey of me and Laura learning
how to walk away from the commentary.
And that's not how I'm built, brother.
And it took a lot and it was smart and it was wise.
It was appropriate. It would not have been
appropriate for me to challenge all these people would have been
stupid. And I was tempted a lot early,

(01:07:48):
but I walked away because I realized the people who judge
you the harshest know you the least.
They don't know you. They know a construction of you.
They have their idea of you and that's what they're judging.
They don't know you. So I was able to hold that and
go, you know what? The people who are making docs
and they don't know us. They know what they think they
know. Because if you knew somebody, it

(01:08:08):
just makes it even even go back to the other issues, man, if
you, your wife is not white. So when she and you, when you
speak the things, it's very different than the beautiful
couple in Tulsa, OK. I was growing up there the whole
life and they're a white couple,white cool.
It doesn't mean right or wrong. Different weight.
So when you speak about it, I dolean in differently because men

(01:08:29):
you would know. So when it comes to pastoral
stuff, I think that this new wave of Tik tokers and
commentators just hold it with alittle bit of reverence because
you don't pastor. What do you mean by pastors?
Like what was that? What all pastors are mega?
What mega churches say some names say some names have some

(01:08:50):
guts. Put some names on it.
Quit talking because you can't. And that's why people use big
labels because that if we took people's ability and here's my
thing man, I it's you're good atthis anyway.
It's foundational principled thinking.
What do we know for sure is true?
Report on that. And if you know for sure it's
true, then cool, that's all you get to say.

(01:09:12):
But beyond that, now it's gossip.
And if we take that off the table, what will Christian
commentators have to talk about?But what they choose to do is
pretend that this is needed. Now, brother, it's gossip.
You don't know that it's true for sure.
Like my situation. What do you know for sure?
AB and C but you've spent 8 videos talking about my motive

(01:09:34):
and my heart. That's sin.
It's gossip. You're a fool, but yet you've
wrapped it in verses and now youthink this is acceptable.
I think that needs to be reckoned with and God will do it
it. It's not like it's a a big deal,
but I just see it a lot. I'm like man, you, that's how I
live my life. What do I know?
That is true about you for sure.That's what I'm going to talk

(01:09:55):
about. Otherwise man, I don't know.
Now I'm speculating. Now I'm trying to judge your
heart. That's wild.
So think about if all the Christian commentators only
spoke to what was absolutely true, they would be very less.
They they would struggle to keeptheir lights on it.
That's how they make their living, because they spend most
of their time talking about stuff that they don't know if

(01:10:16):
it's true or not. Yeah.
Is there is there any names you want to drop or any people?
Like I'm not, I buy new names. I would say it OK, I'm not on it
enough. I just know from what I've seen.
Like Premier League, TikTok or what platforms do you think
about? What comes to mind is TikTok.
I could, but I I've seen it everywhere.
I'm not on TikTok, so I, I can'tspeak to whoever you're speaking

(01:10:36):
about because I'm, when you're saying this, I'm curious like do
I know any of these people? I mean, I I saw a video early
on, like when I got to Tulsa, give you a perfect example.
What was absolutely true that meand my family moved to Tulsa.
That's all that anybody knew. But yet there were so many
people who did these things about Mike Todd is going to do

(01:10:57):
this with Carl and they're goingto team up and they're going to
do hours. That is pure speculative gossip
sin wrong. But that's how you're getting
your little things to add up andyou're making money off of this
and you think you're a warrior, you're a watchman, you're a
gossip. That's what you are.
Hey, me and Carl from the futureand we just wanted to clarify

(01:11:18):
one thing. We were having this conversation
offline and a lot of what Carl you were talking about was
specifically your interaction with the TikTok commentary
community, speaking with such certainty on faith matters and
pastors and that sort of stuff. And not necessarily Mike Winger

(01:11:39):
or Melissa Doddery or folks who make some people call like
discernment ministry, but folks that are doing stuff on the
latest cover up culture thing and stuff like that.
So I wanted to clarify that for people so they don't think
you're taking shots at anybody within the, you know, YouTube
sphere that that I would say is doing good work.
Yeah, I think we we did a reallygood job.

(01:11:59):
I think of qualifying a lot about how great some of the
opportunity is in that sphere todo the right thing, the right
way. And our conversation was about
people who maybe have don't havea lot of track record to speak
about things as though they're certain.
And we talked about the difference between what you know

(01:12:21):
is absolutely true. That's a beautiful thing to
speak from if you don't know if something's absolutely true.
It just demands a lot of the right spirit and the right
posture, and that was our heart.So I think some of the
ministries you named I'm not necessarily familiar with.
I'm really grateful for people who give commentary about things
that are there, whether it's Scripture, Bible interpretation,

(01:12:44):
hermeneutics, you name it. It's essential.
It's not just I like it. I actually think it's really
needed, especially in an age where there's a lot of church
confusion. So it's a great thing.
No one's ever regretted over clarifying, by the way.
So shout out to you for even having the the discernment to
want to do that. But you know, both of us have a
heart for truth and for things to get out the right way.

(01:13:05):
And that was the heart of our conversation.
So I love discernment ministries.
When they've done the right way,we need it.
It's a beautiful gift. It's desperately needed.
We were speaking to the oppositeside of that when it's just
people giving their opinions about things they don't know
about. And that's, that's dangerous and
it needs to be checked. Yeah, yeah, one of the things,
you know, even folks who made videos about me, I, I, I the way

(01:13:29):
I, I, I try to frame it in my brain is I, I think what they're
trying to do is be good Bereans,but without having all the
information and without going tothe, to the, to the scripture
and properly engaging with it. And so whether that's TikTok,
whether it's YouTube, I think that's the heart.
And I think a lot of times, moreoften than not do they cross the
line. But there are some people that
do it well. And I wanted to give them their

(01:13:50):
flowers. Yeah.
So one of the values that when Ispeak on anything, I try to just
speak on what's publicly verified.
Yep. So it's like if someone cause
'cause, 'cause I get that accusation, but it'll be about
like, hey, isn't, isn't like, here's an example, Forrest
Frank, Corey Osbury, Hey, isn't this kind of gossip?
It's like, no, no. No, that happened.
They're posting this and we're talking about the thing they're

(01:14:10):
posting on their social media. That's different than
pontificating. I had Tim Ross on right when you
went over to transformation and that was one of the things that
we were like, why are why are y'all mad that Carl's Carl's
working with Mike like this doesn't make any sense.
Like someone got a job. This is a good thing.
What are you guys upset about? You know, so that that that same

(01:14:31):
week I think that was announced,Tim Ross was here with me and we
had a four hour conversation. So I'm with you and I think this
is this is, this is what I think.
And, and maybe I'm wrong, I think a lot of these guys aren't
at local churches. They're probably not.
Yeah, I don't think they're, they're at local churches.
If they are, they're, they're churches, they're not known and
the churches they don't aren't connected at.
And so there's not a ton of people that can speak into these

(01:14:54):
things. And then So what will happen to
for someone like me, that's like, no, no, no guys, I, I want
to speak to people, not about people.
I'm not going to do this anymore. 20/20/23 I, I drew a
hard line in the sand interest. I'm not going to do this
anymore. Why?
Why did you do that? Well, I told you off offline.
Yeah, because I ended up at a healthy church 1 healthier

(01:15:15):
church 2 because I started meeting great pastors.
I started, I, I, you know, Greg Laurie took an interest in me
very early on and would repeatedly drive all the way
down here, sit in my little studio and seems.
Like a really nice man. Amazing dude, amazing dude.
And and not only take an interest in me, but one of my

(01:15:35):
first times preaching in years was at their young adults
ministry, you know, and so it's like, imagine when I was doing
the things you're talking about or, or getting really close to
that line of speaking on something that's not publicly
verified. And then a Greg Laurie goes,
Hey, can you come preach at our young adults group?
And just just believing and pouring into me.
So, so it was that I end up thenmeeting Pastor Chris Brown.

(01:15:59):
I watched one of our closest friends passed away.
He he my old studio. He lived in the room in the in
the in the master bedroom. His name is Tana Ross.
He got, got got leukemia, beat it.
And then post pandemic, it came back and he died Christmas,
November 2022. And I saw North Coast, the

(01:16:19):
biggest church with the biggest budget, with the biggest staff
and the way they walked through that with his family, with his
widow, with his, with the way they loved him.
And then Chris, Chris Brown cameand sat down with me, the
biggest pastor in the area. And so I started meeting pastors
more and more and more and more pastors.
And they were just like, bro, this is how much I make.
This is where I live. This is how I live.
I'm you may have this view, but I'm telling you this is not

(01:16:41):
reality. And so I just started having
more experiences than I looked at the data and I just said,
man, I I don't want to do this anymore.
I don't want to make videos about people when I could
hopefully move towards talking to people.
And by the way, I actually do think it's in the pastor in in
pastors best interest to talk two people like me or two people
who I agree objective, because Ithink what happens is they can

(01:17:03):
tell their story and contextualize it instead of it
being I agree, you know, ran through.
Now the feedback is well, Ruslan, you're a fence sitter.
You're a fence sitter because now you know, it'd be this on
this comment. You took it easy on Carl and
this and that. I don't.
I don't have. What do they want you to ask?
I don't know what? What do they want you to ask?
Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I.
Don't have answers for that. They just don't like me yeah.

(01:17:24):
And I always tell people just behonest about that.
Stop. Stop picking apart what because
you you cannot push back on healthy living and God redeeming
a family. You can't.
So if you just don't like a person, just be real.
Just say that I can live with that.
But did you ever feel like you got sucked into some of that
because I see a shift. But I know I I we talked about a

(01:17:45):
thumbnail you use one time that I go you're about clicks because
that's the only reason why you would ever put something like
that up there. I think it was something that
somebody else had used talking about me and it was a photo and
I went and you, you have shiftedfrom that a little bit.
But do you when you would use stuff like that, was the
motivation to get clicks or was it genuinely like what?

(01:18:09):
What's your thinking on stuff? Like that.
So I'll go through a timeline where I, I, I don't make our
thumbnails and we've changed ourthumbnails a lot and we've gone
hey man, hey man, Zach, you got to chill with these thumbnails.
If there's some sort of mean face on mine, but we do this so.
Mad so, so, so we've gone through a process of just like,

(01:18:30):
hey, we got to chill, we got to chill because these are real
people, right? Like these are real people.
And so yes, I think it's, I think it's about both.
And I think if, if so, so the idea was, and sometimes is, Hey,
what's going to disrupt people scrolling to get them to click
into the video? And, and then the, the, the, the

(01:18:52):
idea is, hey, once someone clicks into the video, let's try
and give a charitable view of that conversation.
So I don't remember what that video was about particularly,
but I want to say when you launched your podcast, I had
pretty much all positive things to say.
You might have I I'm just saying, I think it was the Rogan
thing. It was.
The Rogan. So yeah, Rogan, Rogan basically

(01:19:12):
had called, hey, anyone that looks like that good and is
walking around with a shirt off and with AD root showing he's
he's he's getting, he's slanginga bunch of you know what I mean,
so on and so forth. So it's like Rogan, you know,
kind of called it about a year before anything happened with
you on his podcast. Yeah.
And that photo is, is just something that always kind of
comes up and it gets people to click into it, you know?

(01:19:34):
Do you, do you, do you think Rogan was a was a prophetic?
No, I think that. Did you?
Well, first of all, did you actually watch that clip?
Did you hear Rogan say that whenI.
Tell you, I was listening. I love Joe Rogan.
I was listening to the pot, I love Bill Burr.
So imagine my horror when I'm like, wait, I mean I'm listen,
I'm like in real time going thatsucks so bad because that whole

(01:19:57):
photo was frustrating like it was, I mean.
What is the photo? Tell me about the photo.
Honest story bro. Is it me, Laura and a very well
known celebrity? We're in a very hot field and we
had a beautiful conversation, the three of us and I had my
shirt off because we were hooping.
We're and and I walked around the corner.

(01:20:20):
There was a the guy who took that photo was in a tree.
We were sworn by paparazzi. I get in the car of this person
with Laura in the back and I am so flustered.
I ran directly into a cement cylinder and wrecked his car.
And then we speed off. So that photo was just it, it's,
it's, it was horrible. And it, it was just like the

(01:20:41):
weirdest. Like that's, that's how we know
fame, Christian fame, that anxiety ridden paparazzi life of
not being able to breathe. It's, it's for the birds.
It's horrible. But that's what happens.
So we're on a it's a blazing hotday in LA.
We're in a park. I'm not walking around the
streets of LA with my pants falling down, bro.
It's not happening. But that photo got circulated

(01:21:04):
and what they were speaking to, I can't say he was wrong.
So it's like, it's not what happens.
Not my story. But he was like, yeah, it just.
But then when I saw it, it felt like friendly fire.
And I had to grow accustomed to that.
When I saw people using. I'm like, well, you know, it is

(01:21:25):
what it is. I if you don't want to be in
situations like that, don't do things like I did.
Real easy answer. What did you think when you
heard Rogan say? Were you just naturally
listening? To well, I, I thought that we
were going to hook up at some point.
We still, I, I, we know some, some people in that circle and I
was looking forward to getting on and ask him about exactly

(01:21:45):
about that. Like, why do you feel like that?
But hey, there's nothing you cando, man.
I just felt like this is really this is bad.
And I, and I think I told Hectorat the time where I said,
because he's told me he's like, man, Carl doesn't like that
thumbnail. And I was like I said, well,
well, I did. We I'm not the one who took the
the photo. Carl took the photo.
I. Didn't take the photo.

(01:22:06):
Well, you were the photo. Yeah, Yeah.
And I said, I said, I said, hey,when Carl comes on, tell me,
let's, let's let's get together,let's get on.
And I said, and then I said, I said, I'll make sure we don't
use any more thumbnails like that.
And so I don't, but. But again, I will say that when
the last, when you start your podcast, it was almost, I would
say 99% of the things I had to say.

(01:22:27):
We're all positive because I wasI really liked what you were
doing. I also don't title and package
the videos. That's not a cop out.
It's still on me. I got you, you know what I mean?
And that's still my fault, my responsibility.
But I think when we you have someone and all they're thinking
is click through rate and that'sthe world they're living in, it
is a degree of like, no, but this is a real human on the
other side of this. It's a real human.

(01:22:49):
He got a family and like he doesn't want that picture out
there. And that's what people think
about it. And so, yeah, I'll take that one
on the chin like that. That's not that's not cool.
You know, I mean when you thinking about a human that you
you want to believe the best about.
Yeah, and, and you and you weren't wrong either, because
that's the game and that's the that's the world.
You're you're humble at heart. So it's easy for you to, you

(01:23:10):
know, say that about something like that quickly.
But yeah, man, it's, it's a, it's funny because I, I gave
away my social media stuff and half the reason I did is because
I was so bad at, I would never let anything get posted because
it didn't have no context. And everybody was like, bro, you
can't, I mean, you can't post that because people will think
you can't know that thought needs eight other thoughts in

(01:23:31):
the moment. I let that go and gave it to my
guy Grant, who's unbelievable. You know, more people have been
getting helped because my hands are off of because if it was up
to me, nothing would ever go because it's like that could be
misconstrued. It needs 19 more sentences.
And I'm not wrong, but that's not the world we live in
anymore. And I had to accept that and go.
All right. That's just.
So that's been an interesting transition for me at 47 to go, I

(01:23:55):
guess, man, context doesn't matter anymore.
So we're just going to say things and we're just going to
fire shots, and that's the way it is.
Yeah, yeah. And and I will say how stuff
looks and then the click in the we we call it click bless.
So it's not click bait, it's click bless.
It's like interesting stop someone, make them click on the
video and then it's like net positive.
How can we find something positive to celebrate?

(01:24:15):
The pivot happened. The pivot happened in 2023 when
all that happened and we I just drew a hard line in the sand.
I said we are not, we are not making any more celebrity pastor
videos. I think there was a video, Mike
Todd was the last celebrity pastor video I did.
And it was the, it was the videoof their Easter thing.

(01:24:37):
And I said, man, I feel like at this point I don't know if this
is a symbiotic relationship. Like he does something, we
react, everyone gets clicks and,and it just doesn't.
And I said like, this is this iswhat they, this is what they
are. I'm not going to react to it.
And as the last like video I made that was.
Critical Have you ever? Why don't you come with me?
I've been with you. Easter thing that TC does.

(01:24:59):
I would love to do that. So I've reached out to Mike
through his brother for years. So be so this is the thing that
people don't know is I usually end up reaching out before I
speak on anybody. And I've been reaching out to
Mike over DMS before I ever madea video on him.
And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why offline.
There was a video I saw that that inspired my book, but I'll,
I'll tell you offline. So I've been reaching out to him

(01:25:20):
and I know his brother. Me and his brother follow each
other. And Jason, I think the second
one, the one that the the I the spit and I thing happened to
Brentham. Yeah.
Brentham. Yeah.
So I've I've been trying to reach out through him and his
old social media guy Roland or Roland.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So I've, I've reached out through him and so it's like,
hey, let's, let's talk because Iactually think this can
contextualize you better. But then I also think there's

(01:25:41):
some things that people don't understand.
And I think what Mike is also like, how much of this is
cultural? Like, how much of this is
missing the cultural context of what's happening in Tulsa in
the. Transformational like I've been
sitting in that church for almost three years and I just I
absolutely love Mike. I I've been around a long time
and I realize because I again, Iwas out of the game for a

(01:26:05):
significant portion of social medias quick trigger change.
And so to come back in, that's just a part of the the world now
you're going to have people thatthey're not interested in what
you're saying they're not interested in.
Like I remember like Mike preached a beautiful message
straight from scripture and thenbreaks into an illustration and
you know, the comment be like, why didn't this guy preach from

(01:26:26):
the word? He just read the Scripture and
he this is called expounding. It's called a visual
illustration. Like, and you realize there's
that there's a portion of the Christian community that
intellectually might be struggling and that's part of
our faith. There is a lane in Christianity
where people don't have to learnhow to think logically or
critically, and it's damaging. And I think that the new wave of

(01:26:49):
what God is doing is allowing people to dig a little bit
deeper then hang out in these weird circles where you don't
know how to think for yourself like that.
So to me, that's a symptom of culture.
But Mike's is a perfect example of of a situation that gets
skewered because of distance andpeople aren't interested in the
real crux of it the the content of it.

(01:27:10):
Yeah, yeah. So that was the last one I made
that and I think the only I toldyou we did the mega church
shenanigans where we could only say nice things.
I did do the video of him in thewith the, with the bell bottom
pants and the the yellow jacket.And that was like, hey, that's a
really beautiful color on him. Like that's a complements of
skin tone. And that was genuinely trying to

(01:27:31):
be positive. And while he was getting dragged
for it and I was just like, hey,that's a cool angle like, but
it's it's also tongue in cheek. I told you about that.
You know what I mean? And that was that that was about
whenever that went viral. Yeah.
So that was the last thing that like we touched that because I,
I genuinely think I think God uses flawed people and I think
perfection is the enemy of progress.

(01:27:51):
And I think God, I know God is using Mike Todd and I know God
is using transformation church. And if I don't necessarily like
it or agree or understand it all, that's not on me to to be
the judge, jury and and and executioner on those that shows.
Depth, though, to be able to saythat's not for me and move on
with grace, that's called logical depth.

(01:28:13):
To be able to have to pick something apart and make it
small so you feel big is pseudo spirituality.
Yeah. And it's rampant.
Yeah. It's like preference.
Yeah. You don't like the level of loud
that this music is? It doesn't make it less holy,
man. Your soft acoustic guitar
doesn't reach heaven faster thanthat amp It doesn't.

(01:28:36):
You like it more? Cool man.
We do not have to turn this intoa spiritual battle.
It makes us all look bad. Stop.
It yeah, here's here's an example.
I'm I'm watching the video of you at whatever conference that
was, right. And I'm watching it and I'm
sitting here and I'm listening to it and, and at first it's
bugging me because Mike keeps saying going, when you go

(01:28:58):
through the fire, who's going tobe with you and the fire and the
fire and the fire, the fire, thefire.
And I'm sitting here like, why is he talking about what
happened in these kind of ambiguous terms?
Right? And then I'm getting frustrated
at him. And then you come on and you go
and, and, and and it, it rocked me because you go, it was my sin
and I take responsibility and you come up with this hyper

(01:29:19):
responsibility. You called it for what it is.
You call the sin. And then it clicks to me.
Oh, the the fire is the theme ofthe conference.
Yeah, so I'm sitting here being critical of this dude for using
language. Wow.
That's actually the theme of the.
Theme of the session. And I'm sitting here like, you
know, I mean, and that's why I'mlike, oh, man, OK, brother.
That's so it's a very humble admission and you're not alone

(01:29:39):
in that. I asked my kids and I don't know
if you've seen this, but I, I'venever understood the comment
culture because I'm older. We don't do that, but I guess we
do now. And I, all my kids are on the
couch and they would look at Insta before the photo or
TikTok. They go to comments, comments,
comments. I said, hey, everybody, stop.
What's with that? Well, which ones?
Everybody's saying, but you haven't even seen the thing yet.

(01:30:02):
There's something ingrained in people now where you want to see
what the comments are. You're now going to build a view
off of what that comment flow is.
Well, not everybody likes this, so that must mean what?
That to me is a problem and it'sI do see it, the opportunity to
change it. So beautiful.
I just tell people all the time,make up your own calls, man.
Like I to look at comments and gain faith or feel shame are

(01:30:28):
equally problematic. Yeah, yeah, and people can go
viral off of a comment and buildan audience.
Off of a comment by just. Leaving a a punchy zinger of a
comment, so that's super. And I will laugh with the best
of them because some comments are very funny, like me and
Laura are that old couple and our kids will send us memes
thinking that they're hurting us.

(01:30:49):
We're like no, This Is Us. Like old couples passing.
That's what me and Laura do and we love it.
So I'm all for look at these comments at the appropriate
things that are funny in my opinion.
Yeah. And and I will say, I think
commentary it just like analystsin the NBA is often, hey, I'm
trying to process this in your trusted voice.

(01:31:11):
Help me think through this thing, right.
And when something is newsworthy, it becomes something
that people want to process someone, something with.
And so when you are the news andpeople are then commenting, it's
not that they're, I think, necessary.
At least that's not never been my heart.
It's that the audience is tryingto process.
How do I think about this? I don't know how to think.

(01:31:31):
About And that's fair and it's needed and that that can be
beautiful. Yeah.
So in that Mike Todd transformation, the conference
going through the fire, I sent it to you right away and I was
like, man, this the introductionhad me once I once I clicked
that, Oh, this is the thing. Then you started talking and I
just was like, man, what, what in it?
And I honestly teared up like I was like, man, how, how awesome
is that? Now you kind of alluded to

(01:31:53):
feeling abandoned by some of your crew, right.
And we don't got to go and and specifically talk about people,
but everybody knows who you who you guys were.
You know, Judah Chad and Rich Wilkerson knows you guys were
like, and and Chris Dorsa was kind of in your guys orbit a bit
too. And so unpack that for me of
like, what was that like losing those people and at the same
time gaining a friend like Mike and gaining new friends through

(01:32:16):
this process. Who is tricky?
Tricky tricky. Rich was like a, a best friend
little brother forever. My kids have a funny memory in
New York. He was there over so much where
one time Charlie comes into our our room, he's on a blow up
mattress and Charlie goes, Rich,do you have a home?

(01:32:37):
So I think when I, you know, made the decisions that caused
the breach, it definitely rattled people on different
levels in different ways. And you know, Judah and I were
best friends for a huge portion of my adult life.
And when you go through relational break, you got 2
choices. You can focus on what caused it.

(01:32:58):
We can focus on the response, the response of others to your
action. I only find one of those to be
fruitful. And so their journey has been
theirs and I respect it. I did what what's really helped
me is stop trying to understand it.
I think that's a misnomer when you go through heartbreak.
And that's what it was for me. It was like a grieving, like, I

(01:33:19):
really, really love my friends. And to lose guys when you're in
a tough spot with stings extra hard.
If you can focus on your role inthe story, you're free.
It's so tempting and even warranted sometimes to have a
human feeling, and I had to havethose moments.
There were some chapters there where I just had to not
therapize it and just talk and be like the ABC and D and get

(01:33:44):
that stuff out and then reframe it into the correct way that I
want to live, which is what's myrole.
So I love, I love, I love Judah a lot, love Rich a lot.
I'm glad, proud to see what they're doing and they're on
their own journey, you know, and, and life is long, but I
like, you know, Judah gave Lauraand I so much support.

(01:34:05):
We would not have been able to start New York the way we did
with the faith. We did without Judah and Chelsea
Rich, you know, he and I, we didlike trench ministry forever.
Like I, you know, young adult ministry back before anybody had
lights on them. You know, we just have great
memories. And so that's cool.
You know, it's OK. Not everything is for forever.
And you know, it's still, it's always going to be near and dear

(01:34:28):
to my heart because when you lose people, I didn't lose them.
I lost that type of relationship.
But like I told you before, you know, I'm not the same guy I was
when all that stuff went down orthe years preceding.
And that's the gamble all of us take with friendships.
Like if you pull out of a friendship, hey, there's a
chance that someone could get through a better and you're

(01:34:49):
going to miss out on that chancethat they don't.
But it just depends on the way you hold it.
So I respect everybody's right to process my actions.
And that's, that's, that's, that's the only way that you can
survive that kind of heartbreak.Yeah, it it, it sounds like, but
just even in hearing you, you say this, you say these things
with a weight, you say these things like you're great.

(01:35:09):
I can't lie. I'm not going to be like, oh,
it's nothing like, no, I care about my friends.
I cared about them deeply. Yeah, yeah.
Do you feel like one day those relationships will be not
necessarily restored to what they were, but to be in a place
where there's open communicationand you guys are are are cordial
and friendly? Yeah, Yeah, I do.
I do. I mean, life is so long and in

(01:35:32):
the more you, I think if you getolder in a healthy way, you can
let stuff go and you can look atwhat's new.
And I'm always up for that. Like I again, if you are
conscious of your role in a relational break, it shouldn't
be a hard story. Like at the end of the day, why
did our relationship breakdown? My actions did that and I can

(01:35:52):
stay right there and just work on that and and that's what God
blesses. So yeah, I would not be
surprised if there's another chapter that who knows?
I don't even I just worry about what's in front of me.
So grateful for the and that's what we talked about.
A stranger came up to me at the gym and they said, and we
laughed about this off air abouthow the funny statements that
I've been given, the words from people.
But this guy was like, hey man, I'm sorry.

(01:36:14):
I said sorry for what? For the way the church treated
you. I said, I appreciate you.
I know what you mean. Let me just clarify this.
The church didn't treat me bad. A couple situations were hard to
deal with, but the church is lovely.
I could name 10 pastors right now that helped me get to a
rehab that I would not have beenable to get to that nobody
knows. They never asked for fanfare.

(01:36:35):
I've barely been able to thank them.
And that's the real church. That's what that's what God's
doing. And for every pastor that lands,
I am not the the norm. The norm is the pastor that does

(01:36:58):
not make choices that damage hisfamily, damages pulpit, bring
harm to the name. God is restoring it.
We'll always restore it. But for every pastor that ends
up on a documentary because he failed, there's 1000 that do it
right every single day. That's the truth.

(01:37:19):
That's not as sexy. That's not going to get the you
know, we're not you're not goingto have this cool shepherd of a
church's pastor for 50 years anddone his job like that's the
world we live in. But people need to know that's
the truth. Don't buy this hype that all
churches are this and all Nah, Nah, Nah.
The the local church is still tome, one of the most powerful
conduits of who Jesus is that we're ever going to have on this

(01:37:43):
earth. And that's the truth.
So, yeah, say that with my with reverence, because I know for as
much ground as we took as a church and we did, that was a
significant chunk of trust that that fell with me.
And I'm thankful that God has restored that for people.

(01:38:05):
And anybody that has, you know, been hurt by my actions, I let
down. I always say, hey, I understand
and I'm sorry. And it's a beautiful opportunity
for you to rethink about this faith, maybe in this next
chapter. No man or woman can have as much
weight as I did to the point where it might throw you off
your faith. Like, what might that
relationship with God look like?And so, yeah, man, it's, it will

(01:38:27):
always matter to me. I'm never going to get over
that. I don't want to get over that.
I'm going to carry it with me with reverence and and God will
keep using it. Hey, me and Carl from the future
and we just wanted to clarify one thing.
I think people have compared youto other folks that have gone
through similar things and a thing that I caught wind of and
you don't have to speak into this if you don't want to, but I
had caught wind of that. You did make a pretty big effort

(01:38:50):
to go and attempt to reconcile with everyone that worked with
you, worked for you and, and, and work towards that.
I, I know personally know multiple people that said, yeah,
Carl's reached out and you know,we've, we've, we've hashed it
out. Some people may still not like
where that you guys and relationally, but you did make
an effort and have made an effort where as some of the
other folks that got caught up there isn't always that

(01:39:11):
repentful heart. I don't know if you want to
speak into that with any other details, but I do think that's
very distinctive. Yeah, I appreciate you saying
that. I think that I've done my best
to make amends where I can. I, I, I only control my side of
that. And when you have hurt people on
a mass scale, which was my situation, I have to handle
those consequences with extreme care.

(01:39:32):
And you know, when you go through a rehab type A, A, the
way they hold a men's is when you can't personally apologize
to somebody. You live a life of a men's and
it's this beautiful way to hold it because I can't go to we had
a we had a platform that reachedmillions and millions of people.
I can't personally go up to every person that trusted me and
I broke that trust and say I'm sorry when I can, I do.

(01:39:56):
And then for those that I can't,the only thing left for me to do
is live a life worthy of the call and in hopes that God can
use that to bring some peace to people.
So I I feel like that's my responsibility and I I love it
and I own it and it's a way to redeem things when it can and
and everybody how people receivethat amends.
That's not my business. It's my job to at least come to

(01:40:17):
the table the best I can and letpeople do it.
That what they will. Would you say the hardest stuff
that that that of the arrows that were thrown at you and shot
at you were from the react the the way the Christian churches
reacted, the way friends reactedor the way non Christian friends
reacted? The churches didn't surprise me
because that's our pattern. I was a part of that pattern.

(01:40:38):
A couple people that fell duringmy time and I thought we should
do more, but I was like, I guesswe just don't.
I hope those guys make it so. It didn't shock me that, you
know, the pattern continued withme, I think.
And the rest is all like I said before, like when when you go

(01:40:59):
and you see people that don't know you just taking shots like
one night before I got off social media, I just, there's
this beautiful post my wife put up and there's a comment on
there. So many cheaters will always
cheat. You're a fool.
This man's AB and C. And I clicked on it and I looked
at the photo. I was like, this isn't a fair

(01:41:22):
fight. Like for me to comment back to
this person, they're doing the best they can.
They what am I going to? What am I going to change in
this moment? Like, what kind of man am I
going to be if I'm going to react to people that are, I put
some food on the table that I don't love.
They're seeing it. And it's like, you got to learn
how to live with it. Like I, I, I tell this brother

(01:41:44):
all the time to guys like don't,don't hate the game you chose to
be a part of. You cannot step up into a front
line of ministry and be sensitive.
Doesn't make any sense. This comes with the territory.
So live your life, stand on yourvirtues, proclaim those values
and understand if you're going to, if you're going to try to

(01:42:05):
change the world, it's going to come with some heat, yeah.
Yeah, one of the things that's refreshing is that in in hearing
you, hearing your podcast, hearing your heart, the
conversation around like what iswhat disqualified and if someone
disqualified permanently and if someone goes back in the
ministry and so on and so forth.And I've seen a lot of folks
that walk through similar thingsand they're running back to the

(01:42:27):
pulpit the moment they can. I've seen folks, I mean, there's
so really dark stuff you know, of, of folks that have been.
Diplomatically, said my brother.Yeah, of of like stuff that
involved multiple women in like,really, I'm not going to name
names here, but people know whatI'm talking about.
Of of of then family members coming out and say no, that
brother needs to be restored. God said it's OK.

(01:42:48):
And this is like, you know, clear clergy abuse, younger
women, older dudes, massive platforms.
You, you haven't ran to the pulpit.
You, you, you seem to be very sober.
How do you process that, that specific aspect of like
disqualification? And what does it mean to be
disqualified? And you know, I, I've made some
pretty bold statements, like I've said, like, hey, I could

(01:43:09):
probably never attend the Churchof a pastor that was in
ministry, got divorced and kept preaching.
Why? Because I think if you can't
lead your household well, I don't know if you can lead the
church well. What is lead your household well
mean to you? Thriving marriage, thriving
family, so on and so. Stuff can go on in a pastor's
life where his family isn't thriving.

(01:43:30):
Let's just say his teenager goesthrough something.
What do we? Do I think we pray for that
pastor? And we, we, we, we hope that
they grow and restore and all that sort of things.
Even though his family is not thriving.
Well, let me rephrase that. So.
So that's fair because I'm not saying thriving as in everyone's
always hunky Dory and everything's always perfect.

(01:43:50):
By thriving, I mean you have a functional, stable marriage.
There is an adultery. There isn't, you know, a
dysfunctional household and you're and you're, you're
married, you're married, you're loving each other.
You're doing well. OK.
Yeah, I'm not splitting hairs there.
I just think that gets murky quick in that.
And I agree with you pretty muchhere.

(01:44:10):
I I just think there's a moment there when people talk about the
qualifications of of an elder and I say, yeah, I agree with
it. And do you understand if we
start breaking that down, what that could look like?
So this guy's disqualified because the Bible says this
isn't that cool? So let's go to the household.
Let's get real clear here. Running a godly household,

(01:44:33):
what's the limit here? Well, right.
Right. Then because of your
relationship, you're going to make conditions for.
Everybody does this. We just don't admit it.
So it's like, my pastor's legit.Really.
Well, he's got a he's got a son that's an alcoholic and he
professes to be a different sexuality.
Yeah. But that's just them going
through a trial. OK, cool.
Because according to your definition about this other

(01:44:54):
pastor, he's disqualified. So how are we doing this?
Right. So I always challenge people to
really, really sit in that. But as far as it pertains to me,
the Bible is really clear about what qualify somebody to be a
minister. I think it's appropriate when
you've gone through what I've gone through to to take a lot of
time. And it it was a it was a big

(01:45:15):
deal. It is a big deal.
And I didn't have a a small church with a small impact that
I think one of the ways that I can make amends, you know, is to
continue to live my life. And I have no ministry
aspirations right now. I don't have any plans to do
that. Who knows what the future could
hold, But to me it's AI think God, oh, God anoints who?

(01:45:36):
Who anoints if you have in your life the ability to redeem some
things to get healthy again? Yeah, I think who decides who's
qualified as who listens to the preacher?
That's who's going to decide andpeople have to live with that.
So I often say like this guy shouldn't be doing what?
How does that impact you? Here's a here's a good question
in response to that, brother. Like when someone says, Carl,

(01:45:57):
you are you are you disqualifiedor qualified?
I said, can you just let me knowwhat the impact on your life is
when you hear the result? What's the impact?
None, none. But you're really passionate
about asking the question. Why might that be?
What else might you be asking? So that's my one of my favorite
quick triggers is to ask somebody, what impact is this
answer going to have on you? Carl, you qualify and I'm like,

(01:46:19):
OK, so to answer your question, the Bible's very clear about
qualification, how someone gets put back in the ministry.
I think that's a conversation for each church to have
individually and it's a decisionfor each congregant to decide
whether they want to be a part of that.
But that's going to come down tosome wise counsel.
But for me, but I'm I'm so excited about my life and I told

(01:46:42):
you about what I'm most excited about, you know, off I just, I
love what God's doing and there's life is big ministry is,
is a lane a vital one? It's important.
But guess what? There's a lot of lanes out here.
And you know, I'm, we're, we're just being grateful to be alive,
grateful to have a family, us together.
And I love the church, so we'll figure it out.
Yeah, Yeah. I think that's a good question.

(01:47:04):
I mean a good answer. I think the the line for me,
that line of divorce and ministry, I'm not saying someone
that I got you was not a Christian or a Christian at 20
in ministry gets divorced and itcomes back and plants a church
at 40. I'm not saying that that's the
line for me, though. I've had folks, pastors that
have gone through a public divorce on the channel and I

(01:47:26):
said, man, I don't know if I cango to your church.
I don't if I could be a member of church, but I think I could
still use you. But you couldn't go because he
got a divorce. And you're like, that moment
there gives you the impression that him moving forward with his
new marriage, whatever it it makes it, you're unable to be
led by him. Yeah, if I'm if I'm being honest
or they're still single. Like for me, it's one of those

(01:47:48):
things. Now, again, I'm not saying that
God can't. Use sure, but your preference is
to be and I think it's beautifuland I think that's wrong or
right. I think it's it's your agency to
be able to go. For me personally, do I want to
sit under the teaching of a guy who's on marriage #3 I don't
know. I'd have to really weigh that
up. Yeah, yeah.

(01:48:11):
How have you processed everything that happened to
Hillsong after the fact? Because Hillsong NYC happens and
that was obviously devastating and you walked through it and
you got help and you, you treatment and rehab and all
that. You did all the things, but then
there's this other whole other aspect where there was a

(01:48:32):
restructuring and Brian Houston and he sits down and all that,
all that kind of stuff. And so it goes.
The comments I kept seeing when your situation happened and
again, comments, right? But it was like people that were
like, hey, like, you have no idea what what's really going on
because of this, this. And then sure enough, stuff
starts coming out and now he's sitting down and I think he's
starting a new church and all that sort of stuff.

(01:48:53):
So I know it's hard for you because that was your pastor,
but have you processed that now you walk through your thing and
that was devastating. But then it was like, oh wait,
no, there's way more here. Yeah, I think when you heal and
you do the work, you're able to remember it all, not just the
hard things. So often what trauma will do and
pain will do is get you to remember facts, but the facts

(01:49:16):
that aren't helpful. So the healthier you get, the
more you're. So with Brian Houston, honestly,
I'm able to sit in some really helpful facts, which is I love
that man. He was extremely gracious and
kind. He's a phenomenal church leader,
believed in me, gave me room to run, supported me, supported my

(01:49:36):
wife, love my family, had and has his own issues.
That's for him and God to deal with.
We all have to pay the I have. I've had to pay the consequences
for my decisions. He has to do the same.
I don't really get into anythingelse because it doesn't do me
any good so I'm able to sit. The last chapter was
horrifically bad. Broke my heart.

(01:49:59):
In terms of what you guys would?Me and Brian, Yeah.
Because I was my my guy. It's like my pastor.
It was awful, but again, my rolein the story was what?
OK. And does it make his response to
it right or wrong? I think there's a beautiful way
to hold heartache like that. And to me, you put it in the
hands of God. You just say what's best, what's

(01:50:19):
most resourceful for my life right now to keep going back to
this well, that brings pain. Or to come over here and dig
this new one. And that includes my memories of
Brian, the good, the bad, the human.
He's a human leader. And that's how I hold it.
Like, I'll let other people commentate on what's going on
with him or what their reactionswere.
I think it was sad. It was really sad.

(01:50:40):
I felt responsible for a lot of the initial impact and what that
did. But I wasn't the 'cause I was AI
was a domino in a bigger play and that's just the truth.
So. Yeah, we're talking a little bit
about like the idea of institutional church, mega
church, celebrity pastors or pastors who are celebrities or
whatever you want to call it, right?

(01:51:01):
What as your views shifted on some of that stuff in terms of
these massive brands that get built out and you know, some of
the some of the, yeah, actual abuse that can happen in these
situations. How is your view of of your
stream or the stream of Christianity that you came out
of the evangelical Nandanam, charismatic leaning, big

(01:51:22):
personality, charismatic leaders, great music, great
presentation type of church. Have your views have changed on
that? Have they been refined, changed?
OK, tell me how they changed. Changed in that I let me think
this through. Good question.
I haven't really thought about it in this regard because I've

(01:51:44):
been on the other side. I I think some of the criticism
is funny to me. I think it's like old school,
junior high insecure people talking about the cool kids.
Sometimes That's what that's what it sounds like.
It's like I want to go to a small church.
Let me just tell you something about growing a church.
When guys, any pastor says that,I respectfully push back it like
we'll, our church is always going to be like this often.

(01:52:05):
Here's what happens and I'll saythis real slowly.
Most pastors start out with a big vision.
They can't do it. So they change their theology to
now suit what their fruit is andtry to act like that's how it
we're never going to be like that mega church brother, you
can't grow your church past whatit is.
Be OK with that. Don't try to put it theology on
this. Don't try to knock every church.
The only reason why they're growing is because what what you

(01:52:30):
rather than glean from what theymight be doing right.
You're so small that you're going to pretend and start
making up reasons for why their success is not legit.
That is the weakest, smallest view of a leader I've ever seen
in my life. It happens all the time.
Like we're never going to be like that.
Church brother, you're in no danger of ever growing.
What if you just worried about that?

(01:52:50):
And what's your inference? How big is too big?
Let's talk about it. And people don't like these
conversations because it gets really cloudy quickly because
it's like I go to a small churchwill Heaven forbid God would
move in your small church because then you'd have to
leave, Heaven forbid. So you better watch what you're
praying because I like my church.
I know everybody know. I saw one whole freaking thing,

(01:53:10):
bro. This is like me, my therapy for
commentators. This guy was like, if you, if
you go to a church and your pastor doesn't know your name,
go to a new church. My pastor knows my name.
I said, brother, do you understand what you're not
saying? So let me get this straight.
If your pastor doesn't know yourname, what kind of life are you

(01:53:30):
living where that is needed? Is it awesome if your pastor
knows your name? Sure, awesome.
But as if that is like the linchpin move for how to decide.
Like I go to a real church, my pastor knows my name.
Cool man. I go to a church and we had
revival there. There's 5000 people there that

(01:53:51):
weren't there last month. So I don't know if I'm going to
see my pastor. We're wrong really.
So I just think people need to again, it comes back to so it
comes back to IQ, logical, critical thinking, digging
beyond what someone has told youmega churches are bad.
Can we please define what a megachurch is?
I'm so sick of this word mega church.

(01:54:11):
There's about 5 churches that are really big and huge and
incredible. Mega churches What over a
certain amount? I don't even know the term.
2000. OK, over 2000.
So if it's it 1500, we're still,you know, we're still on a first
name. I don't, I just don't.
I don't buy any of it, man. I feel like, imagine the Kingdom
of God that has churches that are huge and loud and epic and

(01:54:33):
people get saved and they love it.
And then also churches that are small and they're content and
they're beautiful and they're reverent and people who resonate
with that love it. And everybody kind of works
together. We're reaching everybody.
Why is this a hard concept? Because it takes humility for
people to think like that. So much more fun.
Like, no, no, we can't have, we can't have Elevation Worship.

(01:54:54):
The songs just sound too good. Oh, we're starting to criticize
because the songs sound too good.
Sound like the sound like the world.
What do you mean sound like the world?
That beat, that beat sounds what?
Who do you think created music? Who do you think created the
chemicals in your brain to be able to form your hands to be

(01:55:15):
able to do like what are we talking about?
So some of that stuff, you're getting me excited here.
I just I just feel like there's got to be there's got to be a
better day coming, man, where westop, we move past this
ridiculous age of my church is better than your church.
Would you shut up? How many funerals have you been
to that's I do feel like sometimes when people criticize

(01:55:41):
small level things, they have never been around big level
problems. And you lose a couple people to
some overdoses and you lose a couple people in the in the
middle of the night and you see some people tragically go and
you see people with battling with suicidal thoughts, life and
death. Do you think I care about what

(01:56:02):
genes this pastor has on? I'm trying to get somebody to
the gospel right? If that is the essence of the
spirit of a Christian in this day and age, we'll win.
But my guys are a bigger fish tofry.
Like, why do you have so much time to parse through church
preference? Let's go on to bigger and better
things, man. Let's go try to, let's try to
try to show some people a different version of the Jesus

(01:56:22):
that they apparently do not know.
Because there's some, there's some, there's some wrong things
being put out there that we can make right.
Yeah, yeah, no, I, I, I think mythought on this goes a lot of
times it's the biggest bad fallacy.
So when something gets big, therefore it's bad.
And it's not much deeper than that, right?
OK, what do we do? What do we do?
What do we what do we do when itgrows?

(01:56:43):
Yeah, well, so, so there lies the the the question is like, if
if God breathes on something andit grows, what do you do?
So one of the funny things aboutwhat you're saying right now is
I went and heard Rick Warren at a young leaders thing in like
2013, 2014. And he goes in and he sits down.
He goes, I'm not going to tell you guys how to grow a big

(01:57:05):
ministry because that's easy. He said, you want to grow a big
ministry. He says, I memorized every
single person's name at my church.
And so they got to about 2000 people.
Wow, right, which we just you said the name thing.
But The funny thing is like that's actually the blueprint to
get to a certain point. According to the guy, according
to the seeker friendly model, the guy of the purpose driven

(01:57:25):
church, right. And so he goes on this whole
thing about lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh.
I'm going to teach you guys how to finish.
Well, I want you to finish well.So he goes he's.
So it's so interesting because Ithink that the question isn't is
what size is too big? I think the question is, hey,
can we shepherd and love and disciple people, get them into
communities? And that could that could happen
at our church has doubled in thelast year, right.

(01:57:46):
We have whoa, whoa, yeah. Crazy.
Very careful. Yeah.
We went. Next thing you know, your
pastor's a celeb. Yeah, we went from 700 this
time. Last unacceptable.
Don't even. Fit to to 1500.
Not legit. Yeah, if.
It was legit. It would be shrinking.
Yeah. Because you're not, obviously.
You're not preaching the real gospel because if you were,
people would be running from that because that's the biblical
precedent. When you talk about the good

(01:58:07):
news is people hate you. Yeah, my bad.
That's not real. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, so, so the question then becomes, I think the question is
this. It's not big or small.
It's how big can you grow the church while having people
anchored and discipled and connected, Right.
And that's the that's the trickypart.
And so like at our church, man, we are just having a
conversation with a buddy of mine named Buzz.
And he's like, man, there's all these guys showing up, but

(01:58:29):
there's like 50 of us that are discipling everybody.
Like we need more workers. We need more workers to step.
In I feel like Jesus spoke to that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the harvest isplentiful, but the workers are.
Here's my. Question though, brother.
So when people say that like I'min this small church and I'm in
my community and we're being discipled, are you?
Are you? Are you?
Because no one has joined your small little group?

(01:58:51):
Nobody. So I would also push back there
and go, well, it isn't a fundamental part of this thing
that we believe an open door forother people to see God's
goodness through your life and want to be a part of that.
So I I don't think everything has to be big.
I just really have a pushback issue with people who are

(01:59:12):
pretending that small is holy. Small is fantastic.
If that is your calling, cool. But stop making it like we're
right. They're wrong because they're
big. Let's work on systems in the
bigger church. I've been a part of that.
It's very difficult to do, very hard know when he sets out like
we, we opened our doors to thousands of people.
We grew by thousands, thousands,thousands, dozens of leaders to

(01:59:38):
hundreds of leaders still behindthe 8 ball.
We did our best. There's room to grow when it
comes to discipling people and building community.
What was what was the peak you guys were at when at when I
don't. Even know I mean it'd be over.
How many how many times are you preaching on a weekend?
I mean, it depends on the size of the venue.
So early on, 767 services every six or seven services on Sunday.

(02:00:01):
And then we went to a bigger venue.
So there's 4 + 2 in Jersey, plusone in.
Boston We were in person everywhere.
No, we would. I would go back and forth
sometimes or we would stream it.So he was different.
Yeah. Yeah.
This is, it's very hard, man. It's just difficult to do.
So that's the backside of revival.
People do not understand or talkabout like most of the churches
that you see. And I guess there might be some

(02:00:22):
churches that are weird and theydo this stuff mechanically and
they're doing cheesy, corny things to like, grow.
I don't know that life, Our church grew because it was hand
to hand combat. My life has changed.
Yours can too. Let's go.
Like, very easy. And.
And Jesus is still the most attractive, beautiful, dynamic
message the world will ever have.
I still believe that if you let the gospel do the talking,

(02:00:46):
people will. People will want to hear about
it. I find them.
So I don't care if your church is small or large.
I just don't think we need to get our identities wrapped up in
the sizes of our churches. Like we need some that are
small. We need someone that are big for
different reasons. Why can't that be OK?
Yeah, no, I'm with you. I mean, we, you know how I feel
about other mass dogmatic prescriptions for churches.

(02:01:07):
We talked about offline. I don't, we don't need to get
into those now. So I'm, I'm with you.
I don't think there there is A1 size fits all model for church.
I this is my position. I keep and I say this when the
pulpit and I say this for my, for my YouTube channel.
I say this when I'm preaching atLiberty University.
I think revival isn't going to happen offer screens.
I don't think it's gonna happen in arenas and stadiums.

(02:01:28):
Yeah. I don't think it's gonna happen
at a big church. I think revival happens in our
living rooms and in our small groups.
Yeah. And doing life with people.
And I think big churches can do that very well.
And I think small churches and Ithink house churches and I think
churches overseas and underground churches and
churches in Pakistan can do thatvery well.
And I think it's the day-to-day life.
Ephesians, you know the verse, right?

(02:01:48):
He called them to be possible speechless pastors to to equip
the people or the Saints for thework of the ministry, right.
So in any context, I think the folks who are leading the church
are really just here to equip the people to do the work of the
ministry. I agree and that that happens on
any size and I think that's the that's the beautiful challenge
of all like me and Laura for instance, if we were going to go

(02:02:10):
to church on Sunday outside of TC.
I'm looking for I want to be able to sit down.
I want to hear a really clear message about Jesus.
I don't care too much about the worship we're coming from the
best worship of all time in arguable I'm kidding.
Of course, I love Hillsong Worship.
I love what we were able to create.
I love we were a part of, but I don't care about worship.

(02:02:33):
I want the worship to be kind, wanted to be clear.
I want the message. I don't care about anything
else. But we're 47.
There's different stages in yourlife where like my daughter,
though they're not going to be attracted to the same place
Laura and I are. They're just not.
They're not like I'd be happy ata church with pews, Simple.
I can deal with that. But that's what are we need it

(02:02:53):
at all? That's my point.
And there's there's such an easier way to hold things that
are different than the way some Christians currently are holding
these things. Yeah.
Yeah, No, I love it. It's totally unrelated.
And I asked Judah this question about 10 years ago.
I was at a oh gosh, what are those conferences that they had
that Andy Stanley. And anyway, we were hanging out
one day and I was at a conference Catalyst.

(02:03:13):
It was one of those catalyst conference out here in
California. And I and I and I and I had this
question for him and I have thisfor you.
In hindsight, you were, you wereusing everything at your
disposal. You were losing basketball, you
know, whether that was you and Justin Bieber and you playing
ball with Drake and all these things.
But there I asked you this. I said, Hey, you have this

(02:03:37):
Christian hip hop thing happening and this is right as
Lecrae is exploding and right islike this thing is really
charging. And I I also say, hey, like, do
you foresee some sort of partnership with the people that
are making the art and the mediain terms of the music, as well
as the the preachers that are reaching the people and there
being a cross pollination happening?

(02:03:58):
Because for me, this is a value of mine.
I don't know if you know this, but like one of the things that
that, that, that, that that's fun to do is to put people onto
other personalities. So like, I love going, hey, like
I'm not a textual critic. If I'm going to talk about
sexual criticism of the scriptures, I'm going to point
people to Wes Huff. I'm going to point people to
other creators. Sometimes they're way smaller
than me, sometimes they're way bigger than me.
But what it does is is it offloads the attention from me.

(02:04:21):
And because I'm not trying to build a cult of personality,
because it really isn't about me, but I'm pointing to other
creators. And I love when a creator comes
on this channel, YouTube and, and, and my checklist is like,
preferably they're over 35, preferably in their 40s.
Preferably they have some expertise.
Probably they've done some things because I'm with you in a
lot of ways on a TikTok stuff. It's like, Hey, we need more

(02:04:41):
older people. And I love when other people
come up, when you guys had that moment.
And I don't even know what you want to call it because this is
right after the reformer restless movement.
This is right after Driscoll andthat kind of faded.
You guys have this beautiful moment and all these celebrities
on that. And I was like, Hey, look like
there's other folks out here like Lecrae's doing dope stuff.
KB is doing dope stuff. Do you foresee more, more cross

(02:05:06):
pollination and more, more cross?
So that way it's being offloaded.
And and when I asked Judah this question, this is not a knock on
Judah. He didn't understand the
question. Like like he's like, I don't, I
don't understand what you're asking me.
And I and I said, and I asked itagain and he's like, I've never
even thought about that, you know, and I'm just like, man,
this there seems to be a revivalof sorts happening 1213 years

(02:05:28):
ago through you guys and, and what Lecrae was doing, but it
didn't seem to be a lot of crosspollinating and like, Hey,
there's a unified front of all these people.
And now I feel like that's happening.
Like I feel like we what the forest is doing and what Corey's
doing and Jonathan Preclude is doing and the churches that are
sprouting up. Ed Newton Like there's like a
it's like a movement of people that are all doing.
Medium. Where's that at?
CBC Bible. Yeah, Pastor Ed Newton.

(02:05:48):
CBC Bible. And then you'll see a Chandler
more pop up and leave there. And it's like a it's, it's like
a unified movement between artists, rappers, speakers,
Youtubers. Yeah, I feel like we did that
every Hillsong conference. OK, like.
But was there rappers? There was was Lecrae.
There was. Only Lecrae.
Only Lecrae OK. So let me just say this, but you
know, I'm I'm a I'm a old schoolhip hop head.

(02:06:11):
So I I personally had a disdain for Christian hip hop for a very
long time. OK, so I was absolute trash.
OK, and Lecrae change my mind about it now, bro I I I I think
it's awesome. I hear some songs and I
personally love Forrest Frank because I don't always want to

(02:06:32):
hear and sing about doctrine. Man, every sometimes I hear
Christian hip hop guys. I'm like, man, I I feel like I'm
in a Reformed Bible class, dude.I'm not in the car for that man.
I'm trying to go to the gym and I want to actually feel like I
don't know why we struggle with that so much.
Like, I don't understand why people think that's a bad thing
to feel like I saw one guy say, like, I appreciate Forrest

(02:06:53):
Frank, but we need more sorrow. We do, but we need more sorrow.
There's a lot of sorrow and suffering in this.
I'm like, OK, I, I think I heardhis heart on it.
I'm not making fun of him, but it just struck me.
I'm like, he, he, he was like, Ilike Forrest Frank, but I'm
like, oh, gosh, we need more sorrow because there's a lot of

(02:07:13):
suffering. I'm like, OK, because they're
suffering and sorrow. We need more forest Frank.
Yeah, That's a better way to hold that.
Yeah. Yeah.
So anyway, all that to say and. Let me just say this really not
a good job. Even when Forest Frank went
through sorrow and suffering. Yeah.
And he delivered it, yeah, he was still criticized for it.
So when he made lemonade after he broke his back and when he
went through the fire, it was like, that's no, he really is

(02:07:34):
that guy all the time. He was still critical of it.
But like, that's why I we keep pointing to these mythical
people in the threads. As long as they don't dominate
what what people do cool. I just feel like sometimes like
we're we're. I actually wanted to ask Corey
why he why he switched his stance with force, because I

(02:07:54):
love Corey's humor. I think it's freaking hilarious.
And I thought I felt like it wasn't that big of a deal that
he made fun of Forrest. I actually thought it was very
funny. So it surprised me to see where
it went. It's beautiful.
I'll, I'll take peace over anything, but I, I just think
they're, we can definitely loosen up a little bit.
Can definitely be some more life.
But back to the Christian hip hop thing.
Back then there wasn't as much pollination because I, I don't

(02:08:16):
think I personally was into the scene then.
So I can only speak to myself, but we had other people come
through all the time and collab.I'll bet you there's going to be
more of it because it makes. Sense Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And just to speak to the Corey thing, the way the way I I
paralleled it and I think the way Corey saw it as well, like
like if we were all in a life group together and you, me,
Corey Ford is. Talking about lust, wind, how

(02:08:37):
quick. Is this.
And we're all in a life group together.
And like, Forrest really goes through that.
Like Forrest really breaks his back.
He really doesn't know if he's ever going to walk again.
He really doesn't know if he andCorey made a song as a joke and
then Forest would have been likeForest would have been like,
man, like that really hurt my. We would have had to go to his
house. Yeah, we would have had to.
We would have been like Corey and and Corey didn't apologize

(02:08:57):
and didn't OK, you know, I thinkthat what I'm.
Talking about this so thank you for correct.
Yeah, So I think, I think it's one of those things where like
in a human to human, it's just like my thumbnails, like it's
just like the thumbnails like it's like, yeah, it it works,
yeah. But like it was probably a
better way, but if. Carl was in your small group.
Yeah, you would, yeah. I would be way more sensitive to
that. Yeah, I.
Understand, correct. Yeah, Yeah.
So I think that's, I don't thinkI understood the breath of that

(02:09:18):
situation. No I mean Forrest was sobbing in
those videos and legit didn't know if he was going to be able
to walk. And hold, all I saw was Corey
making a song about this. Yeah, yeah.
No, it was. Yeah, it was.
Very funny. Vasectomy.
Now I can see though if one of them.
Yeah, interesting. Thank you for sending me
straight there. So when they reconciled, it was
like, man, this is beautiful. But no, to your point, there

(02:09:38):
were people that were still like, Corey, you're soft.
You should have sent 10 toes down.
And he's like, but Nah, like as a follower of Jesus, like I got
to be sensitive to my brother. Even if he's being sensitive.
Like even if, even if, even if Igo, if I go, well, Carl, you
took that, you know you, that was you in that photo.
It's like, but no, I should still be sensitive to the fact
that that hurts you and change and repent.

(02:10:00):
Well, that's dangerously close to the calling of a Christian.
Last thing we want to do is is start to honor people who are
doing the real work. It's so much more fun to create
reasons why you don't have to hold the line.
So it sounds to me like, Corey, now that I know the full
context, here, I am doing exactly the thing I'm
criticizing. Now you're commentating.
Now I'm a commentator. Carl Lentz commentary channel
coming soon OK, we're going to wrap up soon.

(02:10:22):
I got I got just a couple more questions Why just getting we
can keep going and we can take abreak if you let me take a
break, but. You think I flew all the way to
Carlsbad? No, I have nowhere to I cleared
my day. So I, I, I got to take you back
and let you shoot around with myson.
Yes. And I, I knew you were good at
basketball, but I didn't know like, you're like elite level.

(02:10:45):
Good. I think I one time let me give
you the full crux. I was I was pretty good.
High school, went to a prep school after because I wanted to
get more looks. Ended up on the number one team
in the country, Hargrave Military Academy. 35 and 112
guys went D1. My roommate got recruited by NC
State. He didn't play the game, they
came to assign him. I played, played great.

(02:11:07):
They wanted me to come. I went to NC State my first day
of practice. I could not get the ball from
under our basket to the free throw line going the other way.
Why is that? Because I wasn't good enough.
The level heads just levels to it.
So my coach, Sean Miller, who's now the coach at Texas, best
assistant ever, I love him, treated me like I was a five

(02:11:28):
star recruit. Walk me, my mom around the
campus with the torn Achilles like Sean Miller.
I love him to this day, he said.Carl, be honest with you.
You have no hope of being a guard on this level.
You can become the best shooter and maybe find your way to get
some minutes down the road. And I went done.
And so I definitely became probably at some point pretty

(02:11:49):
close to elite shooter, but I tapped out pretty quick.
Like I, but, and then as you getolder, fundamentals become more
important. So if you're a shooter when
you're young and you still work on it, like now that I'm 47,
like my mechanics are perfect. So I can still get better as a
shooter. So I, I, I wouldn't say I was an
elite basketball player. I would say I was very good at

(02:12:09):
running a team, very good and leading a charge and I would out
dog everybody. But to this day, yeah, I can
still shoot with these boots on.Right now I'm going 8 for 10
from 40. Yeah, you were.
You were nice. So I'm sure you know this, but
like, the history of basketball was that it was a missionary
tool for folks that couldn't afford to play more complicated

(02:12:29):
sports. Really.
Yeah. Naismith was a missionary.
Yeah, the guy who started it wasconnected to the Muscular
Christianity movement, which is where the YMCA came.
Out I never knew this. And it was the idea was that you
can use sports to help develop young men.
And it has a beautiful history as a tool to reach young men to

(02:12:50):
for Jesus, like, like an actual tool.
Yeah. And I'll, I'll put this over
here in the edit. And so when you we were driving
here, you were telling me how you guys were using basketball
as a missionary tool. Absolutely.
So it's like, tell me. About, I mean, in New York,
basketball is a way of life. So that I lined up with quickly
and we just wanted to do what wedo naturally, which is hoop and,

(02:13:13):
and that helped us get a foothold in a city where you
cannot get a foothold. You know, the the people that
play ball in New York on this level, culturally, there's not
interested in outside people at all.
So you're not going to win thesepeople to Jesus.
What you can do is become part of the fabric, live your life
alongside people. And if you're doing your job

(02:13:34):
right as a believer, hopefully there's something in you that's
contagious. And we just really used it to
continue to take ground and it became a way for our church to
be known in the city so far fromministry.
It was like, what's that church about?
That's a church team. Oh, cool.
Oh, they have a church. Next thing you know, it's
history. So we just, I think for anybody
doing anything, what do you love?

(02:13:55):
And have you seen that yet as a conduit for everything that God
can do? Yeah.
And so it does. It was just simple.
It just happened to fit really well in New York.
Yeah, you guys, you guys had a team on the Rucker.
Well, we were the first team in the Rucker to start five NBA
players. Shout out to Fat Joe, who got
mad at me because I didn't tell him the hitters I was bringing,
he said. Carl, you got to tell me when
you're bringing hitters, and I mean, we were.

(02:14:16):
We had NBA players 5. On Hillsong, Hustlers in the
game got shut down midway through because the crowd
crushed. We had to go to the other side
of the city, the Gaucho Gym, to finish the game, which we never
did. We left during a time out
because it was so packed. I mean, it was like Jay Will at
the one, I think Landry Fields of the two, KD at the three,
David Lee at the four. We had like at least four or

(02:14:39):
five other guys. Scott Machado, who's now playing
in Brazil like we were. It was awesome, but it was a
church team. It made no sense.
Coaches of their professional teams didn't have any issues
with them participating. They probably did, bro, but it's
Rucker. What are you going to do?
Like dudes are going to hoop at Rucker.
Yeah. So I mean, it was, it was just
an incredible, incredible scene.One time shout out to Hannibal,

(02:14:59):
who's the famous MC. He would come to our church so
it would be packed and we would come in and say, I go to, I go
to this, my church, Hill Songs, my pastor, He'd go.
We got services at 10:00, twelveo'clock 3:00.
He would do it 4 minutes on end.I'd be like Hannibal, but he was
that's that was his church. And you said stuff like that is
just it's that's where that's what revival looks like to me.

(02:15:23):
It's organically people. They don't know all the
politics. They don't know all the
commentary. They just know they found a
place that they could call home and through that they have a
relationship with God. That's different.
So that's how we use basketball.It was freaking.
Awesome. That's that's incredible.
Yeah, that's incredible. So you didn't write your sermons
on the on the court. No, but you did hoop a whole
lot. Yes.
And whole lot. And then in that that you told

(02:15:44):
me, you know, Justin Bieber got a crazy crossover.
He does because he's a hockey player.
He does. And so we were talking offline.
I said, who's nicer, Justin or Drake?
Because you hoop with Drake. Yeah.
And you was like Justin for surefor.
Sure. No, I mean, I'm just he's an
athlete, bro. And he, we were with a bunch of
guys who were known in the streets questioning whether he
could play or not. And so there's a hoop outside

(02:16:08):
and he, he, he did what you got to do on the street.
We call it catching the body where I mean, both the guys
ankles are gone. He's falling.
His boys are clowning him. You know Justin can play.
Justin made somebody fall. Absolutely, yeah, his Calabasas,
Calabasas, CA I can call 5 people right now and verify.
So because it's he don't see it coming.
He's lanky, but Drake, I think he can play, but I think he was

(02:16:29):
out of shape the time we did play.
So, you know, it was just a funny discourse.
Like I I was playing pretty hardearly.
Just said, can you can you tone it down?
Because I and he was cool. That was really cool.
Really nice guy. He can hoop too.
This is just levels to it though.
Yeah, did did you feel like whatspecifically with a Drake there
was opportunities to share Jesus, faith, that sort of

(02:16:51):
thing? Yeah, for sure.
And there always is. The way I do that is typically
just by trying to exist and see what God opens up and I'm not,
I'm never looking for that angle.
I, I can't stand that type of living.
I don't think that's genuine. I don't think it's like the
Christian who's waiting for the person to talk so they can get

(02:17:11):
to their thing. I mean, the ability to listen
and the ability to be present are two of the most under talked
about evangelistic tools. Everyone loves the Street
Preachers and the megaphones andthe cool.
There's a place for it, But haveyou ever studied your listening?
Have you ever studied your ability to be present without
being the star of the conversation?
Have you ever existed without giving your opinion?

(02:17:33):
These are all effective evangelism tools, believe it or
not. So for me it was much more
organic. Yeah, I'm going through Greg
Kochel's book St. Smarts right now and he talks
about he's like, I've actually he's like, I haven't personally
LED someone to Christ in severaldecades.
And then he goes on to explain what you just explained where he

(02:17:54):
goes. There's a lot that happens in
pre evangelism and he said everyone wants to be the
harvester, but so many people are actually gardeners.
And he said if we could be better at gardening, asking good
questions, listening, understanding worldview.
He said then then the harvesters, they'll get the
glory and and the churches and the hands will go up and people
maybe was personally somebody Christ.

(02:18:15):
But he said we we have way more people that are gardeners, but
we're trying to force them into this, like walk them through
this question, ask, you know, ifthey want to receive Jesus.
And he said that's that's not how evangelism works.
And, you know, we saw true, we saw hundreds of thousands of
people make decisions in New York every year.
Hundreds of thousands. OK.
And I always used to say, like people would say, Carl, you're

(02:18:38):
such a soul winner. And I'd say, oh, don't get this
twisted. I didn't do any of this.
I'm the last in line with the microphone and the light.
The soul winners are the people who have done life with people
long enough where they would trust them to come to a place
that is so confronting as our church is listen and make a
decision, a choice that'll change your life forever.

(02:18:59):
So that's a great point. Like if you're not concerned
about what part of the the team you what part of the what role
you're going to have in the salvation story, life's a lot
more fun. I might be, you know, I talked
to Joel Osteen one time and I asked myself, how do you handle
some of the criticism? Because Joel is probably one of
the nicest man I've ever met in my life.

(02:19:19):
And I love him and I respect him.
And he said, Carl, I feel like there's there's a world where I
am the I'm the handshake in the Kingdom of God.
There's other people that are going to be, you know, this,
there's other people can be but me.
I know why I'm here. And it was such a beautiful
picture because I thank God for men like that.
He knows what he's good at. He knows his gifting.

(02:19:40):
There's other people there that sit at the table, drop the
hammer, have the conversation, but nobody would ever come to
that table with that person because they look terrible.
They look mean, but they have something to say.
You need the person at the door that has the gift to open it.
It's called a body supposed to work together.
And we are in a world right now,brother, where people are
judging other. Like that foot can't do what

(02:20:01):
that hand can do. Hey man, they're different parts
of the body. Where is this thinking?
Why don't people talk about it more?
Like why can't that person just have a different function than
you? Is he less than you?
Are you more than him? No, God intended this stuff to
work together. Yeah, I'm, I'm enjoying this.
I, I've, I've enjoyed getting toknow you, man.
And I think hopefully, hopefullypeople come away with a robust

(02:20:25):
version of you. You know, I think, like I said
to you earlier, I think there's value in single people having
our conversations. There's not, there's not a
usually what it's kind of customary say, hey, is there
anything you don't want to talk about?
You know, and there's not been asingle thing that you haven't
wanted to talk about. You've been very open, very
transparent. And I appreciate that about you.
I think I think there is a ton of value in just saying, hey,

(02:20:45):
let's just have the conversations or hey, I don't
understand this pocket of culture.
I understand how this, and I think a lot of folks are, are
like that. They don't quite understand how
certain things work and they don't understand, you know, so I
think it serves people well to say, Hey, I'm going to just sit
down and have the the conversations directly, you
know, And so there's, there's beauty to that.
He's important. Somebody told me once, brother,
when you're a man and you get tothe place where my friend Cody

(02:21:07):
Jefferson said nothing to hide, nothing to prove, nothing to
protect, that's where you want to sit.
That's where freedom is. Yeah, yeah, Cody's.
Cody's a cool guy. He is.
We did an event, but we ended upat an event together in Arizona,
The sweetest dude that brought us out and he ends up he ends up
putting us all in an Airbnb and,and, and there wasn't much

(02:21:30):
organization or like we didn't have a car, we didn't have
anything. So we just like kind of fend for
ourselves. We fed ourselves.
Everyone just looked. I was like this, this person
brought food in, this person brought food in and Cody was
Cody was a good dude. He's a good dude.
So before we wrap up, I'm tryingto think if there's anything
else. I think I've asked you
everything I wanted to ask you. I think the only other thing,

(02:21:53):
man, is like, what do you see the Lord doing now in terms of
what's happening in culture now?In terms of I don't know if
you're keeping your eye on the Wes Huffs, if you're keeping
your eye on what's happening on Joe Rogan or, or someone like
myself going on Shawn Ryan or obviously Forrest Frank doing
arenas, Brandon doing stadiums. You know, what do you think the
Lord is doing right now, and what do you think we're going to

(02:22:14):
be in the next several years? I think there seems to be an
urgency that I feel and an opportunity that has never been
here before and I'm excited about it.
I feel like that's why I do lovethis new guard of not church

(02:22:36):
voices being elevated. I think there's a reason for it.
I think that outside of I alwaystell people there's two worlds.
There's the world in your phone and then the real world.
So if you spend more time in your phone world and do the real
world, you will miss this opportunity because there are
people like the narrative that people are bad like that, that

(02:22:59):
that times are tense. All this stuff that you hear
from your phone, it's not true or false.
I'm saying go, go, go out, see what's there for you.
Talk to people. People are really open right now
and I see, I see a beautiful revolution taking place, which

(02:23:20):
is different than a revival. We've had revivals in this
country. I think a revolution is
something that shifts a templateforever.
That is what we are in line for,if we can play our cards right
as the church. I think, I mean, we had the best
opportunity we've ever had rightnow.
That's what I think, yeah. Yeah.
And what what role do you see media content?

(02:23:42):
Crucial you Crucial. Playing into this you.
All, all our brothers and sisters out there that are, that
are in maybe in territory they didn't expect to be in.
And you're sitting on what you're building right now, which
is really, really significant. And it's it's there for people

(02:24:03):
who who want to use it correctly.
God, you said earlier you're glad God uses flawed people.
I was going to say, do you mean just everyone?
Because it it's not about how flawed somebody is.
It's about how faithful they're going to be to what God put in
front of them. Forget about flawed you are.
Think about faithful God is whatmight he do with somebody like

(02:24:23):
you. We just need more people to
continue to try stand up. And that's the backside bro of
of the critical culture we live in.
It makes people scared to step out because what if.
And I like telling people I've dealt with that myself.
Like I'd even coming out into a new strain of life post Hillsong
church. There was a lot of what if

(02:24:45):
people think this and I had to reckon with that.
And I don't think I'm alone in that.
I think that there's, we even talked about stuff that you have
to contemplate, like we got to start naming the people that
we're fearing and make sure they're worth our fear.
And so that's my, my prayer for those that are in the media
field. And I don't know if you can see
yourself in the media field. I just pray that people will

(02:25:06):
trust God and keep stepping out because you look at the people
who have big voices right now. I don't know who they are, bro.
I don't know what they've done. And apparently God's not
interested in that either because they have the moment.
So you might find yourself in a moment where you don't feel
prepared for, you don't even feel qualified for I'm God's not
interested. I'm not interested.
What will you do with it? What do you want to do with the

(02:25:27):
platform you have? And I think I see a lot of fire
in the eyes of younger people right now.
And I, I love it. People are like, I'm ready.
I'm ready to make take a swing at this.
What do you think the biggest misconception of Carl Lentz has
been over the last five years orover the last two years or about
a year and a half, Two years since you've kind of came out to
the public eye? I don't know, brother.

(02:25:48):
I can't even, I cannot pinpoint it because I have done, I think
a really effective job of listening to voices that are
going to make me better. So I don't know you be better at
telling me what the most common misconception is because I don't
know it because I'm not. I feel like I'm so detached from
it. Other than the cheap shot, low
hanging fruit stuff, you know, which I don't give any weight to

(02:26:10):
at all. Like wants to come back, wants
to do this. Nothing like I don't those low
level criticisms, misconceptions, I do not know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's good.
You got any questions for me before we get out of here?
No, I, I, I, I hope you keep on pressing your pedal.
You know, I think the shift thatyou have made vocally about

(02:26:31):
choosing to see the fruit, I hope everybody takes a page from
that because that's more, it's easier to talk about what's
wrong. It's harder to find what's good.
And it's also the job of a Christian is to dig for God's
goodness in it. And I hope more people follow
your lead. And I think it's, it's brave to
do it. And I think that God's going to

(02:26:52):
keep blessing him. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
Carl Lentz, thank you so much for being here, brother.
Hey, thank you so much for watching this video all the way
to the end. If you liked it, then hit the
like button. If you liked it a lot and have a
thought to share, leave a comment.
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(02:27:14):
And if you want to watch anothervideo that is recommended just
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Peace.

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