Hollywood pastor baptized Justin Bieber and moved into his NYC home. Then came allegations so salacious he was evicted and the church turned on him... but now he's staging a brazen comeback with his wife's help

At the height of his fame and influence, Carl Lentz was a rock star pastor – one of the most high-profile Christian leaders in the country.

The face of the 8-000-strong Hillsong Church in New York, with his tattoos and piercings, he was almost as cool as his celebrity congregants: the likes of Drake, Usher and Selena Gomez were regularly photographed at his services.

But the shiniest star of them all, the one Lentz became almost inextricably linked with, was Justin Bieber.

The singer publicly credited Hillsong and Lentz in particular with helping him through some of his darkest times. And the pair's close friendship was sealed when Lentz baptized him one night in June 2014, in none other than NBA player Tyson Chandler's giant bathtub.

Then it all came crashing down.

As 2020 drew to a close – and with his 14-year-old daughter Charlie in a residential psychiatric unit dealing with a mental health crisis – Lentz was exposed for having multiple affairs, including with New York jewelry designer Ranin Karim as well as an 'inappropriate relationship' with the family nanny Leona Kimes.

He admitted to an addiction to both sex and drugs, but denied Kimes' accusations of abuse. 

It was all a devastating betrayal not just of his wife Laura and their children – the pair share Ava, now 22, and Roman, 17, as well as Charlie – but also of those who had hung on every word of his religious and moral guidance.

Almost immediately, he was fired from Hillsong.

Laura, however, stuck by her husband. And, nearly six years after his cheating threw a hand grenade into their marriage, they have, rather breathtakingly, written a book offering marital advice to couples who find themselves in a similar situation.

In Overcoming Infidelity, they each write a chapter on subjects such as 'Should We Even Try To Stay Together?', 'How Do We Tell Our Kids?' and 'Will We Ever Have Sex Again?'

And, in an ironic twist, they reveal which friends remained faithful in the midst of Lentz's infidelity and which ones quietly disappeared.

Laura writes that, at the time 'everything fell apart,' the family had just sold their New Jersey home and were living in Hailey and Justin Bieber's Brooklyn apartment.

'We'd been planning a potential move to Brooklyn for months,' she explains. 'When we told Justin and Hailey our plan was to take our time exploring where we might live next, they generously invited us to use their place as long as we needed.'

However, shortly after Carl's cheating became public, his phone rang.

'It was somebody on Justin's team calling to say we needed to be out of his and Hailey's apartment in the next 24 hours,' writes Laura.

'We hastily packed our things and loaded them into a rented U-Haul.'

Carl concedes that the call felt like a 'kick in the ribs when we were already down for the count.'

'I deserved to be kicked to the curb,' he adds, 'but I felt Laura and the kids were just innocent bystanders suffering once again for my sins. I was devastated on their behalf.'

However, he claims that, in time, he came to see the decision more clearly from his former friend's point of view.

'My actions had put Justin in a precarious place on multiple levels. We'd been very close, and finding out that I wasn't the person he thought I was had exploded our personal relationship.

'Our public relationship tied his faith journey to mine. As the media stories about my infidelity unmasked me as a fraud, it dragged him and Hailey into a publicity nightmare they never asked for. As the media stories implied, if I wasn't who I'd seemed to be, then maybe my notable friends weren't either.'

One celebrity friend who remained unflinchingly loyal was actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry. He provided a lifeline to the embattled Lentz family.

'Carl and I had met Tyler through a mutual friend several years earlier,' explains Laura in the book. 'Our friendship was real and easy from that first meeting. There was no fluff and no BS. Just genuine conversation with a brilliant, down-to-earth man who uniquely understood the pressures of being in the spotlight. His heart for God and unflinching goodness were always apparent.'

Perry offered to help them find a home – and 'insisted that he would cover the cost.'

Laura continues: 'To say that Tyler's gesture was a lifeline does not remotely do it justice. In that moment, he was a savior. He was a reminder that true friends are present come hell or high water.

'At a time when the majority of our friends had gone silent, when it seemed everyone wanted to get as far away from us as possible, Tyler walked straight into our fire while the embers were still white hot and offered help.'

When they found a mansion in Manhattan Beach, California, Perry prepaid the rent for six months – reported to be around $100,000.

'His generosity was life-changing,' writes Laura, 'but more significant was his constant compassion. He checked in on us regularly, and in many ways he pastored us when the actual pastors who knew us best weren't always there. In Tyler we found a true brother.'

As the couple attempted to rebuild the lost trust, Lentz admits in the book to the strange tactic of not wearing glasses to the gym, lest he be tempted by the women working out around him.

When that proved impractical – he kept bumping into things – they devised a set of complicated boundaries and check-ins.

For instance, Lentz would share his schedule for the day, when he was heading into a meeting or coming out.

'I'm almost back at the hotel,' he would text her, 'I'm gonna FaceTime you as soon as I arrive.' 

'But,' adds Laura, 'nothing helped as much as a single question that Carl asked me every single day: What do you need from me for you to feel safe today?' 

Lentz acknowledges the behavior sounds like common sense to anyone in a healthy marriage but adds: 'I'd been living a life of sustained deception for so long that common sense had been abandoned. I had to relearn to apply to common sense to help Laura overcome her triggers and help me overcome mine.'

The pair now say that, while they are not perfect, they have 'created a beautiful marriage together from the rubble of a ruined relationship.'

They remain close to Tyler Perry. Their 'savior' wrote a glowing review of the book in a Facebook post this week, while also criticizing those who had turned their backs on them.

'Reading this book and seeing Carl Lentz take full responsibility for the pain and hurt he caused while at the same time battling to save his wife and family was so moving to read,' he wrote.

'To read his wife's Laura's words on the pain and hurt of infidelity and how the 'church' turned their back on them was heartbreaking.

'I always believed that the church should be like first responders – the first ones in. But unfortunately in some churches it seems as if they go in the other direction when people go through ugly things.

'I'm so glad that every church wasn't like that and there were those that embraced them while praying for healing.'

Justin Bieber has never commented directly on Lentz's affairs, but he and Hailey famously unfollowed his former spiritual advisor on Instagram in November 2020.

And in an April 2021 interview with GQ, Bieber made an opaque reference to celebrity church culture and leaders who 'put themselves on a pedestal.'

He added that churches can get 'surrounded around the man, the pastor, the guy, and it's like, "This guy has this ultimate relationship with God that we all want but we can't get because we're not this guy."

'That's not the reality, though,' he added. 'The reality is, every human being has the same access to God.'

Overcoming Infidelity: 10 Conversations to Help You Heal the Hurt by Carl and Laura Lentz is published by Simon & Schuster