(The Roys Report) In a leaked audio call obtained by The Daily Mail, the founder and senior pastor of Hillsong Global, Brian Houston, described the events that led up to the firing of the lead pastor of the church’s New York City congregation, Carl Lentz.
Houston said difficulties with Lentz’s leadership emerged long before the recent revelations about the Hillsong East Coast pastor’s affair with Ranin Karim, a 34-year-old designer he met in Brooklyn, New York.
“I was already at the point, at the end of the summer, that I felt like Carl and Laura’s time in New York was coming to an end,” Houston said of Lentz and his wife, who also worked for the church.
Brian and Bobbie Houston founded the original Hillsong Church in 1983 in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. It now has locations in 28 countries and, pre-pandemic, saw an average 150,000 attenders each week, according to its website.