Justin and Hailey Bieber allegedly asked former Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz and his family to leave their home amid a cheating scandal in 2020.
Carl and his wife, Laura Lentz, recalled the events in their new book, claiming that Justin, 32, and Hailey, 29, allowed them to reside in their New York apartment after moving out of their New Jersey house.
“We’d been planning a potential move to Brooklyn for months,” Laura wrote in Overcoming Infidelity: 10 Conversations to Help You Heal the Hurt. “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 it.”
In the book, Laura wrote that she was “unaware” that Carl had begun seeing a woman in Brooklyn. When Carl made headlines for being unfaithful, Laura claimed that the pair received a phone call about their living arrangements.
“It was somebody on Justin’s team calling to say that we needed to be out of his and Hailey’s apartment in the next 24 hours,” Laura recalled. “We hastily packed our things and loaded them into a rented U-Haul.”
Carl, for his part, called this moment a “kick to the ribs.” Carl noted that he was “already down for the count,” after being fired from Manhattan’s Hillsong Church over “moral failures.”
“I deserved to be kicked to the curb, but I felt Laura and the kids were just innocent bystanders suffering once again for my sins,” he wrote, per Daily Mail.
While Carl was “devastated” for his loved ones, he now understands that he put his family “in a precarious place on multiple levels.” Carl went on to note that the scandal “exploded” his “close” relationship with Justin since he and Hailey were brought into a “publicity nightmare they never asked for.”
Carl and Laura, who share three children, are still together after the cheating scandal. Justin, for his part, never publicly commented on the drama. Us reached out to Justin and Hailey’s reps for comment.
Before the scandal, Carl baptized Justin and helped him turn to spirituality during a dark time.
“I think Justin has a really deep, mature relationship with Jesus. I don’t think my teaching or my preaching has made even remotely as big of an impact as his own desire and passion and love for Jesus,” Carl exclusively told Us in November 2017. “That’s how it should work. … I think all his changes are a credit to him and him allowing God to continue to use him. Nobody gets credit for that. I don’t know anybody … he’s done this. He’s worked really hard to put himself in a position to be the best Justin he can be, and I’m proud of him and inspired by him.”
