![]() Pastor Lentz told me with passion that while people might differ with some things at Hillsong, there was no possible way anyone could accuse them (or him) of believing in that kind of universalism. So, to be clear, Pastor Lentz had no idea I had been trying to reach him, I had no idea he had tried to reach me, and he was eager to interact with me now. And that leads me back to the present: Is Carl Lentz a heretic who believes there are many ways to God, as one of my Twitter followers recently alleged? Miscommunication is more common than we realize, and we do well not to rush to judgment before we have all the facts. That is one reason why we do our best to get a negative response from a leader - in other words, a leader telling us he or she is not interested in interacting - before addressing things publicly. And since I prize godly communication, I was mortified to see that this happened (no one on our staff can figure out how we overlooked the email). Somehow, his email fell through the cracks in our system, and I had no clue he had tried to reach out to me. Thank you for your letter and for its gracious tone while you expressed your views. I gave my email info on this, look forward to hearing from you. I read your letter and would love to get to know you. I had my staff check all our emails and sure enough, on October 18 of 2014, at 9:17 PM, Pastor Lentz had written this to me through our website. Not only did he have no idea I had tried to contact him several times over the last couple of years, but he told me that he had actually tried to contact me after reading my letter to him on LGBT issues, and somehow, his email never got to me. ![]() Within minutes, we had each other’s email addresses and were in contact. Well, it turns out, he had no idea we were trying to contact him, and the moment he found out I wanted to interact, he tweeted me saying he was easy to reach. ![]() My office had reached out to his office earlier in the week, but we were unable to get a response from Pastor Lentz (although we heard from other church staff), which was the same thing we experienced over the last two years. I began my October 27 article stating, “Pastor Lentz, as you know, I’ve tried on several occasions to reach out to you privately (most recently this week), but without a response, so I’m asking you publicly if you would please clarify your recent comments made to Oprah Winfrey.” Pastor Lentz shared this with me when we talked by phone on Tuesday, November 1, in response to my October 27 article, “Pastor Lentz, Can You Clarify Your Comments to Oprah?” He was clear, unambiguous and unashamed: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). According to Carl Lentz, pastor of the Hillsong megachurch in New York City, people are lost without Jesus and salvation is only found in Him. ![]()
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