Consider how unusual it is for people to wear the same hat if they aren’t, say, working at Wendy’s, or on a baseball team. So there’s this hat.If you show up for a Sunday service at Hillsong NYC, it’ll be the first thing you notice about the audience, or at least it was the first thing I noticed, which is: They’re all wearing this hat. Pastor Carl called a friend whose apartment complex has a pool, but when they arrived, dozens of people were waiting there, too.Īnd that is an image that will stick with you, let me tell you: Justin Bieber, on his knees in Tyson Chandler’s bathtub, wet and sobbing against Pastor Carl’s chest, so unable to cope with being himself that he has to be born anew, he has to be declared someone entirely different, in order to make it through the night. But when they got there, hundreds of people stood waiting-someone had tipped off the tabloids. So Justin wanted/needed a baptism posthaste, and Pastor Carl and Pastor Judah and Justin Bieber got into a car, and one of the church’s body men drove them in one of the church’s Suburbans to the Manhattan hotel where Hillsong rents the pool for baptisms. But it’s easier for God’s children to find a peaceful home in which to pray than it is for, say, Damon Dash.Īnyway, I wasn’t done with the Justin Bieber story. And so they save seats in a special section for celebrities, but also for people in wheelchairs and single mothers who were running late. Celebrities deserve a place to pray.” So do all of God’s children, he says. Celebrities deserve a relationship with God. “People say we cater to celebrities,” Pastor Carl tells me. On any given Sunday, Hillsong NYC salves the souls of 8,000 people, and what souls: Justin Bieber, yes, but also Kendall Jenner and Selena Gomez and Kevin Durant and Bono. The church landed in New York City in 2010, with a branch at the Manhattan nightclub Irving Plaza, a branch at a theater in Times Square, and a branch in an auditorium at Montclair State University. Hillsong, which began in Australia, has outposts all over the globe, from Kiev to Paris to Buenos Aires. “No, I want to do it now.” And Pastor Carl saw salvation in Justin’s eyes, and knew that his baptism couldn’t come quickly enough. Let’s schedule a time.” But Justin Bieber couldn’t be Justin Bieber for one minute longer. Suddenly, Justin was overcome by the Gospel, and he said, “Baptize me.” And Pastor Carl said, “Yes, buckaroo”-he really does call Bieber buckaroo, and now you should, too-“let’s do this.

“I want to know Jesus,” Justin Bieber sobbed to Pastor Carl.

But one day, according to Carl, Justin looked in the mirror and he was ravaged by feelings of loss. There was a petition circulating online to deport him back to Canada. He seemed to be spending more time with drugs than with Jesus. He had been caught being monstrous to just about everyone around him. It is helpful to think of Justin Bieber here, at this point in his life, as a biblical character at the very bottom of a Jobian well of his own making. He has never been anybody but who he has professed to be, which is a work in progress.” He is trying to do his best to figure this out. But no Christian, no person, could live under the scrutiny that Justin faces, says Pastor Carl. In general, people are critical of Justin Bieber for his many alleged human-rights abuses-I heard he once used a wheelchair to cut in line at Disneyland-and this upsets Pastor Carl, because Justin “lives his life on Front Street,” which is a southern way of saying that we can see all that he does, while we get to conduct our sins in relative anonymity. “I need you to help me with a young man,” Pastor Judah said, and Pastor Carl rushed to agree, because helping is Carl’s thing, and the young man was, yes, Justin Bieber. On the other end of the line was one of Carl’s best friends, Judah Smith, another mega-pastor who also happens to be the chaplain for the Seattle Seahawks. Carl is one of the lead pastors at Hillsong NYC, a mega-church so reputedly, mystifyingly cool that cable-news outlets cover its services like they’re Kardashian birthday bashes at 1 Oak. What if I told you I had a Justin Bieber story that would break your heart? Or at the very least, put an asterisk on what you think of him? No, listen: About five years ago, Pastor Carl got a phone call.

Pastor who used to sing with hillsong