Trouble is afoot once more at Hillsong—Hillschlong if you’re the Daily Mail and Hilldong if you’re me—the church for famous people who love Jesus and infidelity. Some months after Terry Richardson cosplayer and former famous pastor Carl Lentz retreated from the holy life after infidelity blew up his marriage and his career, another pastor at the church has stepped down.
As the Daily Mail reports, Darnell Barrett, the creative director of the Montclair, New Jersey franchise, stepped down from his role on Tuesday after possibly maybe sending an inappropriate photo to one of his flock. Barrett is married and a father of two, and is, I’m sorry, packing, if these pictures that the Mail published are indeed real.
What happened is this: Barrett posted two pictures of himself, post-workout, to his Instagram Story (using the “close friends” function), wearing only a pair of white Nike Pro tights. The tights in question are doing an admirable job of trying to both contain and highlight the fact that he is smuggling the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost in his pants at any given moment. The copy that accompanied the photos made references to his struggles with depression and anxiety. Fine and sure. Less fine is Barrett apparently DM’ing the pictures to a 30-year old woman who used to volunteer with the church, and then trying to play that off as a mistake.
In messages obtained by DailyMail.com, Barrett initially tried to play it off as a mistake before apparently trying to lure the woman into a conversation.
‘Hey! I think I might’ve added you to my close friends list by accident,’ Barrett wrote. ‘I’m so sorry. Trying to figure out how the hell to edit it.’
He later claimed that the explicit photos were ‘some real raw s**t I send to my friends man. Lol.’
‘Seriously, sorry about that. I guess,’ he continued.
That’s one way to try to do this, my man, but it is certainly not the best way! It’s not the way I would’ve picked, was I the one sliding into the DM of a former underling with nefarious and sexy intentions. Barrett also sent the photo to the woman a few times over, perhaps in an attempt to make it seem like it really was a mistake and not intentional—a move that reminds me of all the times in college I’d pretend Microsoft Word ate a very important paper by writing two paragraphs and filling the rest of the pages with a string of 000000111010010101001010s.
From the New York Post:
“Haha that’s alright,” responded the woman, who later sent Barrett a much harsher response before blocking him.
“To be honest, this whole ‘fishing’ scheme of yours to see if I will bite isn’t what even pisses me off. What pisses me off is knowing that I’m not the only person you’ve probably done this to,” she wrote. “I’m actually horrified by the thought of how many other innocent girls you’ve manipulated with this ploy of yours.”
“I’m sorry?” Barrett responded.
Got ‘em!!! Except no, you did not. Keep your big ol’ dick in your pants!