Churchome leader Judah Smith recently reflected on his relationship with Justin Bieber and credited the pop star with teaching him more about God than he has ever taught the singer, “because his platform has an acute pressure and pain.”
Speaking on the June 25 episode of the “Deep End With Lecrae” podcast, Smith, who leads the Seattle-area megachurch with campuses in Washington and California, told Grammy Award-winning Christian rapper Lecrae that Bieber’s willingness to confront his own brokenness amid the pressures of global fame has influenced his own understanding of faith.
“I have learned more about Jesus and more about God from Justin Bieber than I’ve ever taught him,” Smith said. “And the reason for that is because platform has an acute pressure and pain.”
During the interview, the pastor reflected on the taxing nature of fame and how Bieber’s willingness to acknowledge his own weaknesses is evidence of authentic faith.
“That level of fandom and celebrity and global, iconic experience is not meant for a man,” Smith said. “David struggled with it. Solomon struggled with it. It makes a man go crazy.”
“And Justin’s willingness to be a broken man,” Smith said, recalling a recent conversation with the singer, “he hit me yesterday with, ‘What can I do for you? I want to be here for you. I love you.’ Man.”
“I just love him,” Smith said of the “Baby” singer. “He means the world to me. … At one point in my life, I told God, I said, ‘If this doesn’t work for Justin Bieber, this Gospel, then it doesn’t work.’ … If this is just something that works for aspirational kids who need something to believe in and buy into to get through another day … when you have it all, either Jesus is beautiful and wonderful and gorgeous and meaningful or He’s not.”
“So, I could go on and on [about] how much I respect that man and love that man and feel like I’m just grateful a camera hasn’t followed me around since I was 14,” he said. “That’d be a nightmare.”
Smith officiated Bieber’s 2019 wedding to Hailey Bieber and baptized the couple together in 2020. He has also provided the couple with counseling sessions.
For Easter 2021, Bieber released his first gospel EP titled Freedom, featuring Smith. The pastor also shared screen time with Bieber in the 2020 YouTube documentary series “Justin Bieber: Next Chapter.”
Earlier in the discussion with Lecrae, Smith recalled first meeting the now 32-year-old artist when he was just 8 years old after Bieber’s mother, Pattie Mallette, brought him to an event where Smith was speaking.
“Justin Bieber, he was 8 years old, and Pattie brought him to this thing I was speaking at when I was, like, 19 or 20,” Smith said. “And I met him and don’t even remember when I first met him.”
“I remember this, at 8 years old, and there were people prophesying saying that he’s going to be a king in his generation. That will give you chills,” he said.
Years later, after Bieber appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Mallette contacted Smith.
“When he gets on ‘Ellen,’ [Pattie] calls me and says, ‘He remembers you, listens to your tapes at night to fall asleep. Will you come meet him and come see him?'” Smith recalled. “Absolutely. It was just as natural as natural can be. It’s just as normal as normal can be.”
After Lecrae suggested Smith is “on the Mount Rushmore of current celebrity pastors,” Smith said he struggles with the idea that some Christians claim to have a specific calling to minister to celebrities.
“Once you become a trusted person in circles of influence and you start getting co-signed, saying, ‘There’s only a few people you can trust, but call my guy because you can trust him.’ And that’s all that it is.”
“I think what’s difficult is running into people sometimes at cafes and coffee shops, and they say, ‘I’m called to celebrities like you, too,'” he said. “I just stopped dead in my tracks first time I heard it. … It hurts my heart because I don’t know if I believe in that at all. I don’t think — I don’t see that in the Bible at all.”
“I judge people when they say that,” he said, “because I feel like, are you in it to get something from the people you say you [are] called to? Because I’m there to serve, hopefully.”
In October, the singer livestreamed a conversation with several of his friends, which focused heavily on Christianity. Towards the end of the video, Bieber delivered a message to anyone watching the video who was “struggling with their own self-image” and wondering if they were “worthy of love.”
“God says you are,” Bieber proclaimed. “I don’t make the rules. But Jesus says that, and I really believe Him.”
Bieber said he wholeheartedly believes that Jesus “loved us so much He put on skin and bones and came in, onto this Earth, as a person, as a human.” The singer expressed confidence that Jesus “lived a sinless life so that we don’t have to be focusing on sin because none of us can do the right thing all the time. And then He literally went to the cross, was lashed, whipped, made fun of.”
“Then He rose on the third day, defeating death, Hell and the grave,” Bieber added. “Now we get to live free, and rather than focus on sin now, we can focus on Jesus, the wonderful Savior.”
In a 2025 Instagram post, Bieber highlighted how he was “grateful for Jesus” because “He meets me every morning with forgiveness and love that I truly don’t deserve.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]
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