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YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 6, ARMENPRESS. Justin Bieber is leaning forward, eyes squeezed shut. “Jesus is God,” booms the pastor Judah Smith, standing before Bieber’s front-row seat in the ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire hotel. “He’s the relationship and the friendship you’ve been craving your whole life. If you believe that with all of your heart, every ounce of your being, I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to ask you to lift up your hand.”
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Bieber’s restless leg, which had been bouncing throughout the 60-minute service, goes still. “One! God loves you,” Smith announces, building to his big finish. “Two! You’ll never be the same.” And finally: “Three!” A smattering of palms shoot up in the 400-or-so-person crowd. Bieber keeps his down. The pastor, whom Bieber has known since he was 16, later makes clear to me, “This room exists to love people, surround people, encourage people” -- not to pressure them into declaring Jesus as their savior. As with many things in his life today, Bieber is sorting out what he truly believes and how he shows that to the world.
The service ends with live music: a four-piece band performing a Christian alt-rock favorite by John Mark McMillan. Everyone stands. Bieber throws his arm around me and sways for the sing-along: “Yeah, he loves us, oh how he loves us...”
Earlier that evening -- before we hit Mastro’s Steakhouse for dinner and head to the Wilshire -- Bieber sits in a rooftop cabana at a different Beverly Hills hotel where he has been living for nearly a year. (He sold his Calabasas mansion to Khloe Kardashian after paying $80,000 in fines for egging a neighbor’s house.) “Enough with the Justin Bieber Show. I want to veer away from the self-centered attitude,” he says. “I’m just focused on the people who have been there since the start, on people who are taking the journey now. I want them to feel like we’re doing this together.”