Tag: Perry Noble

Former Mars Hill Elder Tells Perry Noble, "You Are in the Dark" about Mark Driscoll

On Tuesday (one day after I posted the news that Mark Driscoll had publicly announced formation of The Trinity Church in Phoenix), Perry Noble, pastor of NewSpring Church, spoke about Mark Driscoll’s return to ministry. (I am embedding it because the Facebook feature isn’t working currently. The link to watch it on Noble’s page is here)

On Noble’s Facebook page, former Mars Hill Church elder Dave Kraft left the following message:

Perry, I appreciate your heart in all of this, but do wish you had done your homework and exercised due diligence by finding out what really happened at MHC! I’m afraid you are in the dark about the truth of what transpired and why The Acts 29 network, Paul Tripp and 30 former elders believe that Mark Driscoll disqualified himself and needs to make some things right before stepping back into pastoral ministry! I appreciate your ministry, read your books and value your leadership wisdom.

I expected mixed reactions to Driscoll’s announcement. My guess is that the same polarization will pick up about where it left off.
Who Matters in Perry Noble’s Christian Army?
I doubt many would deny that there is a trail of loose Mars Hill ends from Seattle to Phoenix.
Mars Hill Church had millions in assets. Much of that money was given by people who are now disillusioned and skeptical about organized church. They deserve an accounting of their funds. They have reason to believe Mark Driscoll could secure that for them. I believe they are correct and will believe that unless Mark Driscoll provides evidence to the contrary.
More important than the money is the damage done to the trust of former members. To them, Driscoll’s assurance that he is healing up seems self-absorbed. It seems as though Perry Noble cares more about Driscoll’s return to ministry than the people who lost their confidence in church. Noble’s concern is clearly for Driscoll but I hear nothing about the people in Seattle who have desired all along to hear from Driscoll and makes things right.
At 4:00 into the clip, Noble mentions the former members:

Some people have said, Perry, he hurt people. So have you. So have you. Do we want to talk about the people he’s hurt, or do we want to talk about the people maybe you’ve hurt. Cause did he hurt people, did he misuse his power? Did he abuse people? I don’t know. But I think he’s got ministry left in him, I think Jesus still loves him, I don’t think God removed his calling from Mark’s life and um, he may have hurt people but you know what, he’s learned from it and he’s going to step into this season of ministry with a brand new focus and I praise God for that.

Noble’s concern is about how Driscoll is doing: since Driscoll allegedly has learned from his experience, all is well. He’s got a new focus and that’s what matters. Why don’t the former members matter? Why doesn’t Perry Noble try to find out if Driscoll abused his power? He speaks about the hurt ones without knowledge of them.
This cavalier attitude toward the wounded in Seattle comes across as insensitive. Noble says Christians are the only army who shoot their wounded. In Noble’s version of Christianity it is also fine to leave the wounded bleeding on the battle field. His Christianity rehabs the generals and leaves the foot soldiers to fend for themselves.
What is amazing about real Christianity is that reconciliation is still possible. Based on my conversations with former Mars Hill Church members and leaders, it isn’t too late for everyone to heal up together.

Mark Driscoll to Talk about Leadership at Perry Noble's Church

You can’t make this stuff up.
Next year Mark Driscoll will speak at a one day you-can’t-live-without-it leadership conference for Perry Noble. Check out the conference description.

Pastor Mark will be speaking at the Lead Conference hosted by Perry Noble. This one-day conference will be held at NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina on March 3rd, 2016. This event is uniquely designed for leaders who want their teams and their organizations to succeed beyond their expectations.

And the beat goes on…
 
I just saw that Wenatchee the Hatchet wrote about this last week. He has some interesting things to say about it. Go check it out.

Southern Baptists Say Enough to Perry Noble and NewSpring Church

I don’t know the issues but I post this because it will probably be of interest to readers who follow megachurch news.
Baptists’ Message to NewSpring: You’re not one of us
Noble has admitted to using Resultsource (at least he admitted it) but he did not take profits from the book (different than Mars Hill and according to former Turning Point CFO George C. Hale, David Jeremiah).
Perhaps a NewSpringInsida will show up to enlighten us. Or maybe a NewSpring mattc will provide the church view.

Perry Noble's New Spring Church Used ResultSource to Market Unleash

New Spring Church, pastored by Perry Noble, also used ResultSource to market Noble’s book Unleash. The church released a statement to Christianity Today explaining their reasoning. Read the whole statement here, below is a segment.

Perry Noble used ResultSource to help market and promote one book that he authored—Unleash. The contract for that book was actually a contract between NewSpring Church and the publisher, not between Perry and the publisher—meaning the church would receive all the proceeds from the book, regardless of sales. Specifically, as of November 1, 2014, NewSpring Church has earned more than $60,000 from the marketing and sales of Unleash, all of which Perry would reasonably have been personally entitled to, had the book contract been between him and the publisher.

Indeed, the church holds the copyright.
In the case of Mark Driscoll, the church entered the contract with ResultSource but the book was copyrighted by his LLC On Mission and royalties paid to that entity.
The statement says the church paid $30k to ResultSource and closes in a confusing manner.

If an author believes in the message of his/her book, he or she will want to see the book achieve its widest possible distribution. In the promotion of any book, there are many options available when considering marketing. With this particular book, we choose to use the marketing option that ResultSource provided. This type of marketing is not one we’ve used since on any additional books Perry has written and would not be one we would choose to use again.

They didn’t do anything wrong and they won’t do it again.
Changing the ownership of the book corrects some of the problem. The rest of the problem not directly addressed by this statement is how many books the church had to buy as a part of the process. If ResultSource just did marketing, then that is of little interest; if New Spring also purchased thousands of books via ResultSource’s fake accounts to make it appear that thousands of people were buying the book, then I think that is a problem.
This statement was linked to by Ted Olsen in a sidebar from the larger piece on ResultSource.
The admission that Noble’s book was helped out by ResultSource is not new. A similar statement was released to James Duncan at Pajama Pages last Spring. Duncan then parses the information. Check out the entire post.