It’s not all about Perry. Repeat. It’s not all about Perry. (Updated)
Posted: September 10th, 2009 | Author: James Duncan | Tags: Celebrity, Enthusiasm, Twitter | 25 Comments »Perry Noble will tell you, as he should, that his church is not all about him.
Do his staff know that though? An alert PP reader sent me this tweeted observation from a Fuse/NewSpring acolyte [and worship leader] today.
I’m serious. if @PerryNoble isn’t your senior pastor then you need to be jealous. extremely thankful for his passion and vision
Then there’s this from a few weeks ago:
If @PerryNoble isn’t your senior pastor then you should be jealous. He’s the freakin man.
Seriously?
Update: The tweeter is clearly a NewSpring staffer, according to these tweets: Freaky about Fuse, and Dominating volunteers.
Update 2: After being assured by NSers that he was just a random kid, it turns out that my first instinct was correct. Here’s NewSpring’s own organization chart, which it published after its 2010 Unleash conference:
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This isn’t Perry’s fault though. He has no control over what his staff or volunteers say. I agree a better phrase would be to say, “I love Perry’s heart and am blessed that God gave me such a strong leader.”
I work at a small church plant. I met a girl who goes to Newspring and she came to visit me one week and went to church with me while i was working. The whole time that our youth pastor and I were trying to fix things for youth that night that fit our church and what HE was doing there through those kids she would not be quiet and continually said, “Oh ya’ll should do this, that’s what Perry would do.” or “This is what BCoop would do.”…apparently if you don’t have the vision of Newspring and do thing Perry and Brad’s way then you’re wrong….my co-worker joked that Newspring sounded like a cult…haha
needless to say I haven’t talked to this girl since she left
I have been involved in these types of “movement” churches before (long ago and far away) and it is difficult to separate the man from the mission and equally difficult for the man to not let the fawning fans affect him. There will always be people in the masses to elevate the man to levels they really shouldn’t. PN would need to quell this diligently and stay grounded as best he can.
Some scripture first: 1 Corinthians 1:12
There are certainly plenty of people who attend NewSpring who give Noble more credit than he is due, and/or place him on a pedestal.
But I’m not sure why you’d make a post out of the tweets of one person out of the 10,000+ who attend NewSpring. OK, that’s not entirely honest of me. I do know why you’d make a post out of that.
And just so you all know, Perry Noble was gone from NewSpring for 5 weeks earlier this year, and the ministries at the church didn’t miss a beat. Feel free to add your snide remarks about that, if you must.
…And I really want to believe that Perry does not want NewSpring to be about him. But….when he frames almost every lesson and sermon with personal anecdotes and spends a sizable percentage of so many of his sermons talking about himself, when he sometimes holds himself up as an example for overcoming sins and bad habits, when he stresses the visible success of his church, how can it possibly not end up being about him to a great degree? Too, his tendency to create an ‘us vs them’ defensive milieu does nothing to dissuade people from the cult of personality that has taken deep root at NS. I could ramble on ad nausea on this subject, but for brevities sake, I will refrain.
Ron, thats called teaching! Perry is very transparent with Newspring and always has been! If you think he talks about himself the ENTIRE time, then you might want to actually watch a sermon before throwing yourself to the lions on this blog. Just trying to help out. He uses personal examples to better illustrate God’s word and it works for Newspring. I have never watched a sermon where it talked about him most of the time, maybe one or two examples. AND when he talks about the success of God’s church, he is glorifying Jesus! God put the vision in Perry’s heart to plant the church and it has never been Perry’s but always God’s. nice try!! I pretty much debunked your whole post.
This post really is immature. Sorry. As JT said, to introduce a post about a person who attends Newsping who twweted something is stretching way too much! There are several thousands of people who attend Newspring and not all of them think its about Perry! Not even Perry does! They give the glory to Jesus! It was also a good point that Perry was gone for five weeks, hmmmmmm……
And for DH…I dont disagree with anthing you wrote. That girl probably wasnt a keeper! To think that the way Newspring runs things is the only way is wrong. Focus of what God is speaking to the heart of your leaders because it probably will be different. I know how hard a church plant is so I wish you nothing but the best. Keep your eyes focused on Him!
Anthony, I’ve watched and listened to Perry’s “sermons”. I don’t know what kind of education you have, but what he does isn’t teaching. Anyone who thinks Perry can teach needs to listen to some real teaching. Several sources have been mentioned on this blog. I recommend giving them a listen and do some comparing. Perry is skim milk at best. He’s nowhere near feeding anyone at New Spring real food. He’s stuck on himself-period.
JT and Anthony,
You might want to look a bit closer at who this is before you start complaining too loudly about this post. This doesn’t look like just one person out of 10,000. I’ll betcha a cheap cup of coffee that this dude is a NewSpring staffer. I can’t be sure (hence the small wager), but I reckon he was in Perry’s staff meeting today and then went with him to Fogos in Atlanta.
Can anyone help us with a 411 here? Who is Kaleb Carl White?
Anthony, with all due respect and in regards to you recommending I watch a sermon or two “before throwing myself to the lions”, I attended NS for years, leaving in 2007; I know from whence I speak. I can give so many examples to validate my assertions. Too, I did not intend to infer that he talks about himself the ‘ENTIRE’ time.
As far as the content of the referenced ‘tweets’, I have ran across so many examples of that attitude to know that the referred ‘Perry-centricism’ is not all that rare. I know many who went to NS that to one degree or another harbored that attitude. I was at one time one of the worst offenders, quite frankly. In closure, when I approached NS with my growing concerns, one of which was my concern over the growing cult of personality surrounding PN, I was told by an associate pastor that if I left NS, I would be turning my back on a ‘move of God’ and would probably end up joining some small church of less than 200 people where no more than a couple of people got saved a year. You see, I think the leader of an organization imprints his attitude to his subordinates to a degree and the aforementioned experience is perhaps an example.
Ron,
When you were told by the NS staffer that “if I left NS, I would be turning my back on a ‘move of God’ and would probably end up joining some small church of less than 200 people where no more than a couple of people got saved a year”;
I hope your response at the time was “So?”
This NS staffer has some really brilliant tweets to his name. Some examples:
And this:
He’s just a kid. He’s not on staff at NewSpring.
Duncan,
“This NS staffer” ?
I doubt it. The guy graduated from Wren High in June.
JT, are you assuming that would disqualify him?
He may not be full time, but he appears to be tied in pretty tightly to their bureaucracy (or he’s a serial liar and exaggerator).
Duncan, are you assuming that would disqualify him?
No.
He is not staff. Just a volunteer. I know him personally.
Toph is a trusted source. I’ll take his as authoritative word on this.
Duncan, you owe me a cheap cup of coffee.
Come by sometime and I’ll treat you to one at Java City. While there, we can consult our dictionaries to see whether a volunteer would count as staff.
Apparently, Kaleb and I have a commonality…
http://www.independentmail.com/news/2007/jun/06/coffeehouses-offer-outlet-teenagers/
My guess is he wears stylish jeans and is a rotating guitarist for FUSE…
JT, I’ve already had 14 people come by my office claiming to be you and asking for coffee.
We need a password so I know it’s really you. How about BangORang?
Who’s to say I wasn’t one of the 14?
Cool. Then my debt is paid.