Simon Cox Blog: Alcohol, Perry Noble, and the Church

Sunday, 10 July 2016

Alcohol, Perry Noble, and the Church—What Now?

By now, you’ve probably read that Perry Noble is no longer the pastor at New Spring Church.

The Greenville Online newspaper explained:

The Rev. Perry Noble, who started NewSpring Church nearly 20 years ago, is no longer its senior pastor.

Early in Sunday's 9:15 a.m. service, Executive Pastor Shane Duffey announced that Noble had been removed as pastor on July 1, after the NewSpring board of directors had "made a difficult and painful decision" to make a change.

Duffey said the termination by the state's largest and richest church came after Noble "had made unfortunate choices," and that the board members had confronted Noble on numerous occasions regarding his use of alcohol.

I don’t know what the “unfortunate choices” are and won’t speculate. For the record, I also think adding “richest church” is both silly and offensive. But, I do want to stop and think about the one detail that NewSpring has been clear about: alcohol issues and pastoral ministry.

First, the view of many Christians has changed toward alcohol. A few years ago I shared an interview with an anonymous pastor about this very topic. Here are some excerpts:

It appears that views of alcohol are changing among some evangelicals.Now, many conservative evangelicals have been moderationists for a long time—so an anti-alcohol sentiment is not universal among evangelicals. Sometimes observers will see "Northern Evangelicalism" as moderationist, with "Southern Evangelicalism" being abstentionists, and there is a good amount of truth in that geographic reality. However, it is still a bit more complicated since Wesleyans, for example, are concentrated up North, and you cannot be a ...