I found this video of Perry Noble a few years ago. This encapsulates much of what I hate about some big evangelical churches with their big mega pastors and sometimes, their big mega egos. (Note the qualifications).
Here’s the deal. If you don’t know your people; if you don’t visit them in their homes, see them in their workplaces, and grieve with them in hospitals, you are not a pastor.
Perry Noble is not a pastor.
You can call him whatever you want. Visionary. Executive. Communicator. Abbess. Whatever. Just please don’t call him a pastor.
Before pastors started reading Fast Company to learn how to fulfill their vocations, they used to read works like Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor.
Now, Richard Baxter was a pastor.
Here’s Baxter on the pastor’s duty to visit his people:
We spend Monday and Tuesday, from morning almost to night, in the work, taking about fifteen or sixteen families in a week, that we may go through the parish, in which there are upwards of eight hundred families, in a year, and I cannot say yet that one family hath refused to come to me, and but few persons excused themselves , and shifted it off.
Baxter was also a mega church pastor, and yet found the time to visit 15 or 16 families a week. And that’s not including his grueling preaching load. What I want to know is, what does Perry Noble do all week? 40 hours of vision casting?
And I find more outward signs of success with most that do come, than from all my public preaching to them. If you say, it is not so in most places, I answer, I wish that the blame of this may not lie much with ourselves. If, however, some refuse your help, that will not excuse you from not affording it to them that would accept of it.
This should help those more pragmatically minded pastors who want to see measurable results. If you know anything about Baxter’s story, you’ll know that his remarkable ministry changed the religious flavor of his town for good. Nominalism turned to zeal as regular townsfolk became ablaze with the gospel.
How? Baxter attributed this remarkable makeover to the Spirit working through diligent and loving visitation. Pastors would do well to take heed.
Brethren, do I now invite you to this work, without the authority of God, without the consent of all antiquity, without the consent of the Reformed divines, or without the conviction of your own consciences? See what the Westminster assembly speak occasionally in the directory, about the visitation of the sick: ‘It is the duty of the minister not only to teach the people committed to his charge in public, but privately, and particularly to admonish, exhort, reprove, and comfort them upon all seasonable occasions, so far as his time, strength, and personal safety will permit. He is to admonish them in time of health to prepare for death. And for that purpose, they are often to confer with their minister about the estate of their souls,’ etc.
I wish Perry Noble and others would be more conversant with the Christian tradition when it comes to pastoring. As Baxter says, he has the authority of God, antiquity, and the Reformed divines on his side.
And now for Baxter’s finishing blow. Prepare yourself for some puritanical heat.
Read this over again, and consider it. Hearken to God, if you would have peace with God. Harken to conscience, if you would have peace of conscience. I am resolved to deal plainly with you, though I should displease you. It is an unlikely thing that there should be a heart sincerely devoted to God in that man, who, after advertisements and exhortations, will not resolve on so clear and great a duty. I cannot conceive that he who hath one spark of saving grace, and so hath that love to God, and delight to do his will, which is in all the sanctified, could possibly be drawn to oppose or refuse such a work as this; except under the power of such a temptation as Peter was, when he denied Christ, or when he dissuaded him from suffering, and heard a half excommunication, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offense unto me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.’ You have put your hand to the plough; you are doubly devoted to him, as Christians, and as pators; and dare you, after this, draw back, and refuse to do his work?
Perry Noble just comes off as a giant douche. I don’t know what he’s like to hang around with in person, but his public presentation of himself is not very appealing.
Agreed. I actually hadn’t heard of him before now. I noticed a clip of him talking with Driscoll and James MacDonald. I assume he’s part of the Gospel Coalition then. I think when he exaggerates and creates strawmen the way he did, it’s obvious that he’s just trying to excuse his own behaviour. I’m not opposed to huge churches, but I am definitely opposed to multi-site churches where one pastor heads up multiple churches. So in a large church it is impossible to get to know everyone, but that doesn’t mean you don’t intentionally seek out getting to know a good amount of them and find ways to disciple them. That and have enough other pastors who can do the same for the whole congregation.
I hadn’t heard of Noble being part of the Gospel Coalition and both Driscoll and MacDonald pulled out in the wake of Elephant Room 2 earlier this year. Whatever the Driscoll/MacDonald/Noble/Furtick megachurch leader scene is it doesn’t seem to be Gospel Coalition, at least not since Elephant Room 2.
Agreed lads.
I seem to recall Noble and Macdonald going at it during Elephant Room I .. at least it looked that for the previews for EPII.
It was Elephant Room, I’ve seen the clips.
Too many sheep?
Pastors of a thousand sheep, Be nervous!
For you’ve only time to know just a score,
Most get a handshake ending the service
And a “good-bye” as they walk out the door.
Too busy to call or answer questions,
With meetings to chair and sermons to write,
You wait with eager anticipation,
For a breather when no sheep is in sight.
My sheep are stupid. My lambs are lazy.
They don’t understand me. They’re not my friends
How did I get this job? Am I crazy?
They each want to know me. When will it end?
But stop! Jesus shows us his example,
When he sacrificed his life for his friends.
The Father gave to him each disciple,
And He’ll count each of His sheep at the end.
Jesus was too a shepherd. All the same,
He refused to get caught up in the swirl.
He had just twelve lambs whom he called by name.
With them alone Jesus transformed the world.
©2001 Peter Wallace Dunn
Thanks Peter !
Upon reflecting on this, I think the common thread I’ve seen with Noble is a certain lack of maturity. Like he comes off in some way as a sincere but naive 19 year-old who has had some success growing his church youth group and he has a bunch of passion and some decent skill as an organizer and a speaker but also has a bag full of terrible ideas that need to be edited out of his approach and an ego that’s grown out of his success. If they’re lucky, kids like this get some kind of mentor (senior pastor, professor, someone else they trust and look up to) to help them edit and grow and eat humble pie from time to time. Noble seems to have never acquired someone who can play this role for him – though it’s hard to say since his own background isn’t really discussed much at all either his church’s site or his own.
Dan,that could explain while the Noble shtick sounds so familiar.
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2012/07/another-ones-off-the-bus.html
Ha Tom!