Alcohol abuse wrecks another pastor.
By now, you’ve probably read that Perry Noble is no longer the pastor at NewSpring 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 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. I grew up around alcoholism, though, and there were plenty of those “unfortunate choices” that were connected to alcohol.
But, I do want to stop and think about the one detail that NewSpring has been clear about: alcohol issues and pastoral ministry, and, though we don’t know all the details here, I’ll include a bit about the stuggle of alcoholism in Christian ministry.
Obviously, the view of many Christians has changed toward alcohol. A few years ago I shared an a bit on the change. 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 covenant member of a Wesleyan church if you use …
