In investigating whether
Andrew’s claims were basically credible or not I found that the overall story
is credible. Andrew’s reluctance to fully
self-identify was a big reason all the above material has only been published
now and not back in May 2012. Lamb and Turner were able to confirm the basic
reliability of what I was able to work out and provided some background on
other details Wenatchee had not quite worked out. The rest was blogged and tweeted by the
Noriegas, reported in papers, or preached from the pulpit at Mars Hill.
So, to sum up Andrew’s
story via MPT: He was a member and a
volunteer at Mars Hill Ballard in 2011.
James Noriega was a pastor there who had remarried and had a stepdaughter.
Both James Noriega and his daughter/stepdaughter attest to an “Andrew”, and
Kaitlyn mentions being engaged to an “Andrew” at her own blog. Her mother refers to wedding shopping in
November and a dead link on her blog links back to her daughter’s blog with a
post title “An Unused Wedding Dress”. If this is all thought to be merely
circumstantial evidence it’s a pretty remarkable set of circumstantial
references to a person named “Andrew”.
As to what exactly New
Reformation Press was told was “incomplete at best and likely deliberately
misleading” it would be tough to know what that would be. In the Mars Hill
lexicon being labeled a “wolf” is certainly bad and people took pains to say
Andrew was a liar. One anonymous woman
was willing to imply the possibility that Andrew passed along a venereal
disease to his girlfriend. That’s a pretty
strong implied accusation. Meanwhile,
Mars Hill advocates essentially avoided the question of whether Andrew’s
girlfriend might have lied or had an incentive to lie.
By Kaitlyn’s account,
one of the stories she shared with “Andrew” was about her lying about her
sexual history in her earlier teens.
… When I was in seventh grade, I went to a very popular private
school. I did not fit in at all. I had a few friends who were considered
popular. The main conversation was always around sex. Kids were talking about
how far they had gotten (which I now know to be a lie). I can never do anything
on a small scale, so to bump up my status, I concocted my own lie. A lie that
made me popular. Sort of.
I told a few choice people that I had slept with a youth pastor
and might be pregnant. This spread like wild-fire. I thought my plan had gone
off flawlessly. Until two things happened. A girl in my class called me a slut
and I got called into the principals office.
I knew instantly what it was about. My parents were called in and
I sat between them while the guidance counselor and the principal looked at me
and told me I was dangerous. That I needed
help. That I wasn't allowed back at the school until I had gotten help.
This is part of my dad's and my story. This is where I saw him
defending me. This is where I saw him as dad. But for years I struggled with
this. Fear that I was really dangerous. Shame over what I had said. …
While defenders of Mars
Hill and critics of Andrew have made it plain they believe Andrew was and is
dishonest the question of honesty and credibility is one that fans out in every
direction. What Mars Hill has failed to
fully appreciate is a point Wenatchee has made a few times in the last year,
that even dead links tell a story. If
the aim of Mars Hill was to preserve the privacy of the Noriega family that was
doomed to failure from the years 2004 to 2011, thanks almost entirely to the
culture of Mars Hill itself and the direct participants in the events that
involved Andrew’s disciplinary situation.
That Andrew has publicly stated his identity has simply meant that
everything else that had already been sitting in plain sight, can be easily
produced to show that the basics of his story are not only credible, but
permitted a pretty detailed process of identifying the other parts. Maybe now we can understand why so few Mars
Hill advocates and representatives either contested or even addressed the most
basic details of Andrew’s story, it would have been too easy to identify the
parties involved. But the parties had
for the most part identified themselves publicly even before the disciplinary
situation became a news item. Mars Hill
advocates can criticize Andrew Lamb’s motives as much as they like, it looks
like his story, a year later, checks out.
His willingness to identify himself to the world has meant that he's simply the last in the immediate group of parties to have done so, it seems. The rest was sitting in plain sight under the noses of bloggers and journalists and Mars Hill.
What Wenatchee The Hatchet wrote about last year in more cryptic terms is now spelled out with direct citation of primary and secondary sources.
