Noriega was eventually introduced to
Mars Hill Ballard as co-lead pastor of the Redemption Groups and as part of the
Biblical Living pastoral department.
The above link introduced
James Noriega in a Meet the Staff posting posted on from March 17, 2009. Unlike
the other links I have posted so far, the ballard.marshill.com link has been
dead since some time shortly after February 28, 2012. February 28, 2012
was when I documented the disappearance of James Noriega from the elder
listings at Mars Hill in any publicly observable form. But the title
embedded in the link is as plain as could be.
James Noriega was being introduced as a pastor on staff at Mars Hill
Ballard.
In fact, since the start
of March 2012 at least, the entire Mars Hill campus blog network and associated
archives have been suspended. Any old links default to the current event
calendar. That this happened the week after I documented the disappearance of
James Noriega from Mars Hill eldership and cited references on campus blogs
including interviews with Noriega himself and Pastor Tim Beltz is a curious
coincidence.
I have already noted
that a week after I blogged about Tim Beltz' reference to reading James
Noriega's biblical counseling materials in a Mars Hill West Seattle campus
entry that Beltz was moved to Mars Hill Downtown and the campus blog network
and archives were suspended. As I have amply demonstrated, however, there has been
sufficient public attestation of James Noriega's role in Mars Hill eldership
from Mark Driscoll himself, A. J. Hamilton, and Mike Wilkerson's references to
Noriega as a formative influence on Redemption Groups that Noriega's absence
from eldership at Mars Hill is too conspicuous to simply ignore.
I had, oddly perhaps,
forgotten Noriega was no longer a pastor in any capacity at Mars Hill until the
following statement was issued by Mars Hill regarding church discipline in the
wake of the public coverage of the cases of Andrew and Lance.
The earlier wording of
the response regarding church discipline reads as follows:
In the two cases that have recently
received media attention, we want to remind readers that there are always two
sides to every story. As Proverbs 18:17 tells us, “The one who states his case
first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” Unfortunately, in
most of the articles and blog posts published in recent weeks, with the
exception of the recent Slate article, we were not contacted by the authors to
verify the facts or seek explanation regarding those cases prior publishing
their articles. Out of sensitivity for all involved, and a biblical mandate to
handle such matters within the church, we do not wish to comment publicly on
those specific cases and drag into public what should be private.
It may be true that in most cases
there was no attempt to verify the facts in the cases connected to Andrew or
Lance. It is not clear, however, what facts Mars Hill had hoped Slate,
The Stranger, and other journalists and bloggers were supposed to verify.
Unfortunately for the press release
author(s) The Stranger had contacted
Pastor Jeff Bettger and has received a response from Bettger documented here:
Why the press statement omitted The
Stranger coverage is a mystery. The following article in Christianity Today
published in February 2012 quotes from the earlier form of A Response Regarding
Church Discipline.
In both cases that have been brought
to light, things did not go as they should have, and well before they were ever
written about in a public setting by bloggers and journalists, Mars Hill
leadership stepped in to investigate. As a result of those
investigations, it was determined that the leaders involved had a pattern of
overstepping their authority. As such, they were released and are no longer on
paid staff or in formal leadership in any capacity at Mars Hill Church.
[emphasis added] Again, these actions were taken months ago, prior to any
public exposure. … We're reviewing our current church discipline cases to make
sure all our local leaders are operating within the spirit of love intended to
be present in our existing policies.
The updated version at MH reads as
follows:
[Updated 2/16] In both cases
that have been brought to light, things did not go as they should have, and
well before they were ever written about in a public setting by bloggers and
journalists, Mars Hill leadership stepped in to investigate because we take the
care of our people seriously. As a result of this investigation, we are taking
steps to streamline our church discipline process to ensure that it is applied
in a biblically consistent manner across all of our churches. In addition, in
two separate instances, we have removed the staff members involved and they are
no longer on paid staff or in formal leadership in any capacity at Mars Hill
Church. Again, we began taking these actions months ago, prior to any public
exposure.
The February 16, 2012 clarification
states that the two staff who were let go had no connection to Andrew's case.
Because of the initial wording that was not clear. I began to wonder, in
light of those differing statements, what had happened to Noriega. I had
noticed Noriega stopped being listed as an elder as far back as October 2011,
and possibly earlier. I wasn't sure why that had been
the case but the Mars Hill public relations statements about staff being let go
for overstepping spiritual authority thrust the absence of Noriega from Mars
Hill eldership back into mind.
What I have established so
far is there are only two types of men who could be pastors at Mars Hill and
also have stepdaughters. Bill Clem fits
one type and James Noriega fits the other type. From multiple statements in the
Seattle P-I and from Mark Driscoll himself we can establish that James Noriega
has a stepdaughter, was a pastor at Ballard who got introduced in 2009. So far all of this testimony strongly
suggests that the basic claims Andrew has made were accurate. If Andrew’s story
was incomplete at best and possibly deliberately misleading then how is it we
can pinpoint a plausible identification for the pastor at Mars Hill Ballard to
this level of detail? Incomplete? Necessarily.
Deliberately misleading? That’s
simple assertion.
What would be incomplete
or misleading, then? Well, here’s a
proposal, if James Noriega was a pastor
at Mars Hill Ballard but had been fired some time between September and
November 2011 then, by the time Andrew’s disciplinary situation came up and
escalated, it would have been inaccurate or misleading for Andrew to say that
he was engaged to a pastor’s daughter.
Now James Noriega has a
twitter account anyone can look up that he was going on fishing trips with a
person named Andrew isn’t that difficult to look up. Noriega’s twitter account
described him as a pastor at Mars Hill up through February 28, 2012, after
which time it was corrected to avoid stating he was a pastor.
Good day fishing with Andrew. He out did me with 7 sea bass and 4 ling cod. I got 8 sea bass an 1 ling cod
http://t.co/dm8XAyk
06.18pm 19 August 2011
via Twitter for Android
He also tweeted the good
news that his daughter from his first marriage came to Christ.
I just heard my daughter from my first marriage, say she believes
in Jesus! I've been praying for her 15 years
1:59 PM - 4 Nov 2011 via
Twitter for Android ·
Quite a bit more cryptic
is this tweet from October 17, 2011. I will note that this was the same month I
began to notice Noriega was no longer listed as an elder in any capacity for the
first time.
My lack of humility is the perfect explanation to all my defects
and failures
6:52 AM - 17 Oct 2011
This tweet, from August the same year, is less vague:
Meet our new interns at
Mars Hill church #BLD http://t.co/5ghXHID
@jamesnoriega
@MarsHillBLD
gets to:
Mars Hill Ballard
Mars Hill Church lives
for Jesus as a city within the city knowing culture, loving people, seeing
lives transformed to live for Jesus.
Ballard, Seattle
8:37 AM - 7 Aug 2011 via
web
So as late as August
2011 Noriega was at Mars Hill Ballard often enough to meet and document new
interns. His twitter feed from 2011 also indicates he had gone on fishing trips
with someone named Andrew.
