In Matthew Paul Turner’s
account Andrew said he was engaged to a pastor’s daughter and that after his
confession he ended up meeting with his fiancée’s stepfather. Now in Matthew Paul Turner's wording the
stepfather might be construed as a separate person from the pastor at the Mars
Hill campus. This inference, however, could be a misleading and
inaccurate. I do not believe,
ultimately, that it’s plausible to simply assume that the fiancée’s father and
stepfather as described in a Mars Hill setting are necessarily different men.
It’s possible, of course, but I intend to explain the significance of these two
details at some length given what I know about the history and culture of Mars
Hill.
The requirements for
elder candidacy at Mars Hill are generally thought to be pretty stringent.
Divorce is not generally smiled upon at Mars Hill. Who could have been a pastor
at Mars Hill Ballard and have also been a stepfather? First we have to
establish the conditions under which such a scenario might have been considered
acceptable and only then consider whether there were actual candidates who in
2011 at Mars Hill Ballard could have met those criteria.
There are only two
plausible possibilities to explain how and why a man would be an elder at Mars
Hill and also have a stepdaughter.
Either the man was married, had a wife who died, remarried, and gained a
stepdaughter or the man was married at some point when he was not a Christian,
ended up divorced, became a Christian, married, and with that subsequent
marriage gained a stepdaughter. These
are the only two credible options given the seriousness with which marriage and
family are taken by Mars Hill.
It happens that at Mars
Hill Ballard circa 2009-2011 there were not one but two pastors who were
remarried. Bill Clem’s wife Jeannie died
of cancer around 2008 or 2009 and he subsequently remarried. I don’t recall anything about his kids other
than that they all seem to be adults and seem to have been married. He is
currently pastor at Mars Hill Ballard. Simply put, it was not Bill Clem. Since
Andrew’s story made national news Mars Hill has, at some point at least prior
to March 2012, scrubbed pastor profiles of any and all information indicating
spouses, children, or stepchildren. It’s not particularly difficult to
speculate as to why. In 2012 Clem was
still high profile and had a job within Mars Hill (though not anymore). Mark Driscoll even blogged in 2012 that
because Bill Clem and Bubba Jennings had done such a fine job leading Mars Hill
Ballard Mars Hill could move live preaching from Ballard to Bellevue. Again,
Clem was not the man.
That brings me to the
second man who was a pastor at Mars Hill Ballard who remarried at some point in
the past. Since late February 2012 I documented the abrupt disappearance of
James Noriega from eldership at Mars Hill. As I began to investigate
further into the absence of James Noriega from the Mars Hill elder listings I
scoured publications for more about his background. I came across the
following articles that are the earliest witness to Noriega’s history. They are
important both for being early witnesses to Noriega’s life and history before
Mars Hill and for being on record accounts independent of either Acts 29 or
Mars Hill:
June 1, 2004
James Noriega didn't
know he'd sold drugs to an undercover police officer until the day he was
baptized.
Recognized by a member
of the congregation who happened to be an officer, Noriega was escorted from
the church, his face still dripping.
It wasn't a setup,
Noriega said, unless you appreciate the Almighty's sense of humor. It was
karmic payback, his life catching up with him -- and his own yearning to put
despair behind him.
Like many of the
homeless and formerly homeless men who come to Seattle's Union Gospel Mission legal
clinic, Noriega had been seeking legal advice, but hoped for transformation.
Like many others, he has found both.
"Meth made me
someone I wasn't," says Noriega, 37, who went to prison for a year,
instead of the five years he might have served, helped by Union Gospel
Mission's legal clinic and a substance-abuse program run by the faith-based
mission.
...
Noriega can relate. When
he was in the Kitsap County Jail serving a sentence for a warrant "I
didn't even know had been issued," he had time to reflect on his newfound
faith and life.
Noriega had prayed to be
reunited with his wife. A rigger at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in
Bremerton, he never wanted a divorce. But she had found someone else.
When she got the
children, he discovered drugs. Then he discovered unemployment. He hit the
streets, still masking pain with meth.
"She couldn't --
and didn't -- claim domestic violence or anything like that," Noriega
said. "It came down to the fact she didn't love me anymore. I loved my
kids. My heart was broken. I quit going to work ... I didn't have anything, yet
I was supposed to pay $900 a month in child support."
The legal clinic has
helped Noriega, now a counselor with the mission, repay child support, get out
of debt and start anew.
On New Year's Eve last
year, he married a woman he met through a Christian dating service and
"has a chance to be a dad again" to her 10-year-old daughter.
"God works through
the cracks of our lives," Noriega said. "I've learned not to be
afraid of cracks."
Noriega was once married
and not a believer, got divorced, sank into drug use after the divorce, became
a Christian, married again, and gained a stepdaughter. He was apparently arrested the day of his
baptism for having sold drugs to an undercover cop. Noriega was escorted out
the building by a cop who was a member of the church he was baptized in. Fast forward a few months later to November
2004.
Nov 25, 2004
...
James Noriega had found
it once, before divorce sent him into a drug-fueled tailspin that ended in a
Pioneer Square park one cold December night.
...
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Path-through-despair-and-redemption-led-to-1160587.php#page-2
The chain of events that
landed Noriega at the same shelter was set in motion in 1996, when his high
school sweetheart and the mother of his two children divorced him. His whole
identity was wrapped up in being a husband and a father, and when that
disintegrated, Noriega lost his grip.
"I just never
really got over the divorce," the 38-year-old said.
Drugs became a salve,
and Noriega was soon in the throes of a serious methamphetamine addiction. At
its peak, he was using about $100 worth of drugs daily. He lost his job at a
Puget Sound shipyard. The felonies followed, and the former family man, who'd
never had so much as a parking ticket in his life, ended up in prison.
After being released,
Noriega turned to family members and friends. But he was a liability, and no
one would take him in. One chilly night in December 1999, he found himself
sitting on a bench in Occidental Park -- the same bench he'd walked by years
earlier on his way to a football game with friends. A homeless man was there at
the time, praising the Lord. What a pathetic sap, Noriega thought to himself.
There he was, in the
same place, with nowhere to go. Noriega noticed a line of men outside the
nearby mission and walked over. He soon met Ostertag, who was in a dorm on the
same floor. They became friends, graduating from the program the same day and
joining the shelter's paid staff together two years ago.
Noriega moved out of the
shelter then, but the two continued to work and spend time together. When
Noriega took on his current position as a case manager for the shelter's drug
recovery program, Ostertag stepped into his former role, working with men newly
arrived at the shelter to place them in programs and provide referrals to other
community agencies.
The pair has the sort of
friendship, Noriega said, forged by shared experience.
"There are some
definite depths of our souls we share," he said. "We grew up
together, basically, in a new life -- muddled through it, fell on our faces,
day after day, in a good way, trying to get it right."
And finally, it seems,
they have
In order to more fully
discuss the background of James Noriega we’ll need to take a detour into the
history of Mars Hill real estate acquisitions.
Without investigating this topic we’ll have no idea how James Noriega
came to be at Mars Hill to begin with.
At this point we’ve merely established that of the two remarried men
that James Noriega was the most likely possible candidate to be the
father/stepfather whose daughter/stepdaughter Andrew had been dating. But it is still necessary to establish
Noriega’s publicly published background to show that it’s perfectly plausible
to suggest that Noriega fits the criteria in Andrew’s story as conveyed by
Turner.
Now, to that topic of
real estate …
No comments:
Post a Comment