Perry Noble

After meeting with him, I decided to compose a list of the reasons why I love Perry Noble. Here ya go:

1. He is a normal guy. I am sure that at some point in your life you have had a face-to-face meeting with someone you consider to be one of your heroes (not seeing Batman at Six Flags). Unfortunately, it turns out that the person you respected is a jerk. This has happened to me on several occasions. Perry is just a normal guy who God is using in a tremendous way!

2. He made time in his schedule for 2 guys that he has only contacted through email. He wasn't so busy that he couldn't give me and JR some time. We were expecting an hour and we ended up spending an hour and 45 mins with him and Shane, a really cool guy on his staff.

3. He absolutely loves to see people have a real encounter with Jesus, whether this is for the first time or 100th. A few weeks ago, they had 214 people saved in one day. WOW!

4. He is a Clemson fanatic. Enough said there! He talked about how lots of the players have been saved at Newspring.

5. He really believes in vision. He is really big on not allowing someone to hijack your vision. There are always people that will try to push their agenda on your church or ministry. These people mean well but they will try to use their influence to determine the direction of their ministry.

6. I saw him talk to several people in the restaurant and he was genuinely interested in their situation and what was going on in their life. The dude really cares about people! Most people think that a guy that runs over 6,000 people on Sundays doesn't really care about every person. Nothing could be further from the truth.

7. He blogs daily. One of the first things that I do each day is to read his blog. It pumps me up!

8. He believes in excellence! If you can't do it right, don't do it.

9. He surrounds himself with awesome and incredible people. They have the same vision and heartbeat! They see God moving there and do not mind going the extra mile. An simple example of this is that his receptionist and admin. assistants are the nicest people on the planet!

10. He is not afraid to live on the edge. He said that if you want to reach lost people, you have to be willing to do some things that will even make you uncomfortable. He is not afraid to offend the religious Pharisees.

Needless to say, it was certainly worth the cost of the plane ticket! I am so glad that our meeting with Perry exceeded our high expectations!