Perry Noble

During a Christmas Eve service in 2014, Perry Noble sparked an incident regarding the use of what appeared to be the word nigger.[11] NewSpring Church released a statement in response to allegations that Pastor Noble said the word nigger during his sermon saying,

In regards to your question about the ‘N’ word, Perry doesn’t use that word and doesn’t address anyone in his life by such a word. He did not use that word in his message and what you perceived as him doing so was [a] matter of words getting jumbled as can happen with anyone who is speaking.[12]

Perry Noble was also quoted as saying ″I was also a racist. My grandparents used 'the n word' recreationally. In fact, most white people I knew did —and so I did too. I did not see black people as individual people with real hearts, real souls, real feelings and who really mattered to God — I saw them as a group of people who were different than me, thus allowing me to place them in a category and dismiss them as unimportant," said Perry. He continues, "But … something happened in me in 1990 that would begin to change (and is still changing) the way I see people — I prayed to receive Christ in my life, which truly is the catalyst for the changing of my heart and mind on the issue of the Confederate flag," continued the megachurch pastor.″ [13]

Following a sermon Noble delivered on Christmas Eve, a controversy arose regarding his wording at the beginning of his message.[14] He made a claim stating that there was no Hebrew word for "command," when in fact, there was. Much pressure was put on Perry Noble and on NewSpring Church for this mistake, to the point of a heated tweet on Noble's Twitter page. Noble later apologized on his blog for this tweet and his original mistake.[15]

On July 10, 2016, NewSpring Church announced that Perry Noble had been removed as Senior Pastor, due to alcohol abuse and neglect of his family duties. [16]

On November 1, 2017, Noble released a statement on Faithwire announcing his divorce from Lucretia Noble after 17 years of marriage. He stated that, “After being married for 17 years I have found myself in a place I never imagined I would be — as no one who has ever been married ever dreams in a million years that their marriage will one day end in divorce.” [17]