The cultish MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) congregation, of post-1992, live in a kind of utopian community that we really miss (in addition to the people themselves).
The closeness. The sense we were all going through everything together is unmatched by anything else I’ve ever seen or heard about. Except perhaps the early church.
Almost everyone was at every meeting, every home-group BIble Study, every working bee, every camp conference. If you were sick you knew people were praying for you.
The young people were just as dedicated and didn’t insist on ‘tailored meetings’ with ultra-modern music etc. In fact the music was beautiful, if a little unenergetic.
Homegroups were fantastic with all age groups mixing and contributing (although the contributing was of a certain allowed type post-1992). As couples, you knew all the other families AND their kids and their parents
The youth gave fantastic testimonies.
It was utopia.
But it wasn’t real.
It was forced. It was horrifically partial. It was presumptuous. It was insular. It was un-Biblical. It accepted shunnings, secrets and codes of silence and didn’t question anything doctrinally which ultimately led to its dysfunction.
Everyone was held in by fear, and a lie, that there was no salvation, or a lower quality salvation, outside of MCF/BCF. And, in the end, it locked everyone up to having very limited (close to zero) goals in life, career or ministry. It was like a death camp really.
But everywhere else has a lot to learn from the positive aspects of MCF/BCF.
What we want of course is the utopia without the cult.
Open Letter to Melbourne Christian Fellowship (MCF) 