To the Christian community: Warning about MCF/BCF

Hello all!

I’m writing primarily to Australia’s and South East Asia’s Christian community to properly warn you about the status of the cult-like church run by Victor Hall and Ray Jackson Jnr, called ‘X Christian Fellowship‘ where X = Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and many smaller branches. There are also branches in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

After 35 years of living in one of these branches, MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) in Wonga Park, Melbourne, I can categorically state that it is undoubtedly a very dangerous (but non-violent) cult and any of your parishioners advising to consider attending it or having come out of it need serious counselling. I lost the best 35 years of my life there.

I am still a believer in Christ and recommend they read my blog.

After some wonderful beginnings MCF/BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship) has fallen twice, once at the hands of its founder Ray Jackson Snr (to immorality, 1959-1988) and the second time at the hands of Victor Hall (to his cult theology, 1992-present).

These churches gradually trap the congregation into believing all sorts of untruths and living debilitating types of lives including total shut-down of all prerogatives:

• MCF/BCF/SCF is the only valid church
• Their elders have automatic and systematic supernatural ‘sight’ for congregants spiritual and natural lives
• You must obey the elder’s advice or else you will ‘go to hell’.
• Almost nobody makes their own decisions without seeking eldership direction
• Almost nobody does anything that appears slightly ambitious (starting a business or a ministry or a high level sport or musical talent for example)
• You could be forced to stay in employment that you hate
• You could be forced to do a course or take up a career that you hate
• You could be delayed up to seven years in starting a business or up to five years in getting married
• You are advised NOT to steward a ministry (our life is ‘hidden in Christ’)
• You are advised just to do what your elder or ‘admin’ leader tells you to do instead of stewarding your talents
• Long-term members shun relatives and friends who have left
• Shunned grandparents and aunts and uncles are disallowed from contacting grandchildren and nieces and nephews
• You will be declared worthy or unworthy
• You will be declared marriageable or unmarriageable
• You will be declared a master (business-person) or a slave (an employee) with little chance of switching categories
• You will never be asked or allowed to suggest what you would be good at in the church
• You will almost always be banned from anything you really like
• You won’t be allowed to run a para-ministry like a Bible Study or a Craft Night at your own home

The problem with all of these things (apart from the obvious) is that these elders probably get it wrong about 50% of the time! And they forget what they said last time. They admit that they read us like ‘the cover of a book’. Not to mention that the idea of getting stuff from a ‘guru’ elder is simply not Scriptural! It takes us away from Christ and prayer and the Scriptures! We’re meant to live day by day by Christ in us!

There are around two or three thousand people across Australia living like this in XCFs including in Perth and Adelaide.

What the leadership is doing is full on psychological abuse. Because it is a close community and you obey because your friends are doing it. The theology and culture is of course is completely non-Biblical despite their claims.

The MCF presbytery and eldership comprising Bob Stevens, Gary Worth, Richie Kaa Jnr, Matt Bellingham, Ray Jackson Jnr, Laurie Holland, Richard Kaa, David Bonham, Keith Tucker and Dan Worth present as wonderful caring people but are the exact opposite.

Their only care is to get you sucked in.

After that they will tear you to shreds.

No common decency. And they lie through their teeth to cover up their sins and cult theology.

Do you believe in visions? My father had two about the leadership in 2012 and 2019. emphasizing the millstones around the elders’ necks as they play their games with the congregation, leading them on for decades and then . . nothing.

The 600 people at MCF dwindled down to 300 by 1990 after the first fall, and then down to 200 by 2010 after Vic Hall’s turn toward cult. MCF seems to be stable now and everyone there is virtually intermarried and almost impossible to counsell out of it.

The place is a death camp. Originally a place of flourishing ‘Priesthood of All Believers‘, where everyone contributed, you can now only minister out of a Vic Hall book.

In the last 25 years only three new families attended primarily because of their reputation reported online. And almost nobody has left apart from a few young people.

Nevertheless, I still wanted to report what was going on ‘behind the walls’. I and my wife and four children got out in 2016.

Here is my letter to the leadership of MCF.

Here is my letter to Vic Hall, the creator of the cult theology.