The cult of MCF: Part II (post-1992)

The pre-1992 period at MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) and BCF (Brisbane CF) was characterised by a wonderful restorationist word, originated by William Offiler (USA) and tested academically by Jeff Hammond (Melbourne), albeit delivered to us by a less-than fully multiple eldership and a womanizing top dog whom was unmasked in 1988.

What happened next was a classic case of fruit begets itself.

With the fall of Ray Jackson Snr, all the failings of MCF, apart from the womanizing – that is the control, shunnings and partiality – were then magnified by Vic HAll from BCF as he systematically created a theology that codified . . control, shunning and partiality.

Probably without initially realizing it, Vic Hall, made official doctrine of all the bad aspects of MCF and BCF! He has said recently:

I sought to find an administration sufficient for the fulness of times

Vic Hall, 2014-ish

That’s all very good if it’s Biblical!

But, what was really happening, is that Vic felt he needed to provide the revelatory ‘new word’ that MCF and BCF craves.

And we got it! But not without warnings to the elders from Jeff Hammond, Phil Baird, my father Charles and myself.

So, from 1992 onwards, in came his numerous new teachings, from nowhere, after supposed meetings with Christ Himself, all with a twisted ‘don’t’ do anything unless an elder tells you’ emphasis:

  • Headship
  • Elders as the Face of Christ (I call this guru’ headship)
  • Self-naming
  • Principle of the seed
  • Gospel of You
  • Laying it down
  • Emptying
  • Marred face of Christ
  • Laying it back & forward
  • Imputing
  • Piercing one’s friends
  • Farmer, not a prophet
  • The Rich Young Ruler
  • Master vs Slave in business
  • Filling up the sufferings of Christ
  • Literalism of the five offerings for today
  • Zechariah’s vision of the twin palms
  • The Blood of Christ
  • Pathway of Holiness
  • The Minas & Talents
  • The 3 Witnesses in Heaven
  • Chastisement
  • Judgement
  • Hidden with Christ
  • Don’t steward your ministries,
  • Administration of the Lamb
  • Worthy homes & the 70 disciples
  • Judgment commuted to chastisement
  • The other churches have all fallen
  • Don’t read commentaries or other Christian books

We studied each of those (and another twenty) for 6 months to a year with an accompanying book or two.

What it meant was that not only did we live a life of control by elders (so that, eg, I and many others, became unemployable, depressed and/or lost houses) but that’s also all that got preached about!

We were controlled and learned a theology of control.

It bored us to tears.

It all vaguely made sense, seemed BIblical, and we thought it was Christ coming to clean us up.

But it:

  • All boiled down to the same message: just do what your elder tells you to do or else you’re going to hell. You can’t originate anything. If you do, it will be given to someone else to do.
  • And, crucially, the Scriptures didn’t back up the twist.
    • Neither the teachings of the epistles or Christ
    • Nor the demonstration of the way the early Church lived together in Acts or the epistles.

The teaching that elders have good advice is not cultish.

But the teaching that you must take your elder’s advice or else you are automatically ‘naming-yourself’ and will got to hell is cultish. And destructive. Debilitating.

How did it look?

Like this, said to me by the half-wonderful, half-crazed David Bonham:

No man can start a business
unless
an elder asks them to

David Bonham, 1997

And it was brought in gradually so we got used to it like boiled lobsters.

The leaders in the New Testament just, simply, were never instructed to, nor did, control men’s lives on a systematic basis. The way we lived at MCF bore no resemblance to the early church.

And all the good things of pre-1992 MCF were done away with, especially including, priesthood of all believers.

The cult of MCF: Part I (pre-1992)

There was always something cultish about MCF.

For us plebs inside we rationalized it in two or three ways: (1) about the commitment level: as simply ‘taking a stand’ for Christ, or about the stories of control, shunning or womanizing, (2) we didn’t believe the stories or (3) just accepted that nothing’s perfect.

But pre-1992, these odd things about MCF always irked me.

They seemed so unnecessary and . . childish. Yes, deep down inside I saw a lot of their behaviour as childish. That’s why these days I refer to MCF as not only evil but delinquent. Delinquent in duty of care and scholarship. It was only Bible teachers like Jeff Hammond and Phil Baird that kept me there.

For example.

Why have five or six meetings a week (and expect people to be there)? For goodness sake! Let people live a bit.

And there must be some truth to the stories of shunnings of ex-members (especially if it was a family member of an elder).

And the control of people. Dear God, why are they like that? Investigate it and stamp it out. Take a stand.

And the aloofness of the elders? Do we just forgive them because they are gifted busy people?

And we’d all heard stores of the womanizing of some of the top dogs. Surely that just must be hearsay? Investigate it and stamp it out. It doesn’t matter who it is.

We forgave them because we didn’t really know for sure and the teaching and congregational culture was very solid and wholesome. I don’t subscribe to other’s views on the internet that there was little Scriptural basis for the restorationist teachings (apart from a few over-emphases).

It’s the opposite, as Jeff Hammond’s thesis points out and it was reviewed by a non-MCF theological college and even mainstream theologians couldn’t fault the core claims on multiple eldership, priesthood of all believers and restoration of all things.

But the elders who knew about the shunnings, control and womanizing? And that’s most of the older ones because three elders (Kevin Connor, Bob Holland & Tony Lyon) had exposed it before 1988.

For goodness sake! You guys are in trouble.

The damage was to everyone. Especially the affected women. But a betrayed congregation too. An unnecessarily tainted leadership. Pointless shunnings and control. Families ignoring their natural lives and other duties. Destroyed careers.

It was horrific for a small to moderate number, although everyone suffered due to over-zealousness. Even pre-1992 although 1988 cleaned up some of that.

But in 1992, Vic Hall sought to put his stamp on things.

And, it was to ignore the solid restorationist teachings, and instead, in effect, institutionalize and codify the random shunnings, control, partiality and psychological abuse of the past regime into a systematic theology that made the place horrifically abusive to every single member of the congregation! We all knew we had to give up everything an elder told us to and that became their official job.

Part II tomorrow,

Why did MCF fall again?

I truly think the MCF and BCF leaderships became puffed-up by a religious spirit, and strangely, simultaneously, became genuinely clueless and unprepared after the 1988 fall because they had never really needed to think for themselves under the poorly practiced multiple eldership model. Was it humility? False, learned humility perhaps.

None of this would matter if it were not for the wonderful restorationist word that had been taken up enthusiastically by numerous gifted couples from the 1950s to the 1980s, some of who turned out to be Yes Men, and others who, instead, stood up when the truth came out in 1988 (or earlier) and then similarly with Vic Hall’s fall into deception and egotism from 1992 onwards.

The religious spirit at MCF and BCF looks like the following.

Everyone at MCF is expectant for regular ‘new words’.

But, truth be told, time has shown that God unfolds in jumps with silence in-between.

God’s silence in between is probably to see what we do with it.

But by the late 1980s we’d stopped really doing anything with it and just wanted more ‘new’! We’d already closed-up, gone insular on a ‘fatherhood’, navel-gazing word. Fatherhood? But that was the problem! The older elders were locked into doing what their ‘father’ Jackson Snr told them to do. No real, Biblical multiple eldership.

And, when Ray Jackson Snr’s sins caught up with him in 1988 in Melbourne, Vic Hall in Brisbane was able to easily take over because of the cluelessness of the remaining senior Yes Men. It’s because those men were the men that put up with Jackson Snr despite knowing he was in sin! That’s why they fell for Vic Hall’s unproven word.

Why exactly? Because truth had no longer mattered to them for up to decades, only appearances and their comfy positions and pay-packets and car leases.

Meanwhile, after Vic Hall’s heretical messenger and guru headship word, Jeff Hammond, Tony Lyon and Phil Baird refused to compromise on truth and were kicked out or left.

It’s a sad tale but true.

But neither we, nor Jeff, nor the others have given up on the promise.

MCF, please give me the benefit of the doubt

Dear MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship),

I hope that you can forgive me for the explosive nature of my departure.

Although I do not apologise for my exposure of MCF’s psychologically abusive behaviours and lies and cover-ups over multiple decades, I do wish I had acted more calmly.

But several things you need to know that mitigated that:

  1. I was shocked at the MCF presbytery’s lack of trust in my report – after all our devotion to the Lord and MCF over 35 years. The presbytery was/is comprised of Gary Worth, Bob Stevens, Matt Bellingham’s and Richie Kaa). Only Richie Kaa showed genuine compassion and 100% believed me, although he later betrayed me horrifically in front of the presbytery.
  2. I was stunned by the 100% bare-faced lies by the presbytery. And the lack of admission by most of the four perpetrators of what they actually did and said during their psychological abuse of me over a 15-20 year period. And then their ignoring of Vic Hall’s edicts to make good to me including making restitution if they had over-stepped their mark.
  3. Nothing prepared me for the MCF congregation’s general lack of interest in what I reported. And apparent lack of interest that the elders had gone off track Biblically. Only three men talked with me for more than about 5 minutes about it. The rest of you just wanted to get away as quick as you could. After all we’ve been through together. And nobody went with me as a witness to the elders despite my numerous requests.
  4. I decided I was not going to hide the damage to my humanity. That’s why you saw me writing hundreds of emails and even yelling and crying.

Because damage to humanity is what MCF had almost decided didn’t matter.

But that is the key to MCF’s cultishness. Your leaders didn’t care about what they did to people. And didn’t care about the Scriptural basis of its activities. And wer, ultimately, completely unaccountable.

Gary Worth said (and I have two witnesses):

‘Unless it is sexual abuse we don’t want to know about it’.

Gary Worth (2016)

That’s how low the bar is at MCF.

So, forgive me for my excesses, please.

Instead, focus on my calmer pointing out where Vic Hall has gone wrong theologically and therefore pastorally. And how Justine, I and Charles, along with Jeff Hammond and Phil Baird, still share your original beliefs in restoration of the Body of Christ.

The promise of MCF

Because of, at least the theory of, multiple eldership, many of us stayed and continued to believe in the original promise that MCF preached . . despite the fall of several key players, including the founder of MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship), Ray Jackson Snr, and their exposure in 1988.

The teachings, and promise, had been Biblically solid and really uplifting, and some of it was mostly practiced really well (some parts, not so well).

It didn’t originate with MCF or Ray Jackson Snr, but was championed by him 1940-1988 in the US and Australia, and was, in fact, largely the work of Bethel Temple’s William Offiler (USA) and other restorationists in the first half of the 20th century. It was hugely bolstered by Jeff Hammond’s (Melbourne) scholarly work in the 1970s and 1980s in a Master’s thesis that mainstream theologians couldn’t deny the Scriptural basis of.

Unfortunately, Vic Hall, has, since 1992, brought an end to many of these teachings, particularly true Multiple Eldership and Priesthood of All Believers.

Multiple Eldership

MCF (or Immanuel as it was known pre-1986-ish) taught that the leadership of a church in the early church was always a multiple, without a ‘top dog’. Jeff Hammond’s thesis finds strong academic evidence for this.

For example, whenever the apostles Paul or Peter visited churches, it is always ‘the elders’ plural that they visit. There is no hint of a top dog.

And, unlike the elders in most modern churches, the elders of the early church, Scripturally, turn out to be the actual pastors and teachers and leaders.

Secondarily, of course, other workers, including deacons, and the remainder of the congregation also participate in ministry.

This multiple eldership, although apparently fully rolled out at MCF, did not work in practice because Ray Jackson Snr held control, as does Vic Hall now.

So MCF never really delivered on its promise in this respect.

Priesthood of All Believers

Everyone should contribute. Scripture is clear:

What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.

I Cor 14:26

And this was relatively well practiced at MCF communion meetings and home groups until Vic Hall took over in 1992.

In the mid-1980s there was a real sense of excitement. And people were coming in. You could bring your friends and some would stay.

Unity of the Body of Christ

We taught that Jesus’ prayer in John 17, that God’s people would be ‘one’ as Christ and the Father are one, would occur literally. And why not?

Of course, it could get cultish when it was hinted that we would be the origin of that unity. But, fair enough, few others were preaching it.

Understanding the Symbology of the Old Testament

It was fascinating seeing how beautifully the Scriptures backed up each other. And how you could understand the meaning of the Israelite feasts as shadows of Christianity to come.

For example, the Israelite feasts of Passover and Pentecost have been fulfilled in Christianity as plainly acknowledged by the New Testament writers.

Jesus sacrifice of Himself as the Lamb of God occurred on the same day as the Jews were celebrating their Passover Lamb feast! Similarly, the 120 disciples were filled with the Spirit on the literal Day of Pentecost, as the Jews were celebrating their feast. And there were more parallels that showed us that God had been carefully foreshadowing and leading up to Jesus the whole time.

But there was one more main feast that hasn’t yet been fulfilled in the Christian era . .

End Times & Perfection of the Church

MCF seemed to understand End Times better than most churches.

Why does only MCF (and a few other restorationists on the internet) talk about the meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles (which clearly has links to the Book of Revelation)? It makes so much sense.

Yes, MCF, over-emphasized the ‘perfection’ of the Church. But a lot of it made sense and still does.

Church History & Restoration of All Things

It was useful to understand that the Church of the Dark Ages was gradually being enlightened since Martin Luther. Baptism. The Holy Spirit. Why not restoration of early-church-like Priesthood of All Believers and Multiple Eldership?

It makes sense and still does.

How church should be

Some of my posts sound like a big whinge don’t they?

But it’s because we did and still believe in ‘the priesthood of all believers’ (1 Pet 2:5-9. I Cor14:26).

We didn’t want to draw to ourselves or take over! Just contribute!

The New Testament tells us how church should be:

What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.

I Cor 14:26

That’s a Scripture ignored by almost all churches. The modern church has got it wrong since the 1st century AD.

MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) had been on the right track and then Vic destroyed it with control.

Only smooth talkers and Yes Men could speak at MCF after Vic. Except at home group, but there you could only contribute about how the ‘present word’ was helping you overcome your short-comings.

The typical pleb could no longer give a word of instruction’ as 1 Cor 14:26 says. Only a word of testimony on Vic’s current word.

How about a ‘revelation’ (! Cor 14:26)? They were 100% banned.

But that Scripture makes it clear that church is a place to minister stuff that the eldership has not originated doesn’t it?

Church is meant to be place of worship and sharing and edification.

Not control or entertainment . . or even slick sermons.

Jeff & Annette Hammond

And we still believed in multiple eldership and the restoration of all things as well.

Not just because of Ray Jackson Snr but because we had seen it in Scripture and it had been confirmed in Jeff Hammond’s Master’s thesis (the book below is based on it). Mainstream academic theologians couldn’t deny the core claims of the thesis.

I secretly read Jeff and Annette’s book and it led me to move from a mainstream church to MCF in the mid 1980s. Nothing at MCF was ever as clearly documented Scripturally as Jeff’s book, or practised as we’d hoped.

But it was all we had.

Jeff & Annette Hammond’s (was Harvey) book, based on his Master’s thesis. Mainstream experts couldn’t deny the core claims of the thesis.

What it was REALLY like at MCF

I’ve already blogged about what we went through but I’ve only begun to pour out what it really felt like.

Firstly, you couldn’t find a more committed congregation than MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship). Lovely people. At every event. Every Bible Study. Every working bee.

Great camaraderie. Great culture.

Except we were all hideously constrained.

We are a couple that loved the Lord and His word, and the restorationist word of early MCF and its source, Bethel Temple and others. ‘The priesthood of all believers’. The joining of clergy and the congregation. The Body of Christ. The hope of unity.

As the cultish control came in via Vic Hall’s new theology, in 1992-ish, the first thing to go was ‘priesthood of all believers’. Vic Hall and his minions couldn’t have the messiness of individuals ministering to each other!

It was really sad.

The homegroups and communion service became either hugely scripted or handed only to ultra-trusted Yes Men (some of whom were very good and entertaining preachers and teachers mind you).

All long us men were being psychologically abused by the elders and, in some cases,, undoubtedly, the women by their husbands. After all, Vic’s messenger word gave license for an expectation of unrealistic obedience by the one you were ‘head of’. Undoubtedly.

But all along, we could see how arbitrary it was. It just depended on how your elder saw it in those early days. And he couldn’t change his mind on it. Once he’d made his decision that you were a ‘farmer, not a prophet‘, or ‘a slave = employee not a master = business owner‘, that was it.

It was so literal. And felt like forever.

And in my case, it was forever.

Although they relaxed somewhat after 2010-ish and let us try out our ideas, they never apologized and my doable entrances into business were gone a long time ago. The internet was now a tough place. And the elders still saw me as unsettled. So we were black-listed. But you could never actually talk about it.

It felt very lonely and I thought of myself as very evil for wanting to do things that the elders had ‘named‘ me not to do. Even after they relaxed control.

It took another decade for me to feel unconstrained and free.

And, back at church, there was zero room for the sort of scholarship I could contribute or for non-experts at the new lingo.

Careful study of the foundations of Vic’s stuff? None of that. Was what Vic was saying really Scriptural? Really ready for putting into practice? It wasn’t. But anyone who dared question it got sidelined like Jeff Hammond, Phil Baird and to a lesser extent my father Charles and I.

But as we watched the Yes Men use the MCF lingo so effortlessly, we knew there was no room for us. I just couldn’t have sold my soul to that unchecked word while up on the pulpit (or been able to keep up with it, it hardly made sense). But neither was I ready to give up on the dream.

So, only the smooth talkers could do it. It’s true. Only those who could keep up with those Vic Hall books AND talk touchy feely stuff could contribute.

A lot of it sounded so true.

Rick Jackson and Jona Wills and Helen Holland and Richie Kaa could just out-gun us every time so we just had to accept that we’d been superseded by these preachers kids before we ever got our mouths open. And they lived it too. BUt somehow always scored every opportunity to shine it must be said.

We actually just wanted to help and be part of it. But there simply was no venue for stuttering scholars at MCF.

It just felt so sad that there was no room for people like us to contribute. Slow to speak, a little less entertaining, less fluffy and more scholarship.

And it takes all types surely?

We need the Tyndales and Whitcliffs and Kevin Connors today, just as much as the Billy Grahams and the Brian Houstons.

Surely?

Maybe more.

But who’s going to listen to them?

Of course, in the end, the MCF stuff was fluffy garbage and worse. Endlessly attacking any form of independent ministry or living from one angle to another for 25 years.

And when I finally got time to carefully study it, I did indeed find it to have essentially no Scriptural basis, either theologically or narratively.

The early church just didn’t live that way.

Vic’s gospel is a false and dangerous gospel. But we whipped ourselves about it for 25 years.

Every day.

I can feel the marks.

The ‘Big Bang’ fiasco of 1988

In 1988, we had a fiasco that got called ‘the Big Bang’ by much of the congregation.

Don’t get me wrong, it was big, impactful, and spoke plenty about the fallen nature and disintegrity of many of the leaders.

The two top leaders of MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship), including the ‘founder’ big dog himself, Ray Jackson Snr were found to be in immorality, one with the other’s wife and the other with someone else . . not his wife.

And many people suffered horrifically under that regime and were taken advantage of, side-lined or much worse.

But, somehow, because of multipe eldership, and the solid basis of the strong restorationist word, at least half the congregation – including us – stayed. That’s what multiple eldership is for! Jeff Hammond had shown – in his Masters thesis – that the early church ALWAYS had multiple elders, and CRITICALLY, these elders WERE the pastors and teachers and apostles. It’s not like today where often the elders support a pastor and his team. The elders ARE the team, not withstanding deacons and so on.

Anyway, but the whole Big Bang was a big issue. Vic Hall came down from BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship) and helped clean it up presumably.

But we felt the rest of the eldership team were fantastic, upstanding men of God.

And our restorationist vision of God working through a ‘priesthood of ALL believers’ and Jesus’ prayer for unity being fulfilled needn’t die just because one or two ‘old guys’ fell into temptation.

Unfortunately life is never as simple as that. It turns out that almost all of the eldership of that time had known since the late 1950s that the founding elder had been mixed up in affairs. How? Because three well-respected elders including Kevin Connor, Bob Holland and Tony Lyon (2 out of 3 of who I have first-hand evidence for), and multiple women, had reported it between 1959 and 1980 to the other elders.

But the other elders chose to ignore these warnings, as they have more recently ignored Jeff Hammond’s (1995, see below), my father’s (2012) and my (2016) warnings.

These men, unfortunately, are the current, presently retiring, elders of MCF. The ones who have chosen mostly Yes Men for the present MCF presbytery. These are the same men who let Vic Hall, a known egotist, take over the whole franchise in 1992, even leading Ray Jackson Jnr astray.

If only we had known these little tidbits earlier.

Jeff Hammond, a young-ish missionary elder at the time, finally had enough of Vic Hall’s apostasies, spoke up and got sacked in 1995, on the day of my wedding actually. He has continued to grow from strength to strength in the same original restoration and multiple eldership word, ministering in Indonesia, Australia, Yemen and eastern Europe. It was Jeff who ministered to the Bali Nine as a chaplain bringing large numbers to the Lord through Andrew Chan. And now Jeff and Annette are back in Australia half the time ministering to church leaders and workers.

Well, Jeff and Annette tried to gently explain to us why they were suspecting Vic Hall’s word of heresies but we felt torn in two directions. It took until 2016 before we left.

The Letter to MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship)

Today’s article is the letter that is now on the home-page of this blog.

For forty years since the 1950s, you as Melbourne-based MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship, previously, Immanuel), taught wonderfully about the Body of Christ, multiple eldership and Christian unity and unfolded Biblical truths with unprecedented clarity.

Then, shortly after recovering from the falling of two leaders, in 1992, under Vic Hall from BCF, your presbytery allowed my family’s home church to be turned into a dangerously abusive (although non-violent) cult.

Really? Yes, gradually, month-by-month, over a five year period from 1992-1996, MCF and BCF began embracing all the hallmarks of a pathetic, controlling cult, complete with your own twisted theology, books, lingo, hierarchies, control mechanisms, codes of silence, black-markings, labellings, shunnings and coverups.

Partiality became an art form. We were declared ‘In’ or ‘Out’. ‘Worthy’ or ‘Unworthy’. ‘Master’ or ‘Slave’, ‘Marriageable’ or ‘Unmarriageable’ and so on. It only took one question to be black-marked. So the important questions were never asked.

The coverups!

History was rewritten in a split-second. ‘It was only advice!’ I was told by Gary Worth when I told him that I had been psychologically abused for 25 years under David Bonham and his sidekicks, who were, actually, just putting Vic Hall’s ‘messenger word‘ into action.

Only advice?

No. You taught us that we had to obey eldership or else we were ‘naming ourselves‘, and would go to hell.

You taught it every week for 15 to 20 years.

Laurie Holland, while serving on the presbytery grabbed my arm after the pre-church elders’ meeting and told me that in black and white.

So I proceeded to obey and obey and obey and destroyed my life.

I got banned from every dream and plan I’d ever had. All declared ‘idols’. Not allowed to do an essential postdoc internship after my PhD. Banned from starting a business. Banned from commercialising my software. Imprisoned in a dead-end job I hated for five years longer than I wanted (and then they forgot!). Made unemployable. Lost our house. Banned from even thinking about technology.

I became a broken man. I cried every week for 20 years. They took advantage of my complying nature. And it was all a secret. You couldn’t talk about it.

It was preposterous. And presumptuously done in the hope God would resurrect it they would say. And it was known to the governing presbytery group.

And, similarly, so were the lives of at least 25 other families across Australia destroyed.

You locked up all of us in fact.

The same word every week. The same prophecies. The same angle. Not an independent thought or contribution. For 25 years. And it continues today going by your so-called on-line ‘devotionals’. And the same thing on Wednesday night home groups which used to be wonderful. Nothing but Vic Hall regurgitation now.

In the lies and cover-ups that followed Richie even claimed the Isaac play was suddenly only about the historical Isaac, not us giving up our prerogatives to elders. (Oh really?What’s next? A Noah’s Ark play?). I then reminded Richie of the words of his own songs about giving up ‘vain longings’. Silence.

Then Bob Stevens attacked me personally.

Betrayed by friends.

I appealed to Vic Hall, in Brisbane, who said (I quote): “Paul is a good brother, and if those leaders have gone beyond their mandate they should repent, apologise and make restitution”.

Richie read that to those men but because you, the presbytery, wanted to sweep it under the carpet nobody received a copy of Vic’s letter and 3 out of 4 of the perpetrators couldn’t remember what Vic had said.

The week I decided to leave in 2016 was the final straw. MCF showed its true colors. Your message to us at Easter via good ol’ Jona Wills was “Don’t steward your ministry, just do what your admin leaders tell you to do. Our lives are hidden in Christ.” You have chosen to shut down every ministry and every activity that is not a puppet of Vic Hall.

Today I consider MCF to be the ‘Satanic Church of the Vegetative State‘ because nobody there is allowed to do . . anything. Zero initiative allowed. It’s full on Satanic. A waste of human life.

And, you make us think it’s because the leaders have ‘sight‘. But it’s natural sight. Soooo natural. You read us like the cover of a book, as Gary Worth says himself. So, someone who doesn’t present well is pigeon-holed forever to be useless!

As I suspected as a youth, MCF was a place for the extrovert, the showmen, those with the gift of the gab and the (dis)integrity of the Yes Man. But far worse than I ever imagined. MCF never listened to the umming and ahhing ones, or those who would question anything in scholarship. To their downfall.

What does it all mean? Well, when your leader starts talking abut multiple personal visitations from Jesus HImself, banning us from reading other Christian materials including commentaries and closing all links to other churches, we should have all been on the watch. Jesus said that close to His second coming do not believe those who claim exclusivity (those who say ‘look here’ or ‘look there’).

It means that Vic Hall has led us astray. The carnage of destruction from Vic’s messenger word is horrific in scale and nature. People locked up. Families separated. Financial ruins. Children lost. Divorces justified. Men! Women! Wake up. The MCF and BCF leaders are practising seance-like ‘sight’ but it’s just natural. It’s the same word for 30 years and the rest of the gospel is ignored. Control is not the way. Lead by example and diversity of expression.

Have you noticed that the men who brought us the word so ‘kindly’ but forcefully have all fallen in disgrace or depression? The man’s man, ‘Falky’. Kindly Tucker. Gentle Wiley.

All gone.

Why? Because they forcefully proclaimed a word that is not backed by Scripture either theologically or narratively. Does life in the early church sound anything remotely like life at MCF with its focus on control and elders’ non-stop sessions with men? It’s nothing like that. The epistles and Acts speak nothing of judging people and controlling their specific business, career or ministry choices. Only of wholesome, godly living and commitment to Christ generically.

There’s not a hint of Vic’s messenger word in the life of the early church or their teachings.

It’s all made up by Vic! Year after year, with each new book, I became more and more suspicious and despondent as when the cultish statement was finally made in the book, and I looked up the footnote Scriptures, they barely, if at all, supported the statement, and certainly not the cultish sentiment.

Murray Wiley told me last year, “Paul, didn’t you understand that these were all just theories.” I told Murray: “No. We had trusted that you had got this from the Lord, and tested it in scholarship and spirit.”

My last words to Murray Wiley: “Your move has been the most destructive and bullying experience of my life”.

After Charles, my Dad left he finally, somewhat sheepishly, told me about the vision he had of MCF leadership in 2012. He saw you elders chained to each other, wearing flowing robes, long hair and inverted crowns thrust over your necks like millstones. And you were in coal carts hurtling down a tunnel into an abyss.

You took no warning from Charles in 2012. He is amongst the humblest men I know and was your biggest fan.

You have allowed yourselves to become misled bullies, strutting and judging everyone, holding them to impossible, nasty, selfish constraints as if you have Christ’s eyes on automatic beck and call.

How preposterous.

And in 2016 Gary Worth said he was not going to take a warning from me.

I reminded him that, despite my lowly and trampled status in the church, Ray Jackson Jnr had prophetically declared me a ‘Pillar in the House of the Lord’. The only such pillar in Scripture is Jeremiah. And we know what his job was. To tell the elders and princes. And if they didn’t listen, to go into the courtyard and tell the people.

I was prophetically appointed one of your watchtowers and this is my last warning.

MCF.

From such awesome beginnings.

So what was the new MCF theology?

The new theology, under Vic Hall, at Melbourne Christian Fellowship (MCF) was essentially a huge over-reaction to ‘dead works’ (Heb 6), i.e. works one does of one’s own volition that may or may not be perfectly in-line with God’s will. The over-reaction was to make everyone seek God’s face via an elder. On almost anything. And threaten us with going to hell as the alternative.

We all do things we think are right. We try to do the right thing. But not at MCF.

MCF calls those ‘dead works’ and Vic Hall, from 1992-1996 developed an entire new ‘naming’, guru elder ‘headship’ and suffering theology around it and MCF and BCF have not taught on another topic for 25 years.

Naming

At MCF, it is emphasized that God ‘names’ people to their natures, careers and ministries. There’s plenty of Scriptures to support this. But it’s what you do with it that makes MCF a cult.

At MCF, they believed that your ‘naming’ could actually somehow literally be determined by interaction with elders. Like, on call.

And if you did things outside of that interaction with eldership you were ‘self-naming’ yourself. And that was like the worst thing you could do and deserved hell.

Again, it’s not impossible to find Scriptures supporting this. But it was the literalism of it all. That you could actually determine what to do with certainty, everytime, by having sessions with your ‘guru’ elder.

Guru headship & ‘sight’

So, your ‘guru’ (my derogatory terminology) elder was your local Wednesday night BIble Study (although I’d say it’s been 25 years since we actually studied the Bible at MCF) elder.

And the sessions the men would have with the elders varied from fire-side chats to the Spanish Inquisition.

At Greensborough ours were the latter type. We arrived shaking and returned crying. Huge lists of criticisms. Banned from goals in life, work and ministry. Like forever potentially.

The idea was that the elders were the ‘human face of headship’ (that was an MCF/BCF term). As God is head to Christ and Christ was head to man, and man to woman, well somehow they made elders the ‘human face’ of Christ and of course women received their headshio from men. So it’s like us men were married to . . the elders.

The elders supposedly had supernatural ‘sight’ for our lives. All Christians assume leaders have wisdom. But automatic ‘sight’ for our individual situations? Everytime?That must be obeyed or else damnation?

But they taught it all so sincerely and with beautiful music by the Kaa brothers:

“All my plans and vain longings,
Of all I seek to be,
My desire to name myself . .
Keeps me from meeting You”

Richie & Bryan Kaa (song)

Hauntingly beautiful acoustic guitar.

But supporting a soul-destroying, self-serving cultish theology.

The Scriptures used were pathetically poorly supportive of Vic’s ‘proposition’ (he actually called it a proposition. We must have been lunatics to fall for it):

For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them

Matt 18:20

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

2 Cor 4:6

Do those Scriptures at all suggest that elders are the face of Christ? There was no better Scripture than these that I or they ever found. Yet we fell for it. If anything the Corinthinas Scripture suggests the opposite: Christ gives us light directly in our hearts!

But somehow they twisted it to mean that it was the light shining in the elders’ hearts that were like the face of Christ to us . . plebs.

Nuts.

If you can just imagine the seriousness that this was preached to us.

For 20 years.

Marred headship

Built into the theology was a get-out-of-jail-free card for the elders.

Of course they couldn’t be perfect. So we were taught that, just as Christ was ‘marred for us’, so too are the elders marred. Headship is imperfect but as we honour it, we build character. And so it doesn’t matter if your elder is actually right! Even if he destroys your life!

‘As unto the Lord’.

Suffering

Then we spent another five to ten years learning about suffering for Christ.

We all already knew we had to ‘take up our cross’. But it went further to ‘making up for the suffering lacking in Christ’ (Col 1:24). So if you were suffering, often people wouldn’t help you at all because they didn’t want to deny your slice of suffering.

This was all vaguely Scriptural until it is put into practice by your, possibly lunatic local elder. The elders took us to our own customized crosses.

And we had to learn the word of ‘no’ before the word of ‘yes’.

It might take a decade or two.

I lost the best 25 years of my life, from age 25 to 49 as I was raising my children and trying to support my family, to this lunatic un-Biblical theology of Vic Hall.

Piercing in the house of your friend

One of the classic teachigns they used was from Zechariah where a farmer is told (piercingly) that he is a

‘farmer, not a prophet’.

Zech 13:5

So that began the time of elders systematically labelling us what we were and weren’t.

And it was always the boring one.

The one we were.

Of course we need to ‘soberly’ see ourselves for what we are (Rom 12:3). But at MCF you got pigeon-holed by elders essentially forever. Any plans you had after that were considered in the light of your ‘naming’.

You hoped your elder was having a good day.

You went shaking to those sessions.

The Rich Young Ruler

They’re favourite angle was the story of the Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-27).

Jesus of course ells the young ruler that to make it to the kingdom of heaven, in his case, he must sell everything and follow Jesus.

Well, for me, it was give up every dream, every plan I had ever had.

The outcome

Can you see that if you are taught these BIblical stories ONLY, week after week you kind of start taking it to heart and you start believing it.

And apply them ALL to yourself. With the happy help of your local elder who is only too willing.

But that was the crazy: applying all of those stories to ourselves all and every time about everything.

So we did it. We gave up all our plans and dreams.

And did NOTHING instead.