Open Letter to Melbourne Christian Fellowship (MCF)

MCF & BCF vastly limited ministry by everyday congregants and destroyed our spirits

I’ve commented here and there before that MCF & BCF did away with Scriptural ‘priesthood of all believers’. But many still in these cult churches will deny it and say ‘no, we can contribute at communion meetings & home groups’. But how? Only via regurgitations of Vic Hall word direction in prophecies, testimonies & preaching. We all learned what were the kosher contributions.

Only those consistently sticking to the party line were ever chosen to do anything apart from wash dishes or toilets.

It’s true.

Many of us had a heart for encouragement, edification, evangelism and ministry to children, youth or even general ministry or bible study but couldn’t get a foot in the door. After 20 or 30 years.

I know because I am thinking of lovely friends at MCF who used to be huge contributors whether quietly in the background or from the pulpit but got sidelined.

In the end only elder’s children and total sell-out groupies could contribute anything substantive. We all sat there watching them play the party line. It was disgusting in the end.

And what did it do to us INSIDE?

We all had dreams of simply wanting to CONTRIBUTE. Share our faith. Even in the background.

This unrighteous judging ended up amounting to HORRIFIC psychological abuse.

When you receive ZERO affirmation for 20 years it does something to your spirit. You lose all confidence. You no longer bother contributing. You can no longer make decisions.

You think I’m talking about ambitious types?

No, it was all types. I and my friends got destroyed and crushed. I could list 30 or 40 people and I include my wife and I and my father and a dozen close friends.

It affected not just our life in church but our entire lives. Often it was all accompanied with a destruction of any self-respect in our workplaces or the mission of our workplaces.

We became absolute nobodies. Life just stopped.

MCF & BCF are the epitome of a leadership that are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship at it again needlessly criticising other churches

I’m actually hugely in favour of all of Christendom returning closer to Biblical understandings of God’s promises and requirements.

But, in BCF’s latest member-only online devotion (see below) they hugely miss the mark as usual.

Yes, it’s true that the church fell from the truth. They established ‘formulae’ for getting to heaven. And baptised infants instead of adults who can repent as Jesus outlined.

And it’s true that even in evangelical circles salvation can be formulaic.

But we also know, that in a vast majority of churches worldwide there is genuine teaching about ‘going on in our salvation’.

So many sermons and books on ‘taking up our cross’ and ‘actions must follow faith’ etc.

But BCF & MCF would have us believe they are the only ones teaching this!

And of course, as will no doubt appear in their devotions in following days, there will be the cultish BCF word that we must listen and heed the ‘word of the messenger’ who has supernatural sight for your walk and decisions!

That is a twisted view of Scripture.

Yes, as preached in many churches, we must hear from our leaders. But to cultishly teach we should expect essentially prophetic outpourings in one-on-ones on every decision we make for our specific situation? And if we disobey we go to hell?

That’s what they taught 1993-2016 and likely still today.

It is a debilitating, deceptive and destructive false gospel that cuts out our devotion to the Lord and His word and prayer and guidance from the Holy Spirit as we do these things.

We live by the light of His word to our path. Messengers are only one part of that.

Today’s BCF devotion

To be restored to first love, and established in the gospel of sonship, we must also recognise and turn from the religious philosophies and doctrinal traditions that we have believed and taught in the church as alternatives to the gospel of sonship. Col 2:8. Historically, these doctrines have been the attempts of various leaders and movements, claiming to be part of the church, to define the minimum conditions required for entry into heaven.

The early church fathers, who ministered in the second and third centuries, rejected the gospel of sonship that Paul and the other apostles had outlined in their writings. 1Ti 6:20-21. 2Ti 1:15. These church ‘fathers’ were, in the main, scholars whose theologies were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Rom 1:21-22. 1Co 1:19-23. According to their doctrinal assertions, a parent could secure their child’s salvation and entry into heaven by presenting them to a priest for infant baptism. This practice of sprinkling infants with water for their salvation revealed that responsibility for the salvation of children had been formally removed from the family and had been assumed by the church.

Since the Reformation, many within the Evangelical movement have declared that entry into heaven is conditional upon Jesus becoming an individual’s personal Saviour. The essential element of this doctrine is that Christ’s death on the cross was a legal propitiation that saves a person from the wrath of God that is destroying them because of their sins. Jesus Christ paid the penalty for the sin of the whole of mankind, and this salvation is available to those who meet and receive Christ as their personal Saviour. Many Evangelicals now assert that all that is necessary for a person to enter heaven is to acknowledge this truth and to pray the sinner’s prayer. They then receive forgiveness of sins and are saved from eternal damnation.

The reality of becoming an actual son of God through new birth, and its necessity for entering the kingdom of heaven, has been actively rejected by many adherents of this positional, legal gospel. Joh 3:3-5.

The sin of MCF/BCF

It’s easy (on this blog of mine) to lose the forest for the trees.

What exactly is it that MCF/BCF did to us and me in particular? And what does it mean?

Well, for 20-25 years of my life

I lost the best 20-25 years of my life in depressed, often near unbearable servitude and forced nothingness because of this manipulative and deceived church move of Melbourne Christian Fellowship & Brisbane Christian Fellowship. I can only trust that this suffering of mine is somehow for the sake of others and not pointless
I lived under a national and local church leadership that didn’t let me do anything I wanted to do under threat of going to hell.
Everything I loved (my postdoc, technology, business, Bible teaching, evangelising) and planned to do was labelled an idol or a ‘projection’ to be ‘laid down’, dropped. to have no further interest in unless ‘God resurrects it’. This resulted in endless torturous mind games with elders & their sidekicks literally standing over me. If you showed any interest in something you were banned from it or it was given to someone else. It was heartless.
Due to a code of silence I could not talk about it for 20-25 years
It was sickening and psychologically damaging being blocked from any stewarding of my career/businesses or serving in my church (beyond toilet cleaning) for 20-25 years as almost everyone else went from strength to strength
My local leaders may have been fruitcakes but what they did was 100% consistent with the preaching of Vic Hall et al
Neither Vic Hall/BCF or the local MCF presbytery took any interest or duty of care in what the local homegroup leaders were doing to their flocks yet they knew what my local leaders were doing to me (despite denying it) because Laurie Holland was on the presbytery and talked a lot with David Bonham (my homegroup leader) as evidenced by the threats that LH made to me
When I reported it many of the presbytery largely denied it or said ‘it was just advice’ despite the teaching on obeying without questioning, they denied knowing about it & denied the word preached was consistent with or encouraging of that behaviour
Vic Hall told the local homegroup leaders to make restitution to me if they had gone ‘beyond their mandate’
Richie Kaa & the presbytery determined the local homegroup leaders had gone beyond their mandate
No restitution was ever paid. When they asked how much I would expect, I asked for a TOTAL of $200,000 from the church and the 4 local leaders so that we could scrape ourselves out of the gutter after having lost the best years of my adult life in horrific servitude and nothingness (& lost our house and been near-unemployable despite being a 99.9 ATAR equivalent with a 10-year PhD CSIRO career).
This inconsistency was never addressed
I was never allowed to talk to the presbytery with the perpetrators in the same room
The whole organization is a sham and a cult because they taught ‘do not question us’. ‘It is poured out from heaven into a bowl of teaching’. ‘There’s nowhere else’.
But it was manipulative because we grew up there before it was like this and had become a community. And they made it near-impossible to leave because our roots and friends and family were there.
The leaders knew what they were doing and what they could and could not get away with and who was susceptible
The cover-up by the presbytery was nasty and carefully planned
They shut down a full generation of lovely, dedicated believers who just wanted to contribute in favour of the elders kids and young people who they could indoctrinate (I do not exaggerate)
So I consider Vic Hall, BCF, MCF & my local leaders all culpable and delinquent in their duties, preaching of twisted un-Biblical theology and New Testament responsibility to make restitution.

The true nature of Vic Hall

Through multiple recent interactions we have more confirmations of the true nature of Vic Hall, leader of BCF and the XCF cult movement.

Some who have left consider him to be sincere but misguided.

Who knows.

I believe, unfortunately, that he is worse than that. Of course, usually, God will lead us out of misguidedness if we have a teachable heart.

What we have uncovered recently as we have been interacting with abused folk from XCF sites around the world are a pattern of exaggerations and lies:

Vic Hall LIE #1

Vic Hall claimed to various churches in Indonesia that in the early days a very miraculous tongue message/interpretation was made to tell a large congregation of ministers that:

‘Listen to this man. He is a servant of the Lord and he brings My word. Hear him’.
Tongue message by a non-English speaker (as bragged by Vic Hall)

It’s a totally true miraculous event witnessed by a multitude . .

. . EXCEPT . .

. . the message was not about Vic Hall but about the entire team. It was the late 1970s and Vic Hall had not started preaching his ‘guru’ messenger debilitating word.

The actual tongue message, during the song-service, in English by a non-English speaker, as noted by the translator, was:

‘These are servants of the Lord and they bring my word. Hear them’.
Tongue message, during the song service, by a non-English speaker (as recalled by the natural translator)

Vic Hall was one of five speakers including Ray Jackson Jnr and Jeff Hammond. It was a message about the team, not Vic Hall. And the word was the original word from MCF. This original word on unity, the Body of Christ and multiple eldership is still cherished by us and taught throughout the world by Jeff Hammond and is totally Biblical.

This confirms – to me – the soundness of the original word, and the waste that MCF and BCF have caused of people and the original word.

Let’s keep getting the word out of a growing, powerful, glorious, united global Church knitted together by devotion to the Lord Jesus and Biblical multiple eldership and priesthood of all believers!

2. Vic Hall LIE #2

Vic Hall claims to have perfomed ‘mnay miracles’. Yet none of us inlcuding his fellow travelling ministers and translators are aware of any such feats.

We can’t be sure but it sounds like another Vic Hall embelishment.

This is important because Vic Hall is currently captivating groups up in Indonesia RIGHT NOW with these claims that he DOES NOT MAKE here in Australia.

This is totally consistent with his known fruit and known egotistical way and horrifcally debilitating theology unfortunately, despite the fact that some of his ideas are undoubtedly sound.

Forgiveness

From time to time I do have to ask myself whether I have forgiven the elders and presbyteries at Melbourne Christian Fellowship (MCF) and Brisbane Christian Fellowship (BCF) for their cultish, abusive practices and misleading, manipulative and non-Biblical teachings.

Have I really forgiven them?

Why am I writing this blog?

Does forgiveness mean not warning others?

Can I forgive them AND write this blog?

I don’t really know for sure.

But I know that I do feel love for the leaders of MCF and BCF. I hope for reconciliation. I hope the best for them. I pray for them.

But I also pray that they will be exposed for what they are doing.

So it’s complicated.

I have ‘forgiven them’ to their faces but since then have had many arguments with them. In my heart I forgive them but they won’t talk to me. They have not asked for forgiveness because they are still abusing people and lying about me.

But Scripture strongly hints that we need to always forgive, even if not asked for forgiveness. Interestingly when Jesus could have made it clear about enemies and abusive ones he only said to ‘love and pray’ for them. He didnt’ say to forgive people continuing to be enemies, contrary to Jesus’ and Stephen’s examples on their deathbeds:

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Matt 5:44

Regardless, I forgive them.

But, as required for ‘enemies’ I will ALSO keep this blog going to expose the harm continuing to be done by these delinquent and deceived and incredibly destructive people.

I feel more love for them than revenge or need for vindication, but on principle I must keep this blog open.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship: Peddling Unaccountability

One of the worst things that BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship) does is teach unaccountability.

Sadly, it’s part of their cult theology. And part of their life style.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship and MCF teach and exemplify unaccountability in a ridiculously large number of ways:

BCF/MCF taught all the time that we should NOT be concerned with things ‘out of our accountability’. Don’t get concerned about injustices on other people. They actually said that. It’s because XCF is a church move of injustice. Elders are telling people to do stupid things on a daily basis and causing havoc. Their argument is to let God have revenge, but what about NOT hiding injustice. We’re not supposed to hide and abet injustice according to Scripture!
Don’t talk about what’s happening to you. Don’t ‘murmur’.
When accused ‘open not your mouth’ as Christ. It’s effectively a code of silence, taking the fifth. But it’s a for a corrupted reason.
Injustices don’t matter because God knows, God takes revenge and everything works together for good.
Do what your elder tells you even if you know it is wrong because elders are marred as Christ was and in following them you are obeying ‘as unto the Lord’
Don’t help people suffering because that is God’s measure of suffering and will build character in them
Their care axiom is: ‘If it’s not sexual abuse, there’s nothing we can do’

The place was just short of a complete nuthouse only because most people didn’t obey these things all the time out of residual common sense.

Let’s just never forget that the Scriptures have WAY MORE TEACHING about exposing and standing up for justice than any vague allusions to idiotic Brisbane Christian Fellowship teachings.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship: The Big Bluff

Many of us ex-XCFers have noticed how nervous, cagey and guarded our overlords were at, eg, MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) & Brisbane Christian Fellowship (BCF). Both when they were trampling us and when they were covering it up (or kicking us out).

It’s because the whole thing was a big bluff.

How much could Brisbane Christian Fellowship get away with?

They had to walk a fine line between asking us to give up everything and something we could lay down without thinking twice.

It had to hurt. But not too much at the start. By the end, you had suffered so much for what they made you believe was for your own good (or for the sake of others), you let them hurt you even more until it was utterly soul destroying.

They talked you into dropping all of your interests and opportunities! You would oscillate between being as mad as hell and the calmness of no longer caring because you now knew you would never get anything. You gave up on any hope. Nothing mattered anymore. We became play things to the elders.

We just let them walk over us like doormats. Trampled underfoot. Slapped in the face. Nothing of our humanity remained.

The first thing they had to give up as Brisbane Christian Fellowship & MCF leaders was having any common decency. The line that would tell them: even if it’s true I can’t ask them to do that! They learned to go BEYOND that line. And with a straight face.

That’s what made a good elder at XCF churches: how good a poker face could you keep?

I think they take the Scripture too far on being ‘as gentle as doves and as cunning as foxes’ to win souls. Just slightly!

They have made a mockery of Christianity. These elders time is not spent in prayer and serving and searching the Scriptures. They taught themselves how to bluff and keep a straight face.

In my case they spent 18 months before they finally said ‘no, you can’t start your business’ or change jobs or do my internship or move house or travel overseas or even think about technology or run our craft night . . all whilst making me think I could eventually. They led me on and were just sus-ing me out the whole time trying to work out how far they could take me.

Other men who wouldn’t take any funny business could do anything. But the compliant, gullible and trusting . . idiots . . like me.

Well, Brisbane Christian Fellowship & MCF took us all for a ride.

I am disgusted by you David Bonham. Laurie Holland. Steve Anderson. Steve Holland. And the game-playing, careless & delinquent MCF and Brisbane Christian Fellowship presbyteries.

Your non-apology partial apologies carry no accountability or meaning.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship: Present Truth

BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship) and MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) have a unique mode of, well everything, but running a church and their origin of teaching.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship has only preached on ONE topic now for 28 years since 1992.

I do not kid you.

I listed 20 or 30 sub-topics they preached on in an October post last year. But these covered ONLY A SINGLE ‘present truth’ topic: how to lay down your life to the elders. And of course it was a twisted theology that had elders creating crosses for you rather than situation or God. You had t ogive up stuff you wanted to do in the hope that God would resurrect it miraculously. They called it laying down and imputation.

Any other church would preach on general Godly living, finding God’s will, dealing with sin, family issues, growing in Christ, finding a ministry, leadership principles, end times, apologetics etc etc.

But not at BCF and MCF since Vic Hall.

If Brisbane Christian Fellowship can’t come up with a new sub-topic under the heading of laying down your life to the elders they will re-run an old one.

So not only did we live a life of control, when at church we were bored to tears hearing the same word on control every week. And at homegroup, youth group, men’s meetings etc.

It was a life of control and a theology of control to justify it.

There was no consideration for what the congregation needed. We were all sucked in as a captive audiance, most of us stuck in there through friends and relatives we knew we would be shut of from if we questioned – let alone left.

So if Brisbane Christian Fellowship couldn’t be bothered on teaching it, because of Vic’s control-freakishness – they didn’t even allow any of us younger or less glorified ones teach the other important stuff. If you suggested stuff like that you went further down into the black list.

We only accepted it because of the wicked manipulation of: “Your time will come when you are settled in this word. Trust God”.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship: Motivations

I’ve been posting about Brisbane Christian Fellowship’s (BCF) theology, claimed infallibility, abuses, retractions, warning signs and contradictions.

And all along I’ve been asking why we should have been expecting ‘new words’ and revelations and infallible directions from Vic Hall and BCF – given its origin in the failed MCF?

The reasonable explanation is of course: we shouldn’t have but were sucked in like boiling lobsters and captive audiences.

But what was Brisbane Christian Fellowship’s motivation?

Our motivation was obvious: we got excited about seeing the full gospel preached and enacted.

Living the Book of Acts is how I put it,

But what was/is Ray Jackson Snr’s & Vic Hall’s motivation?

It seems to me that all the side-aspects of MCF and BCF – youth ministry and song and home groups – were tacked on to make it look like a normal church but that the top leaders actually didn’t care about the flock.

They ONLY cared for continuing in their pontificating about ‘Administrations for the End of the Age’ and the global church and manchilds and so on.

All the evidence of the current abuses and earlier abuses by the top leaders at MCF and BCF confirms this.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship & MCF never cared about the flock.

They just wanted to be paid for sitting in their offices trying to come up with the next big thing.

Vic Hall never even claims that his Jesus visitations gave him any teachings.

Just rebukes.

The new theology pouring out of Vic and BCF is just him sitting at a desk and arguing finer points with his ‘Yes Man’-stacked presbytery.

So why do any of you at BCF and MCF continue to pay obeisance to him and his word? There’s absolutely no reason to. And every reason not to. Murray, Falky and Tucker are all gone.

It’s just Vic Hall and Peter Hay at Brisbane Christian Fellowship.

And in Melbourne it’s the ol’ delinquent MCF presbytery of Gary ‘It was only advice’ Worth and Bob ‘We discovered your secret sins’ Stevens. Plus the hairdo, Matt ‘I prefer to trust David Bonham’ Bellingham.

And Richie ‘The Isaac play was just about the historical Isaac’ Kaa.

Such a liar yet such a gifted musician and wonderful crafter of folksy banter.

Is that what you want to base your life on?

It’s crazy.

They are just very, very deceived, delinquent and egotistical people.

Brisbane Christian Fellowship (BCF): Warning Signs

Last post I pointed out how BCF and MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) essentially claims infallibility and then, in one of their rare semi-apology retractions of teaching they said:

We mixed up the revelation about the twin palm trees and the twin bowls of Zechariah and incorrectly thought it should be applied today.
Vic Hall & Ray Jackson/Gary Worth (2013/2014), as best as can be remembered

In this case that teaching from Brisbane Christian Fellowship was actually about the (incorrect) fact that God is supposedly only pouring ‘present truth’ (new teachings) to and from a central pair of bowls. And then they admitted they got it wrong (above).

But here’s the thing:

Note the irony re the nature of the retraction
Where exactly are the BCF teachings coming from?
Again, why are we expecting new teachings anyway?

The retraction was about the issue of infallibility and exclusivity of their ‘source’ of teachings.

Hello!

No one listening to that warning bell?

Well I heard it.

Like the subtle donging bell when the T-Rex turns up at the cliff in Jurassic Park II. Poor guy played by Toby from West Wing in the jeep. Listen for it next time. Or ever noticed the donging bell that some home teams play for the visiting team in a gridiron match . . at the end of an unsuccessful 3rd down?

Chilling.

It was the beginning of the end for me. Still wasted another 2 years at MCF though.

And then the, essentially word-for-word, quote from Brisbane Christian Fellowship above shows that it’s coming from ‘their thoughts’, their analysis etc: ‘We thought’ . . the teachings etc were coming from . . ‘twin bowls’. Ridiculous.

It’s THEIR THOUGHTS! And EVEN IF (a big if) it’s alleged ‘revelation’, it should be treated as very suspect until bolstered by Scripture and careful testing, as Scripture tells us to.

When did we stop as MCF-ers looking stuff up ourselves like the Bereans we used to be? When?

When Vic Hall took over.

I’ve been in Vic Hall’s house when he’s working. He’s sitting at a desk like anyone with Bibles and notebooks open.

Why do we believe that, since his alleged visitations, everything he stumbles upon is God directed? With all the harm they’ve caused and even admitted errors?

What if it’s ALL wrong (i.e. the twisted emphases)?

Why should ANY of it that is not plainly stated in Scripture be . . right?

Why indeed?

It sort of goes back to Brisbane Christian Fellowship’s theory on ‘sight’ of the elders. The elders supposedly had sight for our personal lives. And the presbytery and Vic Hall had sight, in particular, for the regional or even global church.

But why? Why should the BCF presbytery or Vic Hall have this sight?

It’s crazy.

Paul claimed to preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor 2:2). But BCF is revealing non-plain readings of Scripture on a seasonal basis. Why? Jesus is about to come back? But we were warned not to expect anything additional:

Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.
I Cor 4:6

Wow! It actually says it there. DO NOT go beyond what is written. And why? To not set one man above another! The original apostles came with signs and wonders at the opening of the Church age.

Vic Hall has only come with pride & ego. And appointed by a very fallen leader.

Restoration is one thing.

Inventing new stuff that’s barely visible in the Scriptures . . and unrecognizable in the manner in which the early Church lived?

That’s apostasy Brisbane Christian Fellowship.

The rest of the Church is content with Christ.

BCF, you can keep Vic Hall for yourself.