Open Letter to Melbourne Christian Fellowship (MCF)

How does MCF/BCF pull-off institutionalized bullying?

It struck me today that what MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) and BCF (Brisbane CF) essentially have managed to achieve is institutionalized bullying.

But how do they manage it without tipping off everyone?

Part of the answer is the new, un-Biblical theology has so many built-in excuses for bullying:

You need to hear from outside yourself
The elders have supernatural sight for you
You can’t name yourself (to a calling), that’s like marking your own exam paper
You can’t choose your elder! How it falls is how God wants it.
Even if the elder is wrong due to marred hedship, it doesn’t matter, God sees your heart and all things work together for good
You’re planted here
You can’t talk to others about what your elder is doing to you, that would be murmuring
We need to be like Christ and close our mouths
Hearing what we don’t want to hear is part of taking up our cross
Isaac let Abraham tie him to the altar
Circumcision of the heart is like literal circumcision – we need to let the elders work where we’d least want it (Yuk! Yep, they taught that.)

And on and on.

Much of it is Biblical . . IF (a big IF) . . we replace the word elders with . . God.

All the emphasis on getting ‘deep and meaningfuls’ from your elder. It was just fluff and garbage.

I hated it from day one but thought, no this has to be God’s way.

But what goes on behind closed doors?

In addition to the built-in bullying nature of the twisted theology, today I’m wondering what goes on behind closed doors to turn these friends of mine into monsters?

What is going on behind closed doors? We can only speculate here. But from discussiosn with elders wh ohave left (most before the Vic Hall era, but not all) it’s stuff like:

The only tasks ever given to anyone are related to bullying people
They learn from how they are treated and at the top they treat each other at least as bad as we have been testifying
it’s all done at threat of loss of salvation and position in the church
They are only rewarded for harsh treatment

In any other church apprentices would be patted on hte back for all sorts of things:

visiting the sick, elderly & the widows
a good sermon
an evangelical thrust
their portfolio tasks done
a great initiative

But forget that ‘worldly’ stuff. I’m not kidding, at MCF, at the senior level, kudos comes from bullying people. I’ve seen David Bonham managing his henchmen as they destroyed my life.

To make people behave like David Bonham and Tim Maurice, just imagine what those bastard presbytery guys are doing to them!

You are so sick MCF & BCF.

Tim Maurice’s fall to the dark side

When I met Tim at MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) in the late 1990s he was a really nice young guy from Sydney, brimming with confidence and friendliness.

But sometime around the 2000s he succumbed to the dark side, from everything I’ve seen and everything I’ve heard.

He’s played major roles in Simon’s miseries and other marriage bannings and such. And treacherously dealt with and shunned his in-laws who were friends of mine.

But of course, there were signs in the early 2000s. Being presentable and confident and friendly, and newly married, he was an ideal choice for apprentice eldership.

But I remember the first time I heard him speak, in the early 2000s.

It smacked of treachery, lack of wisdom, harshness and novice-ness.

All done in the nicest, Tim-like way of course.

He was talking to the kids at a youth conference, and then later to us adults, about laying down our lives for the brethren. Of course. MCF’s greatest hits. Right when the elders were destroying my life (at threat of loss of salvation).

His approach was to rubbish the humanity of any human endeavor . . whether it be sports or technical or academic.

I thought: How depressing for our young people? How unwise? How sucking up.

Nobody else had ever criticized so many fields of endeavor.

Named them.

Technology. Business. He described people (like me) trying to become ‘Whizzes’ as instead, just being ‘Wheeeeees’. Whatever that meant. But it was derogatory to our fields of endeavor and our effort and our God-given inspiration and talent.

Just as kids were choosing careers they were being taught it was all pointless and no point working hard at it.

What a DOWNER!

Sport. He rubbished the 2000 Olympics and Olympians. What is so good about being able to run fast? What’s the point. He got lots of laughs describing ‘winning a race by 10 milliseconds’. So what? he said.

Of course we all know we can’t take anything with us.

In comparison to our salvation by Jesus it is all dung.

But does that mean while we are here we rubbish everything? Certainly not. But MCF is all about overdoing everything.

Instead, life is to be lived folks. While we are here.

We work. We steward. We live. We succeed. We fail. We love. We have interests. If not then we are not even alive.

If we are not human first we are nothing. MCF tried to take humanity from us despite us being God’s most cherished creation!

Some people love sport. Some business. Some technoogy or arts or sciences or medicine or hospitality. Do we need to degrade their interests and contributions?

The Book of Acts continually honours people’s vocations and work ethic. Think the textiles workers, soldiers, tent makers, home makers and so on. Even Ecclesiastes points out the value of work and the joy of it despite it’s ultimate demise eternally:

So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot.
Eccl 3:22

But at MCF/BCF we can’t even enjoy our lot. They ban us from the line of work we want to do!

Of course this was all after Tim Maurice’s big attempt at being a Whiz in advertising failed. So now rubbish everyone else’s plans.

Tim Maurice.

What a novice, my friend.

It’s not too late to turn back to the light side, apologize to all those you have harmed Tim. Fancy thinking you can decide who gets married to who and when! How delinquent.

XCF churches are wolf-like and plain stupidly delinquent and childish

I just re-read my own post on the ‘farewell damnation’ letter to Simon Doyle (NCF/SCF) by an elder.

Not only are these guys wolf-like.

They are like babies.

How you put up with it Richie (& everyone at MCF/XCF) I can’t fathom?

Yes I can. It’s because you are not the kind-hearted fellow you put on. You put convenience ahead of truth, Richie.

Everyone at MCF, you are under idiots, wolves and babies like the NCF/SCF elder.

When I first gave my evidence and testimony to Keith Tucker and Ray Jackson Jnr they were so compassionate. But although Keith remained sympathertic, the next time I spoke to Ray Jackson Jnr he put on the party line. Complete switcheroo!

I reiterated my story to him, sitting in his car outside his house since he assumed I would explode at him – and told him how Gary Worth and Bob Stevens had lied about the past and further baselessly provoked me – and he looked at me and for a second and I (stupidly) thought he was going to come clean!

Nope, with a straight face he said ‘if you can lay down in this you will be really strong.’

I told him, Ray, it’s over.

It’s over!

You guys mean almost nothing to me any more. I told this to the new presbytery already. I’m disgusted by you. I’m sad for YOU.

It’s OVER. I’m free of you. I’m not ‘laying down again’ ever again to you guys.

They are delinquent. Evil, babies.

Tomorrow I’ll have that disgusting Tim Maurice in my sights. I’ll remind you all how clear it was in the mid-2000s that he was lacking in wisdom and sucking up. A novice. I miss the good ol’ non-puffed up Tim who married my friend Eljah.

There was something unique about our leaving

We were the only ones who – to my knowledge – ever left MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) ‘violently’. By ‘violently’ I mean with a big fuss.

Why? I’m not trying to big note myself. Or air dirty laundry. I just want to know why.

Everyone else – to my knowledge – didn’t try and rock any boats or cause any stink. They just left quietly with or without nice goodbyes because they realized MCF was no longer for them and, if they were upset about the elders, kept quiet because it might harm their friendships to cause a stink.

But I wasn’t like that.

Was there no other person who left without too many MCF blood connections?

I was so disgusted with the leadership that I wrote letters and emails and told everyone (who was of strong faith) exactly what happened: first the elders, then the ‘princes’ and head families of MCF and then everyone of strong faith.

Why?

Because I wanted to warn everyone. And, at a more emotional level, I was appalled by what had happened to me, the sheer waste, and to their lack of accountability and to their disregard for the Word of God and interest in covering it all up:

I had fought hard for the MCF word, leaving a mainstream church and other offers of leadership in the Pentecostal movement.
I had studied the MCF word hard coming to the conclusion that much of MCF’s original restorationist word was Scriptural.
Ray Jackson Jnr had prophetically named me as ‘a pillar in the house’, which is a watchman role like Jeremiah’s who, upon apostasy, had to warn the priests and elders and princes of Judah and then, when they didn’t listen. tell the people in the courtyard.

Well that’s what I did.

And not one person came with me as a witness.

Only a handful of people listened to me for more than a few minutes.

That’s when I realized: I had lost my life for 30 years to a non-existent ideal. And to friends who were not really tied to Scripture like I or my father. Due to family connections they were more interested in supporting the regime because it included all their closer buddies in leadership positions.

Forget Scripture and evidence!

Everyone else rambled on about it being the elders business or justified it because of about Vic’s visions or ‘Uncle Vic’s’ theories etc etc. It was sickening. No discussion about Scripture! Or they didn’t believe our stories or acted like it didn’t matter because it hadn’t happened to them! Many of my friends told lies about the ultra-cultish period of 1995-2005 and how especially bad it was at the Greensborough homegroup under David Bonham and his sycophant young henchmen.

Many think my father Charles didn’t support me because he stayed an extra 12 months at MCF. But he was trying to fix it from inside and had had a vision in 2012 about how corrupt the leaders were.

The thought that Dad or I would ever leave MCF would have been considered by most impossible.

It can only be that MCF has lost its legitimacy Scripturally and accountability-wise.

My father and I were treated like doormats at MCF but we wore it on the chin. The Lord has even shown Dad (eg) that the elders, to their demise, would never take him seriously.

We are utterly disgusted by the leadership at MCF and BCF. You have let us all down so demonically that I once said to the eldership, and almost believe it, that you have ‘delayed the 2nd coming of Christ’.

Everything we have pieced together from what we now know to be true points in one direction: a focus on by MCF and BCF elders on their own positions of power and control.

MCF congregants, you act as if MCF is right irrespective of anything

The saddest thing about our friends we have left behind at MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) and BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship) is that, almost without exception, they act as if:

MCF is right no matter what evidence is given
MCF’s teachings are so important that the ends justify the means
Even if you agree with us, somehow it doesn’t matter to you what MCF has done
MCF somehow deserve endless benefits of the doubt
They can’t speak up about what has happened to those treacherously treated
Vows of silence are acceptable
We don’t have evidence

But all of these benefits of the doubt given to MCF are un-Biblical or untrue or both.

The Scriptures speak against all of these behaviours:

Partiality sometimes OK?
- Nope. We must not let position affect our decisions (James 2:1-4)
Ends justify the means?
- Nope. Saul’s desire to please God wasn’t accepted (1 Sam 15). And neither was King Asa’s (2 Chron 16).
Injustice can be ignored
- Nope, God HATES injustice! (Pro 6:16-19, Micah 3)
Silence OK?
- Nope. Ephesians tell us to EXPOSE injustice (Eph 5:11)!
Accept continual injustice and impartiality and Lording over and taking advantage of?
- Nope. Paul tells us NOT to accept leadership like that (2 Cor 11)!

For goodness sake!

Almost all of you at MCF agreed it was disgusting the way I was treated by the leadership but YOU DID NOTHING!

What did Justine and I ever do that makes you think we aren’t at least as worthy of the Lord than your super-hero elders?

Why do they get the benefit of the doubt 500 times? Are you applying silly ‘touch not the anointed?’ Are you that simple-minded? Falling for that Jedi mind-trick? I can tell you for 100% truth: they deserve less than the least of any of us after what they have seen and done and lived with.

They are so culpable of the Big Bang thing! And since 1992 they’ve led you astray following after a loveless, egotistical and rather unwise tyrant (Vic Hall) ALL OVER AGAIN.

This is a warning to you!

You are putting comfort and familiarity and friendships ahead of Scripture and truth and the exposing of horrendous injustice and sin.

Will not one of you men or women stand up for the little ones harmed?

Is MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) changing?

I’m starting to hear (from a few ex-MCFers in contact with current MCFers) that ‘MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) is changing’.

Is that true? Is it possible?

Of course it would be wonderful if MCF was changing for the better (from their behaviour described in this blog). And of course I’ve got no idea from outside whether that’s the case or not.

But MCFers are saying:

We’re changing . .
we’re no longer ‘like that’ . . harsh . . etc
Multiple MCFers to ex-MCFers

Wow, that would be great!

Maybe it’s true.

But . .

. . for true change, there must be repentance, admissions and apologies . . and restitution made.

As far as I know neither Helen Pomery or Simon Doyle or Thanomere or . . this author have had apologies made or restitutions made. And neither have any of the other scores of families.

When David Bonham, Laurie Holland and their side-kicks pay up, I’ll let you know. We are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars by those cowardly men, and ourselves owe this to banks and other organizations because of what MCF did to us over three decades.

So, being nice to MCF groupies and family members is one thing (and doubtful anyway).

If Richard Kaa Snr’s apology from the pulpit a year or so ago (that I read the transcript of) is anything to go by, their change is an utterly pathetic and meaningless change designed to suck in the poor unleavables who are married into it or want to be.

Actually admitting what you’ve done to REAL victims, and doing it publically. And making restitution, that’s another thing.

The stupid thing is there’s probably only 10 or 20 families at MCF and BCF that would actually say we desire or need monetary restitution. XCF could cover that with a couple of million bucks hopefully (since at least in my case, I’m discounting the damages by a factor of 100).

The rest would just like a public apology.

Is this slander? Is it necessary?

I’m on an early pre-Christmas break so forgive my irregular postings this week. And soon we’ve got a multi-part testimony coming from Simon Doyle which really shows how unhealthy and un-Christian XCF is. Then . . and now.

Well. in my mind, it’s not slander if it’s true. And my comments are just my recollection of events.

My complaints about MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) are that:

Their guru headship word locked up my life for 20-25 years
I lost my identity career-wise, community-wise, business-wise & spiritually for that entire time.
I became a play thing for elders.
I lost my employ-ability. We lost our home.
Nobody at MCF really cared enough to actually do something about it
And that’s despite (1) Vic Hall telling the perps that if they had gone beyond their mandate they should make restitution & (2) Richie Kaa assessing that they had gone WAY beyond their mandate and counselling them for that
And then the MCF presbytery washed their hands of it despite no restitution made! The fact that the perps ignored Vic Hall’s request was NOT EVEN commented on.
Absolutely no closure.
And then the presbytery itself turned on me and lied and provoked and betrayed.

That’s what makes this necessary.

People are living in that community and think it’s a good place while it’s a terrible place.

When did I know it was wrong?

When did I know the teaching and practice of guru headship was wrong?

Interesting question.

Because in some ways I knew the practice of it, by David Bonham and co, was wrong right from the start.

So does that put the fault on me then?

No, because MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) taught just as strongly, that:

Counsel may seem wrong to us
Even if it is wrong, we still need to listen to ‘marred headship’ (‘as unto the Lord’)
You can’t ‘shop around’ for your own messenger
You are planted here
Talking about what your elder is doing to you is murmuring

So this ‘get out of jail free‘ card for the elders meant there was no recourse to debate anything. You just had to accept whatever they did to you.

Otherwise you were going to hell.

They also misused and legalistically and twisted-ly applied other Scriptures:

You shouldn’t try and change the ‘state you were saved in’ in, and this was applied to careers (I Cor 7). So how come people get married in XCFs?
You should only do what you can put your hands to (that is don’t plan schemes). How does anything get invented in that type of society?

So I just accepted for 20 years that although my local elders and his henchmen were idiots and even wrong and unfair, because God knew about it, He mustn’t want me to do my internship or change jobs from the one I had grown to hate or start my businesses or commercialize my software. And that the Lord hated my passion for these things. I cried weekly about this.

It was only when Gary Worth, Bob Stevens and Ritchie Kaa started lying to me tha tI realized the whole thing was a sham.

The simplest cause of all the problems was that Vic was wrong in his teachings about guru headship and accepting marred headship and codes of silence etc.

As soon as I realized that I became hugely angry.

That they had peddled this crap theology and practiced it without care or safe guards. And they lied and provoked and misused private information. And were completely unaccountable.

So I knew the edicts were wrong in the natural from the start but thought that God must have wanted it. But when I came to realize that the elders had no integrity and the theology was a sham, instantly it was either fix up the place or get out. Not one person at MCF could see my POV (or deeply cared enough to do something about it) so we got out.

Led by the Spirit

Well, today’s MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship)/BCF (Brisbane CF) ‘devotion’ is all about being ‘Led by the Spirit’.

Really? That’s it’s title but of course it’s somehow twisted to another ‘guru headship’ message!

I kid you not:

When Solomon said, ‘Let your head lack no oil’, he was implying that it is possible to forego the anointing. Ecc 9:8. We do this when we reject the order of headship through which the oil of the Spirit of grace is ministered to every Christian.
BCF devotion, Dec 4th 2019

So from one verse about being anointed by oil they insist it’s talking about being led by the Spirit thru . . headship order. Which, at MCF/BCF means ‘guru headship’, where elders are the face of Christ to us plebs.

Incredible. Still at it!

And even if this is a link between oil (Holy Spirit) and headship, it’s to HEADSHIP: that is. coming under the Lordship of Christ, as the Scriptures on headship ACTUALLY say:

But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man,^[a] and the head of Christ is God.
1 Cor 11:3

There’s no elders in there! It even says ‘the head of EVERY man . . is Christ’!

Not elders.

This month they are busy defending their twisted guru headship foundation that has destroyed hundreds and hundreds of lives.

In fact, look how they start today:

We can be confident each day in our work because the Holy Spirit is leading us. In this regard, we do not need anyone to script our life for us.
BCF devotional

Hmmm. That’s what they did do for 25 years! They scripted our lives. Move by move.

This is their way of almost apologising: the non-apology back-flip.

In fact Vic Hall, almost laughing, did make this non-apology apology a few years ago down at MCF:

We never wanted elders managing the daily minutiae of men’s lives!
Vic Hall, MCF, 2013-ish

But Vic, your preaching implied that elders should manage our detailed affairs! The sin of self-naming was illustrated time and time again with examples about choosing ministries to steward (or not), courses to take up (or not), musical instruments to choose (or not), houses to buy (or not), jobs to take up (or not), businesses to start (or not) and so on.

Vic, what did you leave us to decide?

There was no apology for the horrific damage done. And it continues today.

It was the beginning of the dash to freedom for me. It should have been for us all. Because we all knew that the preached word had been harsh and indisputable for 20 years on that topic. And it’s practice.

Why this sudden daily defense of their foundation? We might be having an impact. Who knows. I hope so. Please keep the testimonies coming in.

And how ridiculous to link being led by the Holy Spirit to guru headship.

Victim mentality?

Oh MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship).

You went on and on about your hatred of the ‘victim mentality’.

But what other church (other than perhaps the Catholic Church) has so much (unholy) need to be against the victim mentality?

Why should you have such hatred for victims that are seeking justice?

Do you not understand how FOUNDATIONAL justice is to the Judeo-Christian ethic? How many times ‘justice’ and ‘mercy’ appears in the Scriptures (256 times, not including synonyms)?

And have you not read:

Do not deny justice or show partiality to anyone.
Deut 16:19

Don’t do it to . . ANYONE.

But you did it 70×7 times to almost all of us!

It was your modus operandi! Banning us from our joys. Declaring everything we wanted to be an ‘idol’. Giving our ideas to someone else . . who hated it. Never thanking anyone for a job well done. Letting people suffer ‘their cross’ without help.

I can remember Richie Kaa preaching:

Who’s been a victim? Well, I hardly need ask, especially in this place!
Richie Kaa, MCF, 2015-ish

It got a few . . nervous . . laughs.

Because we all, along with Richie, knew that MCF was a place that had become a platform and house of utter bastards.

We had preached such a lopsided word for so long. About never thanking anyone (because it was our ‘duty’). About letting people live their cross. About not getting alongside victims who ‘just wanted attention’.

We became freaking bastards to each other.

We need to uphold and come to the rescue of the trampled, the downtrodden. The victim. Always.

For as often as you (helped) one of these, you did it to me.
Jesus

And MCF & BCF: stop being the perpetrators.