The timeline of MCF’s destruction of my life (Part VI)

Last time I covered the beginnings of my exposure to MCF of what they had done to me.

Next, after the perpetrators of the abuse largely made ‘non-apology’ apologies and Gary Worth made zero apologies, I took it to the full MCF presbytery which consisted of :

Gary Worth
Bob Stevens
Richie Kaa (Jnr)
Matt Bellingham

Bob Stevens agreed it was ‘beyond the mandate’ of leaders to carry on like that for 10 or 15 years. And even admitted restitution was not off the table.

But it was all a delaying tactic.

Matt Bellingham was unable to carry on a conversation about it. All he said was ‘I prefer to believe David Bonham’. I said, great, let’s talk to David because he admits at least 80% of it! But he would have none of that. Matt, it turns out, is essentially a smiling, betraying hair-do.

Richie Kaa was, at a personal level, very frank and admitted he 100% believed me, it all stunk and admitted the church HAD preached over the top teachings. And even he admitted he sometimes wondered whether we were a cult or not. But he told us he wouldn’t go on record on that.

Richie counselled the three perpetrators (he refused to talk to our ‘elder statesman’ Laurie Holland) that what they had done was wrong.

And he was really disappointed with their responses.

No apologies. No shame.

But then nothing.

So I emailed Vic Hall in Brisbane.

He sent back an email to Richie that ‘Paul is a good brother’ (I and Justine had spent a couple of days with Vic and Lorraine a few years earlier). And he wrote that ‘if these men have gone beyond their mandate, then they owe Paul an apology and restitution’.

But MCF only read the letter once, and to us all . . separately.

When I talked to the perpetrators, none of them mentioned hearing anything about restitution (or a similar synonym)!

Nobody got a copy of the letter and so we could never reconcile with each other what was on it.

Of course this was the MCF way of looking like they were doing something, but doing nothing. And maybe worse. Maybe the perpetrators were read a different letter?

So I complained to the presbytery about the pathetic handling of the issue, in particular the fact that none of this was done with myself and the perpetrators in the same room.

Then Bob Stevens, Gary Worth and Richie Kaa all turned on me and began to personally attack, provoke and lie about me.

Bob Stevens reported that the perpetrators back then had uncovered secret sins and so on. These were private confessions of sins that are common to man!

Gary Worth said they no longer believed me! And labelled me ‘unworthy’.

RIchie Kaa denied that the church had preached over the top on laying down prerogatives to elders (despite saying the opposite in private to us). I reminded him of his hauntingly beautiful acoustic guitar song with the words:

. . all my vain longings . . of all I seek to be . .’

Richie Kaa (song)

Silence.

Complete betrayal by all three.

That’s how they do it folks.

I stormed out never to return again.

But restoration comes in the morning,

The timeline of MCF’s destruction of my life (Part V)

Yesterday I covered the majority of the systematic and sustained psychological abuse over a 20 year period committed by my local leaders David Bonham and his side-kicks, against me, together with the MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) presbytery because senior presbytery member Laurie Holland, knew what was going on.

Today, I’ll describe our realization tha twe’d been had and the cover-ups and lies by the perpetrators, including the MCF and BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship) presbyteries.

By 2006, David Bonham and MCF had made me unemployable in three ways. They destroyed my academic career, banned me from changing jobs while I was young enough to suit industry, and banned me from starting multiple timely tech startups, delaying me seven full years. We lost large amounts of money.

From 2007-2016 I spent a full decade unemployed for about a third of the time and otherwise in poorly paid or very temporary jobs, none of which built to anything until the last position:

  • Kitchen hand
  • Gardner
  • Brickies laborer
  • Epidemiologist
  • Systems engineer
  • Data scientist (co-foundner)

That was after topping all of my classes and being a Project Leader at CSIRO and a Group Leader at University of Melbourne, on the executive of the Australian Society for Biophysics for most of a decade, frequent invited speaker at scientific conferences and publishing 25 peer-reviewed papers.

But with 15 years of active ANTI-stewarding of my career by David Bonham.

The last position finally seemed to be (and was) the beginning of the end of a decade of searching to rebuild my career and confidence, and was a Data Science position in a Seek.com funded startup company I was a minor co-founder of.

It means that MCF destroyed a total of 20 years of my life from age 30 to 49. Not to mention an earlier five years of my life where I was restricted by a lesser degree of insanity, 1988-1992.

It all came out at a counselling meeting at MCF HQ in Wonga Park with Gary Worth and Matt Bellingham. Gary was wondering why our finances were in such a mess.

I explained, well actually it’s MCF’s fault.

I had never verbalized it. I told him the whole story.

It was the first time I had ever told the story because we were not allowed to talk about what our elder was ‘doing to us’. That was murmuring.

He appeared surprised and very slightly compassionate.

But then immediately went on the defensive when I started accusing the church and its teachings.

We’ve never taught anything wrong.

If it’s not sexual abuse there’s nothing we can do.

Gary Worth 2016

I wanted him to get the eldership together with me and the perpetrators. But no can do. There would be no trying to figure out what happened.

We can’t do he said/she said.

Gary Worth 2016

Why not Gary?

I confronted the perpetrators.

David Bonham said he’s sorry he didn’t get everything right but wouldn’t admit to anything specific. His wife just calls what we went through ‘my lot’. But Rhonda, it’s ‘my lot’ caused by your husband.

Laurie Holland wouldn’t answer my emails.

The two apprentice elders at least were prepared to discuss details.

Steve Anderson admitted it was all wrong what they had done. ANd expressed they were just following the leader. But wouldn’t take any responsibility and tried to squirm out of things I quoted him as saying: ‘Did I really say that?’ Of course you did and worse Steve!

Steve Holland admitted everything. But wouldn’t take any blame for ‘my lot’. And said he would do it again! I challenged him by saying what if we told his daughter she couldn’t do a DipEd after her BSc and see if she could impute her way to a teaching position. Silence. It was the same situation that they had put me through twenty years earlier.

Finally Steve Holland’s wife admitted it was terrible the way we had been treated. But that was as far as they went.

Continued tomorrow.

The timeline of MCF’s destruction of my life (Part IV)

Last time we were up to the Big Bang of 1988, the falling of two top leaders from MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) and the calm between the storms of 1988-1992 where Vic Hall was gradually taking over from Brisbane Christian Fellowship (BCF).

Now we enter the phases of 1992-1996 and 1996-2016 where Vic Hall gradually brought in brand-new cultish teachings, and then I was destroyed, my life and career and ministries and joys and hopes utterly trampled by two elders and elder apprentices.

Those two links above cover the 1992-1996 period really, so here I’ll just summarize and focus on the effect it had on me 1996-2006.

It was gradual, like being slowly boiled alive like lobsters.

The 1992-1996 Vic Hall period started out with slightly warped teachings on headship (of Christ to man and husbands to wives) and ended with elders being inserted as essential messengers to men between Christ and man to help you discard your ‘idols’.

I call it ‘guru headship’ because your local elder pretty much became your guru.

All along it was emphasized that if you didn’t ‘present yourself to the brethren’ in this manner, once or twice a month typically, then you were self-naming yourself and would ‘go to hell’ with nashing of teeth and so on.

This was preached hundreds of times, but later was denied by some of the presbytery.

We were suspicious because the Scriptures didn’t really plainly state any of these things. But the top-level elders brought it, and proclaimed it, with such excitement and fanfare, and apparent love, and the past word had been so good, that we took the pill.

So what did it mean for me?

Well, I saw what was coming. As a young CSIRO PhD scientist I realized my dreams of doing my essential postdoc in the US or UK and, later on, creating startup companies would be seen as ‘idols’.

And were they ever.

The period 1996-2006 was a slow death for me, as we were raising our children and trying to create a life for ourselves, renovating our house and wanting to carefully steward our careers and ministries.

MCF destroyed absolutely everything for both I and my wife Justine.

Although I had done a local postdoctoral fellowship for a couple of years at CSIRO, my bosses were telling me I needed to do an overseas postdoc because a postdoc needed to be done in a world class laboratory and my bosses lab didn’t cut it.

But this was seen as an idol immediately by my local elder David Bonham and his apprentices Steve Anderson and Steve Holland, both preachers’ kids of course. They accused me of focusing too much on my PhD and career and told me if I left I would never come back.

At that point they stopped short of threatening me with hell fire.

But it worked anyway. And the weekly sermon and home-group meetings and Vic Hall books implied hell fire anyway if I ‘self-named myself’ which I was certainly wanting to do.

I would not have their blessing.

And I would miss out on all the ‘revelations and processings’ going on here in Melbourne (and nowhere else).

So I gave in. I loved my first five years in that job but now was outgrowing the CSIRO postdoctoral position because I had my own research interests.

But that was all irrelevant.

At local men’s pizza nights I would be castigated for talking about my PhD too much. I tried to point out that you didn’t do a PhD in academic science lightly and I needed to steward it or else I would be out of a job in a few years.

But they accused me of being faithless.

I gradually lost interest in academia because I wasn’t allowed to pursue my research interests by either my boss (since it was his lab, fair enough) or my guru elder (who would’t let me move!).

I’d done eight years of PhD and post-doc by now and it was time as a 30 year old to flex my wings.

So. Just as MCF was starting to push men to go into business to ‘make money for the kingdom’ I also switched interests to tech startups which had always been my Plan B (and had planned for it by studying Physics/Math (academic major) AND Electrical & Software Engineering (tech minor)).

Now’s when the full on cult-machine of presumption, partiality, bannings and judgement of MCF and David Bonham came into full action.

When I explained that my other interests were in tech startups, they were shocked and immediately assumed it was my knee-jerk reaction to being banned despite it being my Plan B all along. They didn’t buy my argument that as well as being a PhD scientist I was virtually an engineer too.

I looked too much like a science geek I guess. Quiet etc. But married and almost with children now, I had actually shed a lot of my shyness and was at the peak of my game actually, brimming with confidence and knowledge of the internet, software and AI industries.

It was 1996-1998 and Google was just starting up.

I wonder what they would have said of the Google pair Brin & Page? Or Bill Gates or Steve Wozniak? Pretty geeky, non-traditional business looking guys. My guru headship jus tdidn’t understand the new world.

But bigger than that, they just no longer allowed for any common human decency.

To let someone try something they really wanted to do without labeling it an idol!

Well. it didn’t go well. In the end, after humoring me for a while, over a period of a year or so. I was finally completely banned from starting a company unless I could do it in the evenings or pick up work to do in the evening.

They told me I couldn’t leave my day job because I was having problems coming under my boss that I needed to face.

That wasn’t really true. He had actually given me a lot of opportunities but wasn’t a friendly man to work with per se and I had mentioned that. But mostly, my research interests were different to his. I really needed to do a postdoc in an international lab doing my interests (after all, an academic has to become a world expert in a field of their interest, or else, no tenure) or start my software company.

I had built some interesting prototypes. After looking at the first one they refused to even look further at my work. Literally refused. The second idea was much better (the first was done rapidly to show them something).

I was about to buck against them and was grabbed, literally, by the arm by my previous elder, Laurie Holland, as he was coming out of a pre-church elder’s meeting. He quoted Proverbs 12 at me

‘There is a way that seems right to a man and it leads to death’.

Prov 12

How could I disobey? I didn’t of course.

I had effectively been threatened with damnation if I started my business.

So I tried looking for evening work in tech and in these two endeavors lost my evenings and money over a period of another year or two. And made life hard for my wife. But it was because I wasn’t living either one or the other properly or my day job and was second guessing everything and trying to keep primary school teachers and high school drop-out elders happy.

They judged me as an idolater. Accused me of wanting trophies. Any good things that happened as I tried the evening approach were declared tricks of the enemy.

So around 1999, with the birth of my first child, I pretty much just gave up.

Ultimately I was banned form even thinking about technology.

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

David Bonham (to me), 1997

Then I begged them to let me apply for jobs and they told me they had never banned me from that. But they had, five years earlier telling me I couldn’t leave my boss because I wasn’t serving him happily!

No apology for keeping me in a job I hated for five years longer than I had wanted to!

If these men had had any common decency left they should have seen that this was disgusting psychological abuse.

Finally in around 2002, the predictions by my CSIRO bosses came true and they didn’t offer me a fourth contract renewal and I wasn’t able to get a job anywhere else in the Melbourne academic community. They all said the same thing: no international postdoc. I was competing with all my colleagues who had had two years in Oxford or two years in Cold Spring Harbor.

BTW, I was otherwise a top academic scholar: an ATAR equivalent of 99 (above the cut-off to the School of Medicine at Melbourne University and published 25 peer-reviewed papers.

Finally the elders relinquished total control in about 2003. But I still considered every word they had said as the word of God’ to me. None of that was ever retracted. So I proceeded, shaking in my boots, holding back my talents, second guessing every step of the way. It’s the only way I knew now, as a severely battered and down-trodden person.

A total of seven years after my original tech ideas, they relented and let me start my company but my software product idea was out of date by then and needed a lot more work. Another year went past, my father was banned from investing in us, but we eventually raised some funds, started the company and then within a three months Microsoft and Google both came out with the same product . . for FREE!

The product I had built a prototype of seven years earlier!

We stuck at it for another two years, losing more and more money, trying to make it better than Microsoft’s and Google’s. But it was a never ending catch up game. And the more complex, the more bugs . .

My simple entry into tech had been lost for ever.

No apologies from the elders of course.

They never even asked for the details.

I would hear second hand, thruough my father, they would say

When is Paul going to re-train?

David Bonham (about me to my father) 2006

Utter bastards who destroyed three of my careers:

  1. My academic career
    • banned me from doing a postdoc ‘because I would never come back’
  2. A career in industry
    • forced me to stay in a dead-end academic job I had outgrown instead of branching out into industry ‘because I needed to ‘serve my boss’
  3. Tech startups
    • banned me from multiple tech startup plans despite my having prototypes and/or detailed plans ‘because I was hunting trophies/idols’ OR ‘because I needed to learn to lay it down and impute’ OR ‘because I was a scientist not a technologist’

And even after they relinquished control, they banned my father from investing in my businesses.

So, here I was, no hope in academia, an expert in tech but no full qualification or experience, a failed business and now almost 40!

Destroyed hopes and dreams.

I had had numerous internet ideas and prototypes well before other entrepreneurs but was not allowed to commercialize them. And they destroyed my academic career earlier.

And destroyed finances. And a wife, working two jobs, with a lapsed CPA, and four kids! We lost our home and I lost all credibility with everyone.

And that doesn’t even cover what they did to us at church itself. We got banned from youth leading because of my unsettledness. And were never allowed to do anything else again in church from that year on to the time we left in 2016 (other than clean in the scullery and bathrooms at church). Ultimately we even got sidelined in Sunday School teaching. And neither could we run our own craft nights or Bible studies at our own home.

It was all very hurtful. I cried weekly for 20 years from 1996 to 2016 and variously blamed myself, God or them.

I now, as then:

Charge the past and current MCF and BCF presbyteries, including Vic Hall, in addition to these men who directly abused me, with inflicting severe, systematic and sustained psychological abuse for 20 years, all whilst knowing that they were deeply hurting me.

Paul ‘Kovaks’ 2019

Vic Hall has even asked those men to make restitution for ‘going beyond their mandate’ and being ‘prescriptive’ about my life.

But he is more guilty than them. And my father’s visions in 2012 and 2019 do not bode well for any of them.

Bob Stevens asked me what restitution I would expect.

I answered:

At least $20 million.

But I’ll discount it down to $200K
between the four perpetrators.

Paul Kovaks 2016

Just repent and apologize in a meaningful manner!

Surely my life story here is a story of a lunatic version of the gospel, created by an egotist, taught by senior leaders who didn’t flinch at teaching something enthusiastically that was non-Biblical, and implemented with zero care or love by everyone concerned, especially the MCF presbytery and my local fruitcake-ish and, ultimately, nasty leaders.

And remember, that more than one hundred others have been destroyed in strikingly similar circumstances.

Continued tomorrow. The cover-up and lies by the presbytery was almost as bad as the psychological abuse.

The timeline of MCF’s destruction of my life (Part III)

Following on from my first three years at MCF, where I experienced both the good and bad of the move, we then experienced the Big Bang of 1988 (here’s my earlier account).

This was the discovery that two senior leaders of MCF, including the founder Ray Jackson Snr, were found to be in immorality, one with the others wife, and other women, and the other with other women, not his wife. And there was incontrovertible evidence of grooming of young, disadvantaged women going back to the 1960s.

Horrific, horrific stuff going on under the noses of the remaining eldership. And ours.

Huge harm.

Now, this was a shock. A third of the congregation of 500 fairly quickly left.

But neither of those two men had had much impact on me directly, and I had studied the word and Jeff and Annette Hammond’s book , based on Jeff’s Masters thesis, and saw that the multiple eldership principle was Biblical, and sound precisely because it allowed for continuity after a falling away like this.

I and many that remained held true to the other restorationist teachings covered in Jeff’s book, The Priesthood of All Believers and the hope of unity of the Body of Christ. And didn’t see them being practiced much elsewhere. So we stayed.

As I describe here in more detail, I initially felt the remaining eldership handled it well, although I agree with some that they didn’t include us much in what had really been going on.

But the disappointing thing we discovered much later is that these elders had been told by three departing or silenced elders, Kevin Conners, Bob Holland and Tony Lyon, since as far back as 1970, that the founder was living in immorality. Justine and I had learned that in the 2010s from relatives of Bob Holland and later from Kevin Connor, a great Bible teacher, and Tony Lyon after we left MCF in 2016.

So the elders we now entrusted our lives to had been living with and keeping secrets for twenty years! And put up with all sorts of games including: ‘if you forgive me, then you can’t bring it up again’ carryings on. When it’s ongoing immorality and grooming of young disadvantaged women!

Well, the remaining eldership seemed to be doing a serious job of cleaning up the place. And opened up to to other churches. Vic Hall came down from BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship) to help clean it up.

There was kind of a calm between two storms from 1988 to 1992.

I made some really good friendships, helped in Sunday School, kids clubs, youth work. I was pretty ordinary at those sorts of social things. It was OK.

But the youth program for my age group was based on music bands for most of those five years and gave nothing for us, by then, non-musicians to do during our own youth program. It felt pretty silly really, seemed to go on for about five years, but I know the band members were having a ball.

I also experienced my first real altercation with the elders.

I’d personally felt the youth program was too music focussed to the extent the band members walked around like rock stars and had become unapproachable. Murray Wylie came down and told them off for their poor culture. So I wrote a letter to the elders about what Murray had said because none of them were actually there that night.

I got accused of being jealous instead of ‘thanks for telling us what Murray said’! And got told the other kids said Murray had said nothing of the sort! Of course the band members were primarily the elder’s kids. So I sent my letter up to Murray.

Lots of fun. Not. Just more accusations.

Anyway.

A storm was brewing.

Little did I know that was my last year of freedom.

1992. I was 25.

That was one of the last times I made a major decision that was not forced on me at threat of damnation.

The next time I was 49.

Continued tomorrow.

The timeline of MCF’s destruction of my life (Part II)

After around three good years (see Part I), in 1987, I started realizing that MCF had some genuine semi-cultish ways:

1. The elders seemed aloof. And we almost worshiped them, especially the top dogs. But wasn’t it supposed to be a Priesthood of All Believers? And a truly multiple eldership without top dogs?

2. My local knowledgeable elder & his kindly wife seemed surprisingly difficult to impress. And wanting to hold everything tightly to themselves. But weren’t they supposed to be ‘building up the Body of Christ to minister’ (Eph 4)? Contrary to most of the young people, I knew our word backwards after having researching it, and brought four of my friends in (almost unheard of). But when I wanted to give them Bible Studies this eldership couple treated me, frankly, like an idiot and insisted on doing it themselves, and really poorly. I also expressed interest in playing piano at home-group and got no interest from them or opportunity to train.

3. The joke that the preachers’ kids got all the opportunities seemed to be true. But New Testament Scripture and Proverbs warns against partiality so clearly!

I slowly began to close down. It seemed everything was always of one day in the near future but never visible. Imagine how I felt another 30 years later, still there and treated the SAME way! For goodness sake, all we wanted to do was contribute! But these elders and couples, even three years later, treated us young people like idiots.

4. I started hearing about the way the elders and congregation spoke of people who left. And it grieved me. I knew the stories they told were exaggerated and had two sides.

5. They had a frustratingly anti-education sensibility. How silly! The Apostle Paul and at least, Luke, came from educated backgrounds! Were my studies going to get in the way of my ever helping out?

But I put all this down to ‘nothing’s perfect’ and I’m too young and quiet anyway.

The communion meetings in general were a bit all over the place, but generally edifying and the homegroups were great sharing from all and the Bible Studies were solid.

The youth was cliquey but I had a good enough group of friends and loved the homegroup.

Then came the Big Bang of 1988. Continued tomorrow.

The timeline of MCF’s destruction & mean-spirited waste of my life (Part I)

Background

MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship), for me, started out as a breath of fresh air. I hadn’t heard about the pre-1992 cultish behaviors. And of course, had no idea what was going to hit us post-1992.

I actually loved the Lutheran Church I attended, and Its congregation.

But there was absolutely no doubt that that organization, and most other mainstream churches, were not interested in moving on from, essentially five-hundred year old Reformation teachings, further towards more Biblical understandings of Christianity.

From everything I heard, or read, about MCF, or Immanuel, as it was known at the time, it was a church open minded to what the Scriptures have to say, rather than entrenched Church dogma. And with their well-attended Bible Studies, camps, home-groups and live-in Bible College, not to mention testimonies of miracles, it seemed like a no brainer.

Rev Dr. Jeff Hammond and Annette Hammond’s scholarly book, based on Jeff’s Masters thesis, on the Priesthood of All Believers and Multiple Eldership sealed it.

I switched to MCF during first year uni, 1984, after I was filled with the Spirit at a uni Students for Christ (AOG) camp.

Apart from the fact I was a quiet sciencey type, suddenly in the midst of a church of five or six hundred, including at least a hundred, young people, whom it seemed were almost all crazy extroverts, I liked it. My local home-group was fantastic and I slowly made some friends and they all loved the Lord.

Fantastic! They were living the book of Acts! There seemed to be numerous ways to contribute, share and learn.

The Reality

Well, three years in.

Still a lot of good!

The Thursday-night Bible studies were mostly good, but I preferred the structured studies by people like Laurie Holland, Phil Baird and Jeff Hammond on topics like the Feasts of Israel (and application to Christian life) rather than Ray Jackson Snr’s waffling on.

Initially I had been interested to hear what the Founder of MCF was going to say, but I quickly realized he was getting too old and he seemed to be struggling to come up with new stuff to keep the crowd happy. I forgave these wafflings, and honored him as an old guy who had already contributed much.

It didn’t bother me because I really liked his son Ray Jackson Jnr, and his preaching. Clearly a truly gifted, Bible-based preacher, connecting the dots for us, and challenging us.

The multiple eldership, which in MCF’s view actually ARE the pastors, preachers and teachers, whether on the pay roll or not, seemed to be working well. Multiple and different speakers, every week. Any man or woman could preach if there was time.

Great youth camps. Great family camps.

Tomorrow, I’ll outline how, as a 21-year old I began to see the hints of past and ongoing cult, pre-1992. But I was completely unprepared for the horrors of Vic Hall that were to come.

The cult of ‘Guru Headship’ was dangerous nonsense

The way of ‘guru headship’, as taught at Melbourne Christian Fellowship, and its Brisbane counterpart, apart from being non-Biblical, was horrifically presumptuous and lazy. And dangerous. And, Biblically, complete nonsense.

But here I’ll focus on how, in the end, it was a con-job.

It put elders between man and Christ as an actual required-for-salvation doctrinal point. But was brought in very gradually.

And was all based on the idea that elders, automatically, have spiritual sight for the direction of people in their lives.

What used to be optional friendly ‘deep and meaningfuls’ became mandatory, scary and depressing sessions.

Presumptuous

But how presumptuous that elders have this ‘on call’!

Unlike prophecy which was triggered by the Lord (you hoped), the words of direction from your elder were triggered by you turning up on his doorstep.

And if you didn’t obey, you would go to hell as a ‘self-namer‘.

And if you struggled with the bannings and accusations (or didn’t turn up regularly) you essentially became persona non-grata.

A non-person.

It might take you five or ten years to realize it. But upon reflection you began to realize that you gradually were becoming among the ‘walking dead’.

What you spoke carried no weight. What you suggested was humoured. They would let you clean the bathrooms but that was it. Eventually they even delivered Sunday School lessons by an approved committee. I loved the word and wanted to teach. Forget that! We couldn’t even teach Sunday School in the end!

And we were both born teachers but overlooked 200 times. I kid you not.

That was the danger of presumptional, preposterous eldership ‘sight’. You didn’t get to do anything that you knew you were good at! You had to wait to be ‘discovered’ by YOUR elder. Like a movie star. Just to help in planning a camp or teaching a Bible Study or running a family fun night.

Lazy

Now, what about from the elder’s point of view?

Well, their so-called ‘sight’ didn’t seem to depend on any effort on their part. Prayer and study didn’t seem to be required. Certainly no counselling qualifications.

No, we were taught that men miraculously had sight for their wives and the same for elders for their flocks. It was because of the principle of ‘headship’ supposedly.

It was lazy.

And the counselling was always completely obvious. They read you like the cover of a book. What any man on the street would think is what they thought. If you looked like a business man, your business plans were blessed. If you didn’t, your plans weren’t.

It was almost always 100% predictable.

Con-job

It was a complete sham. They weren’t getting it as prophetic sight every time! Or any time. It wa just presumption. And they knew it. We thought they were in deep prayer about us at least. But they knew they were just spouting off the top of their heads using totally human wisdom. Except, unlike at every other church, we had to obey it or else damnation.

That’s what hurt so much when we realised we’d been had by scam artists.

They knew it was just book-cover reading. Gary Worth (on the MCF presbytery) admitted it to me.

What’s wrong with that? Of course we read you like the cover of a book!

Gary Worth, 2016

What happened to discernment and looking beyond skin-deep?

Paul, didn’t you understand these were just theories?

Murray Wylie, 2018

I knew in my case I had a great piece of software to market but not as a traditional bricks-an-mortar-business. It was the new age of the internet.

But I had to try and get that thru book-cover readers who had no idea.

My future relied on, and was destroyed by lazy, presumptuous . . dishonest idiots frankly. They knew what was going on.

MCF takes the Fifth

Whenever MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) is accused it takes the Christian equivalent of the (US) ‘Fifth’ (Amendment), the vow of silence.

Is that a Christian response?

They would claim that they are shutting their mouths as Christ did at His trial.

There’s several things really wrong with this.

Firstly, MCF is not Christ. How do they know before hand if they are innocent or guilty?

Christian responses require ‘taking a witness’ as outlined in Matt 18:16 or 1 Tim 5:19, clearly implying a process where talking is involved between the disputing parties, even if it involves an eldership.

But, no, MCF just takes the Fifth, and will never bring the two parties together. The Bible is full of Scriptures emphasising the importance of justice. How much more in the Church itself!

But you know what the real, ironic, problem with taking Christ’s stand is for them?

Of course, when Christ closed His mouth He was accepting the guilty verdict on behalf of us sinners! That’s why His mouth was closed! Not to squirm out of taking accountability as MCF does.

If MCF takes the vow of silence, they need to accept a guilty verdict and, just for once, accept the consequences and apologise and make restitution.

The Curse of the Golden Lampstand (Part III)

Excuse my juvenile ‘Indiana Jones’-like blog page title but today I’ll conclude my 3-part series on the three travelling teachers that brought to us, at MCF (Melbourne Christian Fellowship) in the 1992-2016 period, the cultish BCF (Brisbane Christian Fellowship ) word and then all three men . . mysteriously . . disappeared, in many cases/locations, without explanation during 2014-2016.

Keith Tucker

I consider Keith Tucker (MCF) a friend, and to a certain point he stood by me in my battle with the elders.

Nevertheless, although he brought the BCF word gently to us, in his methodical manner, he certainly brought it as a word not to be compromised with.

And, Keith, I stand by my statements, that, just as with David Falk (Part I) and Murray Wylie (Part II), the new Vic Hall theologies were twists on existing understandings within Christendom, but without Scriptural backing for the twist!

Keith, do you remember ever reading Jeff Hammond’s book, based on his Masters thesis, called The Biblical Church Pattern? Well, in that book, Jeff and Annette go to great lengths to Scripturally justify the original restorationist teachings of MCF.

And, with a few minor exceptions, that book holds up. And it’s because he showed in at least two or three out of five ways – on each point – that the restorationist teachings (eg on Priesthood of All Believers) were Biblical:

  1. Multiple New Testament teaching passages in the gospels and the epistles supported it. And perhaps OT as well, or in shadow.
  2. The way the early church lived in Acts, or narrative passages of the epistles, demonstrated the teaching
  3. There often was even evidence that that was how the early church had acted from historical documents
  4. Mainstream scholars agreed, upon reflection, with Jeff Hammond that this core thesis was Biblical
  5. There was some spiritual evidence and fruit of it working when gently tested in our church

That took hard work! It’s what young men do. (It’s the period of my life that I lost BTW).

And it was important. It showed me that we were on solid ground. And it’s not as if any of the teachings carried great dangers. How can multiple eldership harm anyone?

But what you brought us from BCF was twists on conventional understandings with very poor evidences via (1) above and almost nothing from (2) – (5).

And dangers? The word on ‘guru headship‘ was chock full of great dangers and no care was exercised in enacting it! None at all. The presbytery prides it self on not knowing what David Bonham was doing to me. But that is an example of the lack of care. And it’s not true anyway because Laurie Holland, whilst on the presbytery, knew fro 100% sure).

Keith stood by me until when, near the end, I went berserk as I found the presbytery elders lying through their teeth and horribly provoking and rewriting history. That is their way I’m afraid.

I got angry. In the end, I broke windows. I lost the plot. I swore.

But they lied and provoked and had no compassion and took no care or accountability and paid no attention to common decency or expectations of Biblical justice.

Not even prepared to sit in a room with myself and the perpetrators.

Not once . . not once.

That’s the MCF/BCF way.

Ironically, for me, Keith, only a few months later, was shifted out of leadership and teaching because he had been identified as harshly counselling his flock in Sheperton.

Three out of three of our messengers fell in one way or another after teaching thousands of people . . crap, that was put immediately into action by unchecked elders across the nation.

That’s not a coincidence.

Charles’ 2nd Vision

In 2012, my Dad, Charles had an unexpected vision of the deception the elders were under.

But this week, in October 2019, after I told him about my (this) blog, he had a 2nd relevant vision that night, for the first time since 2012.

In his vision this week he saw himself in a stadium, something like a gladiator stadium.

And a beautiful cake descended and was wrapped up in plastic wrap to go into cold storage.

Dad immediately understood that this was MCF’s ORIGINAL word, and MCF having lost its lampstand, was now separated from the original solid restorationist word.

And there were men that separated Charles away and sat him down, isolated from everyone else in a part of a the stadium.

Meanwhile they had fun with a pointless, warped and strange game with a ball that he was not allowed, nor did he want, to play. The game involved spitting a ball out of ones mouth, probably hinting at the ‘Vic’-speak all the leaders began to assume as they became masterful users of the MCF/BCF lingo.

Charles realized these games were the distractive, dangerous and pointless devices of Vic Hall of the past 25 years. Strange teachings, lingo and legalism to keep the flock feeling they are getting something, but instead going around in circles for 25 years.

Oh Vic. Oh MCF.

It’s time.