About Figtree Anglican Church

This is the House that Rod Built

Part 1

‘Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain’

                                                                                         Psalm 127:1 (TNIV)

Introduction

This is the first of a short series of articles about Figtree Anglican Church, which is located in Figtree, a suburb of Wollongong, just south of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, Australia, in the Diocese of Sydney of the Anglican Church of Australia.  In the articles I will discuss how Figtree Anglican Church became a mega-church during the time of the Rev. Rod Irvine as senior minister, the flagship of the Sydney diocese, with over 1,000 people attending the several services each Sunday and running many other programs. Then I will discuss how it developed into a leadership cult and how this is demonstrated by the behaviour of clergy, staff and others holding positions in the parish towards parishioners Machelle and Scott Dobbs and their children, among others. Finally I will look at how it fared under ‘new management’ after Rod Irvine and his wife Helen left the parish, moving to Brisbane in 2008 after 21 years. It continues under the senior ministry of the Rev. Ian Barnett, but it is failing and fading from its’ former eminence.

In the articles I will ask the questions: where did Figtree Anglican Church go wrong? Could there be a lesson in its’ story?

Before we get started I will look at some foundational issues about the meaning and definitions of ‘church’.  

What is a church?

There are five major definitions of ‘church’.

The first definition means that there is the Christian ‘church’ which is the ‘body of Christ’ – the collective of all Christian believers. One joins this church by believing that Jesus Christ is Lord, the ‘Son’ of the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit that God has disclosed through the Bible as how his God-head is constituted. There are no buildings; there is no music, whether pipe organs or bands, choirs or singing groups; there are no forms of service; there is nothing except naked belief and, following from that, a determination to seek God’s will and to do it in His strength.

In this meaning we say: ‘I am part of the church.’

In the second definition ‘church’ means the building that is called ‘a church’.

Money is inextricably bound into this concept of church. As a building it needs money raised to build in the first place, to re-build in part or whole, to extend, add kitchens, disabled access, toilets and to comply with fire and safety regulations. It could be said to ‘eat’ money. In this it is indistinguishable from any building from the humblest home to grand public buildings. This definition has little or nothing to do with the activities that are carried on inside it other than that its’ title ‘church’ means that the Christian worship of God is its’ fundamental purpose, just as enacting laws is the fundamental purpose of Parliament House.

In this meaning we say: ‘I will go and look at a church.’

 

The third definition is a description of the activities that are carried on in the building: the Christian worship of God, together with a whole host of other activities associated with this. When ‘church’ is defined in this way, the building in which these activities are carried out in itself need not be a ‘church’ as described in the second definition, but can be a school hall or an abandoned cinema building or the local Town Hall or even someone’s lounge room.

In this meaning we say: ‘I am going to church.’

The fourth definition is the church organisation[1]. This is an association of people[2]: they are part of the organisation in the broad categories of clergy, staff and volunteers[3]. There are several levels of the organisation itself, from Parish to the State-wide and Federal church organisation[4]. At the Parish level, a ‘church’ like Figtree Anglican Church, or City-on-a-Hill or Planet-Shakers has an organisation that has grown up to run the worship services, pastoral care, parish social, educational programs and the like, care for the buildings and raise money. But there is within this definition a conceptual entity that can be the object of pride, adoration and sense of identity.

This is still ‘congregation’ based but, as at Figtree, it can become an oppressive regime and as at Figtree it can become an idol.

It is the necessary human organization for achieving anything, but like all human things, it can become corrupt and dysfunctional; and it also becomes more intrusive as the ‘congregation/church’ grows, and as at Figtree, it can become seriously dysfunctional.

In this sense Christians say ‘I go to (or I belong to) Figtree ….’

The fifth definition is ‘church’ as a denomination. This is the congregation’s link with other congregations, and with historic Christianity. We see it developing in St. Paul’s care for city-churches, and in the Jerusalem Apostles giving instructions to the gentile churches.  It is part of God’s provision and ONLY people like the extreme wing of Sydney Evangelicals poo-poo it completely. The tragic history of Christianity in Japan amply illustrates what happens when it is destroyed!

The fact that denominations quickly become corrupt and dysfunctional probably only highlights that even the devil thinks they are worth trying infiltrate, subvert and destroy!

              This is the sense in which Christians say: ‘I am an Anglican’, or ‘I am a (Roman) Catholic’ or ‘I am Russian (or Greek) Orthodox’.

What does the Parish leadership want us to know about Figtree Anglican Church?

 I was researching Figtree Anglican Church while preparing some chapters of the book ‘The Evolution of a Lie’, which is the story of Machelle and Scott Dobbs and their family in relation to the clergy staff and members of Figtree Anglican Church and I found this statement of Figtree Anglican Church’s ‘core values’ published on their website.[5]

Figtree Anglican Church ‘core values’

Our Core Values

Commonly held values are the key to unity. At FAC, they are the foundation to which everything we do is aligned and define what makes us unique as a church community:

     Faithful ….. at all times.

          Adventurous ….. in all things.

               Compassionate ….. to all people.

What do they mean?

When one considers the behaviour of the clergy, other leadership staff and significant parishioners towards the members of the Dobbs family as discussed and examined in my numerous articles and my books “A Synergy of Malice’ and ‘A Mother’s Story’[6]  these ‘Core Values’ ring rather hollow. Perhaps there should be an expansion of the description of these ‘core values’, thus:

Faithful: to whom? There is no mention here of being faithful to God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the behaviour of the leaders of the parish which I have examined in other articles on this website and will examine in this series this core value can be seen to work out in practice as ‘faithful to the leadership and to the parish identity’.

This value should read: faithful to the parish and the leadership, no matter how far they stray from the Gospel.

Adventurous: in what way? What does this mean in the context of a Christian, indeed an Anglican Church? Do they mean abseiling the formidable escarpment behind the parish? Or do they mean standing out firmly against injustice, malicious gossip, deceit and deviousness? Do they mean standing up for the Gospel in all its inconvenient truths, such as the need to be truthful, to demonstrate the nature of Christ in all dealings with other people and to reach out to all persons in His name? Not as far as the conduct demonstrated in the case of the Dobbs family, among others, goes.

This value should read: adventurous except where it involves standing up for truth and justice against the actions of the leadership, the parish and the diocesan organisation.

Compassionate: to whom? Not compassionate towards the young woman parishioner who had an affair with a member of staff in an unrelated case. Although her affair had already ended when the staff member was asked to resign and she was attempting to put her marriage back together again, the leadership announced her name from the pulpit as the ‘other woman’ in the affair. Understandably, this caused great distress to her children as well as to her husband and herself and made their task of rescuing their marriage infinitely more difficult.

Not compassionate at any stage towards the Dobbs family, adults and children.

This value should read: compassionate to those of whom the leadership and parish approve. Compassionate towards those who, in the self-righteous judgment of the leadership, have not committed any sin. But not compassionate towards those who are falsely accused and not compassionate to those who have repented and obtained God’s mercy but not that of the parish leadership.

And as I will discuss later in this article, those people of whom the parish and leadership approve are those who contribute large amounts of money to the parish and who sycophantically support all that the parish leadership says and does.

About the Rev. Dr. Roderick David (Rod) Irvine

Rod Irvine’s career was founded on science and teaching based on his university degrees obtained in 1969 and 1976 from the University of Queensland. But then he switched careers, to come south to Sydney to study at Moore Theological College, the Sydney Anglican Church clergy training college from which he graduated in 1979[7].

He returned to Brisbane and was ordained deacon there in 1979. In 1980 he was priested. He served as assistant curate in a Brisbane parish until 1982 but there is a gap after he left that parish during which he held only a licence called a Permission to Officiate, meaning that he was not attached to a parish but retained the right to perform the rites and sacraments of the Anglican Church[8].

This gap continued until 1987 when he appears in Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church, appointed Rector (now called Senior Minister) of All Saints Figtree. While he was there he took time to complete an MBA. He remained there until 2008, whereupon he returned to Brisbane.[9]

A brief history of Figtree Anglican Church

Originally there were three parishes in the Wollongong suburbs, including All Saints in the suburb of Figtree, which were adjacent to each other. A decision was made to incorporate the other two parishes into the one parish of Figtree Anglican Church. But for this decision, the three parishes would have struggled along with their separate congregations. Undoubtedly the decision caused a great deal of heartache for parishioners of the two parishes which lost their separate identity and were merged into Figtree Anglican Church.  At about the same time, Figtree Anglican Church severed its’ connection with its’ previous designation, “All Saints Anglican Church Figtree” and became plain Figtree Anglican Church. A pity: a reminder of the communion of saints[10] to which all believers belong is no bad thing; it gives a sense of history and a sense of what present-day believers have to live up to.

After the merger the parish gained momentum to become a very large church indeed. As the numbers increased the need for larger accommodation became acute and a very large building housing an enormous ‘worship space’ with coffee lounge and general social area attached, along with meeting rooms and offices was commissioned and built. While ugly, it undoubtedly serves the purposes for which it was designed.

This is the house that Rod built:                

How did Rod build the house and maintain it?

There are two elements that make up the Christian Parish church: the people and the building. To some extent the kick-off for building up the numbers of people in the parish church was given by the merger of All Saints Figtree with another two parishes. From there it was a matter of building on what one had fortuitously acquired.

As I have said, when you are talking about the church defined as the church building, then you are talking about lots of money. It is the responsibility of the church wardens to deal with these problems of money: these are three people, two of whom are elected by the congregation as People’s Wardens, and one appointed by the Senior minister as the ‘Rector’s Warden’. Their responsibility for maintaining the fabric of the building allows the senior Minister to keep his or her finger on the pulse of the discussions and to ensure that God is not dishonoured by any bright ideas for fundraising. But as we will see, Rod became responsible for revenue raising at the expense of his control over the pastoral and other aspects of parish work so that these ran out of control and led to the disgraceful events visited on the Dobbs family by the leadership under his responsibility.

Rod Irvine’s recipe for a mega-church

A part explanation for the development of the mega-church lies in Rod Irvine’s personality and interests. After going to Figtree Anglican Church as the senior minister, Rod Irvine studied for the degree of Master of Business Administration (MBA) which he received in 1996.

When you look at Minutes of Figtree parish staff meetings in 2006-2008, it is clear that Rod Irvine’s role in Figtree had become focussed on responsibility for raising donations whether through the usual weekly offerings or additional donations for special church projects, rather than worship services and the day-to-day work of the parish church. Instead Rod Irvine was praised for his ability to raise money to plough into building and other works, in some cases surely more for the glory of the parish than the glory of God.

This is a difficult balance to get right, and there is a strong argument that ‘serving Money’[11] is better under the control of gifted people other than the clergy, whose ordination vows say nothing about raising money and a great deal about serving God and studying only those things that will make one a better Priest whose task is leading people to salvation.[12]

Another issue is how parishioners are treated. Clearly the model for how the Priest interacts with those he has undertaken to lead to salvation is Jesus himself. In the gospels there are a myriad of examples of how Jesus treated people. Here are just as a few:

The Woman from Samaria that he met at the well[13]: in his encounter with her Jesus ignored his fatigue (he had been on the road for many hours), his hunger (it was about midday) and his thirst (other than to initiate the conversation by asking her to give him some water from the well) and as a result of this extraordinary conversation when he disclosed to her that he is the Messiah, he not only led her but also all the people of her village to salvation. There are two very compelling examples of his behaviour here. The first is that he, a Jewish man, asked a woman who was also a member of an outcast tribe to give him a drink of water. He would have been expected to treat her as inferior to him, and certainly not drink out of the same cup because she was ritually unclean.  And during the conversation he told her that he knew she had had four husbands and that the man she was living with now was not her husband. He did not judge her, and he did not shun her. Instead he caused her to call all the village out to see him, and many put their faith in him.

The woman taken in adultery: he saved her from being stoned to death. As I pointed out in the preface to my article ‘The First Stone Revisited’[14] stoning had fallen into disrepute for about 100 years before this incident. It was also outlawed by the leaders of the Roman occupation of Palestine, who reserved to themselves the right to take someone’s life. This case was mainly a test for Jesus: to put him in the position of denying either the Law of Moses or the law of the land under the Roman Emperor. Instead he shamed those who had taken up stones until one by one they dropped the stones and slunk away. Then, turning to her he told her that he did not condemn her, and to go and sin no more[15].

Another example is Jesus’ relationship with the tax collectors and sinners. There are frequent references to criticisms of him mixing with them and going to eat with them. When he hears these criticisms he says that he came into the world not to heal the righteous but to save sinners[16].

Throughout the gospels are examples of this sort of personal encounter that changes people’s lives. As we can see from the accounts following on from the end of events recounted in the four Gospels, those accounts in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, Peter and John, from that point onwards there is the constant struggle to live up to the change of heart, to change one’s life in accordance with the conversion that was experienced at first.

The main business of the priest for the people entrusted to his care is twofold. First, he must tell them about the glorious life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and what this means for them, and work with the Holy Spirit to bring their hearts and minds to new birth. Second, he must nurture, teach and mentor these souls as they embark on and continue the new journey: the daily struggle to change and live a life that is holy and righteous in God’s sight. Because God loves every person, then the priest has an obligation to love in the same way all those souls he has had entrusted to his care.

This is essentially a one-on-one process of teaching and mentoring and living out in front of them the love of God.

But this attitude is not reflected in how Figtree Anglican Church treated people. What is concerning is the way Rod all too obviously brought secular ideas into running and financing a parish as if it were a secular organisation. And these secular ideas are at odds with the main business that the priest is called to perform and the way he is to nurture his parish.

The following notes were taken at one of his seminars on ministry. Since leaving Figtree Parish in 2008 he has continued to spread his own personal gospel of finance and ministry to church leaders in Queensland, among other places. Here is what one of these has published on his blog connected to the website for the North Buderim Community Church of which he was at the time of downloading the senior minister. The notes start with this:

Tips from Rod Irvine on how to spend time in the week

8 11 2010

4 areas to spend time on each well as the lead pastor:-
1. Vision
2. Money
3. Staff
4. Elders

In these ‘4 areas to spend time on’ there is no mention of a commitment to daily personal prayer and making time each week for extended prayer with the parish counsellors and wardens and with anyone else who might be a good prayer-partner. Perhaps this would come under the heading ‘Vision’, as long as what was meant was the weekly process of discerning and implementing God’s vision for the parish, not just what the human beings want for the parish. I raise this at this point because later in the notes of Rod’s ministry training seminar the reader will take note of the recommendations for raising funds for the ‘vision’ and dealing with protests about a specific project which would indicate that the vision here is a purely personal, human one.

The notes that follow disclose two main areas of concern in this seminar. The first is the identification and ‘use’ of leaders, and the second is finances.

Identification and ‘use’ of leaders

The notes go on:-

 Other tips on how and where to lead and care for people:
1. Peretto (sic – Pareto)[17] Principle of Pastoral Leadership – 80% of advances come from 20% of time. So make sure you spend time with people who will be or are leaders.
2. Birthdays – know everyone’s birthdays. Call them on their birthdays and pray for them.
3. Time after church – spend time with people you wouldn’t or couldn’t otherwise through the week and pray for them.
4. Thank you notes – write thank you notes to anyone you see serving.
5. Phone calls – a 10 minute phone call is a long phone (call) and so phone calls are a good use of time with people. Whereas a 30 minute visit is a short visit. Make lots of phone calls.
6. De facto leader – there is always at least one ‘de facto’ leader in a church. Look out for who it is and spend time with them.
5. First 5 years – As the lead pastor you are on trial for the first 5 years so make everything you do count. Or in other words make sure anything you do works.

Despite the heading, this is not a list of ways in which to ‘lead and care for people’. It is a way of cynically manipulating people to think of you as a good person and to support you.

These recommendations are very superficial in pastoral terms.

Calling someone on their birthday is not really much more than a gesture: people do not need a 10 minute phone call for simply living long enough to make the next birthday. On the other hand they may be so honoured and flattered to have a call from the senior minister and not just from the pastoral care worker that they will be won over to support the senior minister in the next call for spending on a ‘vision’ the senior minister has conceived.

However there is no recommendation to spend time calling a person who is in the midst of grief and pain. Such people cannot be expected to give a good return, or at least not immediately. Yet they are the ones who need the prayer. And if you are going to call them, or, after church, meet people that you would not or could not spend time with during the week, how are you going to pray for them? How much time do you allow for finding out what they really need prayer for? What if they are firmly in the ‘80% not worth the trouble’ basket?

Little thank-you notes can be delegated to one’s office assistant for you to sign-off. How pastoral is that?

Also concerning is that there is an emphasis on only valuing people who are ‘leaders’.

The Pareto principle is applied (as if gospel, and yet in opposition to the Gospel) as a tool for not wasting time on people who do not matter: those who will not be ‘leaders’, who will not fall within the 20% who will give a good return on the time spent on them. That return may be in acts of service for the church and the parish, or, as we will examine later, in financial ways, thereby making it (both ‘its’) successful and therefore the senior minister glorified in clergy conferences and at diocesan organisation level for running a ‘successful’ – that is, commercially successful – church entity.

It can be argued that Jesus spent a lot of time with his identified ‘leaders’ – the disciples he (God) chose to carry on after his death and resurrection. But that is the point. He was teaching them privately as well as along with the 5,000 or however many were there on the day how to carry on and deliver the Gospel to the world laying the foundation of the Christian church after he left them. This is not what Rod Irvine’s seminar on creating a mega-church is about at all. He is about creating greater support for the senior minister (himself in the case of Figtree) and, as we see later, raising money to support his vision for the church he is building.

Church finances:

The notes go on –

This is particularly evident in the area of parish finances

There are 3 different aspects to fundraising:-

1. Raising finances from the week by week giving.

2. Raising finances for ‘projects’ that flow out of a long term ‘vision’ for each year. This involves asking people to give an amount of their giving above and beyond their weekly giving.

3. Raising finances for a Building Project. This is raising a larger amount of money for capital works. It is good to only do this every 2-3 years.

The first two of these are done at the same time in the year at a ‘Commitment Day’ which is preceded by a 5-6 week teaching series on Sundays on ‘commitment.’ Every talk is not on financial giving but one is the Sunday before the ‘commitment day.’ Rod would have commitment on the second Sunday of November. A key element over the teaching series is showing videos featuring the ‘projects’ for the year. It is important these are fun or even funny. Other elements include brochures; bible studies; daily journal notes; notices in newsletters; letters; visiting groups and individuals.

This is an unpalatable example of ruthless manipulation of people. For one-twelfth of the year the teaching of the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ is interrupted for a series of sermons that is really about getting people to give more money (even more than they can afford?) to the parish both in weekly giving as well as giving an amount over and above that for whatever is the ‘vision’ of the year. And not only the sermons. In whatever activities the parishioner is involved with there will be a positive blizzard of reinforcing messages, even in the weekly Bible studies.  The blatant use of fun or funny videos to manipulate people’s responses and to overcome their natural prudence in not committing more than they can afford by creating a climate of humour is an abuse of power over people. Undeniably these are based on the tactics used by secular marketers to get us the gullible public to buy things we neither want nor need. But is that the Christian way of dealing with people – by hoodwinking them?

Later in the notes is this:

It is important to start thinking at the beginning of the year about possible projects for the next year. Settle on the projects by June. Commitment series in October with ‘Commitment Day’ in November. November and December giving and pledges trickle in and thank you letters go out.

It would appear that it is necessary to have something in the way of a project going each year so that people get used to the cycle of appeals to give more to these projects on top of the weekly commitment. This pro-active approach to pressuring people to part with money that may be sorely needed to fulfill their own commitments is disturbing.

As the notes say:

Some of the key ‘project’ categories are ‘childrens (sic) ministry’; building maintenance; evangelism; youth and compassion (giving to those in need). A particularly important category is ‘Our church our ministry.’ This is about the overall ministry of the whole church include all that is going on the weekly life of the church.

Another aspect to the manipulation of people in the less admirable aspects of their personalities is tapping into their desire to belong to a successful group. One only has to look at people who follow a particular football team: one sees so often a passionate self-identification with the success of the team. When a team falls into disrepute or to the bottom of the league the anguish amongst their supporters is palpable.  There are a number who will be supporters to their dying day and to whom the thought of supporting another team is tantamount to treason. But others will move away, disgusted with the coach, the administrators, the team members or whoever is to be blamed for the plunge in the fortunes of the team. These people have their counterparts in those who want to belong to a thriving church. They are happy to announce that they attend a vibrant well-known church; they are happy to bring other people to that church. This is good so long as the vibrancy comes through the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit in their midst. But if the vibrancy is man-made: ‘good bands’, lively singing group, fun activities and videos (especially during the Commitment series) and not too much in the way of ‘churchy stuff’ like preaching and no embarrassing demands for talking about God to other people and walking in Christ’s footsteps, then this is not good.

Look at the project entitled: ‘Our church our ministry’. Not: ‘God’s church’. This is engendering in people an entirely secular self-identification with that particular parish church, Figtree in this case, and ownership.

The notes go on:

Another thing along the way was to have the ‘most influential’ person in the church to get up and endorse the whole concept.

This is again another form of manipulation of the individual. First there is the idea that the person who has been flattered by being identified as ‘the most influential person in the church’ will support the project. Then there is the placement of the endorsement speech within the church service (‘get up and endorse’) where the place and timing is supposed to lend even greater gravitas to the underlying claim that God as well as that ‘most influential person in the church’ endorses this project. The message is that the individual parishioner should not dare to challenge the project, but just pledge that hard-earned money to support it at the expense of family and other commitments.

And finally, still on the topic of finances and projects:

Ignore ‘squawkers.’ Initially there will be people who are negative about the concept. Over time this will stop and most of the time these are the people who don’t give anything anyway’.

This analysis recommends dealing brutally and contemptuously with those who may have excellent reasons to speak out against a planned project: they are denigrated as ‘squawkers’ by pouring ridicule not just on their views, but on themselves, personally. They are to be simply ignored – cast outside the magic inner circle, and they are to be all too obviously treated as unimportant, people who ‘most of the time … don’t give anything anyway’.

In summary: the gospel according to Rod Irvine

Overall Rod has given an excellent analysis of the cynical manipulation of some of the worst aspects of human nature: the desire to be part of the ‘inner circle’, to be one of the ‘identified leaders’, even ‘the most influential person in the church’; those who desire public recognition for their qualities in leadership and influence and who enjoy, need even, being courted for their approval. These are the ones who can be counted on for sycophantic support. Then there is the advocacy of brutality to be exercised towards people who dare to criticise or fail to support the project that the senior minister dreamed up at the start of each year, whether it was needed  or not.

At the heart of this ‘gospel according to Rod Irvine’ there is a ruthless disregard for all aspects of the welfare – from the spiritual to the material welfare  – of God’s people; the welfare of those who have been placed in the shepherding care of the ministers of a church. Concern for the spiritual welfare of those in one’s care includes advocating a humble and contrite heart. It is against inflating their pride and arrogance in worldly recognition and against reinforcing these attitudes by cynically harnessing them to gain personal support for activities designed to promote worldly things, not those of God.

How is this manifest in Scott and Machelle’s case?

This is especially illuminating in understanding the attitude of Rod Irvine and others of the Figtree leadership and staff towards Scott Dobbs which led to their easy acceptance of outrageous false claims when these were made. Scott was not an identified leader in Figtree although a man of outstanding intelligence, education, and an experienced missionary trained by a well-respected organisation YWAM[18]. Nor was he a member of the inner circle of people who bought their way in with spectacular donations each year like the parishioner, David MacNeice.[19]And Scott was very remote from the ‘most influential people’ who could be brought in to endorse another, expensive, project for the parish. He was a poor man. He had been a student for many years; then he was on an academic salary; then he was on no salary at all, but sporadic income from casual work. He would say he was rich in the treasure that was his wife and family of 6 children. That doesn’t seem to count in Rod Irvine’s ‘gospel’.

In another area Scott was a ‘squawker’ who did not unconditionally support the leadership. For example, he had had the temerity to criticise the music ministry leader for the choice of worship songs. At the time he played the guitar on a rota of bands and other younger members of the bands and singers had asked him to speak up for them. The employed leader of the music ministry asked Scott to leave the music ministry meeting when he voiced these concerns.

Comparison of Rod Irvine’s mega church doctrine with identified cult church activities

 One of the areas where cult churches are most criticised is the unrelenting pressure put on parishioners to give money to all sorts of projects, especially where the parishioners cannot afford to give more than their weekly giving for all sorts of good and proper reasons, such as unemployment or heavy family commitments.  The cult church targets people with the falsehood that if they do not pledge to give more – indeed more than they can afford – they are denying the power of God to make the money materialise. This ‘magical’ version of how God operates is, of course, a grave lie and a defamation of the character of God. Indeed Jesus said: ‘It is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ (Matthew 4:7) (TNIV)

The cult church devises all sorts of projects largely for the glory of the parish, such as large and larger church buildings, halls, vehicles and other material items.  And particularly, these are for the glory of the leadership, as the Senior Minster (or Rector) gets a great deal of kudos in diocesan circles as the leader of a large and wealthy, well-resourced parish.

In cult churches there is no room for asking God what He wants to be done, whether He wants a new, bigger better worship space, kitchen, or drum kit. On occasions, when asked this is exactly what He may want, but the church that does not ask, who does what seems to them as men to be needed would do well to heed Psalm 127:1 ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain’ (TNIV)

A cult church sells its’ brand to the community market of Christian unbelievers and waverers, people of other faiths and people of no faith. It sells itself by spectacular events: festivals, programs to bring people into the church (building) about concerns apparently unrelated to Christianity, like a series of discussions about parenting, and ‘conferences’ where the church brand is sold to many thousands in a major City venue. Hillsong is a prime example of this relentless marketing. Figtree in the time of Rod Irvine also used its’ access to power and the influence of people in the congregation to market its’ brand.

As anyone who has attended one of the mega-outreach programs run by Hillsong will attest: there is the same emphasis on giving money; the buckets in which offerings are placed come around with monotonous regularity, asking for even more money from people who have already bought tickets to each event. The calls for money are accompanied by clever and persuasive preaching.

It is all a long, long way from the itinerant preacher called Jesus who sat in a boat, on a hillside or at the side of a lake and talked to people, not measuring out his time in the 30AD equivalent of 10 minute phone calls.

And with what intensity did those people listen. Some who listened turned away and went on sinning; some who were church officials were incensed and sought ways to kill him; but others, many others, listened, repented, turned to Jesus and had their lives transformed.

Jesus had no need of buildings, bands, outreach carol services, courses and training programs and all the paraphernalia of the modern parishes seeking to make themselves ‘relevant’. It is as if the modern church fears that the message they preach is irrelevant, and there is a strong argument that in Christianity ‘lite’, the watered-down, inoffensive to anyone version that some of them present, they are irrelevant.

Jesus did not send around for a collection. He asked His Father in Heaven for everything He needed and poured out what He received unstintingly upon those he served, which meant anyone who came to him, not just the ‘identified leaders’. The poor and the useless in society received healing, all in need received food both of the heavenly and the earthly kind and all were shown a new path to walk (especially those who now could walk), a path which led to eternal life.

 

 

In Part 2: I look at cult behaviour manifest in Figtree Anglican church, in particular in its’ application to the case of Scott and Machelle Dobbs, a case when the leadership and others of that church reached the nadir of unchristian behaviour.

In Part 3 I ask the question: what went wrong with Figtree Anglican Church?

 

 

 

 

Post filed under Anglican Church, The Figtree Affair.