Give and it shall be given.....

Whether you believe it or not, our Senior Pastor (SP) is a very generous giver. We are not referring to his giving away his money because we are in no position to comment on that.

We are referring to his giving away money from our Church Missions Fund. Please do not be mistaken. We are totally in support of giving to missions, to the poor and needy, to the underprivileged and to bring the Gospel to the dying world. But when it comes to giving a love offering to a guest speaker using Missions Fund, there should be a limit as to the quantum.

If our Church collects a love offering from the congregation and gives it all to the guest speaker, it is alright. In fact, that should be the correct approach. If, for some reason, we did not collect a love offering from the congregation but instead take from the Missions Fund and give a love gift to the guest speaker, it may still be acceptable provided it is reasonable. But is it reasonable when SP take a substantial sum from the Missions Fund and gives it as a love offering to his good-buddy preacher from down south?

That is what he did when Rev Robert Lim came to preach in our Church in 2003 for our Faith Promise Sunday. The June 2003 Missions accounts show that a love gift of S$10,000 was given to him (see the Missions accounts document attached). For just preaching at our 2 or 3 services in DH, this love gift is certainly a very big sum. We wonder what was the justification for this generous gift. This is a question SP and the Missions director have to answer. As we have no access to subsequent years’ accounts, we cannot comment if similar gifts were made for Rev Robert’s subsequent visits to Calvary.

The grapevine talk is that this is a common practice among some pastors, not all, we must add. It is their “holy” version of “You scratch my back, I scratch your back”. Call this speculation or what have you but this is human weakness and human nature. For example, if you are invited by your friend for his son’s wedding, what is the first thing you do. Yes, you would immediately check your diary or notebook to find out how much that friend gave you for your own son’s wedding. Our natural response is to make sure that we do not give less than what we have received.

The same with Chinese New Year ang-pows. Haven’t you parents been guilty at one time or another of asking your little son or daughter to peep into the ang-pow she has just received to see how much that aunty gave. You do this so that you can determine how much to give to that aunty’s children.

There is a benefit of giving generously, the more you give, the more you shall receive. Sounds biblical except that the giving pocket is different from the receiving pocket. So SP, in making this generous gift to Rev Robert, can expect a reciprocal treatment when he preaches at Rev Robert’s church in Singapore.

When Dr Lum first brought out the issue of the US$10,000 love gift that SP gave (without prior BOD approval) to Dr Guynes for chairing the last EGM, we had thought that it was a one-off extraordinary event. It would now appear that such arbitrary giving by SP is not uncommon. If the funds came from his own pocket, no one will complain but in both cases, the funds were taken from the Missions account.

Strangely, Rev Phil Stevenson was not given the same treatment. In his case, a love offering was even collected in his presence (unlike in Rev Robert and Dr Guynes’ cases) but whatever love offering collected WAS NOT given to Rev Phil (see the attached email from Rev Phil to Dr Lum confirming this fact).

From here, the readers can see the biasness of SP. He is generous to Rev Robert because they are good friends and SP stands to benefit (or may have benefited) from such giving. Rev Robert’s church is one of the larger churches in Singapore which means they can afford a generous love offering for their guest speakers. Rev Robert’s church is also said to have given SP’s wife her Honda Civic or so she claims.

Rev Phil, on the other hand, comes from a relatively small church in Perth and his church can barely afford a decent team of staff. There is no way they can offer a generous gift for their guest speakers. In this case, any love gift to Rev Phil will just be a pure giving away and so, poor Phil’s love offering was kept by our church. This immoral act is an embarrassment for Calvary Church and someone should be held accountable.

Someone should also be answerable for misusing the Missions Funds for this selective and arbitrary giving of love gifts.

Will the Chief Executive of Calvary Church, please stand up?


CT COMMENT:
Both Dr Guynes and Rev Phil’s cases were among the 23 issues raised by Dr Lum, who was then subjected to a Kangaroo trial and summarily terminated as a member. Dr Lum brought Rev Phil’s email to the Kangaroo Court on 28 Feb as evidence to prove his statement but was not given the opportunity to do so.

DR LUM WAS SACKED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH AND FOR REVEALING THE UNETHICAL AND IMMORAL PRACTICES IN CALVARY CHURCH AND THE HIGH-HANDEDNESS OF SP.

COMING NEXT
We will be publishing a statement from an ex-deacon. The statement supports 1 of the 23 issues raised by Dr Lum. In the self-explanatory statement, you will see that SP’s autocratic style is not something new. You will find out that from a long time ago, SP already had an dictatorial hold over the deacons and what has unfolded in the last one year is not that surprising.

COMING SOON
Would anyone spend RM21,000 on 8 wireless microphones and 1 headphone? Apparently our church did………with your money, of course!!

FINALLY.....
Both the Proposer and Seconder for the resolutions to reinstate Dr Lum were called to meet with the deacons and SP on April Fools’ Day. They were told point blank in their faces that their resolutions will NOT be tabled at this Saturday’s EGM. There was no room for negotiation or consideration. Another display of brazen dictatorial management.

All members who support a change in our Church must attend the EGM tomorrow and speak out boldly and vote wisely.