Calvary Church Makes the News Again

Last Saturday, a group of unhappy Calvarites gathered together in Calvary Church Damansara Perdana and handed over a Memorandum to Senior Pastor Prince Guneratnam (PG) to voice their unhappiness over the mass sacking of 400 Church members. The Memorandum, which was signed by more than 100 members, also seek the reinstatement of all the terminated members.

The group of members began gathering in the Indian restaurant across the road from our Calvary Church Damansara Perdana, Church office from as early as 10am. By 10.45am, the group had grown to about 80-90 members. Disappointment, discouragement, bewilderment, sadness, hurt and grief were written on many of the faces. Who can blame them? Many of these faithful worshippers have devoted most of their adult life, several as long as 45-49 years, serving tirelessly in Calvary Church. As one member said, some of them were saved, baptized, found their life partners, gotten married, had their children dedicated and later, witnessed them get married in Calvary. And now, with a stroke of a pen by PG, they have all got kicked out of their Father’s house. That was the price they paid, for just trying to make a change, for merely asking for transparency and accountability from PG and his Deacons.

At 10.50am, an ex-Church leader, Bro Ronnie addressed the crowd to encourage them. At 11.00am sharp, the group stood up and walked out and marched solemnly and peacefully across the road to the Calvary Church Damansara Perdana Church office. To their disappointment, PG did not come out to meet them. Instead he sent his Associate Pastor Steven and his Deacon-lawyer, David Peters to meet the group. After several minutes of discussion and negotiation, three representatives of the group were allowed to enter the Church premises to meet PG to hand over the Memorandum.

The three representatives went in, handed the Memorandum to PG and were out within a few minutes. According to one of the representatives, they invited PG to come out and meet the members but he flatly refused.

The entire historic event was over in 20 minutes, witnessed by the press and under the watchful eyes of the police, whom the group had earlier informed, as a precautionary measure.

The submission of the Memorandum to PG made the news in all the major newspapers namely the The Star, New Straits Times, China Press, Nanyang Siang Pau and Sin Chew Daily the following day.

Click on the images to view the newspaper reports.
                                    

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Members To Submit Memorandum To PG

COME THIS SATURDAY TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT!

Event: Submission of Memorandum to Pas Prince

Date: 20 March 2010

Time: 11am

Place: Pusat Aktiviti Calvary, Damansara Perdana

A big group of Calvarites will converge at Calvary Church Damansara Perdana, Church Office this Saturday, 20 March 2010 to submit a Memorandum to Senior Pastor Prince Guneratnam (PG) to protest against the massive sacking of 400 faithful, long-serving members.

This is in response to the Hitler-style cleansing of the membership rolls undertaken by PG and his Deacons recently in their attempt to silence the voice of the hurting members.

Instead of the shepherd protecting his sheep, our Calvary shepherd is now kicking out his own sheep!

Among the members sacked are several who have been members for more than 45 years. In fact there is one pioneering member who has been with Calvary since its first inaugural service in 1961, the year Calvary Church was born. Today, after 49 years of faithful service, he has been sacked. Another “old-timer” sacked is a member who has been serving in various ministries since 1963.

These faithful members were already serving in Calvary when PG was still in his school uniform. When PG was introduced to these pioneering members in 1972, they received him warmly and voted to employ him as their pastor. Today, this pastor has terminated their membership without even the courtesy of a simple phone call or a letter to tell them why they have been sacked. This is indeed one of the darkest hour in the history of Calvary Church.

If you are among the 400 who have been sacked, please come this Saturday to support your fellow burden-bearers. Even if you are not among those sacked, do come in support of the group’s struggle to bring about greater transparency and accountability in the leadership of Calvary Church.

PG goes berserk: Witch-Hunt Part 2

In a desperate attempt to cling on to power and his fat paycheck with perks only enjoyed by top corporate executives, Senior Pastor Prince Guneratnam (PG) has gone berserk and embarked on a massive witch-hunt and removed more than 350 church members from the membership rolls with the biggest casualties, being the voting members.

The new membership rolls were put up on the Damansara Heights Church notice board yesterday together with the Preliminary Notice of the coming AGM to be held on 23 April 2010.

The total number of voting members has dropped from 886 as at June 2009 to only 706 now. Although it is an overall drop of 180 voting members, the actual number of voting members sacked is more than this as during the past year, the Church had been actively giving out voting memberships to new-comers, who previously, would not have qualified to be voting members. The non-voting associate membership has also been slashed down to only 694 from 871 previously representing a termination of 177 associate members.

Most of the members axed were TTG supporters and ordinary concerned members who had questioned the leadership at the last AGM. All the core TTG leaders including the seven who had filed a suit against PG, the Deacons and Assemblies of God Malaysia (AOG) were also axed. None of the sacked members was issued with a show-cause letter or even informed of their dismissal. Such is the high-handed, autocratic style of PG who just refused to accept the fact that members no longer have confidence in him or his leadership.

CT understands that the TTG is planning a large press conference soon to publicize the injustice done to members, the mismanagement of member's offerings and missions-giving and the victimization of the members who had filed or supported the legal suit.

To clarify, the legal suit is a class action representing a group of Calvary members and the sole purpose is to seek the Court's interpretation of our church constitution, to declare the last AGM null and void and to re-convene a fresh AGM so that the members can exercise their constitutional rights to vote on the seven resolutions proposed by some members. The inclusion of AOG as a Defendant in the suit is unfortunate but necessary as Calvary Church was incorporated under the sub-trusteeship of the AOG.

The said legal suit is still pending in the High Court under case management, This is typically a long-drawn process where all the parties continuously submit their claims, replies, affidavits and affidavits-in-reply. After all these is done with, only then will a proper hearing date be fixed by the Court.

The convening of an AGM next month is in bad taste and a blatant disregard of the court process as the said legal suit to nullify the previous AGM is still pending in the High Court. The decision to sack the 350 members and the seven members/plaintiffs can be deemed as victimization and will certainly be detrimental to their defence. One can only conclude that our Deacons are either simply ignorant and silly or a bunch of recalcitrant, vindictive folks without morals and ethics. The joke of it is that there is a lawyer sitting among them! Or perhaps, it’s a case of ‘Follow the leader’?

Lord, come quickly and put an end to all these nonsense!

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Berita Calvary has just published a Letter bearing a call to pray for Calvary Church from a TTG supporter. Let us unite together to pray and P U S H on.

Click here to read : Let us P U S H
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Here's a Devotion written by David Wilkerson on 8/03/10.
JESUS AND STORMS  
Jesus ordered his disciples into a boat that was headed for a collision. The Bible says he “constrained [them] to get into a ship…” that was headed for troubled waters where it would be tossed about like a bobbing cork. The disciples would be thrust into a mini-Titanic experience—and Jesus knew it all the time.

Where was Jesus?

There was only one lesson for the disciples to learn in this storm—only one!

A simple lesson—not some deep, mystical, earth-shattering one. Jesus simply wanted to be trusted as their Lord in every storm of life. He simply wanted thedisciples to maintain their cheer and confidence even in the blackest hours of trial. That’s all!

Read the whole devotion, click here : JESUS AND STORM