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 

By God's Grace, we continue on...

WE are reproducing this section of the previous post titled, "WHY I USE "ALLAH." written by Pastor Eu Hong Seng, to be more focused on the Calvary Church, Kuala Lumpur Crisis Saga, so that readers can focus on the church issues and thereby make relevant "Comments".

This is also a gentle reminder to all Concerned Members and friends to pray for the outcome of the next mention date for our case which has been scheduled on 24 February 2010.
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To bring this article closer home to us in Calvary Church, Kuala Lumpur, we borrow Pastor Eu’s words and reproduced them to read like this:


But the Calvary Church community has always been a peace loving people.

For the sake of harmony, TTG members engaged in closed door meetings in the past, to negotiate the issues of Truth Transparency and Godly Governance in the running of Calvary Church, rather than to bring it to the courts. And we were always assured by the Senior Pastor and Deacons that we could use our Church Constitutional rights at our AGMs to exercise our rights as church members to voice our opinions and to make decisions by way of voting so that the members voices are heard and carried out as allowed by our Church Constitution

But today (as decided by PG and Deacons since last AGM), they are saying we cannot use the Church Constitution and the various Church leaders have started rejecting all the Resolutions put in for consideration by members at the EGMs and the last AGM thereby confiscating the fundamental rights of the church members to vote at an AGM. And the claim is we "used to accept it" – but that's because the Church members have been tricked into negotiating behind closed doors in the name of the Christian and Church culture of "talk and resolve quietly." So because “nobody” heard from the Concerned Members, (many in the past and the present TTG) now PG, Pastors and Deacons of CC take advantage and say, we accepted it all this while. This is absolutely not true.

Different Concerned Members have been moaning, complaining, objecting and writing to the Church leadership for more than 20 years. (Many have said their peace and left to worship in other churches)

Should we concede for the sake of peace alone? Friends, the days of closed door meetings - where our views are deliberately misrepresented and compromised - where the Church Members are always bullied (i.e removed from church membership as in Dr Lum) and threatened (i.e axed from serving in church ministries) into submission for the sake of Christian Love and in the name of bearing a good testimony, are perhaps over?

It is indeed sad, that after 49 years of existence, the Church is still not ready for mature dialogue, and is still struggling to hear the voice of reason.

This is not a Christian Love issue, this is not a Touch not God’s anointed issue, this is not even a Forgive and Forget your pastor issue.

And this is definitely not a maintaining a good Christian Testimony in Malaysia issue.

Before us are simply constitutional and “human rights” issues, a call to respect the spiritual convictions and Godly principles held by members of Calvary Church. This is simply a call to exercise common sense and to respect boundaries and rights of Calvary members whose monetary contributions are paying for the salaries of the Pastors who are now "biting the hands which feed them".

We hope and pray that the above facts and reasons would help Calvarites understand that TTG brothers and sisters, are not insisting on using the AGM to propose RESOLUTIONS to be voted upon by members to "irritate" the “easily confused people” of the church.

We continue to pray for peace and seek a reasoned solution, so that Calvary Church can indeed shine as a great testimony for our Lord Jesus Christ, so affectionately known as a fountain-head church in Malaysia and the world over.

Adapted by CT Administrators

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR

TO ALL.