Note Of Alarm

There was a note of alarm, this week, over on my Facebook page:

Went to your old church this morning. Chaos. All divided about the minister. ... Who owns that building. Seems like there is a war going on.

Towards the close of my ministry in my "old church", I spoke with the congregation, and said that they could anticipate this and why. I said -- it is on record -- that this could continue for one generation if one did not address core issues. This is regardless of what happens in regard to ministry. One sees, namely, cycles entering into Churches. I myself issued a call for a meeting of the members to address these issues, and two days later was summoned to a boardroom and handed severe threats. I said: "Enough is enough." I was not in a position to deal with this. I have been worried that I was not permitted to see critical resolutions and signatures of the Church, involving millions, and those signatures which I did see were not in order. Add to that that the Church auditor was ruled to be in “criminal contravention” of the Act, where he is the guarantor that all is well. I was worried, too, apart from my personal distress, that attacks on me after my departure were intended to neutralise me. I did not deserve it, and wonder whether it is possible to undo such damage. The police, just recently, ruled that I should have had a protection order, and they put it in writing. With regard to the ministry of the Church, the constitution states that the minister must be "evangelical and Congregational". The building should not even come up. To this day, my own resignation as minister -- it seems mere trivia now -- is not finalised. The conditions for my resignation were and are not met, and attorneys placed this on record with the Church. OBSERVATION: I was privileged to be part of a heyday of the Church, and my ministry there ended with our income (in my last financial year) on the highest high that one had seen in a generation or more. One should not forget my wife.