Tag: church leadership

Church leadership must help member, not allow issues to fester


A LifeGate church member had her car vandalised while it was parked on church compound in Glen Waverley during normal church service time on a Sunday.

That member has had a long running complaint against the leadership for a while now, for the same reason many entries in this blog have set out. Unfortunately that complaint has gone unaddressed and so this recent vandalism probably got magnified as a result.

It is of course regrettable that a car parked in church compound should be vandalised while a normal church service is under way.

Even more regrettable however, is the painful thoughts and emotions of this member, so much so that the role of the devil is alluded to. To ascribe a property vandalism to satanic attack shows how disaffected one has become. In response to the member’s complaint, the leadership has promised to investigate the vandalism.  

To my mind, it is far more important for the leadership to look at the root cause of the member’s state of mind and emotion. If the leadership is able to do something to rectify the wrong, why has it chosen not to do so, and allowed the matter to fester – so much so that this member’s view of church, God and the devil has become so intertwined (twisted even) to such an extent? Everyone needs to do whatever necessary so that he or she is always in a ready state to love and serve the Lord and His people.

Anything that becomes a hindrance to a church member’s ability to love and serve the Lord and His people should be addressed and resolved without delay.

The leadership and pastoral team would be derelict to let it fester and allow the member to continue to harbour such stumbling blocks and fail to grow and serve as a result.

Great tennis, great expectations


I got up this morning feeling groggy and had to focus to get through my morning routine. Tress and I had fun watching the tennis last night, soaking up the quality tennis on display. It was a bit sad to see Novak the reigning champion exit the tournament but Stan Wawrinka looked like a really nice fellow, gruff notwithstanding – so it was all just a great treat.

After the match, we waited a little while and then drove to the Blackburn station to pick up our visitor, who was lucky enough to have been able to watch that fabulous match in situ. We got home around 1am, and Tress and I went to bed straight away.

My 4.30 alarm went off too quickly and the snooze went unheeded for a few extra minutes. I eventually reacted and stumbled out feeling groggy.

The car park at Blackburn station has been closed since the new year started and I have had to get in for the 5.30 train, if I were to get a park. So I had no choice but to stick to this routine, and still got to the gym a bit after 6.

I’ve re-started reading the scriptures from Genesis and as I was making my way through Moses, Aaron and the numerous plagues befalling the Pharaoh’s land, I tried to think of different tacks to knowing God from these narratives.  God is in control, He has a purpose, uses His people to achieve His plan and He too, caused a hardening of heart to apparently thwart His plans. Yet, it also looked like those “setbacks” were also designed/built into the scheme of things so that more aspects of His power may be seen.

I wonder therefore, if the obstinacy seen in LifeGate church leaders is a parallel of sorts. Could the refusal of these people to own up to what they did to Jason be just what the Lord has designed and is there a purpose to that which either we have missed or is yet to be revealed?

Either way, I hope this episode no longer becomes something which holds back progress in the lives of people involved. The seeds were sown back in the second half of 2012 and so they have been distractions long enough. Too long, in fact. Ordinarily this sort of issues should have been resolved very quickly – within weeks at most. Be that as it may, I hope the focus now is how everyone involved should work out best to reach out to others who need the Lord.