Tag: Glen Waverley

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.

Retail Tailing Off?


I was in the Dick Smith outlet in Box Hill earlier today, looking for an adapter for a very old printer in our office. I could not find the adapter so I thought I’d ask one of the 2 shop assistants I saw in the shop. Neither of them showed any interest in serving me, even though I was standing right at the front of the reception, making it as obvious as I could, that I was waiting for help. I stood and waited for easily 10 minutes. One of those 2 shop assistants was behind the reception counter on the phone, obviously on a personal call. He could not have missed me, the only person waiting at the counter at that time. When he finished the call, he walked away from the counter and went to the back of the shop. It wasn’t until about 5 minutes had passed before he came back to the reception counter. I wonder if both the workers were hoping I would go away after waiting for a few minutes. As it turned out, my near 20 minute wait was futile as all it took for one of them to finally attend to me, was less than a minute to say to me the adapter wasn’t available.

It is the same with the Myer Forest Hill Chase store. For as long as they have existed (since taking over the Harris Scarfe store), they are one of the worst Myer outlets I know. The service is near non-existent and when you do get service, it is the most unfriendly type.

Ditto the Gazman outlet at The Glen shopping center in Glen Waverley. You either get no service or when you do, you get the most unfriendly, almost rude service.

So why is there a prevalence of bad service in retail outlets? You hear complaints on talkback radio but it is only when I put my own recent bad experiences that I realise it isn’t an isolated or aberration of a problem. It looks like the trend now.

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March Equinox


I think today’s the March Equinox. If that is correct, the days get shorter from today. Soon we’d have the dreaded dark-at-five pm days. I have always said to Tress and Kiddo that I didn’t mind the cold in winter. What I dislike are the short days. I think they contribute to depression for many.

I also remember 21 March for a different reason – it was the day I started work since we moved to Melbourne about 6 ½ years ago. It was also a Monday and I went in to the office of Sharrock Pitman Legal in Glen Waverley. We were living in Mount Waverley then and Kiddo was attending Mount Waverley North Primary. Tress had also started work in Myer on Lonsdale Street in the city.

We were finding our feet in Melbourne. We started to go to the International Christian Community church (ICC) in Glen Waverley. Pastor Chek Chia was there then. Other than a new life in a new city with a new job and so many other things which were new for us, we also had a very new theology to contend with in the approaches of that church towards prayer, guidance and instructions.

In some ways, the shorter days ahead reflect how I feel now. Some things appear bleak. I wish things could be different and we could unwind the clock and set things right from those early days. I know however that God is sovereign and He is also good. God’s wonderful creation included not just the March Equinox but also the September one. We’d have to live through the coming “6 months”, work on things, keep our eyes on God and look forward to the September Equinox when days will become brighter and longer again.

The creation of our God is wonderful. The cycles of astronomy and seasons are part of His beautiful creation. The ever changing weathers, life experiences, joy and pain, hope and despair and indeed even life and death – have all been “signed off” by our sovereign Lord and as the wise proverb says, we need to trust God, acknowledge Him in all things, and He will set our paths straight.

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