So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Paul Kovaks
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by Paul Kovaks »

Thanks for those thoughts both of you.

I feel for your losses too.

And thanks SBJ for that intro and link to Wordsworth's SBJ. It was very touching.

Your question, how to reconcile turning the other cheek (to abusers)?

No answer, but The Scriptures teach both Christ's
turn the other cheek
and Paul's sarcastic
Because you, who are so wise, are happy to put up with fools. 20 You put up with it if someone enslaves you, if someone exploits you, if someone takes advantage of you, if someone places themselves over you, or if someone hits you in the face.
So it must be the context.

Christ's instruction was clearly about something we are forced into.
But Paul was talking about something the Corinthians (and we) were putting up with of our own volition!
Why do you put up with it says Paul!
And MCF/BCF did those EXACT same things to us that Paul talks of.
Why did we let them?
Because we believed they wer ethe mouthpiece of God.

So, I believe that both Christ's and Paul's words apply to us.
While we thought we were forced to put up with it, it was still good for our souls to turn the other cheek (as we did a million times) as if to a wordly authority (as they were in fact).

But when we realized what they were doing we would be nuts to stay in it as per Paul.
Faith Hopegood
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by Faith Hopegood »

Just wanted to highlight some points from the excellent post by Boundary Rider about how much the former leadership in Toowoomba was drawing:
Some points to consider for the ACNC, extracted from the ACNC reporting for TCF: ---
• For the 5-year period 2014/15/16/17/18, the income trend covering Falk’s rise and fall shows $1.8M/$2M/$1.6M/$960K/$850K
• Tithe wages for that same periods for 3-4 ministry families (Falk/Baker/Smith/Perrin) show as $150K/$150/$200K/$210K/$160K. Bear in mind that this is base salary of between $40K---$50K per family, which then approximately doubles through the provision of cars, fuel, travel costs, housing and housing loans, superannuation offset etc as ancillary benefits which under normal tax requirements are considered as taxable income
• The EXEMPT Benefit figures (Falk’s slush fund for house renovations, overseas and other holidays, the wine cellars) for that same period are ...... $498K/$718K/$798K/$254K/$200K
• The likely conclusion which can be drawn for this pattern related to Falk’s rise and fall is that Falk could well have been paying himself with all the loans and offerings of the good folk at TCF to give himself that $700—800K salary he was so willing to brag about.
Just to let that sink in. Exempt Benefits over and above Annual Salaries per year!
2014 $498,000
2015 $718,000
2016 $788,000
2017 $254,000
2018 $200,000

I am truly stunned and flabbergasted by these amounts and words fail me how a church or religious organisation can justify anything close to this.
Just by way of comparison, a CEO of a major pentecostal church with a P-12 school attached receives a salary package of $150K per year approved by the board.

In fact I am nearly in tears just trying to comprehend what sort of mindset of a person is comfortable with receiving this remuneration and still being a "man of God" and leading the flock.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with CEO's of large successful public companies earning large salaries - they work for it and have a lot of responsibility to share holders. But Toowoomba Christian Fellowship is not in this league. I personally know a lot of people, poor, poor families who literally gave "the widows mite" to the Christian Fellowship in the unwritten implied contractual understanding that the money was being given to Gods Kingdom and to further the work in Gods Kingdom and follow the Great Commission.

This then brings into light those apocraphyl visions listed elsewhere on Streetcar that people have had about the Christian Fellowship leaders.

I would beg and implore from the bottom of my heart for every Christian Fellowship elder and leader, to please go and do some proper formal theological studies at a reputable reliable institution before you lead the flock and to ensure you know how to lead the flock in a Godly way. You need to do this because, if you keep going along the path you are following, listening to your own echo chamber and cutting yourself off from the rest of Christendom, then you don't know what you don't know. You will be leading the flock blindly, teaching gnosticism, thinking you are going along Gods path when in fact your spiritual compass is distorted and you are leading people into the wilderness away from Christ.

Sadly Vic Hall, the master puppeteer, still sits at the centre of his web pulling the strings. Vic Hall can not tell people he knew nothing about what was happening in Toowoomba, there are too many people who were in meetings and discussions with Vic Hall and he knew precisely what was happening.

Harking back 20 or more years, Vic Hall feigned the same ignorance and innocence when the whole Wattle Loans (pyramid scheme) was exposed. Vic claimed he knew nothing however former elders have stated they were in weekly elders meetings at BCF (with Vic present) where full financial reports were provided by Mackay and Allen stating how much money BCF and Vic Hall were receiving (from tithes, offerings etc) from people who were part of the scheme.

This is a pattern that keeps repeating itself under the misguided leadership of Vic Hall. It is allowed to flourish and grow because of the wrong theological teachings where men are said to be "messengers of god", "star messengers", virtual "popes" who are speaking God's direct word to the flock and are in fact gods themselves in a way, thus they are worshipped and never questioned or disagreed with.

Do not be deceived.
robocop
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by robocop »

Harking back 20 or more years, Vic Hall feigned the same ignorance and innocence when the whole Wattle Loans (pyramid scheme) was exposed. Vic claimed he knew nothing however former elders have stated they were in weekly elders meetings at BCF (with Vic present) where full financial reports were provided by Mackay and Allen stating how much money BCF and Vic Hall were receiving (from tithes, offerings etc) from people who were part of the scheme.
I clearly recall the night David Falk stood at the pulpit at Chandler and berated the congregation for their SIN of investing godly money into dodgy WORLDLY SCHEMES.....
Paul Kovaks
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by Paul Kovaks »

Yeah, that's so telling Robo.

So what are we saying about David Falk?
Was it ego & greed?
Or did he believe he was somehow collecting all this stuff to 'bless the body''?
surprisedbyjoy
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by surprisedbyjoy »

So Robo that being Chandler must have been during a time when young Falky was emerging as Vic's blue-eyed boy. I remember those days of young Falky's emergence. Back then he was backed by the credibility in many a BCF young adult male as the ex-footy player who once captained none other than the great Wally Lewis in his Brisbane State Highschool days. Quite the profile!! For a straight-laced BCF Christian young adult male Falky was quite the ‘hero’. He made us love our footy again, though he himself burned all his old Jerseys with his Beattles collection. And there he was on the soapbox at Chandler being Vic's man on the spot to do with how to use our money for the.....ahem.....KINGDOM!!! The perfect storm was brewing way back then!! And then they sent him to Toowoomba….poor Toowoomba!

And Paul K, yours are the sixty-four million dollar questions??? What caused all this??? Ego, greed or blessing the body…..or something else?
Ego? - Certainly those who knew Falky would know that he loved that soapbox, whether it be Sunday mornings or during the week he always took centre stage. Quite the authority of EVERYTHING! So I’d say a very large portion of ego, which to be fair can befall us all as a human condition without the help of courageous friends to be a mirror to us. Poor Falky didn’t let anyone be that to him in this regard, so perhaps a fair amount of blame rests with him there I’d say.

Greed? – Again a fallen human condition so not much more to add.

Blessing the body? - Certainly was the smokescreen without a doubt, but in reality I beg to differ. Only a couple of businessmen succeeded under what Falky’s would likely claim were his business tutorials. Probability would suggest they likely would have succeeded without him. What’s not written in the Falklore is that a vast majority lost BIGTIME. To protect these wounded ones it would not be wise to give detail here. Couple this with huge unfinished TCF buildings still without statutory approval and a church congregation that shrunk from 300 to 80 and it’s a resounding NO on that one. So no, I’d say he most definitely has not blessed the Body!

So I’d say a lethal brew of ego, greed, deception, delusion and narcissism with a large and convenient dose of neglect from his colleagues and superiors. There’s a classic example I remember. Can you remember Dave’s last load of present truth he was feeding us just prior to his demise Paul? Essentially it was the Luke 19 teachings of Jesus about the Nobleman entrusting minas. He preached it at an International Bible School in Brisbane not long before to his health crisis. I believe he was preaching it in earnest overseas (Thanomere??). I have it from a good source (likely the best BCF source known in those corridors in fact!!) that there was quite a bit of money coming his way from Malaysian businessmen too based on the preaching of his Nobleman delusions.

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that Falky was essentially claiming that he was the Nobleman and the reason why businessmen where successful under his star messengership and noblemanhood was because he had that special portion to impart. Of course, his version of this parable also gave a suitable rationale as to why businessfolks were failing under him also. His scripturally solid disclaimer was that these ones were so obviously wicked and lazy compared with the successful ones. So cruel and divisive!! These good folks were faithful and hard-working IN ACTUAL FACT!! Abused by Falk and ignored by the hierarchy that supported Falk (sounds quite ‘Pellian’ doesn’t it!!)

As an aside there was some talk around that Vic did not want Dave to publish his book on this latest ‘present truth’ Nobleman egomania for the IBS. However, with control for the printery based in Toowoomba, Falky did it anyway and spread it throughout Vic’s sacred Lampstand territory of South East Asia and Australia. None of Vic’s excuses on this seemed to add up since Vic and Presbytery sat in the front row at Burton Lane while Falky fed this rubbish to the local regional Qld International Bible School gathering.

Anyway, only a matter of weeks later his health crisis unfolded. The way his health crisis unfolded so quickly and then all of the mystery around Vic Hall and David Baker checking the TCF books while Dave was recovering in hospital seems now to be quite telling.

So my honest answer to your question Paul would be yes, much ego, the type becoming of a pubescent Brisbane State High School Rugby legend, not the leader of a faith community. The typical characteristic of someone looking for ‘big things’ for himself, which by the way, is quite contrary to the teaching about minas (ie faithful with little things). Definitely not the sort of thing you want in a Pastor, Minister type though, and for that I’m suggesting Victor Hall and the CF Presbytery/Star Messenger/Apostles/Profits/Pastors etc have a lot to answer for!!! It’s not like Falky was still 20/21 years old and still emerging. He was sent from Brisbane as the Apostle of Toowoomba, Vic’s head Prophet and 2IC and now pushing 60 years of age, let loose on the poor folks of Toowoomba CF and travelling the world with the CF ridiculous hierarchical messenger status. He’d even risen above that and was tempting self-proclaimed Nobleman status handing out minas to all who would be deceived by him. Definitely not the teaching of Jesus of being faithful with mina’s/little things. What a danger! Such neglect!! Or something more sinister perhaps??

Just helping join the dots Paul and Streetcarians. Correct me if you think I am overstating good folks.
Faith Hopegood
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by Faith Hopegood »

That is an excellent synopsis Surprised By Joy.

I would definitely agree with your comment that most of the "businessmen" or people whom Falk encouraged to go into business definitely lost big time and those men and their families are still paying for that folly even today for several that I know of.

The other trick that was common in Toowoomba was for Falk to encourage people to sell them homes during the period of increasing house prices and thus he would demand a tithe of the increase "that God provided".

For the businessmen, most were encouraged to put everything on the line and sell their houses to fund their entry into business. Out of the dozen or so that I know of, that ventured down this path, I can think of 3 that succeeded - eventually - and one of these had to rely on either cash injections or virtually free labour from family members to finally make a go of it (15 years later!). One of the three would have succeeded whether he was in the church or not due to professional qualifications and industry support.

This leaves 9 out of 12 who lost everything - literally everything. Houses, family, family inheritances, superannuation, parents superannuation, the lot.

As soon as a person had nothing more of value to give (nothing else could possibly be extracted from them), they were dropped kicked out of bounds without warning. This behaviour holds very very true both for Falk and Vic Hall and Vic Hall still does this to this very day. Given their ability to identify people they could use for their selfish purposes, one would have to conclude they are both narcissistic in nature mixed with a bit of psychopathic behaviour (the think they are God speaking!) and use religion as their vehicle to feather their nests. These good shepherds are absolute masters in fleecing the flock.

All this was done in the name of The Messenger who was God's representative here on earth. No. I am wrong. The CF elders think they are more than just gods messengers, they believe that when they speak it is actually god speaking thus they are sort of being a god and not just a representative. The proof of this theology is that if you questioned what they were saying, they would respond with "are you questioning god?"

Back to the money trail. Let's look at who the winners and losers are in this situation. Statistics show us that 95% or more of the CF businessmen who took the leap of faith and sold everything to start a business - failed, and they are still paying the price to this day. In Toowoomba alone, these businessmen lost literally millions in wealth combined. If you doubt my claim, consider this: 9 out of 12 failed, that is one house each valued conservatively say $250,000 each. That is $2,250,000 alone. I know of one man who had to sell several rental houses he inherited as well as his own home - so you have a cool $3million even before you start counting tithes on private house sales and weekly tithes and offerings that were extracted with an utterly ruthless manner.

There are a couple of dubious success stories and one success story who would have succeeded anyway. Where did the wealth go?

One only has to raise ones eyes to the pillared mansion on the hill and the white elephant in the valley below it to see where the wealth was redistributed to!

I am not sure if Vic Hall lives on a hill but I did hear he has a "compound" of sorts. (I wonder if the compound has walls to keep the unwashed out?)

It is a bit like the Vatican isn't it? For a couple of thousand years the catholic church worldwide sells indulgences and promises people the keys to heaven by paying money to the pope and his representatives under the threat of eternal damnation if you don't. (This is no different to what Pope Vic and his Cardinal Falk have been doing with their Messenger preaching). One only has to look at the marvellous walled city in Rome and all the gold trappings so see where their heart is. Look at all the poor catholic countries and populace around the world (I am thinking central and south america) and the abject poverty they live in.

And who says walls don't work!
robocop
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by robocop »

I am not sure if Vic Hall lives on a hill but I did hear he has a "compound" of sorts. (I wonder if the compound has walls to keep the unwashed out?)
Sorry Faith, no walls, but a very substantial wrought iron front gates into the property. Have driven past many times. Here's a Google Earth view of the "compound". Been added to quite substantially, since the days when they first moved in.

Image
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Thanomere84
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by Thanomere84 »

I can verify that robocop's picture is accurate. In my days of high favour with that evil man... I was invited to stay there twice, and had visited it also on other occasions thrice, and I can confirm that this is exactly what his compound looks like. It has a lovely name, one that ill-fits a place where evil schemes are hatched, brewed and plotted all day long... it's named 'Sylvandale'.
Faith Hopegood
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by Faith Hopegood »

Thanks Robocop and Thanomere for the posts

Looks like a nice (probably debt free) home, well manicured lawns, plenty of space for entertaining, garages to shelter the tax deductible exempt benefits MV "BCF Elders Retreat" recreational fishing vessel! I did hear Vic once preach at Chandler about how he was not ashamed to have a lovely glittery chandelier in his home. Of course I am being cynical and sarcastic somewhat. I am sure recreational fishing and boating is a wonderful relaxing pastime - I just get a bit ansy when poor struggling congregation members have paid for the boat. (I will replicate this post in the BCF section of this forum).

We need to contrast this largess with the biblical example of apostles in the hundred years or so after Christ ascended to heaven. Did any of the original apostles have large wonderful homes? Or were they true shepherds to the sheep, most of them relying on the people they met to feed and shelter them along the way?

Reading the New Testament and other biblical commentaries, I am pretty sure that most of the original apostles did not have much in the way of worldly goods or wealth. One of the apostles, Paul I think, was tentmaker and stated that he used to do his tent making to provide income for himself so he was not a burden on those he visited to preach the Good News.

Peter eventually found himself in Rome and the Roman Catholic Church claims Peter to be their first pope. Somehow I don't think Peter ever envisaged the huge edifice of corrupt wealth, that is now the modern day Roman Catholic Church, when he was in Rome! In fact St Peter was crucified upside down in Rome during Nero's reign.

The example clearly given to us from God's Word is for the leaders of the church to be humble servants caring for the sheep, not fleecing the flock. These same humble servant apostles should also have the ability to wash the feet of the disciples and believers. Contrast this Godly attitude with the example of BCF Eldership and associated lackeys, who it could be argued, act in a similar way to the Catholic Church in Luthers time and also conmen standover merchants extorting money from followers with the promise of salvation and continues "special" revelations from god to the anointed star messenger.
robocop
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Re: So what’s the situation at Toowoomba Christian Fellowship? ----

Post by robocop »

Some points to consider for the ACNC, extracted from the ACNC reporting for TCF: ---
• For the 5-year period 2014/15/16/17/18, the income trend covering Falk’s rise and fall shows $1.8M/$2M/$1.6M/$960K/$850K
• Tithe wages for that same periods for 3-4 ministry families (Falk/Baker/Smith/Perrin) show as $150K/$150/$200K/$210K/$160K. Bear in mind that this is base salary of between $40K---$50K per family, which then approximately doubles through the provision of cars, fuel, travel costs, housing and housing loans, superannuation offset etc as ancillary benefits which under normal tax requirements are considered as taxable income
• The EXEMPT Benefit figures (Falk’s slush fund for house renovations, overseas and other holidays, the wine cellars) for that same period are ...... $498K/$718K/$798K/$254K/$200K
• The likely conclusion which can be drawn for this pattern related to Falk’s rise and fall is that Falk could well have been paying himself with all the loans and offerings of the good folk at TCF to give himself that $700—800K salary he was so willing to brag about. I have a strong hunch that both the ATO and ACNC would see this use of the Exempt benefits as FRAUD and Tax evasion.
• So the likely conclusion seems to be: --- Quick analysis would suggest that Falk could well have been paying himself with all the loans and offerings of the TCF good folks in the order of 700-800k p.a. during the peak of his folly. This assumes the other 3 families were on $50k wages and $50k exempt benefit p.a. (i.e. 100k p.a. package) which would ring true with informed information about the remuneration system of the ‘fulltimers on the tithe’ such as Baker, Perrin and Smith families
Compare to what the ACNC actually says about its COMPLIANCE PRIORITIES
The ACNC is not resourced to investigate every regulatory concern that is brought to our attention. We prioritise investigations based upon the level of risk.
The ACNC uses a risk-based approach in allocating our compliance resources.
We prioritise concerns that present the greatest risk to trust and confidence in the charity sector. Our proportionate approach to compliance allows charities a chance to address unintended mistakes while dealing with cases of serious misconduct quickly and firmly.
Before acting, we carefully consider the risk and the most effective response in the circumstances. We will assess and consider several factors, including:
* the type of problem, contravention or misconduct what or who is at risk
* the likelihood and frequency of occurrence or reoccurrence
* the potential impact on the charity (including the impact of any proposed enforcement action), and
* the risk profile of the charity and the behaviour of the charity’s responsible persons.
Obviously, the people at the ACNC didn't see any problems with the in-accuracies that were taking place in Toowoomba at the time, because they did NOTHING to address the problems that were happening, even though they were alerted to these.
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