Kong Hee is out. Almost everyone involved in the costliest criminal trial in our little red dot, “possibly exceeding $10 million”, are out. They have served their sentences and are now back with their family.
Only Chew remains behind bars. His attempt to leave Singapore in a sampan with about $5k in cash costs him an extended sentence. But he too will be out, possibly end of next year.
Meanwhile, City Harvest’s board has issued a statement saying that Kong Hee will be “taking a period to spend time with his family, especially his elderly parents.”
In the statement, it also said that “while in jail, he spent most of his time seeking and studying the things of God.”
Kong Hee thanked his church and members for writing to him when he was in prison. He said that their letters had brought him comfort and joy.
Lesson? Three, actually.
First, Kong Hee said he misses his family, especially his elderly parents. He wants to spend more time with them.
Well, no matter how you are seen by others in the church or behind the pulpit facing tens of thousands of rapt members, when you go home, stripped of all your titles and honours, you are still your father’s son, your wife’s husband or your child’s father.
Those roles and responsibilities define you more than any others. If you invest in them, given the time and devotion, at the end of an exhausting day, or in the end of a jaded season, you will still want - more than anything else - to return to them for understanding, forgiveness and healing.
Somehow, the tears shed with loved ones allow your sight to experience deeper clarity. And the soil of your heart where the seed of reform is planted is deeper too.
That’s what family does to a broken soul. The mending comes with an endearing touch of love. It also comes with an embrace of hope and the enduring joy of reconciliation.
Second, the board also said that Kong Hee remains “a spiritual leader of the church, although he has not been on the payroll since 2005.”
Mm...I wonder, how do you restore a fallen pastor?
When a laymen strays, he serves his time and returns back to the fold led under the charge of a loving shepherd.
But what if the shepherd strays? What happens to his flock? How should his flock then address the issue?
I have learned in law that there is a distinction between legal wrong and moral wrong. In the context of a fallen pastor, should we go further with spiritual or leadership wrong, that is, a wrong that goes deeper than time served and a public/private apology or apologies offered?
Well, only time can tell as to what direction of change Kong Hee will take, in addition, of course, to his confession that he had in prison “spent most of his time seeking and studying the things of God“.
But my hope is for grace to take its full course before a fallen pastor is restored back to the commanding pulpit again, that is, if he ever returns (and somehow, I am sure he would).
Here is what a fallen pastor once said about the divine partnership of time and grace.
“The value of time in the process of healing and restoration is that it permits grace to have its effect upon the soul and spirit of the fallen man. In my own case, the magnificence of grace has been magnified over time and allowed me to see the sheer undeservedness of it, my inability to hear it and God’s consistent willingness to impart it.”
Truly, how is the sheer undeservedness of grace to be magnified in a broken soul if it is not given the time to do its work leading to full personal repentance?
And...
Third, the papers this morning asked, “Is this the end of the saga?”
Well, for the criminal side, it has indeed ended. The law is simple. You do the crime, you do the time. It’s basically payment in kind.
But how does a church move forward then? How does the body of Christ respond with his release? Is it essentially back to “business as usual”? I recall John Newton once said: “The Christian ministry is the worst of all trades, but the best of all professions.” Food for thot?
Mind you, I think this goes beyond restoring confidence and order within the board, and implementing a swift succession plan to ensure a form of human leadership continuity. (Don’t we all abhor a divine disruption of our pre-set institutional unbrokenness?)
Alas, if a church at this stage is still worrying about perception, instead of transformation, then nothing will change in the long run - just saying.
I guess an AW Tozer quote will be apt here as I end.
“I believe that the imperative need of the day is not simply revival, but a radical reformation that will go to the root of our moral and spiritual maladies and deal with causes rather than with consequences, with the disease rather than with symptoms.”
Yes, “go to the root of our moral and spiritual maladies and deal with the causes rather than with consequences.” That is clearly prescriptive, which has to lead to the restorative and the transformative.
The last thing we want to see in the body of Christ is that which is emotive, selective and then dismissive.
While Kong Hee has most probably learned his lesson in the incubation of time within solitary confinement, has the church learned theirs? Have they gone through their own genuine “solitary confinement”?
Now, I won’t be surprised if some of their leaders or former leaders see the root issue as one that has little to do with Kong Hee and Sun Ho over time, but more to do with their followers.
For at times, leadership is about followership, and they become sadly indistinguishable, thereby doing away with the all-crucial check-and-balance. And at such time, it is not the leadership that goes on the offensive, but its the followers that enable them to go on the offensive.
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