Eugene Peterson - the Mess Part 2.

Yesterday, I went to visit my father-in-law. He was in the hospital after a knee surgery. A little background here is that he has been a pastor for the last 42 years. That’s long time for a life dedicated to stand by souls who crave for a hand to hold, a face to relate to, and a heart to share one’s brokenness. 

Now I know a pastor’s calling is sacred, but what do they really do or experience in that calling? What do they have to rise above when everything around them is falling apart? 

In this day and age, where the pastors we have come to know lead megachurches with thousand-strong congregation, and they are also adored and adulated, is the pastor’s job really that difficult?

I think it is fitting here to cite St Augustine, a prominent African Catholic bishop, who attempted to describe the role of a pastor. It is no easy read for the prerequisites of a job. Here is the job scope of a shepherd of broken/wounded hearts.

“Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low-spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved.”

That’s a rather high calling right? 

Anyway, I read a book “The Pastor” by the late Eugene H. Peterson many years ago, and recalled one incident the good pastor encountered that had stuck in my memory. 

The year was 1955. The young seminary student Eugene had a rather unusual encounter with a church janitor. His name was Willi Ossa, a German. He said that Willi was one of those people who profoundly shaped the process of him becoming a pastor. But it was not a positive encounter, trust me. 

Willi was severely negative about the church. He had seen it all and wanted to warn the young Eugene about becoming one. His outraged hostility had a grounding on his past experience. 

Willi had lived through the war and “personally experienced at close quarters the capitulation of the German church to Hitler and the Nazis. His pastor had become a fervent Nazi.’” Willi knew little about deep theology then. He only knew that “the state church he had grown up in hated Jews and embraced Hitler as a prophet.” Willi was a witness to history of how a church became corrupt, siding with the evil of the time. And Willi “watched as they turned his beloved Germany into a pagan war machine.”

Ironically, Willi became an unwitting advocate against organized religion when he told Eugene that “churches, all churches, reduced pastors to functionaries in a bureaucracy where labels took the place of faces and rules trumped relationships.” Pastor Peterson wrote that Willi liked him and didn’t want him, whom he saw as a friend, destroyed. 

So, one thing led to another, and Willi, being also a very serious painter, offered to paint Pastor Petersen. In the book, Pastor Petersen wrote: “Every Friday I would sit with the afternoon sun on me, mostly silent, as (Willi) painted and Mary (Willi’s wife) prepared a simple supper. Then we would walk the six blocks to the church.”

It took a few weeks to complete the portrait. And guess what came out of the church janitor’s artistic strokes. Pastor Peterson described his portrait as such: “He had painted me in a black pulpit robe, seated with a red Bible on my lap, my hands folded over it. The face was gaunt and grim, the eyes flat and without expression.” When Mary first saw it, she exclaimed in German: “Krank! Krank!” It means “Sick! Sick!” 

When Pastor Petersen asked Willi why Mary would say that, he replied: “I told her that I was painting you as you would look in twenty years if you insisted on being a pastor when the compassion is gone, when the mercy gets squeezed out...” He then turned to Pastor Petersen and said: “Eugene, the church is an evil place. No matter how good you are and how good your intentions, the church will suck the soul out of you. I’m your friend. Please, don’t be a pastor.”

That young Eugene took the advice and turned it on its head. He became a pastor anyway and founded a church in 1962, “Christ Our King Presbyterian Church” in Maryland, which he had served for 29 years before retiring in 1991. 

This brings me back to my father-in-law. He had his own stories to tell about the people he had encountered. But I will always remember what he said to me once, “Mike, my calling is to the people God has entrusted to me.” And I trust, the entrusted lives also included leaders too.

Alas, misshaped lives are not uncommon everywhere we go, and healing wounded hearts is one of the key callings of a pastor in the humble refuge he resides in called the church. But the church is far from perfect. It can become ugly, and in rare times, as Willi puts it, it can be perceived as an ally with evil. 

For those unfortunate occasions, the church was supposed to be one that stands apart from the world where the source of her hope is not on things that offer only temporary solutions and pleasures. The tragedy is that the means often become tyrannical, and subject the end to a compromise or deformation that, like Willi said, “suck the soul out of you.” 

For decades, my father-in-law and many pastors in his church have stood in the gap to personalise hope, exemplify love and embody joy to their sheep who have been crying out for a living testament to the faith they have been reading about in the Bible. 

In the end, it is the people that the shepherd’s heart can never let go. And their lives matter because the true shepherd leaves no one behind. His journey is for a lifetime, and his road, no matter how treacherous, is one that his sheep never travels alone.

Let me end with these questions posed by Pastor Petersen. 

“In our present culture the sharp distinction between a job and a vocation is considerably blurred. How do I, as a pastor, prevent myself from thinking of my work as a job that I am expected to do to the satisfaction of my congregation?”

“How do I stay attentive to and listening to the call that got me started in this way of life – not a call to make the church attractive and useful in the American scene, not a call to help people feel good about themselves and have a good life, not a call to use my considerable gifts and fulfill myself, but a call like Abraham’s “to set out for a place…not knowing where he was going,” a call to deny myself and take up my cross and follow Jesus, a call like Jonah’s to “go at once to Nineveh,” a city he detested, a call like Paul’s to “get up and enter the city and you will be told what to do”?”

Indeed, if you read Jeremiah 12:5, this scripture will challenge you: “If you’re worn out in this footrace with men, what makes you think you can race against horses?” 

Pastors run that race, both on foot and on horses. His is a long journey in obedience, in the direction of what his Saviour had overcome. It is thus an obedience for a purpose beyond the squabbles of men, the pettiness of their blind ambitions. It is also a race that he never knows where it will take him. 

But as long as his eyes are on the crown of life that is imperishable, his hope will always rise above the circumstances, his faith above the uncertainty, and his love, as Augustine puts it, above the temporary earthly affairs of an intemperate soul.

 

John Allen Chau's missionary life cut short.

John Allen Chau was an American missionary. He was determined to bring Christianity to a tribe (known as the Sentinelese) which has been living in isolation for as long as 60,000 years. 

Sadly, he was reportedly killed by the Sentinelese when he landed on their shores in November. 

However, while John lost his life in the effort to convert them, Dr Madhumala Chattopadhyay was successful in making the first contact twice in 1991. 

She shared details of the two trips with The Straits Times last month.

The secret of the first contact seems to be coconuts. It reports that “coconuts do not grow on the North Sentinel...This is why the fruit has been a precious gift in government contact missions that have tried to befriend them since the 1970s.”

Here is a full extract of what happened to the rest of the mission led by Dr Chattopadhyay on Jan 4, 1991. 

““As their ship nearer the coast, the team saw smoke rising from behind the foliage. They got onto the lifeboats and started to approach the island. They threw some of the coconut sacks into the water as a sign of goodwill.

Soon, some Sentinelese showed up to pick up the sacks that had washed ashore. The team made gestures inviting them to come and take the coconuts.

”We moved the boat really slow, so slow that its movement could not be easily detected,” said Dr Chattopadhyay.

”The Sentinelese moved towards us gradually. It was tense as we were within their arrow range and they could have fired arrows at us at any moment.“

The team decided to drop coconut one by one to prolong this first interaction, which lasted more than six hours.

”The Sentinelese were observing us for a long time and it took a while for them to overcome their fear and start picking up the coconuts from the water,” she said

Some tribesmen then swam up to the boat and the team members jumped into the knee-cap water. 

“They started touching the boat as if they were playing with it...they were even taking them from our hands,” said Dr Chattopadhyay.””

Dr Chattopadhyay could not said for sure what led to the successful mission. It may be the coconuts, that is, the six hours of building trust by dropping the coconuts one by one into the water, or as some believed was the presence of Dr Chattopadhyay, a woman. 

Dr Chattopadhyay said: “They may have interpreted my presence as a sign that the team meant no harm.”

After that, she went back on another two occasions.

The second time was successful. It was about 6 weeks later, on Feb 21, 1991. This time, “the Sentinelese showed up without bows or arrows. Two tribesmen even got into the boat and helped themselves to sacks of coconuts”

The third time was not so due to the inclement weather. 

After that, the mission was called off as Dr Chattopadhyay felt that “there was little else that could be gained from these encounters.”

Since then, there were no reported encounters except John Allen Chau and two fishermen. The latter were killed by the ttribesmen in 2006. 

While Dr Chattopadhyay shared her experiences on the successful first and second contacts, she also shared her thoughts about the unfortunate demise of John Chau.

She said: “Not only did Chau not have permission to be there, he also should not have tried to convert them to another religion. They are animist and have a close relationship with nature and venerate it, which possibly helped them survive the tsunamis in 2004.”

She added: “We should not try to change their self-sustaining way of life. They should be contacted only when there is a need, such as to ensure they are doing fine in case of a natural calamity. The Sentinelese are the kings of their land. We should let them remain that way.”

Lesson? Just one. 

I have little doubt about the heart of John Allen Chau. I feel that he wanted to make a difference. I feel that it was great missionaries like David Livingston, William Carey, Hudson Taylor and Jim Elliot who must have inspired him. 

While not all of them were killed by tribesmen, they have indeed transformed the society they have left behind by living gospel-centered lives. 

Yet, there is something inside of me that doesn’t feel quite right about the demise of such a young life, only 26. 

Before he left, he wrote this letter to his parents: -

“You guys might think I am crazy in all this but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people … This is not a pointless thing-The eternal lives of this [Sentinelese] tribe is at hand and I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language as Revelation 7:9-10 states.”

If you read his background, John came from a church called All Nations Family. The church was founded in 2000. 

Its founder Pastor Floyd McClung believes in preparing the ground for the Second Coming and the Final Judgement of God. And in order to do that, the church has dispatched 150 disciples in 35 countries. 

They “are training a further 3500 missionaries each year to ‘ignite the church planting movement. John Chau was one of these disciples.” (Jamie Seidel - news.com.au). 

It is a church in a hurry. It has no time to lose as it believes that a utopia on earth is not possible. And the only way to hasten a new heaven and earth is to do the Great Commission with great urgency and spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. Only then will Revelations unravel the earth and bring about the establishment of a new eternal kingdom of everlasting peace. 

I am no expert in the end time but I believe that the church has a responsibility to her members in the present time. As such, I have no comment on how a church conducts her services, spread the gospel or set mission manifestos. But, everything the church does - in action, speech and belief - do have consequences to her members. 

It is said that madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups, and if we are not careful, the members - as individuals - can always get helplessly caught up in the fiery enthusiasm of the church and this fiery enthusiasm can end up tragically when the church takes misguided theology to the extreme. 

Many would have deemed the actions of John Chau as foolish and senseless for engaging a tribe he knew little about and entering into a terrain without proper research. I don’t know whether he had read about Dr Chattopadhyay and her successful efforts to connect with the Sentinelese in 1991. 

But whatever it is, it is a tragic waste of a young life who could have done much more in the faith if he had been properly guided.

From what I gather from his letter to his parents and the urgent prophetic mission of his church, I felt that All Nation’s Family should at least acknowledge that they too have a part to play in the loss of John Chau. 

John Chau’s action cannot be seen in isolation. He saw it not as a “pointless thing“ to evangelise to the Sentinelese as their eternal lives are in his hand because his church had driven into him through various in-house trainings and indoctrination the same urgent belief and expected him to do something about it lest he be found unworthy of the faith.

Let me end by saying that this is a good lesson to always think for yourself when you are in the crowd. Sometimes, the leader of the crowd is not always right, however organised the crowd is.

The fact that he has followers does not mean that he is unerring in his ways or that he knows what he is doing all the time. (I am saying this because I have met members who swear allegiance to their pastors as if he is never wrong. Hence the necessity to repeat this forewarning). 

At times, the growth of organised religion is as much a social phenomenon as it is divinely empowered. But having said that, I believe some organised religion falls on the social phenomenon scale, that is, their growth can be explained away in a humanistic point of view. 

This accounts for how some of them can be a runaway success when they appeal to the social animalistic instinct in us to form an exclusive identity from the world, to look for some eschatological signs that promise a better world from their current less-than-ideal existence, or to put their collective hope on a god who endorses material prosperity as the cornerstone of their faith in Him. 

And sadly, what gives these organised religion their credence is how they subtly and deftly, but no less disingenuously, put a veneer of divine endorsement onto what is and has always been a social phenomenon. They therefore turn what is essentially man-driven to God-approved. 

Alas, some of them may get away with it by personally prospering on the naivety and misguided enthusiasm of their members. No major harm done there except the self-deception to cling on to a belief premised more on what one wants to hear than what needs to be said. 

But, some of them end up costing a young life.

...the one that got away.

Last Saturday, when Kong Hee asked for forgiveness before his church for being unwise, for taking things too fast, and for not praying more, I thought to myself that there is just one thing that he can't be faulted in this entire legal fiasco, and it is this, his undying devotion to his wife. If anything, his commitment to her is exceptional and unquestioned. 

In fact, the Crossover Project was clearly the brainchild of Sun Ho. Without her, there wouldn’t be any crossing over to begin with. So, notwithstanding the theological legitimacy of it, what Sun Ho desired became the all-consuming ambition of the husband. This conflict of interest between the proper usage of the building funds and promoting his wife's music career effectively clouded his judgment, focus and direction. 

This brings me to Justice Chan's dissenting judgment on the appeal. Although I agree in general with his view that there was wrongful loss to CHC (that is, a much higher interest to be earned if the millions were invested in bonds other than Xtron’s) and wrongful gain benefitting the pastoral couple (this is self-explanatory), there is just one minor part about his view on Sun Ho's role in the Crossover that I beg to differ.

I will tell you why after this extract from Justice Chan's opinion at page 264: "With some imagination, numerous other feasible options could be explored to identify the option which would best achieve the same (evangelistic) objective at perhaps the most reasonable cost...The apparent single minded pursuit of only one option to use Sun Ho without even considering the possibility of other better and more cost-effective alternatives to achieve the same evangelisation objective itself raises questions as to whether at the back of it all, the appellants had a predominant motive to benefit Sun Ho specifically and to benefit Kong Hee indirectly, with evangelisation being just a distant objective. The undue preference by the appellants for this single option to the total exclusion of all others is compelling."

Now, the part I differ in the above quote is when the Judge wrote that they (CHC leaders) should have considered exploring other "better and more cost-effective alternatives" rather than myopically putting all the financial eggs into one Sun Ho's basket.

While I understand where he is coming from and it is eminently logical from a secular point of view, I feel that one cannot analyse the whole saga without factoring the mentality of Kong Hee (and Sun Ho) at the time they allegedly received that divine (Crossover/Cultural) mandate. This is where the context of religious zeal and mass belief comes into play.

For Kong Hee and his leaders, it was never about the money or cost. Didn't Kong Hee once say to plan to the sky? Money is secondary to obedience here. As such, no other cheaper alternative will do or nothing is deemed better (than his better half). The bottom-line is that Sun Ho was the chosen one. She was God’s elect for the Crossover. Like a modern day Moses, she was destined (so they believed) to take the tens of thousands across to the promise land of mass conversion via musical masquerade.

In other words, she was created for this indispensable role which had its innocuous start in the late 1990s when the couple were vacationing in an Asian country and were marveling at pop singers strutting their stuff on huge TVs screens. That was where the vision of the Crossover took hold and took root.

After that, the cultural mandate to evangelise through secular music by grooming Sun Ho (and no one else) was affirmed rather divinely (if not conveniently) by three separate and independent scriptural sources/authorities. That was their defining moment, and the launch of the ill-fated Crossover ambition tour.

In fact, as an aside, every megachurch pastor has his defining moment. For Joseph Prince, the head of New Creation Church, his defining moment was when God spoke to him while he was driving in the Swiss Alps.

So, while the CHC leaders may not deny that there are other better and more cost-effective alternatives to spread the word, a calling is however still a calling. And to defy or ignore it would be an outright rebellion against their divine creator. Mind you, this is no small infraction for the religiously obsessed.

And, yes, at this point, I can hear the voices of protests asserting that they are simply delusional. But, we are forgetting that this vision was nevertheless very compelling and real to the pastoral couple at that time, and it became their raison d'étre over the next decade before the law caught up with them.

So, whether they are delusional or not, Sun Ho was the one and only reason for the Crossover Project. As such, it bears repeating that there was no other better or cheaper alternative available for the CHC leadership other than to elevate Sun Ho to be their sole evangelistic vehicle.

This in fact coincides with what Justice Chan said (at para 511) that "the Crossover is synonymous with Sun Ho's secular music activities and that the two may be used interchangeably." He even went on to write that "I would have thought that the particulars of two of the three sham investment charges as framed are fairly clear in that the monies were dishonestly misappropriated "from the said Fund for the purpose of funding one (Sun Ho's) music career."" (emphasis in italic from Justice Chan).

When you put them together, that is, the Crossover, Sun Ho and the criminal charges, what you get is an insidious convergence of all funds, effort and investment into an unwieldy ambition with the single aim of making Sun Ho into an international success. Everything is therefore poured into her career, and I believe she was kept apprised of them from the start.

Sun Ho knew what it takes and how much it takes to launch herself into international stardom because she was the ultimate recipient/beneficiary of a major portion of the funds. I also sincerely believe that she knew the risk involved and the surreptitiousness of the whole operation.

The above can be inferred from the Blackberry message sent directly to Sun Ho (and the other leaders) on 5 April 2010 before the accused were charged. The message strikes at the heart of her feigned innocence, and it reads:-

"Sun, one of the main reasons why I proposed the Special Audit is to buy us time to fill up the hole. We don't want all the issue to grow to the extend (sic) that the authorities step in BEFORE we fill up the hole. By appointing our auditors, it will be easier to talk and get things done. If the report turns out to be lacking in some areas, we will improve and change. They can help us. 

That's why to me, it is important to let the relevant authorities know that we initiate a special audit. They will at least not do anything till the report comes out. By then, the hole is filled."

But alas, all attempts to fill up this hole were in vain because Kong Hee bit off more than he could chew in his desperation to fund his wife's music career in America. As such, Kong Hee's waterloo was an American rapper named Wyclef Jean and Sun Ho's Wellington was her sexually-charged music video "China Wine". Both of which were the beginning of the end of the Crossover fantasy.

But, just as every historical reality is spiced up by a counterfactual hypothesis, the counterfactual for the Crossover is this: "What if it had been an international success and Sun Ho a runaway mega-hit? What would become of Sun Ho then?"

Well, if the Crossover were to be a smashing success, you can expect Sun Ho to benefit immensely from it. 

Contractually speaking, she stands to gain 25% of the gross income received by Xtron, on top of the S$10,000 monthly income to her. Mind you, it's "gross" and that means sale revenue earned from her concerts, album sales, tours, licensing and merchandising activities before taking into account any cost and expenses incurred. That’s quite a huge sum, but that's not all.

She is also entitled to 10% of the gross income from the agreement with UA as well as 100% of the royalties that UA will receive on her behalf. While it is said at the trial that Sun Ho had always donated her money back to the church, this cannot be independently verified.

Even if this was so, it cannot be denied that the Crossover was set up to not only make Sun Ho an international superstar with unauthorized church funds, it was also for the purpose of enriching her greatly.

And yet now, as we fast forward to the present day, the ones who were investigated, charged, sentenced, and soon to be incarcerated are her husband and five other leaders. She somehow remained blissfully untouched.

Alas, the greatest irony of this prosecutorial dragnet operation is that Sun Ho is not only free from any criminal implication, she was also ordained in November 2015 by reputed church leaders to take over the helm of CHC leadership.

So, if you look at it from a panoramic view of the entire saga spread over the last 14 years (since 2003 when Roland Poon blew the whistle and paid a price for it), you will realise that Sun Ho is not only synonymous with the Crossover, she had also benefited directly from it without spending a single cent from her own pocket. Yet, when the house of cards fell and the deception was unraveled, it was not her but the others who have to face the music and the clanging sound of prison bars in due course.

To compound the irony, Sun Ho was even red-carpeted back to be the lead pastor of CHC 2.0, thereby retaining full control of the church and over the millions of dollars in the Building Funds.

Indeed, if anyone ought to be thankful of her divinely-protected fate, it has got to be Sun Ho. I guess it's like most of the congregational prayers got diverted to forging a divine hedge of protection around her. For at the end of the day, she is most definitely the one that got away. Cheerz.