Who Runs the PCC?

Rev. Fonki is remembered as saying at one time that once he left the office of Moderator, he was ready to go wherever he was sent as a pastor. But it has been months since he was posted to Nsimeyong as hospital chaplain, but instead of reporting there for duty, he is still gallivanting about in Buea, having installed himself in a position of his own creation. Is Moderator Miki impotent to enforce the transfer? What happens if, in future, other Church workers refuse to go where they are posted?

Following the Health Minister’s recent visit to the Synod Office, a video trended on social media, showing our Moderator, the Rt. Rev. Miki Hans, looking and acting rather lost in the shadow of his predecessor, whose very prominent presence at the occasion raises many questions. Rev. Fonki is remembered as saying at one time that once he left the office of Moderator, he was ready to go wherever he was sent as a pastor. But it has been months since he was posted to Nsimeyong as hospital chaplain, but instead of reporting there for duty, he is still gallivanting about in Buea, having installed himself in a position of his own creation. So, in what capacity was he present at that occasion? As a hospital chaplain in Nsimeyong or as CEO of CEDAR, whatever?

Is Moderator Miki impotent to enforce the transfer? What happens if, in future, other Church workers refuse to go where they are posted? One recalls that Rev. Modika was posted to Kumba but refused to go. He was virtually ostracized and ended up living on charity until he was bundled to his village. So what happened to that kind of discipline in the PCC?

How many Pectoral Crosses? To add insult to injury, Rev. Fonki was seen on that occasion wearing a pectoral cross and a purple shirt. This is part of the exclusive outfit of the sitting Moderator of the PCC in public functions. Every other PCC pastor present at such an occasion wears a black shirt. We are reliably informed that Fonki himself had insisted on the exclusive nature of that dress code when he was Moderator. In his presence, all other pastors wore black shirts, distinguishing him with the purple. So, what gives him the right to flout the rule now, when he is no longer Moderator? The PCC has only one Moderator, and that MUST BE SEEN AND FELT without any ambiguity. The PCC is not the Bamoun snake with two heads. This incident reminds us that he singlehandedly inducted Miki as Moderator, though it was not his place to do it, and that in so doing, he put one pectoral cross on the inductee’s neck, then took a second one out of his pocket and put it on his own neck. Presbyterians watched all this in disbelief, but nobody bothered to ask where the second cross came from, and since when an outgoing Moderator started wearing one. Also, knowing how expensive a pectoral cross is, it is only proper that we make sure Rev. Fonki did not induct his successor with a cheap imitation and keep the real thing for himself. Finally, one observes with interest how, wittingly or not, we have turned the Pectoral Cross into a ventral or abdominal cross, both literally and symbolically. ‘Pectoral’ means it should be hanging on the chest (the cage in which the heart is found). Now ours hangs on the stomach (the food bag). How symbolic may that be of the shift in the wearer’s focus from spiritual to carnal concerns?

 Board of Trustees or None? If Moderator MIKI is too weak or compromised to reclaim the prerogatives of his office, somebody should step up and help him, because this is weakening the authority of that office. This is one of many blatant violations of Church orders where you would expect a Board of Trustees to step up and restore order. But what now passes for the PCC’s Board of Trustees is stunningly silent and absent. This complicit silence is understandable because the BoT was hand-picked by Rev. Fonki, not based on probity and integrity, but on complicity and subservience to him. But the mess can’t continue unchecked. Either we have a Board of Trustees or we don’t. If Moses Nfongang and his group cannot sit up and join the redemptive effort (which they should have initiated in the first place), then they should either resign or face a vote of no confidence. We learn that the Moderator is soon on his way to the UK. With all the negative vibes generated by the continuous presence of Rev. Chewachong there, the Church has every reason to demand his instant redeployment. It is certainly not Truth House alone that has read the article in The Sun newspaper, laying bare Chewachong’s opaque financial stewardship in the PC UK and elsewhere in Europe. That article quotes one of many angry Christians there as saying: “No one has said that Rev. Chewachong has put money into his personal account, but all we need is accountability and transparency. That is why Christians are reluctant to give money anymore to the church because there is no accountability, until every penny raised through Personal Donations, Harvest-Thanksgiving has been accounted for” Yet Rev. Chewachong remains arrogantly mute about all this, preferring to threaten Christians and call them names. Even in a recent PC Europe convention in Copenhagen, he did not deign to address these concerns, preferring instead to insult Truth House as “bad Christians” – whatever he knows about being a Christian. Rev. Chewachong’s case is like that of Rev. Teneng, against whom expressions of disgust continue to flow from nonnegligible members of the Ntamulung congregation. And it is all about sitting on the money he is wringing out of parishioners. Having individuals like Chewachong manning key segments of the Church is part of the havoc the former Moderator has wrought in the PCC. In any case, whether such an individual himself deserves to be called a Christian, let alone a pastor, Truth House prefers to answer him only after the Moderator’s visit. In fact, if the Moderator has his ear to the ground like Truth House does, one would have expected him to send audit teams to these places before going there in person to restore serenity. We dare trust that, with the Rt. Rev. Miki, now in power, audits will cease to be used exclusively as weapons against people perceived as not loyal to an all-powerful boss and become what they were designed to be – an instrument for ensuring financial and administrative rectitude. And our call for transparency also applies to fellows like Revs. Ajime, Kang, Teneng, Ndip, etc, who have made themselves real liabilities and outlived their welcome where they are.

 Forging a Legacy: It is very irksome for Presbyterians to keep seeing their Moderator walking in the shadow of a man who has bastardized the institutions of their Church and made a laughingstock of it. Moderator Miki needs to take time off to reflect on what imprint he wants to make on the life of the Church. The first of his five years in office will soon end, and his tenure is displaying a disappointing hallmark so far. His predecessor’s brand was arrogance, tyranny, cupidity and materialism, with a finger in every pie. So far, the Miki brand seems to be inertia, laissez-faire and quiescent enjoyment of the fruits of his predecessor’s abusive policies. Take it or leave it, if he continues to allow the Fonki clique to get away with all their present antics, we are unlikely to have any Church left by the time his mandate comes to an end

Financial Transparency in Demand. Truth House continues to demand the overdue redeployment of the Finance Secretary as well as a public account of his stewardship as the exchequer of the PCC. How does a Church that changes its top management every five years turn around and keep the same Chief Finance manager for over ten years? How can we not know that, by so doing, we are creating the conditions for financial impropriety? Which credible institution, as big as the PCC, overhauls its top administration after five years without a comprehensive audit accompanying the handover? The Rt. Rev. Miki must know that in the absence of financial transparency, it will be only right for Christians to withhold their giving to the Church until things change. We know our detractors will misinterpret this warning as Truth House trying to bring down the Church financially. That will be a deliberate distortion to divert attention from our key message, which is a call for transparency. It must be recalled that the PCC lost financial support from some of its foreign partners in the last ten years because the Fonki administration notoriously resisted calls for transparency. Similarly, nobody should expect Christians to continue to fund a Church that does not give an account of their money. That era is past and gone.

Silence is not Golden. The culture of arrogant silence, which Miki seems to have inherited from his predecessor, and which consists in shutting out all criticism, risks being his undoing if it continues. There are only two possible explanations for his attitude: Either he recognises the genuineness of the concerns being raised, but is too scared or too compromised to take the necessary redemptive measures, or he is his predecessor’s alter ego and means to continue in his footsteps. In that case, he must gird his loins, because the Church is waking up and can no longer be raped with impunity. Mr. Moderator, if you care, keep listening to Rev. Fonki and his KPs telling you that TH is just making noise. You may realise too late that this was not just noise.

Still Reverend? All of us in Truth House and in the ‘I AM PCC’ caucuses have grown up in the pure Presbyterian tradition, respecting our pastors as vicars of Christ, taking their word for gospel and looking up to them for good example. That is why we made great sacrifices to make our pastors as comfortable as we could, even at the cost of our own comfort. That high regard has been grossly abused in the last ten years, beginning with the outgone Moderator himself, who became a ruler rather than a leader, and a master rather than a servant. Now, because of him and his clique, respect for the pastor will no longer be automatic. It has to be earned. Any highhanded pastor must know his days in the PCC are numbered. It is the wake of a new PCC, thanks to the excesses of the last regime. Make no mistake, we are not asking for perfection. It is not incident to humankind. We are simply asking for the fear of God to be restored in the polity of our Church. There have always been human shortcomings in the past – pockets of embezzlement, dishonesty, tribalism, factionalism, etc, but Christians closed their eyes on these, since they were not so blatant and widespread – the perpetrators still had the fear of God. In the past ten years, however, that fear has been thrown overboard, and the gang leading the Church became unhinged, exaggerating every form of abuse. That is the reason the Fonki regime, despite all the material infrastructure it boasts of, will for a long time be remembered for its spiritual deconstruction of the Church. That Church is in dire need of restoration, and Moderator Miki must know that it will not come through softheaded complacency and quiescence. The pus will stay inside, and the abscess will continue to fester if you keep caressing instead of incising it. A word to the wise, they say, is sufficient, but we’ll keep talking and raising the volume for even the deaf to hear.

 Separate Functions: Congregations that sheepishly continue to allow themselves to be led by the nose will have only themselves to blame. This is the dawn of a mature PCC under responsive leadership. Pastors are ministers of the Word and sacrament. That is a most exalting job, and that is why we call them Reverend – meaning venerated or held in high esteem. But we have seen how disgustingly some of them have compromised their ministry with financial misconduct. In fact, we still call some of them ‘Reverend’ only out of decency and respect for the Church that ordained them. To salvage their calling and secure the resources of the Church, Truth House will henceforth advocate for the separation of clerical and secular functions in the Church. In that new current, it is up to each pastor to decide to either swim along or sink. In its next outing, True Talk will focus on Harvest, with emphasis on budgeting, levies and giving accounts. And now, after reading this edition, even if it is your first, we leave it to your conscience to determine if it is written by enemies or devotees of the Church. God bless you.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke