This article will look at “Apostle” John McElroy and learn about the church he now apostolically governs in Perth, Western Australia.
John McElroy is recognised as a New Apsotolic Reformation (NAR) “Apostle” of Wagner’s Coalition of Internation Apostolic Leaders.
An organisation that creates international governing Apostles for the dangerous International NAR Cult.
From the ICAL website,
Australia Coalition of Apostolic Leaders (ACAL)
John and Alaine McElroy, Convenors
Contact: Email: acal@acaleaders.org
Web: http://www.acaleaders.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acaleaders
Phone: : 08 6241 2700
Apostles John and Alaine live in Perth, Western Australia and lead Churchlands Christian Fellowship. Apostle John is the founding director of the Southern Cross Association of Churches, an apostolic network with100 ministries across Australia and 28 nations. Apostle John is the author of Passing on the Baton, about the importance of spiritual fathers and mothers building into younger men and women.
The ACAL Convenors are currently putting the organisation on a new footing that will enable expansion, greater influence in every aspect of Australian society and building supportive and empowering relationships between our members. Our first priority has been the formation of a new National Council comprised of church and marketplace Apostolic leaders from each Australian state and territory. These men and women will be instrumental in convening leadership groups who will implement the AIM Strategy of Acknowledging, Instructing and Measuring Apostolic leaders.
The second priority is to streamline our process of including new members within ACAL. The third priority is the improvement of communications between members by establishing a new website: acaleaders.org.
Finally we are extending our National Summit meeting to 3 nights and 2 days to enable more input and discussion and to build stronger relationships between members. Our goal is to increase our membership to 100 within the first year.
Source: Australia Coalition of Apostolic Leaders (ACAL), ICAL, http://www.icaleaders.com/australia-coalition/, Accessed 22/05/2016.
Group Sects writes about their experience on Churchlands, providing more information about John McElroy and his ministry.
CHURCHLANDS – WHAT WENT WRONG?
Lance White (Group Sects) writes…
I’ve previously remarked extensively on this and other blogs about my brief and unhappy time at Perth’s Revenue (Riverview) Church, but not had anything much to say about the church where I spent several years in Perth, Churchlands Christian Fellowship, mainly because it hasn’t been relevant.
While I was there in the 1990’s, Churchlands was a thriving megachurch. Not in the US sense, but it was big for Western Australia.
To cut a long story short, it started out life as a suburban Uniting Church, moved to a local college campus, moved again into a converted warehouse in a light industrial area several suburbs away, left the Uniting Church to spearhead the new Vineyard churches in Australia, was kicked out of Vineyard [hours after the movement’s founder’s funeral by his successors) and finally established its own denomination, the Southern Cross Association of Churches.
Recently its Executive Minister (not the Senior Pastor) was sacked. I understand it was due to an adulterous relationship with a visiting minister.
Attendance at Churchlands grew exponentially in the early part of my time there, because it achieved that rare balance of being a ‘contemporary’ church, but without the extreme hype and arrogance of a typical Pentecostal/Assemblies of God church.
Then Churchlands’ senior minister, the former US Presbyterian John McElroy came under the influence of John Wimber, one of the founding leaders of the Vineyard movement.
This brought the so-called ‘Toronto Blessing’ to Churchlands. It’s ‘almost anything goes’ brand of ‘signs and wonders’ became too much for most of the congregation who one-by-one walked out the door, never to return.
The last time I visited a service at Churchlands, it struggled to muster 50 people, including the staff who were present. Unthinkable compared to only a few years previous when saving a seat with a bible was the only way to prevent languishing in the back row (before they had to bring out the extra rows of chairs for the latecomers) a considerable distance from the stage..
Some of what you see posted on this site has been my continual unpacking of much of what I experienced at Churchlands. I have prayed for people at Churchlands and watched them keel over. I have laughed and cried. Once, I watched a young man prancing down the aisle, whinnying and snorting like a horse while jumping through an imaginary skipping rope during one moment of ‘blessing’ (some things just stick in your mind forever)
I now know that nearly all of what happened at Churchlands was merely the power of suggestion, as proved by the British atheist hypnotist Derren Brown who has replicated the tricks of the faith healers.
As for ‘holy laughter’, research has shown the brain is wired to laugh when someone else laughs.
Christians are often told to judge something by its ‘fruit’.
Several years on, and the ‘fruit’ of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ and the emphasis on ‘supernatural ministry’ can be clearly seen in Churchlands today.
The church is a shell of its former self and since it successfully undocked from reality it has silently drifted in theological space without being pulled back in by the gravity of the gospel – God reconciling sinners to Himself through faith in Jesus’ dying on the cross as an atonement for our sin.
Churchlands is currently orbiting the influence of the Californian Word Of Faith minister Bill Johnson.
John McElroy has been banging on of late about the importance of ‘generations’ at Churchlands; older people mentoring young’uns.
Why? Because this is what Bill Johnson teaches.
There’s nothing wrong with that teaching per se.
But what it does show is that Pastor McElroy easily comes under the influence of another minister, and the whole congregation is expected to go along for the ride.
Which is puzzling because McElroy is a fine exegetical bible teacher, but he seems to have a massive disconnect between his formidable bible knowledge and the other gumpf he’s picked up along the way from the Word of Faith crowd which he now parrots in Perth.
I can’t speak highly enough of some of the members of the congregation I met over the years I spent at Churchlands. They remain the nicest and loveliest people I’ve ever encountered (except for a couple of homophobes in leadership and the congregation) and I wish I had the opportunity to still see them from time to time. But they always were, and still are poorly led.
Source: Lance White, CHURCHLANDS – WHAT WENT WRONG?, GroupSects, https://groupsects.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/churchlands-what-went-wrong/, Published 17/03/2016. (Accessed 23/05/2016.)
Categories: New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)
What a lie this obnoxious ICAL thing is.
http://www.acaleaders.org/site/cpage.asp?cpage_id=180084342&sec_id=180016965
1. Accd to link above it costs $350 / yr to be an ‘apostolic leader.’ I don’t recall the true biblical apostles paying yearly memberships:
http://www.acaleaders.org/site/cpage.asp?cpage_id=180084341&sec_id=180016965
2. “DEFINITION OF AN ‘APOSTOLIC LEADER An Apostolic Leader is gifted, taught and commissioned by God….”
No, these bozos are commissioned by Nar, NOT by God.
3. “An Apostolic Leader is… to function… by hearing what the Spirit is saying to the Church.”
Arrogantly claiming to be the mouthpiece from God to the Church? What rubbish!
4. “Apostolic leaders have a grace that has come to them in the form of a call to be one of five types of leader: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and/or teacher.”
These wishy-washy morons can’t make up their mind what they are: ‘apostolic leaders’ or one of the five-fold ministries. This entire statement is brainless nonsense anyway.
http://www.acaleaders.org/home/180016965/180016965/files/acal-membership-app.pdf
5. Gotta hand over those credit card details so YOU can be an ‘apostolic leader’ too!.
http://www.acaleaders.org/home/180016965/180016965//docs/acal-10-priorities-of-ar.pdf
6.” ‘Safe Church Leaders’ Action Point: Pray for discernment in choosing churches and leaders who are safe and not building their own empires”
Well you ICAL people better pray to get rid of all these leaders then because this whole I.C.A.L. thing is a S.C.A.M. from hell and ICAL is the empire of the scammers running it.