Two senior Gloriavale leaders stand down amid promise of change

Tuesday, 31 May 2022

Gloriavale businesses have links to the dairy and meat processing industries, and provide work for transport companies.

Two senior leaders have resigned from their positions at the Gloriavale Christian Community.

In a statement, a spokesperson announced Fervent Stedfast and Faithful Pilgrim had stepped down from their leadership roles. They were part of a leadership group of 16 servants and shepherds that operates under the community’s overseeing shepherd.

It comes as a new era of change has been promised in a public apology for Gloriavale's role in “failing to prevent and protect victims of labour exploitation and sexual abuse”.

Fervent Stedfast had resigned his position as financial controller last year, but on Tuesday he resigned from being a senior community leader, a role that he has held since 1995.

**READ MORE:

Gloriavale senior shepherd Fervent Stedfast, top left, and Overseeing Shepherd Howard Temple, top right, at a meeting with Green MP Catherine Delahunty. (File photo)

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The statement said Stedfast was accused several times in the recent Employment Court hearing of failing to properly handle employment issues during his time as the community’s financial controller.

The recent Employment Court ruling found that former Gloriavale members who worked up to 70 hours a week for years were not volunteers.

Stedfast was the head of Gloriavale’s trust board and the group's accountant. He has also acted as a media spokesman for the group on several occasions. He was previously second in command during founder Hopeful Christian's tenure.

Stedfast told Rural Delivery that he joined the then-Springbank community in 1970 as a 23-year-old. He had 'embarked on a search for truth' that led him to the community.

In 1989, Stedfast wrote What We Believe, a book about the community that codifies the group's strict Christian beliefs.

Employment Court Judge Christina Inglis said that even a cursory reading of What We Believe should have set loud alarm bells ringing for labour inspectors.

Stedfast was previously the principal of Gloriavale Christian School prior to Faithful Pilgrim.

The statement from the community says Pilgrim resigned as principal of the school in 2020 over his failure to protect children in his care.

Just Standfast, pictured in 2019, was sentenced to six months of community detention and two years of intensive supervision.

A recent Teaching Council decision suspended Pilgrim for serious misconduct after he endorsed a teacher, Just Standfast, as being of “good character and fit to be a teacher” on an application form to renew his practising certificate when Pilgrim knew he had sexually abused a 9-year-old student.

“In taking full responsibility for this, he has also resigned from his position as a senior community leader … [T]hese resignations are part of Gloriavale’s commitment to change, as outlined in its recent public apology. No decision has yet been made on their replacements,” it says.

Pilgrim, 66, told the tribunal he knew of the allegation made about Standfast in 2012 and also that he had heard a rumour about inappropriate conduct by Standfast to a different young person about 25 years earlier.

The leadership said in a previous statement it was “deeply saddened” by the harm that members of the community had experienced.

The pair will remain in the community but hold no leadership positions.