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Bishop Lau Hui Ming was a little baffled when he was elected as Bishop of SCAC. He chose to obey God’s command for he believed obedience to be the source of blessing. He said: “I am prepared to face the challenges for the next four years with an obedient heart.”

Rev. Dr Lau was elected the President of SCAC in the 45th Annual Conference of SCAC in 2020 (effective January 1, 2021), and the presidency was officially renamed as the “Bishop” (Please refer to the 1275th issue of Methodist Message for related news).

He admitted that though some brothers and sisters reminded him to be “ready” a few months before the Annual Conference, he did not take it seriously. He was thinking that there were many qualified and suitable candidates in SCAC and he was unlikely to be elected. “I have always been very low-key and my chance of winning the election was slim.” But he was elected as the President! He confessed that when he was elected, he was baffled and flattered. He took it as God’s calling and he accepted the calling obediently.

Rev. Dr Lau was born in the Sg. Maaw area, west of Sibu. He studied at Kwong Hua Kindergarten and Kwong Hua Primary School. He was transferred to Chung Xin Primary School after the family moved to Sibu. Later he attended Sacred Heart Secondary School. He enrolled in Methodist Theological School, Sibu to be equipped for his ministry. He graduated from Trinity Theological College, Singapore in November 1993 and in December that year he was posted to pastor in his mother church Xin Fu Yuan Methodist Church.

Shaping years
Three and a half years later, to replace Rev. Dr. Khoo Ho Peng who went abroad for further studies, he was sent to the Wesley Methodist Church, Sibu to be the pastor-in charge.

“At that time, I really couldn’t speak English, let alone to pray in English. One time I had to do visitation with some church members and as pastor I needed to pray in English. So I went to the MTS library to look for prayers in English but those were not written in today’s English. I had a hard time understanding the meaning of these prayers. During the visitation, my English prayer was just like a horrible ‘car crash’. It was really embarrassing for both the church members and me, hahaha…”

Not only so, he had to prepare the English sermon a few days earlier and fax it to Rev Hii Kong Ching, who was pastoring an English church in Miri at that time, because the internet was not so common at that time. He asked Rev Hii to help to correct grammar and words used. Then Rev Hii would fax it back to him. If there were changes, the script would be faxed to Rev Hii again for checking. “After faxing back and forth a few times, the words on the fax paper were very blurred but I still insisted on doing it because I wanted to do a good job.”

After serving in the church for half a year, he approached Rev Ting Daik Choung, who was then the DS, to express his desire to be posted to other churches. However his plan to be the shortest serving pastor in Wesley Church turned out to be that he eventually became the longest serving pastor (6 years and 7 months) in the history of Wesley Methodist Church.

He recalled that he was then the only pastor of Wesley Methodist Church. He was the only preacher apart from occasional invited speakers. He had to preach in both English and Chinese. His English was poor, his pronunciation was inaccurate, and he was once “laughed at” by a younger member. He could just swallow the humiliation and took that as a motivation to spur himself on.

Later, a church member who was an English teacher, suggested that he read the sermon in front of her before preaching, so as to help to correct his pronunciation. He benefitted a lot from the help of the sister. Later the church members of Wesley Methodist Church also helped many other pastors posted to the church to strengthen their English. According to him, in Kuching, where English is used more broadly, some church members are conducting English tuition classes to help those pastors who intend to strengthen their English. In 2004, he was appointed the DS of Sarikei District. Six years later, in 2010, he was posted to shepherd in Trinity Methodist Church, Kuching. He was elected as the Bishop in 2020 and is now back in Sibu.

To further equip himself, he enrolled into a distance learning program from the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in the United States from 2003 to 2007. From his studies, he saw the importance of youth ministry and became interested in congregational studies and leadership spirituality.

From unwilling to obedient
When speaking of his calling, he said that he was sure of God’s calling when he was still a student. But he was stubborn, disobedient and instead he wanted to take up a stable job. It was not until after attending the 1987 Youth Mission Convention that he began to realize that he had always been communicating with God by his own rationale and that restricted God’s actions.

“Before that, I had a lot of ambitions, to be a pharmacist, a lawyer, an interior designer, government health officer etc. At that time, I even went to the notice-board of the Sibu Municipal Council to see if there was any recruitment notice from the Municipal Council. .. … After being sure of my calling, my friends also invited me to join them to go to Alliance Bible Seminary, Hong Kong to be equipped. But I was not interested in going to Hong Kong.”

At that time, his friends and he joined the Youth Mission Convention, and he asked God to affirm his call by strong wind and rain. However, till the end of the Youth Mission Convention, the weather had been fine. At the end, when everyone was filling out the commitment form, he was emotional and realized that he had always been communicating with God by his own rationale, and what he was asking was actually restricting God’s actions.

“Then I realize that God does not necessarily call you by the way that you want. I was not ignorant of God’s calling, but I was unwilling to obey. From then on, I had a deeper understanding that obedience is an important source of blessing.”

Building up pastors’ lives
After pastoring for so many years, he has seen all kinds of life situations, very much like the social microcosm reflected in the “Dream of the Red Chamber”.

Regarding the direction of work for the next four years, Bishop Lau points out that he will not only coordinate to achieve General Conference’s theme “A renewed church”, but will also pay more attention to the building up of the life of the pastors of our church. A pastor’s life is very important for the healthy growth of the church. “A pastor can be idle or busy in his work; his life can be rich or empty, all depending upon the relationship between the pastor and God.”

So he will be spending more time working with the pastors on development of their spiritual life, especially the 11 DSs under the Annual Conference. “I will start with the DSs, to strengthen their life before expanding further.” Currently there are about 180 pastors in SCAC.

As for the church members, he believes that the current work such as gospel sharing (such as the Sheep-seeking Campaign), Bible reading and prayer have been on-going for many years and so far have achieved good results and should continue. So he will be focusing upon disciple making and life of the members and their relationship with God. “We have to focus on how to make members disciples of Christ, and to be the light and salt in their everyday life and in the workplace.”

Bishop Lau and his wife have two daughters and one son. His wife is a full-time housewife, the elder daughter is a physiotherapist, currently working in West Malaysia, the second daughter is still studying law at Multimedia University, and the youngest son will be sitting for the SPM examination in Feb, 2021, the exam was postponed from 2020 because of Covid-19 lockdown.

Interviewed by Menglei
Recorded by April Lu
Translated by KT Chew