This past weekend I was in Malacca for some teaching and preaching at City Community Church, a leading Assemblies of God church in the city. It was a trip with many highlights. I was especially glad to spend some extended time with my friend Fook Meng who chairs the elder’s board at the church.
Fook Meng reminded me that he first heard me speak in his first year in law school. The occasion was the 2nd Malaysian FES National Conference, 1995. I spoke on the evidence for the resurrection and that if it really happened it changes everything. Fook Meng was already a believer, but he said that that talk changed his life.
We remained in contact over the years. He was in one of my mentoring groups. He said that group helped him make the transition from tertiary education to working life. He also said the group confirmed his burden to return to Malacca where he has been ever since. Ambitious lawyers usually choose to remain in Kuala Lumpur where there are many more opportunities to make your mark. But he felt led to go home to Malacca. The mentoring group prayed along with him and confirmed that he should go back.
Almost three decades have passed since our first encounter. Fook Meng is now head of litigation of his firm and spends time mentoring young lawyers. He also helps provide leadership in his church. By returning and remaining in Malacca, he has been significantly used by the Lord in his city.
I really enjoyed spending time with him and his family. Periodically he mentioned that he had been blessed by my mentoring. But the “mentor-mentee” relationship doesn’t describe our relationship now. He is my friend. We are friends in Christ. One of my mentors, Dr James Houston, together with Michael Parker, writes about how mentors should be friends in the end.
Just as with one’s natural children, when they grow up, the relationship is more friendship than childish dependency. So too the spiritual elder should be willing to become more a friend than an advisor for both people are seeking to live under God's will and service. Then mutuality, communion and reciprocity begin to widen the horizons of trust, respect and Christian love within the fellowship of the one body-in-Christ. There young and old, children and parents, are embraced into a greater wholeness all participating in the bride of Christ. For we have only one Father, who is in heaven and only one brother, who is Christ the Lord, and we all become “spiritual,” because the Holy Spirit pervades in all we are and do. (1)
“Mutuality, communion and reciprocity” describes my relationship with Fook Meng today. As friends, we both seek to live “under God’s will and service”. And we help each other do so. The ultimate mentor is God our Father and He guides both of us.
I have had the privilege of walking with many younger Christians through the years. I don’t doubt that certain elements need to be in place for a mentoring journey to be helpful. Still, my goal always is that I want to build a friendship with those I walk with and that includes, among other things, learning from them. It gave me great delight to spend some time with my friend Fook Meng.
____
(1) James M. Houston and Michael Parker, A Vision for the Aging Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 86.