One of God's Straightest Arrows
For Flora, Stephen, Lois, Daniel, and Philip:
The first time that I met Pastor Gary Wong was during my junior year at Cal Berkeley. How I ended up at Pastor Gary’s church was a highly unlikely story. Though I was raised in a non-Christian family, I did attend church from the age of six to thirteen where I learned everything about Jesus and salvation. However, I was one of those who dropped out of church at a time when all of my peers were doing the same. But the merciful God saved me after my first Friday night Bible study at CIBC Oakland. To be saved after going my own way the previous seven years was miracle of God. To start living like a Christian and returning to church was even more unlikely for me.
This is where Pastor Gary came into my life. He always made himself available to all the young people at church, especially to an outsider like me who only came on Friday nights. Somehow I started to approach him whenever a question about God or faith popped into my heart or mind. I don’t remember exactly all the questions I threw at him, but I’m sure most people would be put off by my slightly irreverent or contrary-sounding questions. But Pastor Gary handled all my questions without judging me for sounding so “unchurched”, which I was. His acceptance of me had a huge impact on the way that I looked at the church. You could speak straight to Pastor Gary and he would speak straight to you. The way that Pastor Gary ministered to me was greatly used by God to spiritually form me. After what I’ve shared so far, you would think that I had spent lots of time with Pastor Gary. Well, the truth is, I hardly spent any significant “quantity” of time with him before I graduated from Cal and headed down south to USC for grad school. But what “quality” time he gave me for maybe a total of 10 Friday night contacts over an 18 month period sustained and prepared me until I was ready to start going to church every Sunday in Los Angeles.
Even after more than forty years have passed since that time we had together, my recollection of those brief question-answer times with Pastor Gary is still fresh. Here are a few other things about him that impacted me:
He was soft-spoken and humble, frequently unable to hold back the tears as he talked about his Lord.
Even though he was born in China, he spoke English without an accent, which was important to me as an ABC at that time (but of course not as important to me now).
He was fully committed, fully invested, fully passionate about anything and everything that had to do with God and with His kingdom. It is not surprising for me to hear about all the ministry that he did AFTER he retired.
He was about as straight as any pastor or Christian that I have ever encountered. When you spent time with him, you always knew that you would be getting straight answers about God and from the Bible. Maybe his being so straight in the way that he served God and talked about God made him appear to some people as being a bit boring or repetitive or old-fashioned. Now that I have been a pastor for over 27 years, I’ve come to a few conclusions about what’s important in ministry. One of them is this: To be a good servant of Jesus does not require style, eloquence, or sophistication, for these are mostly external things. The best servants of God are those who are bland in self but dynamic in Christlikeness. Pastor Gary was the type of pastor that God is most pleased with because he was one of the straightest arrows in His divine quiver of servants: The straightest arrow is the one that always flies the straightest to the target. Through his life, Pastor Gary repeatedly hit bulls-eye on God’s target.
I am blessed to have been personally touched so deeply by Pastor Gary’s life and ministry. Thank you, Flora, Stephen, Lois, Daniel, and Philip for giving your husband and dad to me and to all the others to the glory of God.
Wes Ong, Laguna Chinese Baptist Church