Today, I bid a fond yet sad farewell to a good friend, dear mentor, and colleague. He influenced me, my thinking, and my way in the world in ways I’m still trying to understand.
I first heard him preach in a well-planned worship service with a sermon creatively titled “Resources Untapped for Recipients Unaware” as a young university student. Impressed by his wit and communicating abilities, I purposed in my heart to keep worshiping at Greenhills Christian Fellowship (GCF). For a couple of years, I stood on the sidelines, listened to his impassioned preaching as I grew in my faith in my own quiet corner in GCF’s old worship centre.
In yet another preaching of his I received a challenge to quit running from God’s calling in my life to be a minister– something I knew I had back in high school. It was then I realized God wasn’t going to give up making sure I heard His voice– albeit my attempts to shut His voice out in my pursuit of a university degree. Shortly after college, I enrolled in a Bible college to obey. In my sophomore year in Bible college I decided to return to GCF, believing that as a pastoral student I would benefit greatly in being exposed to a megachurch context and learning more from its respected leader, I quit my post in my dad’s church and volunteered to serve at GCF. In a few months, GCF has absorbed me into its staff.
One evening following a baccalaureate service for graduating seminarians of the Conservative Baptist Association, this tall, saintly looking (at least to my eyes), Southern Baptist minister, in his full academic regalia, whose preacher voice bellied the force of his ideas and the passionate will he possessed, walked up to me and said, “You look good in your academic regalia, Jon. Not a lot of people do. It’s time for you to get your master’s.” So he made sure I was a part of GCF’s new breed of Masteral students in which I found myself to be blessed to sit under his teaching ministry in a deeper level than just “preaching.” It was an honor to have served the Lord Jesus Christ with him for 10 long and fruitful years beginning as worship coordinator and then as worship pastor.
More than a dozen friends sent me word of his death, which by the time I received it, the news was all over Facebook, and when I read the first message I opened, I stopped what I was doing, closed my eyes, and sat in prolonged silence–an act of prayer that didn’t require words.
Dr. Luis Pantoja, Jr. had a massive heart attack while he was climbing the stairs at a senior pastors’ conference in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. Pastor Edmund Chan, his good friend and pastor of Covenant EFC Singapore, heard a loud thud behind him and found P. Luis lying faced down on the floor. Because he was unconscious some other pastors tried to revive him. After some attempts to do so at a local hospital, he was pronounced dead.
His forebears and descendants– both in the flesh and in the spirit– would have been and will be proud of his life and work and the way he honored the God of His of faith with humility, generosity, and passion. That is in part what he taught me and so many others.
In Spanish, our word for good-bye has strong religious overtones. “Adios” means literally “To God.” When we bid someone farewell we literally offer them a benediction, we offer them to God. (A=To, Dios=God). That’s what Pastor Luis did for me; he gave me to God in a way I had not dared to be given before. At our best that’s what we do for one another, and for our world, we give each other to God in more loving, daring ways than we would or could on our own. And so I close with a simple farewell, offering him to God with my deepest gratitude: Adios Pastor Luis. Adios!
The Rev’d. Luis L. Pantoja, Jr.
November 21, 1946 – September 6, 2010
“A handful of ashes now vaulted in this corner, with nothing to boast but grace from his maker”Watch the HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD video and wait for his comment at the end.
Confluent Thoughts 