Eric was born in Clydebank, Scotland in 1932, the youngest son and second-youngest child in a family of 5 boys and 2 girls. When Clydebank was a key target for German bombers during World War II due to its being the major shipbuilding centre in the United Kingdom at the time, the Kirton home was destroyed during a spate of bombings, forcing Eric’s parents to send the children to be cared for in the countryside. Eric spent the war years growing up on a farm in Luss Village, on the banks of Loch Lomond.
At the age of 14, at a youth camp, Eric committed his life to Jesus Christ, and very soon thereafter began to sense a calling into missions work.
After his school years, Eric trained as a woodworker and worked with a well-known furniture supplier in Glasgow. He also enlisted in the armed forces. In 1953 he was called for duty with the British Royal Air Force and stationed in Singapore and Malaya during the Emergency for 2 years. Feeling the Lord’s call to missionary service in Malaya, he returned two and a half years later in February 1958, commended by his home church in Glasgow.
After intensive language studies in Kuala Lumpur, he moved to Kuantan where from the old wooden house he had rented, he established the first Brethren assembly on the east coast.
In 1959, he married Tan Cheng Kim, a teacher from Kuala Lumpur, who moved to Kuantan and continued to use her teaching career as an outreach opportunity among children and teens.
After 2 years of planting the seeds of the gospel, the first new believers were harvested for God’s kingdom, and in 1964, Kuantan Chapel was built. Many church leaders across the country today – and indeed over the world – as well as many missionaries from Malaysia were the product of the ministry of the Kirtons in Kuantan.
The Kirtons’ ministry expanded over the years to include helping to establish the work in Temerloh, and to regularly help minister in the assemblies in Bentong, Raub and Kota Bharu, as well as the Presbyterian church in Kuala Trengganu.
In 1984, with the church work in Kuantan well-established, the Kirtons contemplated new ministry elsewhere, but sudden debilitating illness left Cheng Kim bedridden and in need of constant medical attention, forcing the Kirtons to move to Kuala Lumpur. Cheng Kim went to be with the Lord in 1989.
After moving to Kuala Lumpur in 1985, Eric became a regular itinerant Bible teacher and preacher in churches in the Klang Valley and across the country. He also served on the management board of Evangel Book Centre and as chairman of the annual Klang Valley Bible Conference.
In July 2006, he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma (an aggressive form of skin cancer) and underwent surgery to remove a tumour above his left shoulder-blade. In December 2006, surgery was required for a second tumour in the same region, but unfortunately this time the pathology report indicated that the cancer had not been contained. Intensive radiotherapy ensued until it became clear some weeks later that the cancer had already spread into the lungs and was no longer treatable. Within a month, his left lung was a solid mass of tumour and no longer functioning, and within a further 2 months, his remaining lung had also succumbed to the cancer and the Lord ushered him into his eternal presence early in the morning of Saturday 24 March 2007.
Eric leaves behind 3 children and 2 grandchildren: Colin; Laurence and his wife Yoke Lin; and Carol and her husband Barry Sherbeck and their 2 daughters Laura Kim and Dana Joy. In their lives, and in the lives of a myriad other spiritual “sons and daughters," Eric Kirton has left a lasting legacy.
“Well done, good and faithful servant! … Come and share your Master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21)
p/s : Text references was taken from www.ekirton.com/
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