Mr Ken van Kralingen
Ken van Kralingen was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on 15 February 1935. He was the youngest of seven children raised in a God-fearing home and was taught the Scriptures from his youth. He was indeed brought up “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”. He grew up at a time when Holland was ravaged by the effects of German occupation during World War II and he experienced much hardship throughout his childhood and learned early in his life about the reality of death. He was naturally of a serious disposition and experienced periods of intense conviction of sin throughout his young years. In the environment in which he was raised, the free offer of the gospel was seldom conveyed in the preaching of the Word. He was greatly solemnised as a result of a childhood accident in which he received a severe electric shock. During this time he came to the stark realisation that if he was to be taken away from this world it would be to a lost eternity.
Mr van Kralingen married Lydia in 1958 and together they decided to emigrate to New Zealand in the hope of building a better life. Just prior to their departure, a niece brought a package of Free Presbyterian Church magazines kindly given by her school headmaster, who had heard of their intention to move to New Zealand. In the Lord’s providence this provided the first point of contact with the Church that was soon to become their spiritual home.
In 1959 Mr van Kralingen joined the fledgling Auckland congregation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which had recently commenced meetings for public worship. Rev William MacLean, minister of the Gisborne congregation, made regular visits to Auckland to provide supply. Mr van Kralingen was deeply impressed when he first heard Mr MacLean in prayer. He later expressed to Lydia his belief that the Holy Spirit was present at the prayer meeting that evening. From this point forward the van Kralingen family attended the services regularly.
Mr MacLean was much loved and appreciated by a generation of converts in Australia and New Zealand who had been blessed by his preaching. It was through the instrumentality of his preaching that Mr van Kralingen was brought to a saving knowledge of the way of salvation through the merits of the Saviour. He came to the realisation that he was an enemy of Christ by wicked works. Having searched for many years, he was now brought to the blessed understanding that in the free offer of the gospel there is an invitation
to poor, lost and needy sinners to come to Christ alone for salvation. And he was enabled by divine grace to close in with His Saviour.
When speaking to others in later years, he would often reiterate his love for the freeness of the gospel offer and the blessedness of hearing preaching where this was prominent. He returned from the Gisborne communion, from which he dated his conversion, brimming with the love of Christ and the joy of the Holy Ghost. He immediately wished to share these experiences with his wife, who had been unable to attend this communion season. To see her husband so transported with spiritual joy brought her to the sobering realisation of her own spiritual state and her need of a Saviour. This was instrumental in leading her to the Saviour a number of years later.
Mr van Kralingen was among the first to be ordained to the office of the eldership in the Auckland congregation, on 19 March 1963. The other men were the late Mr Edwin Christensen and the late Mr Donald Beaton. The text at their ordination service was: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev 2:10). In 1968 the Auckland congregation was blessed with their first minister, Rev Donald Malcolm Macleod. He laboured in the congregation for a decade before the Lord called him to glory.
After this period, the congregation was vacant for 32 years. During this time, the elders of the congregation faithfully maintained services, punctuated by most welcome visits from church deputies as well as Revs E A Rayner and J A T van Dorp. Mr van Kralingen was thorough and prayerful in his preparation for reading sermons at public worship. He felt much of the gravity and responsibility of the office which he held and the responsibility entrusted to him by his Saviour to shepherd the flock. He was a faithful and stable influence, with much sanctified common sense. During the turbulent period of the APC split he remained steadfast in his adherence to the truths he held dearly. He was often heard saying, “There is no perfect Church on earth but show me, if you can, a Church that adheres more closely to the teachings of the Bible than the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland”.
Mr van Kralingen and his wife Lydia provided a hospitable home for a large number of Church deputies who visited the congregation during the decades prior to the arrival of Rev Jett Smith. It was cause for much thankfulness to him that the Lord had answered the many prayers which had been sent up for one of His servants to be sent to the Auckland congregation.
In the latter years of his life, Mr van Kralingen became the main carer of his disabled wife. He was devoted and selfless in his care for her. Three months before his death he was admitted to hospital with a life-threatening illness. He took this as a solemn warning that his days on this earth were numbered.
He took the morning service on the Sabbath before he passed to his eternal rest. The text of the sermon he read that morning was Luke 14:17: “And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready”. We believe that he could say from personal experience: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). He died suddenly the next morning, Monday, 18 November 2013.
The Kirk Session tribute stated: “The Auckland Congregation feel a sense of great loss at the passing of Mr van Kralingen. He was a highly esteemed and much loved elder of the congregation for 47 years. His many years of service in the Church were characterised by a humble, yet faithful, devotion to his Master, and also the witness of the Church, which he had come to love. The congregation and Presbytery to which he belonged miss his wise counsel and are keenly aware of the loss of a godly man whose life, walk and conversation was salt and light among us. We would humbly implore the Head of the Church to raise up others to take his place in the Church here below.
“Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace’ (Ps 37:37). ‘Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men’ (Ps 12:1)”
^1Contributed by members of the family.