A Tribute to Rev. Suchart Chujit

by M.L. Smith

With deep sorrow, yet with the sure hope of the resurrection, we give thanks to God for the life and faithful service of Rev. Suchart Chujit, LCC’s missionary in Thailand, who was called to his eternal rest on March 16th after a battle with cancer.

Born and raised in southern Thailand, Rev. Chujit did not begin life within the Christian faith. Rather, his journey to Christ is a powerful testimony to the living and active Word of God and the steadfast love of our Lord working through His Church.

Through the witness of his wife, Aporn—who herself had come to faith through early Lutheran mission work—Chujit was first invited to hear the Gospel. At the time, he resisted. He was not only reluctant to attend church but was also critical of his wife’s departure from her Buddhist traditions. Yet the Lord, in His mercy, was at work in ways unseen.

During a fishing trip, Chujit was struck by lightning, leaving him hospitalized and near death. In those long days of recovery, his wife remained faithfully at his side, praying for him and leaving a Bible within his reach. With little else to occupy his time, he began to read—starting in Genesis and continuing through to Revelation.

He later reflected that he could not stop reading. The more he read, the more he was drawn in. The Scriptures took hold of his heart. What had once been resistant began to soften. He described it as a frozen heart slowly melting and warming. By the time he had finished, he turned to his wife and expressed his desire to attend church and learn more of this Word that was so profoundly transforming him.

Chujit received catechesis from Dr. Herb Gernand, a Lutheran layman who had established a house church, and later from Rev. Ted NaThalong, who continued the missionary work in Thailand. Through their teaching, the Holy Spirit strengthened him in the faith, and he came to confess with joy Christ crucified and risen for the forgiveness of sins.

From that point forward, Rev. Chujit devoted his life to the service of the Gospel. Through theological training provided by LCC’s international mission efforts, he was prepared for pastoral ministry. He was called to serve as a missionary-at-large in the Phang Nga region of southern Thailand, where he labored faithfully for nearly three decades.

Pastor Chujit (centre) and members of his congregation welcome visitors.

Those who knew Rev. Chujit remember not only his faithfulness in doctrine and practice, but also the spirit in which he carried out his ministry. His joyful disposition and gentle humor often opened doors for conversation and eased hearts, making him not only a preacher of the Gospel, but a pastor who knew his people and was deeply loved by them.

Rev. Chujit was devoted to shepherding the flock entrusted to his care, preaching Christ crucified with clarity and conviction, and administering the sacraments with reverence and joy.  Many came to hear the Gospel through his ministry, and new believers were gathered into the life of the Church. Some who sat and listened to him preach were not unlike the man he himself had once been—resistant, distant, perhaps skeptical. He knew it. And that knowledge shaped his ministry: he proclaimed the Gospel with patience, and with the quiet confidence of a man who had felt a frozen heart thaw by the work of the Holy Spirit.

We give thanks to God for a life of faith marked by an unexpected beginning yet abundantly filled by grace. We thank God for Aporn’s faithful witness, for the teachers who walked alongside him, and for the decades of ministry that flowed from one man’s encounter with our living and life-giving Lord.

Though we mourn his passing, we do not grieve as those without hope. Chujit now rests from his labors in the presence of his Saviour whom he faithfully proclaimed.

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord… that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.” (Revelation 14:13) 

Rev. M.L. Smith is Director of International Missions of Lutheran Church–Canada

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