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View from the Pew  Mary Adamski |
Prayerful beginning
An expansive new church for
Calvary Chapel members is almost
ready to open in AieaMusic, praise and preaching are on the church dedication program next weekend, but praying has been going on for 17 months at the new Aiea Heights site of Calvary Chapel Honolulu.
Workmen at the site were treated to a monthly pau hana dinner, the potluck effort of the congregation. Prayer was part of the fare. Hundreds of Calvary Chapel members have worked at the Komo Mai Drive location before and since the January 2003 groundbreaking. Prayer was part of those "field trips."
Thursday was Dedication Day minus 10, and Pastor Bill Stonebraker's first visit to the site after a week away to a mainland conference. He wove his way through the campus, dodging carpet installers, questioning sound technicians and conferring with representatives of lead contractor Western Engineering.
Calvary Chapel Aiea Campus
What: Dedication CelebrationWhen: 6 p.m. May 16
Where: 98-1016 Komo Mai Drive
Guest speaker: Pastor Chuck Smith, Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, Calif.
Music: Two or More, Christian pop musicians
When the senior pastor said, "We'll get it done by the 16th," there was clearly a prayer in there: No stage built or video screens up yet in the sanctuary, no bookshelves yet in the bookstore, no water running yet in the toilets -- what else can you do but have faith and hope?
From its current cramped and rather dim space in a former theater at Beretania and Nuuanu, Calvary Chapel is coming into the light of a years-long dream. It's literally into the light, with a wide sunny plaza between sanctuary and cafe/bookstore where tables will be set up for socializing. Big windows with views of mountains and Pearl Harbor are everywhere, even in ground-floor offices and nursery rooms.
The $10.5 million project on six acres in the Newtown subdivision was more than four years in the planning. A testament to the planning is the fact that no "change order" was needed to remedy an oversight -- and raise the cost.
The new Aiea Heights Calvary Chapel will be dedicated next weekend after years of planning and hard work.
There's 58,800 square feet under roof, including the 10,000-square-foot sanctuary with 1,000-seat capacity and a new school that will open in the fall. The school will "integrate a biblical worldview in the studies," said Stonebraker. For example, when evolution is addressed in science class, "it will be discussed as what it is, a theory. We want kids to become thinking adults."
One of the five Calvary pastors, Ed Arcales, will be principal of the school, which is now accepting enrollment for kindergarten through fifth grade. It will grow to eighth grade by 2007, with an anticipated enrollment of 250 students.
Thursday, while the contractors' paid work force prepared for the last big concrete pour for the entrance stairway, the Calvary job corps did its own thing, as usual.
» Russell Takaezu, associate pastor, hauled dozens of boxes just delivered by UPS into the bookstore-to-be.They were just a peek at the power of volunteers. People worked to clear the land -- bought for the bargain price of $800,000 because it is between two deep gulches on land sloping down from the street. Volunteers dug trenches for the irrigation system, planted landscaping greenery and pulled television cable through conduits. They built cabinets and are seeking used restaurant appliances for the kitchen. Ahead lies creation of a fountain and immersion pool for adult baptisms and development of downslope acres where members envision a garden for weddings and a picnic area and camping ground.» Jared Iwanaga made headway in setting up the Starbucks coffee corner.
» Guy Tokunaga, who returned from missionary work in Russia to join the work force, helped set up the studio to house KLHT Christian radio station.
» Russ Espinoza laid out the array of door signs he made. My favorite was "Crawlers" -- one of three categories of kids to be minded in the child care center.
Calvary Chapel Honolulu was one of the first nondenominational evangelical churches here, at the beginning of a movement that has mushroomed. Stonebraker was a surfboard maker on the North Shore when he and his wife, Danita, began holding Bible study meetings in their two-bedroom Sunset Beach home in 1972.
"We didn't know the phenomenon that was starting," he said.
His mentor was the Rev. Chuck Smith, of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, Calif., where Stonebraker was ordained. Smith will be one of the speakers at the dedication.
Calvary Chapels are a "loose affiliation" of Bible-based churches, each with its own defining traits or "distinctives," Stonebraker said.
"Our primary distinctive is to simply teach God's word simply," he said. "We teach the Bible from front to back, Genesis to Revelations, making it relevant to people's lives. They want to know the plan God has for them."
The congregation led by Stonebraker moved into Honolulu in 1982 and into the downtown theater in 1988. Several other churches have sprouted from this congregation. There are now 20 Calvary Chapels in Hawaii and more than 1,000 worldwide.
About 2,000 people now attend Sunday services, and 1,200 families have made tithing commitments, he said.
The move will inconvenience some Honolulu residents who have walked to the door of the downtown chapel, but it will also relieve members who come from as far as Waianae and Wahiawa for Sunday services.
The new Aiea complex will "allow us to give a greater effort to minister the things of the Lord to people. It's a protected environment for families and children. It gives space for reflecting and growing in their families."
The concrete workers strike brought a two-month delay, but there haven't been any major setbacks, Stonebraker said. Church building isn't a Cinderella story because congregation members still experience personal troubles and deaths, and, he said, he is conscious of undercurrents of anxiety, which he attributes to Satan. Among the sad notes was the death of his mother, whose home overlooked the site and who had been looking forward to attending the new church.
"If it is going to be a work of the Lord, the devil is not going to like it," said the pastor. "I've sensed the pressure ever since I became a Christian. It causes us not to take anything for granted. That's why you need to never stop praying."
Guy Tokunaga, left, Russ Espinoza, Jared Iwanaga and Russell Takaezu unloaded boxes of supplies Thursday for the new Calvary Chapel building shown behind them.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Religion Calendar
Mary Adamski covers religion for the Star-Bulletin.
Email her at madamski@starbulletin.com.
