CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Moanalua Community Church is being spared by developers who will tear down the rest of Moanalua Shopping Center to erect a large Navy social services center. Standing in the church are Goldrino and Alma Balatico, the Rev. Wally Fukunaga and Joel DelaCruz.

Saved

After fighting eviction for four
years, Moanalua Community
Church is born again

As demolition crews knock down the former Moanalua Shopping Center next week, one landmark building will be left standing.

Moanalua Community Church at 20 Bougainville Drive, which had its start as a chapel for sailors in World War II, will continue to operate in the neighborhood being developed as a social services center for Navy members and dependents.

"This congregation has made a great leap of faith ... and here we are," said the Rev. Wally Fukunaga, whose office bulletin board contains a larger artist's rendering of the development plan -- almost everything brand new but the 1958 vintage church building.

The 100-member congregation is elated at being saved. Next comes the "born again" phase, as they seek to recall members who drifted away and revive programs and plans that waned during a nearly four-year struggle against threatened eviction from the Navy land.

The congregation's elected lay leader, Goldrino Balatico, said that revival is under way thanks in part to the inclusion of three other worshipping congregations under their roof. They are New Life Pentecostal Church, led by the Rev. Richard McGriffin; Cup of Freedom Church, pastored by the Rev. Iopu Fale; and Trinity Samoan Congregational Church, with the Rev. Peter Timoteo as pastor.

CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Fukunaga studies detail in a stained-glass window that helped the church gain protection as a historic building.

"The church is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays as we have one service after another," said Balatico. "Each church has a weeknight service, so we're a busy place." Altogether, about 600 people attend services in a week.

Fukunaga said, "We're an interfaith center of sorts. We have doctrinal differences, but we are all children of God." He was called as interim pastor in November after the congregation left the position vacant for 18 months, unable to promise a job that would last.

"What we're doing drains us and sustains us at the same time," said Joy Lacanienta-Contreras, a church member who brought her professional expertise as a community organizer to the struggle. "We know we were doing it for God's glory. Like any battle, you must regroup. It was a tiring process to fight to keep our doors open. So many times, the situation seemed so bleak."

Balatico said getting listed on the Hawaii Register of Historic Places in August 2003 "is what saved us."

A stained-glass window that encompasses one whole wall of the A-frame building, described as the "largest connected stained-glass window in Hawaii," helped persuade the Hawaii Historic Review Board. Designer John Wallis of California wove the ideas of the 1950s congregation into his creation. A map of Pearl Harbor, aircraft and ships depicting battles from the Revolutionary War to World War II and military insignia are there, along with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Confucian symbols. People from a variety of cultures surround a large figure of Christ over the quotation "For You Are All One in Christ Jesus."

STAR-BULLETIN / 2004 Moanalua Community Church began as a chapel for sailors in World War II. The 1958 building at 20 Bougainville Drive was listed on the Hawaii Register of Historic Places in August 2003.

Without backlighting, the unique window is virtually invisible from the outside. "We know we're a landmark but not many other people do," Balatico said.

Attaining the historic-site listing put some restrictions on developers bidding for the project.

Jeff Arce, partner and chief financial officer of the MacNaughton Group, said, "We embraced it as being part of the community there. We like the mix. It's a relatively quiet use, an attractive use, and it creates a sense of history within the property."

He said the church has a long-term lease for the property. Nearby will be a 55,000-square-foot, two-story office building to house support services for Navy personnel, including a deployment and shipping office, family counseling service and travel agency.

The $20 million development will include 30,000 square feet of retail space for shops and restaurants that will be for Navy families, as well as "a place the church family can enjoy," Arce said.

Better than the roads that now surround the church building, there will be "a grassy lawn, a parklike setting" between the church and office building, he said. The drop-off area for the preschool attached to the church will be improved. "We are trying to make it kind of a neighborhood," Arce said.

Moanalua Community Church members are starting to spread the news.

» Lacanienta-Contreras described the new hope in a presentation at the June statewide Aha Pae'aina conference of the United Church of Christ denomination. The Moanalua youth group was showcased at convention worship services.

» The 120 other churches in the Hawaii conference can expect to be on the mailing list when the church's newsletter, the Window, gets rolling.

» The curbside sign will be jazzed up, proclaiming the people's goal to "Reach Up! Reach In! Reach Out!" and listing the other congregations meeting under the roof.

» The church will seek financial help from the national denomination's development and renewal ministry, and apply for grants to spruce up the aging structure and stimulate programs. Sadly, Moanalua received an $80,000 grant through the federal faith-based initiative program but had to give it up because, with uncertainty about closing, it could not fulfill the requirement to present a three-year plan.

The church hired its first-ever paid office manager, Joel DelaCruz, who will make it possible to have the door open throughout the week. The 80-child preschool -- formerly subsidized by the church and now run by Kamaaina Kids -- and a new contract with a wedding business will help pay the lease rent, said Fukunaga.

A committee is getting organized to begin a search for a permanent pastor.

Even when the congregation was faced with losing its home, one program that did not fade was the Bread Ministry, which feeds the homeless. Every day at 5 a.m., Moanalua Community Church volunteers arrive in a van at the Kaneohe Safeway store to pick up all baked goods that have reached the shelf pull date. They take the food to the Institute for Human Services six days a week. On Sunday, church members take the bread, cake, bagels and donuts to care homes, low-income senior housing and homeless people in the area.

Lacanienta-Contreras said she hopes they will revive the Women in Transition program, in which the church collaborated with Central Union Church and an agency teaching computer and other office skills. The project to help women moving on from prison, homelessness or abusive situations to employment required hands-on volunteer dedication to provide transportation and child care.

"The only reason MCC is still standing is because of the community that protected and maintained it," said Lacanienta-Contreras. "It's not just about keeping the structural, physical aspects, but the church being alive and a part of community. Historically the church has been known to serve this community. For me that's the most important aspect."

Fukunaga said, "That's the story from the Bible: Out of brokenness comes healing. A seed leads to new life."