A NEW SENIOR KAHU
Kahu Curtis Kekuna posed with Deacon Patricia Warren yesterday just before holding service and being voted in by the congregation as the new senior kahu of Kawaiaha'o Church.
Pastor’s debut
Curtis Kekuna heads
Kawaiaha'o Church
A man who has worked for 35 years in ministry to youth was elected yesterday to head Hawaii's oldest Christian church.
Kawaiaha'o Church members chose the Rev. Curtis Kekuna for the senior pastor position, which has been vacant since 2001.
The Rev. Curtis Kekuna
Age: 56Education: Kamehameha Schools and Whitworth College (Spokane, Wash.)
Recent experience: Senior chaplain, Kamehameha's Big Island campus
Family: Married to Rebecca Kekuna for 33 years. They have three daughters.
Kekuna, 56, has worked in chaplaincy positions with the Kamehameha Schools since 1980 and has been senior chaplain at the school's Big Island campus for the last year. He is a 1966 Kamehameha graduate.
He has been active with Young Life International, a Colorado-based Christian outreach to youth, since his college days at Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash. He established Young Life Hawaii when he returned to Hawaii in 1973 after graduating with a master's degree in youth ministry from Fuller Theological Seminary in California. He was full-time director of the Hawaii organization until five years ago.
"Much of that work was to reach people who didn't have a faith," said Kekuna. "Here we will work to increase the faith of people ... so they will love Christ more today than they did yesterday."
He brought a lively evangelical style to the service yesterday, calling for responses from the crowd and using anecdotes and humor as well as scriptural quotations.
"We are in for a change," said former moderator Frank Pestana. The church was served for more than 40 years by the Rev. Abraham Akaka and the Rev. William Kaina, whose traditional style was described by Pestana as "we listen, he talks."
Kahu Curtis Kekuna prayed yesterday during Ho'okupu at the 9 a.m. service at Kawaiaha'o Church.
Kekuna said Young Life International "trained me different from the United Church of Christ tradition. I want to be a dispenser of God's word. I don't want people to be listening so hard to words that they miss what God is trying to say to them."
"We have some young people, we would like to reach out to more," said usher Ross Wong. "I'm impressed with his youth ministry and with his person. He's a steadfast Christian."
Some 106 of the 117 people who signed in to vote after yesterday's service voted for Kekuna.
The 600-member church has been involved in a search for pastor for much of the last seven years. A two-year search to replace Kaina led to selection of the Rev. James Fung, who returned to Connecticut in 2001 after less than two years in service. Last year, the nominee recommended by the search committee, the Rev. Kaleo Patterson, failed to win the two-thirds majority vote required in the bylaws.
Kawaiaha'o's Hawaiian identity is important to members of the church, which was built by the first Congregational missionaries and attended by the alii. But in its years of seeking a pastor, members eased up on the bylaw requirement that he be fluent in the Hawaiian language.
"The priority is worship here. We practice our culture in the way we worship," Kekuna said. "While we embrace our culture, we do not leave others out."
He said he is not fluent in the language, but continues to study it.
"Kahu (Abraham) Akaka was my first exposure to a Christian minister," he recalled of a time when Akaka was on Maui, where Kekuna's family lived. His family attended Kawaiaha'o when they moved to Oahu two years later.
He said he is aware of "gaps" in the Kawaiaha'o membership and wants to reach teenagers and young adults.
"He is the perfect selection," said Peter Galuteria, whose friendship dates back to the day when Kekuna, as a seventh-grader, entered a Kawaiaha'o Christian education class taught by Galuteria. "We had a contest memorizing scriptural passages, and he won," Galuteria said. "The prize was a Bible and he still has it today."
