Kawaiaha'o losing its minister

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

The pastor of Kawaiaha'o church told worshippers yesterday he will resign after only 18 months.

James Fung said there was "too big a gap between who I am and where I sense this church wants to be going." Advertiser library photo • Feb. 28, 2000

Fung said it will take a while for the church to organize a search for a successor, and that he will pray and talk with members about the kind of church they want Kawaiaha'o to become, and the kind of minister who can help the church achieve that goal.

Fung said there were no negative reasons for his departure, but that he had realized the "Western" style of ministering he developed during 35 years on the Mainland was "not the best fit" for a church so steeped in tradition that ministers must be able to speak Hawaiian.

He said he wished the missionaries who founded Kawaiaha'o in 1820 had been as aware of differences between their view of religion and the spiritual life of Hawaiians.

"It was as if you thought someone had hired you to do brain surgery and you found out they wanted coronary care," Fung said after yesterday's service.

There was "too big a gap between who I am and where I sense this church wants to be going."

Fung acknowledged that Kawaiaha'o faces many "challenges," but adamantly refused to discuss any problems, including dissension he inherited and sought to end over the church's lucrative wedding ceremonies for Japanese tourists.

Fung, a graduate of Kamehameha Schools who was born and raised in Hawai'i, said he will return to New England.

He said he preached last Sunday at Center Congregational Church in Torrington, Conn., where he will become senior pastor Dec. 1.

The salary at Torrington will be less than he receives here, and the winters a lot colder, he said, but he felt that God was calling him back to New England as clearly as he had called him to Hawai'i.

Church leaders from Torrington told him several weeks ago they had searched New England and the continental United States in vain for a new pastor. Finally, they turned to the place from which famed early Hawaiian Christian Henry 'Opukaha'ia came to New England to live and study. 'Opukaha'ia is credited with being the first Hawaiian convert to Christianity and the inspiration for the missionary movement to Hawai'i.

Church member Ellen Gabonia, one of about 180 at the 8 a.m. service yesterday, said seeing Fung go will be "like losing a friend," and that she didn't understand the church situation behind it.

She said her children, ages 20 to 25, had returned to church because they "could understand and relate to his message."

Bank analyst Sheldon Kaleina-moku, 28, one of about 200 at the 10:30 a.m. service, said "I've always enjoyed his approach, more modernized than the one of the older kahus."

Visitor David Hanson of McCall, Idaho, attending with his wife, Alma, said his son had just left a NASA job to become a missionary in New Guinea, and that he sympathized with Fung for following his own spiritual path and with the church in letting him do so.

Fung said he would say nothing negative about the church he is leaving, because anything negative is overshadowed by positives. He said the church had given him far more than he had given it, and called on members to see both his arrival and departure as gifts from God to help Kawaiaha'o.

He said he believed he would have been an "OK" pastor at Kawaiaha'o, but he was convinced God intended him to be an "outstanding Hawaiian missionary" to the Christians of New England.

Fung was instrumental in persuading church leaders last December to settle a lawsuit brought by wedding promoter Mack Hamada after the church in 1996 ended Hamada's exclusive contract to provide deluxe and expensive nuptials at the church, mainly for Japanese nationals.

After his arrival in June 2000 from the Portage United Church of Christ in Michigan, Fung said Kawaiaha'o's Japanese wedding program was running smoothly and he saw no reason to change it. Kawaiaha'o's budget for 2001 is $1.4 million, with the majority of the revenue from weddings.

Prior to Fung's appointment as head of the 600-member congregation last year, Kawaiaha'o had been operating without a full-time pastor since the 1997 retirement of the Rev. William Ka'aina. Ka'aina had succeeded the legendary Kahu Abraham Akaka in 1984.

The Rev. Ron Ching served as interim pastor for six months before Fung arrived, but his contract was not renewed — upsetting some members who liked Ching's energetic and open style.