Akaka asked young Kekuna and another youth to help with the Christmas Eve service one year, and the simple experience of lighting the Christmas candles became a life-changing event for the 10-year-old, Kekuna recalled.

"I was just awestruck that here is the Lord's birth, and on the eve service the pastor asked these two kids. I just never saw myself as having any part to do with the service," Kekuna said. "From that moment on, I just wanted to serve God."

As he grew, Kekuna said he was determined to explore the world, and drifted away from the church at times. But he always

returned, and last week he was voted senior pastor of 162-year-old Kawaiaha'o Church, one of the most prestigious church jobs in Hawai'i.

The voting ended a 14-month search for a new leader for the historic church sometimes called the "Westminster Abbey of the Pacific."

Kekuna's father, a full-blooded Hawaiian, was station manager for Hawaiian Airlines before starting a hearing-aid business. He also sold real estate. His mother, a full-blooded Chinese, worked various jobs over the years and became a real-estate broker later in life.

The couple made sure Kekuna and his three sisters were exposed to the church. When the family moved to Honolulu, they began to attend Kawaiaha'o Church, where Akaka had become the senior pastor.

Kekuna said his attendance at Kawaiaha'o was "sporadic" in high school. But after graduating from Kamehameha Schools in 1966, he attended Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash., a Christian college.

To this day, he isn't sure why he selected Whitworth.

"I needed to go there," he said. "I really believe God led me there, and my faith was once again affected, and in my college years I began to understand my relationship with this savior we call Jesus Christ," he said.

The campus was deeply divided over the Vietnam War, and Kekuna said he "supported my country. I believe in being part of a country. We reap the benefits here — therefore we should support our country."

He was nearly drafted after graduating in 1970, and planned to become a medic or assume a noncombat role because his faith would not allow him to kill at war. At the last minute, he failed the physical because of a back condition.

Kekuna has mixed feelings about the war in Iraq. "My own stance politically is I'm not going to take a stance, because I don't think it's fair politically to influence your congregation" unless the issue is clear cut, he said.

"I'm in the same boat I was 30 years ago. I support my country, but at the same time I'd like to get out of there," he said. "We didn't find weapons of mass destruction, but we did find thousands of graves, and from that standpoint — from a humanitarian standpoint — what we did was right."

After his near-miss with the draft, Kekuna went to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., from 1970 to 1973. There, Kekuna polished his preaching style, and "ever since then I've been preaching — churches, camps, it doesn't matter where."

"I love to talk about Christ, so if you want to call that preaching, that's fine, I preach all the time," Kekuna said. "As soon as I met Christ, my life was changed dramatically, and I started witnessing more, and that's when my preaching career began."

Kekuna was active with Young Life International, a national Christian outreach program for youth, and he established Young Life Hawai'i when he returned to Hawai'i in 1973. He was full-time director of the organization until 1999.

He also worked part-time for Kamehameha Schools for many years as dorm adviser, sports chaplain, assistant to the chaplain, and most recently as senior chaplain at the Kea'au campus on the Big Island.

•	"I love to talk about Christ, so if you want to call that preaching, that's fine, I preach all the time." — Curtis kekuna | New senior pastor at Kawaiaha'o Church

"That definitely convinced me I never wanted to be in a place like that again," he said. "However, I can enhance what I'm saying with real-life experiences. That's what I try to do, because I want people to understand that all kahus are normal people, and before I committed myself to following Christ, I was a very rascal kid, as many of us are."

Kekuna, 56, has been married almost 33 years to Rebecca Jean. They have three grown daughters.

Kekuna has spent the past week packing for the move back to O'ahu, and said he hopes to draw more adults in their 20s and 30s to Kawaiaha'o.

"I definitely want to see a youth ministry that's vibrant, growing and even affecting the community with their own faith in Christ through missions, through serving other churches, through gaining education to further their faith," he said.

"I want Kawaiaha'o to know that I'm there because of Jesus, and it's a very humbling task that God has called me to, but I feel called by God to do that. I'm there to serve them, to love them, and I want them to know I'm available and I'm there for the people of God."