Kalihi church celebrates a century of outreach

Kalihi Union Church rose from the destruction of Hono­lulu’s Great Chinatown Fire of 1900, which wiped out the bubonic plague as intended and took with it the rat-infested squalor where early immigrants lived when it burned out of control.

Many of the immigrants who fled the flames with little but the clothes on their backs found desperately needed help in Kalihi from the Rev. Horace Chamberlain. Under the Hawaiian Board of Missions, the Kalihi Settlement grew out of his hard work and soft heart.

The settlement house eventually developed into the Kalihi Union Church in 1913, with the merging of Palama Chapel and Kalihi Moanalua Church, according to state archives.

Kalihi Union is inviting the public to celebrate its 100th anniversary with a weekend of free festivities Aug. 23-25, including a luau, music and fun fair.

Today the multi-ethnic congregation of 500 is part of the Evangelical Free Church of America, switching from the Oahu Association of Congregational Churches in 1994 over doctrinal differences. KUC’s focus has long been on the surrounding neighborhood, providing activities for youth, and offering a Bible school from which many a Sunday school teacher in Hawaii was certified, said Vernon Von, co-chairman of the centennial committee.

Ministries include preschool, Boy Scouts, summer fun, clubs for seniors and Japa­nese native speakers, sign language, hula, partnerships with the Hawaii Foodbank and the Hawaii Juvenile Detention Home, and more. Services are also offered in Japa­nese and Korean, and global outreach rounds out the agenda.

Ada Lum, who joined Kalihi Union Church in 1935 when she was 9, said, "When I was growing up, I remember the youth minister taught a bunch of us girls how to play basketball and volleyball."

Lum, a Bible teacher, author and missionary, said small-group Bible studies were provided.

"To me that was very, very important," she said. "I realize how formative they were. I didn’t come from a Christian family, and everything (about Christianity) was new and fascinating to me. The prominent thing I remember is the Sunday school teachers were so cheerful, very loving."

Lum said most of the kids were Japa­nese and Chinese, with a sprinkling of Koreans, whose parents were immigrants like hers and didn’t have a formal religion.

The church’s Hawaii Bible Training School, formed in 1904, grew to the point where it enrolled 500 students under the Rev. Paul "Papa" Waterhouse in the 1930s and ’40s, she said.

"Papa Waterhouse was a great evangelist, a good one for drawing in people," Lum added.

Marion Von, co-chairwoman of the centennial committee, said KUC’s original sanctuary was the old Kalihi Settlement building that was moved to the current property at 2214 N. King St. and renovated by 1909.

"It was used as the first sanctuary until a new two-story church building was completed in 1917. From 1917 until 1957 the older building was used as a gym for the young people," she said.

Vernon and Marion Von started going to KUC when they were high school sweethearts, attending Bible school and joining the popular youth choir. He played basketball and other sports with longtime member Robert Yuen, a middle-schooler in 1947 when he first joined KUC.

Yuen remembered playing basketball in the gym, where the pliant walls of the original wooden sanctuary offered an unusual advantage to the team. Players learned to break their falls by running into its walls after they drove to the basket.

"You could never beat a Kalihi team back then," he said. "Thank God those walls weren’t made of solid concrete."

Yuen originally went to the church just to hang out with other kids, but he found a valuable mentor in the late Tsu­tomu "Tomu" Naka­mura, the resident maintenance man.

"He took these kids under his wing and kept them out of trouble, and that’s where I kept out of trouble," Yuen said. "Tomu taught us how to grow vegetables in his yard on the church campus. He taught us a little bit abut carpentry and a little about just about everything."

They helped repair windows, Yuen said, and helped with other odd jobs.

Yuen didn’t object to attending Bible classes at 8 a.m. every Sunday for four years before church began because of the camaraderie of singing in the choir, especially in the company of a girl who would become his wife.

Dottie Yuen said, "I was from a private school, so there (at KUC) I met a lot of friends from different schools. One of them was Marion (Von), so we’ve been friends for over 50 years. It was a combination of learning about God together and fellowshipping with one another, and sharing our lives with people we never knew before."

Yuen said she came to KUC at "a low point in my life when I needed the loving support of a church, something to hang on to."

Music and choir director Robert Carbaugh provided the mentorship.

"I learned how to serve through him," she recalled.

Over 23 years she taught music to 216 kids who went through the children’s choir program, and is now directing the handbell choir.

"It’s been a love for me and Kalihi and the music program," Yuen said.

The Rev. Jonathan Steeper, senior pastor the last two years, said, "Kalihi has always been home to me … a spiritual home." His parents, William and Elizabeth Steeper, served in the 1950s and ’80s, between living in Canada. His mother, "Libby" Steeper, has arrived early to celebrate the centennial.

"This has always been a place you can find radically different people in their passion for the Lord and their willingness to step out. … God has chosen to raise up people who didn’t have a lot to offer, other than the Lord," he said, citing the church’s ministries to ex-convicts, immigrants and broken families and its 100 years of reaching out to the poor.

"That’s who we are. That’s how we started and that’s how we’ve continued. Through my parents, and living in shadows of these other spiritual giants (the longtime members), the spirit has been passed down to me — the aloha of Jesus."

It’s not just an attitude of acceptance, it’s a matter of identity, Steeper said.

"Our people are ordinary and often people who are not offering a lot to the world, but who have been touched and changed by Jesus," he said. "What’s exciting is to see people when their lives are completely changed. God has offered a lot to us and made us something."