Imagine Church, based in Kakaako, attracts people turned off by traditional congregations

As a teenager, Kevin Sweeney began searching for truth, or at least a sifting aimed at separating what is real from what is phony.

After about a year in that pursuit, at age 18, an existential crisis led him to Jesus.

These days, Sweeney, now 31, serves as pastor of Imagine Church in Kakaako.

Most of Imagine’s 60 to 75 regulars are millennials, although there are a handful of baby boomers.

In 2013, Sweeney and his wife, Christine, a marriage and family therapist who assists him with the church, launched their dream of starting a congregation that would be “woven into the cultural fabric of the neighborhood” taking shape in the Kakaako district.

Sweeney said, “I saw the cultural energy of Kakaako — the artists and small businesses” springing up. “The neighborhood is driven by young millennials, entrepreneurs, the creatives.”

Imagine meets in a multipurpose warehouse, Kaka‘ako Agora, at 441 Cooke St. for 6:30 p.m. Sunday gatherings instead of a typical morning service. The neighborhood is often jumping on weekend evenings, with art and fashion shows, concerts and people going out to eat.

Many of Imagine’s members, like Sweeney, had either not grown up going to church or felt turned off by experiences there.

Citing the Barna Group, an evangelical Christian polling firm, and writings by Alan Hirsch, an Australian leader in the missional church movement, Sweeney said that the number of people who see themselves as “spiritual but not religious” is rising. These people are still searching for answers to life’s big questions but are often not finding the answers in conventional churches, he said.

“Imagine is for people who have nowhere else to go. Don’t come to Imagine because it’s a cool, new thing. I’m trying to create something real that has been driving me since I was a teenager. I am a person caring deeply about substance, so it’s for people searching for something real.”

Sweeney speaks in a sort of poetic prose peppered with terms like “communal threads” when describing how to live a fully connective life, and “consistent rhythms,” referring to the church’s regular gatherings.

“Creating is at the heart of spirituality,” said Sweeney, who likens his role of church pastor to design. “I am a community designer.”

Sweeney’s views on his faith are detailed in a just-released video, vimeo.com/182157569. He wrote the video’s script and also narrates.

In addition to its weekly gathering, Imagine holds events such as dinners at members’ homes twice a month and a “Storytellers Collective” at 6 p.m. on the second Wednesday of the month at BoxJelly, 307C Kamani St.

Sweeney dubs the collective sessions, during which participants may share confessions in a setting that’s nonjudgmental and safe, as an “AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) for everybody.”

“Storytelling is just where we learn to be honest,” which is essential to making deep connections with people and God, he said.

Sweeney spends most of his work days at BoxJelly, a co-working space that is also used for meetings and events.

Another collective effort that Imagine is tied to is called “Guerrilla Grace.” Sweeney describes it as “artists and creatives passionate about disrupting this cultural slumber and waking people up to life, God and grace through street-level guerrilla poetry and street-art installations.”

A graduate of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., Sweeney said he embraces an inclusive form of progressive evangelicalism. While his beliefs tied to hot-button topics like homosexuality may collide with those held by fundamentalist evangelicals, Sweeney said he honors the various roles others play in his spiritual journey because “it is flowing out of love and a desire to serve God.”

Imagine is connected with the V3 Church Planting Movement under the umbrella of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, but Sweeney has no connection to the Baptist church and doesn’t have to report to the board.

“I always saw Imagine as a church that grows up with the neighborhood … that also takes responsibility and helps create the future of this city as well,” he said.

“What’s happening here is not perfect by any means,” he said, acknowledging the number of high-rises going up juxtaposed with the homeless crowding sidewalks and parks.

Following Jesus’ example, “We begin on the margins, we don’t begin in the conference rooms. I begin with the homeless. Churches are supposed to be the conscience for the state and hold the powers-that-be accountable, and remind them not to forget about the vulnerable.”

On Monday nights, in partnership with the Honolulu Museum of Art, church members hold art classes for homeless kids in the nearby Next Step Shelter.