After six years of repairs and renovations, Hawaii’s oldest Christian church is holding a grand reopening of its sanctuary doors.
Mokuaikaua Church in Kailua-Kona is holding a three-day ho‘olaule‘a themed “E Ho‘i Mai! Return!”
The event begins Friday night and continues Saturday and Sunday to celebrate the sanctuary’s reopening, as well as the 205th anniversary of the historic house of worship.
“We are just so excited to be reopening after having gone through the earthquake and COVID and now, six years of restoration, to have the roof repaired and the cracks in the walls and the steeple, all that redone,” Anneke Ndecheck, the event coordinator, told the Tribune-Herald. “We have about 67 members, and in the past six years, it’s been a $6 million project, and we are ending debt-free. And that is largely due to all the incredible generosity from all our major donors and partners, Friends of Mokuaikaua, because we could not have done it alone.”
Mokuaikaua’s congregation was established by Christian missionaries in 1820, with the church building completed in 1837.
The historic lava rock and crushed-coral mortar structure with the 112-foot-tall steeple on Alii Drive was damaged in 2006 by a magnitude-6.7 earthquake on Oct. 15, 2006. The temblor, which is known as the Kiholo Bay Earthquake, cracked one of the church’s walls, but the congregation continued to worship in its sanctuary until termites caused church officials to call in an exterminator in 2019.
“He said, Kahu, the least of your problems are the termites,” recalled The Rev. David de Carvalho, a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, native and the church’s pastor, who with wife Kim has led the congregation since May 2011. “You need to look at some of the destruction that has happened. So I followed him and he showed me. There was termite damage, there was dry rot. There were pieces that were missing of the structure.
“So he said you’d better call a structural engineer and have him evaluate the structure for you. So we brought in a structural engineer, and he confirmed that we had to do something or we would lose the building if there was another earthquake like the one we had, or a big hurricane.”
Ndecheck said the church held its services outside “where we normally drink our coffee,” and attrition during the closure as well as COVID lockdown has left the church — where kings have worshipped, starting with Kamehameha II — with 67 members.
Despite the reduced membership, the community — the world community — came forward with the $6 million necessary to complete the repairs and renovations to the structure.
According to de Carvalho, because the building is on Hawaii’s Register of Historic Places, the project plan was a restoration rather than a remodel.
“Basically, we tried to just replace everything that was there. We tried to put everything together as it was before,” he said. “There are a few things, like the platform in the front, that is extended a little bit. And a koa wall in the back, I didn’t put it back up. We left it open so people would have more of a view of our sanctuary. But everything else we did was to try to preserve what we had before.”
While the membership is only 67, the grand reopening is a free community event, and the church wants people beyond its congregation to attend.
“We can hold almost 500 in the sanctuary,” Ndecheck said. “We have a balcony seating area all the way around the sanctuary, so we can use that capacity when we have our Christmas service or Easter, and hopefully, for the celebration, we’ll need that capacity.
“We have very limited parking for our church members, but Tony Honda has offered us event parking for free. It’s a little bit of a walk but it’s close by. And there are 90-minute parking lots around town that are free for kamaaina. We expect people will attend for an hour or an hour-and-a half, and they should be able to find parking.”
Friday’s theme for the reopening is “Honoring the Past.” The festivities start at 5 p.m. with an opening ceremony at the birthplace of Kamehameha III in Keauhou and torch relay by runners from Mokuaikaua and sister churches, following the historic route via Kailua Pier where missionaries first arrived. They are scheduled to arrive at 6:30 p.m., with a 7 p.m. service themed “A Night to Remember.”
Saturday is “Celebrating the Present” with a 9 a.m. lei-untying ceremony with dignitaries present and prayers of dedication and blessing. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. is an open house offering sanctuary history tours, a bouncy house, face painting, hula workshops, lei making, and celebratory presentations. There’ll be a 6:30 p.m. service titled “Celebrate with us!”
On Sunday, worshippers are “Believing for the Future,” with a celebratory bell ringing from 9:30 to 10 a.m., a 10 a.m. service titled “From Mokuaikaua to the Nations,” and coffee and refreshments from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The clergyman echoed Ndecheck’s excitement about reopening.
“It feels amazing, just like going home,” de Carvalho said. “We had a great time outside, too. I don’t feel it was detrimental to the congregation. It was different. But we definitely love to be back inside of such a special place.
“You feel connected to the worship of the kings and queens. You feel connected to history. It is such an amazing experience.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.