by admin | Apr 8, 2020 | News
A Special Online Worship Service
Easter Sunday
April 12, 2020
__________________
Join us on Sunday for:
† Special Hula by RoseTatiana Warken Ceballos
(Accompanied by Dr. Douglas Duvauchelle)
† Easter Message by Kahu Alan Akana
† Sing-along with Easter Hymns
† Reading of the Easter Story
† Music by Kathleen Dahill
(Performed by Our Church Choir)
† Prayers of the People
† Sharing Our Joy!
You can find the link on Sunday morning
right here on our website.
You can also go directly to our YouTube Channel
to watch Sunday’s service and
most of our past worship services.
_________________________________________________
CHURCH OUTREACH PROJECT
Making “Comfort Masks” for KVMH
Our faithful volunteers continue to make face masks for Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital (KVMH). These are masks worn by their employees who are not working with critical care or coronavirus patients. In order to meet this goal, we still need lots of help. If you can help, please contact Cathy Evans (volunteer coordinator).
We will use a very simple pattern: two pieces of cotton fabric (9” x 6”), and 2 pieces of 1/4″ or 1/8″ elastic (7” each). The instructions are on this video on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tBg0Os5FWQ&feature=emb_title
If you are interested in this project, please do the following:
- Let Cathy know if you will sew masks and if you need fabric and elastic: [email protected]. Prayers and Squares has extra fabric which you can pick up at an agreed upon time and location between you and Cathy.
- Enlist/encourage people you know to sew these masks. In order to meet this goal, we need others to help. Please let Cathy know the person’s name, phone # and email address.
- When people are ready to deliver completed masks, contact Cathy.
- REALLY IMPORTANT: Please look in your stash of sewing supplies (AND ask your friends) to donate to this project 1/4“ or 1/8” elastic. This is an item that is in short supply and lately unavailable available in stores!
- MORE IMPORTANT: Pray! This is something we all can do! Pray to heal those who have COVID-19 and to protect those who do not have it. Pray to reach out to meet the needs of the people around us during this pandemic. Pray we can meet the need for these comfort masks. Pray to give us all hope, joy and peace.
_________________________________________________
STEWARDSHIP MESSAGE
Our Stewardship Committee asks each person to prayerfully consider giving as much as you are able so that our church can continue to carry on our important mission and get through the next couple of months by fulfilling all of our financial commitments. As always, checks may be mailed to the church: P.O. Box 536, Koloa, HI 96756. All gifts are greatly appreciated!
Sincerely,
Bill Dressel, Stewardship Chair
_________________________________________________
LECTIONARY READINGS FOR THE WEEK
During challenging times, reading the Bible on a daily basis is a great source of inspiration and hope. I encourage you to read and meditate upon the Scriptures of the Revised Common Lectionary and ask yourself how God might be showing up in the Scriptures for you, what God might be saying to you, and what guidance you might find as you share God’s love in creative and meaningful ways.
—Kahu Alan Akana
Each week Christians throughout the world read biblical passages from the Revised Common Lectionary, including the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament, and Gospels. After three years, a good portion of the Bible is included and the cycle begins again. RCL passages are often read in church worship services, and Kahu Akana usually includes at least one of them on the following Sunday. This week’s readings areActs 10:34-43; Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18; Matthew 28:1-10.
__________________________________
“Weekly News of the Church” is provided by Koloa Union Church, an Open and Affirming (ONA) Congregation of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a member of the Kauai Association and Hawaii Conference. Please contact the church office if you would like to have our weekly news sent directly to your inbox. Join us at 3289 Poipu Road in Koloa!
by admin | Apr 8, 2020 | Message from Kahu
“Save Us”
A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,
and others cut branches from the trees
and spread them on the road.
The crowds that went ahead of him and
that followed were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
(Matthew 21:8-9)
In my message on Palm Sunday, I talked about what was going on as Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey while people shouted “hosanna.” That word comes from the Hebrew word which means “save us now,” or “save us, we pray.” As Jesus moved toward the temple, the symbolism would not have been lost on Matthew’s first readers. The temple held the power in the land—not just religious power, but political and economic power as well. Those who were leaders in the temple were servants of Rome. This is significant, as Warren Carter explains in his book Matthew and Empire, because Matthew’s Gospel presents Jesus as the courageous and clearly-focused man who squarely looks at the authority of the Roman Empire and cries out a resounding “no” to all that it stands for—including its underlying values and privileges, its politics and its economic structures—and then presents an alternative vision for the world. According to Rome, there were certain people who mattered and others who were expendable. Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, we see Jesus proclaiming that everyone matters.
Matthew is suggesting that Jesus was there to save people from the empire, including its values, structures, and the false assumption that some people matter and others do not. Furthermore, as Jesus enters the temple (according to Matthew, the first thing Jesus does when he dismounts the donkey), he overturns tables and casts out those participating in an unjust economy. He does this to make room for those for whom the temple was built: those who wish to pray, those who want to see, those desiring to be healed and made whole.
The story of Palm Sunday is a radical political challenge to empires who act as if some people do not matter. It is also a challenge to religious institutions who go along with such empires. The story is a call to act as if everyone matters. May we challenge all such empires and their assumption that some people matter and others do not, and that some people are more important than others.
During these strange days of isolation and sheltering in place, please know that you matter to God. I invite you to let someone know today that they matter too. You can do this with your words and your actions.
I invite you to view the video of Sunday’s worship service to learn more.
I look forward to our next online worship service on Easter Sunday!
Aloha nui!
Kahu Alan Akana
__________________________________________
“A Message from Kahu Alan Akana” is provided most weeks by Koloa Union Church, an Open & Affirming (ONA) congregation of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a member of the Kauai Association and Hawaii Conference.
To see a video of a recent message by Kahu Akana, click HERE. You may see the Koloa Union Church YouTube channel to see many of his past messages and subscribe in order be notified when a new message is posted. Please share these videos with friends and invite them to church. Please feel free to “Like” any of the videos you see and share them on social media, such as Facebook, so that others will notice them.
You are welcome to join us on Sunday mornings! To see our Sunday morning schedule, click HERE.
Kahu Akana is also an accomplished artist! He specializes in creating vibrant watercolors of the flowers of Hawaii and hosts a Sunday afternoon reception in a gallery at his home, the Smith Memorial Parsonage. He also meets visitors by appointment. Most of the profit from the sales go for the maintenance and upkeep of the parsonage. To see a video about his art and gallery, click HERE. To see the gallery website, click HERE.
by admin | Apr 8, 2020 | Newsletter
April newsletter PDF2
by admin | Apr 5, 2020 | News
A Special Online Worship Service
Sunday, April 5, 2020
__________________
Join us on Sunday for:
† A Special Message by Kahu Alan Akana
† Music by Kathleen Dahill & Chris Sweitzer
† Scripture Readings by Our Keiki
† Prayers of the People
________________
Click
HERE
To Watch!
_________________________________________________
STEWARDSHIP MESSAGE
Our Stewardship Committee asks each person to prayerfully consider giving as much as you are able so that our church can continue to carry on our important mission and get through the next couple of months by fulfilling all of our financial commitments. As always, checks may be mailed to the church: P.O. Box 536, Koloa, HI 96756. All gifts are greatly appreciated!
Sincerely,
Bill Dressel, Stewardship Chair
_________________________________________________
LECTIONARY READINGS FOR THE WEEK
During challenging times, reading the Bible on a daily basis is a great source of inspiration and hope. I encourage you to read and meditate upon the Scriptures of the Revised Common Lectionary and ask yourself how God might be showing up in the Scriptures for you, what God might be saying to you, and what guidance you might find as you share God’s love in creative and meaningful ways.
—Kahu Alan Akana
Each week Christians throughout the world read biblical passages from the Revised Common Lectionary, including the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament, and Gospels. After three years, a good portion of the Bible is included and the cycle begins again. RCL passages are often read in church worship services, and Kahu Akana usually includes at least one of them on the following Sunday. This week’s readings are Psalm 118:1-29; Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-10; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66; Matthew 27:11-54.
__________________________________
“Weekly News of the Church” is provided by Koloa Union Church, an Open and Affirming (ONA) Congregation of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a member of the Kauai Association and Hawaii Conference. Please contact the church office if you would like to have our weekly news sent directly to your inbox. Join us at 3289 Poipu Road in Koloa!
by admin | Apr 5, 2020 | Message from Kahu
“Honoring the Missionaries”
“I shall cause breath to enter you,
and you shall live.”
(Ezekiel 37:5)
It was on this week 200 years ago that the first Christian missionaries landed in Hawaii. By the end of the year, there were mission stations in Kailua-Kona, Honolulu, and Waimea (Kauai). They arrived during a time of novel viruses and horrific epidemics. In the short span of just over 40 years before their arrival on March 30, 1820, the population of Hawaiian people had decreased by more than a half. By the end of the century, the population of Hawaiians was only 5-10 percent what it had been when Captain James Cook arrived in 1778.
In my online message this past week, I talked about the book I wrote, The Volcano Is Our Home: Nine Generations of a Hawaiian Family on Kilauea Volcano, which tells the story of the Hawaii from 1756 to modern day through the eyes of my Hawaiian ancestors and family. Throughout my research for the book, I tried to constantly imagine what it would be like to have so many people die in these islands. In my writing, I tried to put myself in the shoes of my ancestors who survived dreadful decades of epidemics—one after another for over 100 years.
The example of many of the missionaries of the time gave me hope—especially the doctors. In my research for my book and in the reading I have done since moving back to Hawaii in 2014, I have been greatly inspired by the physicians and their wives who left comfortable lives and promising careers in the United States to sail to a small group of islands half way around the world. While often living in uncomfortable conditions, they served the Hawaiian people and never gave up hope in saving them from extinction.
I’ve been reading the book, 9 Doctors and God. It tells the story of the nine missionary doctors who arrived in Hawaii between 1820 and 1849. Some of those physicians went above and beyond the call of duty in order to bring sick people to health and keep epidemics at bay. They also excelled in other areas. In my message I mentioned three in particular: Dr. Thomas Holman, Rev. Dr. Thomas Lafon, and Dr. James Smith. The last two served the church right here in Kōloa! I found that we could all learn so much from them, including how to live with purpose and hope during an epidemic.
- We can have compassion for the whole person and address spiritual and physical needs—and social and emotional too!
- We can take epidemics seriously and we can be smart about them. We who follow Jesus listen to the experts. We pay attention to those who know what they are talking about—and we follow their advice.
- We can pay attention to the social issues of our day and speak out against injustice.
- We can hold onto hope—even in the midst of fear, anxiety, emotional pain, and horrible epidemics.
I invite you to view the video of Sunday’s worship service to learn more.
I look forward to our next online worship service on Palm Sunday!
Aloha nui!
Kahu Alan Akana
__________________________________________
“A Message from Kahu Alan Akana” is provided most weeks by Koloa Union Church, an Open & Affirming (ONA) congregation of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a member of the Kauai Association and Hawaii Conference.
To see a video of a recent message by Kahu Akana, click HERE. You may see the Koloa Union Church YouTube channel to see many of his past messages and subscribe in order be notified when a new message is posted. Please share these videos with friends and invite them to church. Please feel free to “Like” any of the videos you see and share them on social media, such as Facebook, so that others will notice them.
You are welcome to join us on Sunday mornings! To see our Sunday morning schedule, click HERE.
Kahu Akana is also an accomplished artist! He specializes in creating vibrant watercolors of the flowers of Hawaii and hosts a Sunday afternoon reception in a gallery at his home, the Smith Memorial Parsonage. He also meets visitors by appointment. Most of the profit from the sales go for the maintenance and upkeep of the parsonage. To see a video about his art and gallery, click HERE. To see the gallery website, click HERE.
Recent Comments