Apologia Kauai - Paradise. Redeemed.

The Gospel of the Kingdom is that we come into a culture, a society, a tribe with the message of Christ's authority and what He's done. And we're calling people to now come to this risen Savior who is ascended and seated on His throne, who is the King of Kings.

We're calling them to come to Him in repentance and faith and to submit to Him, to come to Him humbly and to come under His rule. Which means that, let's say for example, a Christian church comes into an area like Kauai.

I believe that if the Gospel is clearly communicated here, the Spirit of God is mighty enough to convert people, and I believe this with all my heart, that when the Gospel has penetrated a place like Kauai, I believe that that society should look different.

It should look different when Christians have been there. It should look different when they are converted to Christ. They should be transformed and renewed and changed. Things should be different. So we have a vision for this street, this main street, of even businesses owned by people in the church where we communicate with the community through even the businesses we own.

And we bring glory to God through the best possible business that the community sees and they know, oh, all those businesses owned by people from Apologia Church, and those people are great, they love God, and that's a way we can communicate with people in the community is just through those sorts of things.

What comes into a place like Kauai, the small place and community that it is, is the message of the Gospel. It transforms hearts and minds. People are reconciled to God and that changes everything. Yeah, it does change how they do business.

Now they do business to the glory of God. I believe that if you're a business owner and you're a Christian, people should walk into your business and it's impossible for them to walk out and be an atheist because everything is so amazing.

Everything is done to the glory of God. Whatever you do in word or in deed, do to the glory of God. And I believe that Christian business owners should be a light for the Gospel in any community. You should walk into a town like Kapa 'a after it's been affected by the Gospel and every tourist that comes in there knows something's different about this town.

These people do business different because they're Christians. You know, one of the failures that I think a lot of missionaries had in this island and islands like this in particular is trying to go and to change the culture by like making them dress a certain way, listen to a certain type of music, you know, even like not use their old language.

But that's not the Gospel. The Gospel is about Christ, about what He accomplished for salvation. And cultures, peoples, nations, tongues, languages come to Jesus with all their differences, all their cultural background, all different languages to come serve the one King.

And so they throw away their idolatry, but they're allowed to maintain their cultural essence or who they are as a people under the feet of Jesus. You're not coming to an island like this trying to make them become Westerners, right?

Like conservative Christian Westerners, dress a certain way, listen to a certain type of music, whatever. You're coming to an island like this to obliterate the idolatry, to bring people to Jesus. And those people that love Jesus begin to love Jesus within the bounds of their own culture and distinctives.

And so when you do come, it's not about making them into Westerners, it's about making them follow Jesus and throw away their idols and all their false religion to come to worship the true Christ with true religion.

My name is David Tamaoka. I'm 35 years old. Could you tell? I'm married, I have four kids. My mom's family is from Kauai. My grandmother and grandfather moved from the Philippines to work in the sugarcane industry in Kauai.

And so that's how God sovereignly moved our family here.

How did you hear about Apology?

Mainly through a podcast, one of my buddies told me, hey, listen to this. You might like it. And so, yeah, I followed the link and found you guys. And I've been listening for not very long, actually, maybe about six months or so.

Yeah. And just really enjoyed the content. Sometimes it's challenging stuff to listen to. So in Hawaii, we're like not as, don't take this the wrong way. We're not as confrontational. See how that came out?

So the style is like, is a little bit punchy, but encouraging and challenging in that respect. I do know that there's some resentment from the Hawaiian community towards America because of historically how the U .S. government basically stole the land.

This night, a most significant presidential apology. At the White House yesterday, President Clinton signed a formal letter of apology to the people of Hawaii. He was apologizing on behalf of the U .S. government for the government's involvement a hundred years ago in removing the independent Hawaiian monarchy by force.

There is a deep-seated, long-standing hostility towards Christian missionaries on this island with the natives because of the inconsistent witness of Christians in the past and the devastating things that happened to their culture as a result of Christians coming here.

And this is important.

This is the reality. Native Hawaiians represent nearly half of all those in prison and make up 30 percent of the homeless population. They are the poorest, least educated, and unhealthiest of any ethnic group in the state.

Now they are saying, enough. Sovereignty now.

You know, one of the things people often think is that Hawaiian independence or sovereignty activists are absolutely opposed to Christianity, that they teach a history that says Christianity is one of the worst things that ever happened to Hawaii.

I've actually heard that.

What has happened is that the Christian church, of course, has been very prominent in Hawaiian society since the missionaries arrived and the Great Awakening and these types of things. In fact, the laws of the Hawaiian kingdom are all based on Christian principles.

One of the other things in the 1840 Constitution says no laws of this kingdom shall be at variance with the laws of Jehovah God.

From a Christian's perspective, a local Christian's perspective, the hard thing is a lot of the missionaries and the missionaries' children were involved in that takeover. I think there needed to be some reconciliation with the church and the Native Hawaiians.

We're not coming with the message of the gospel to change their culture, except the elements of the culture that represent simple idolatry. The failures have been in typical evangelical missions coming from, say, America.

We go to Africa. We go to Papua New Guinea. We go to some place that has never heard of Jesus. We go there and we try to transplant Western American culture and values. We're going to go there and make you dress like us, dance like us, sing like us, look like us, and that's Christianity.

But that's not how the gospel works. The gospel goes into all these different cultures with tribes, tongues, languages, men of every tribe and people, and it looks different in every place because the people look different, but the gospel message is the same.

You're going to change their government, their education, their media, the way they do business, but yet they're still going to retain a culture that's theirs?

Yeah.

Yeah. They're going to retain their identity. See, that's the glorious thing about Jesus is, I mean, what do the gospels constantly talk about? The New Testament witness is that Jew and Gentile are brought together in one.

He has broken down the dividing wall. We are now one in Christ, but you're not the same person. You're different people, different colors, different backgrounds, all unified around the same king, and I think that that's beautiful.

I think it's beautiful. If every painting was the same shade, the same color, the same lines, all art would be extremely boring. But what makes art so beautiful is the different colors, the different lines, the different perspective, and that's what makes art so beautiful, and I do believe God is an artist, and I think it's one of the beautiful things about the Christian church and the kingdom of God is all the different colors, all the different shades, all the different lines, all the different smells, all the different shapes.

Everything is so different, but we're all unified under one king.

For me personally, I've never done anything this big in my life. To decide that I would pick up my family and move them 3 ,000 miles across the ocean to come and decide to do this is scary and exciting.

The fear is, yeah, can I do that? I know I can do that, but is God going to make me do that?

Is God going to make me do that? Let me just say this. This place is hard to plant a church in. It's hard because you're coming across 1 ,000 miles of ocean. It's hard because it's extremely expensive to live here.

Everything gets shipped here. People suffer here because it's so difficult to actually plant here because it's so expensive, it's pricey, and you have the culture of the island is a particular way, and you're coming into that culture, and you're expected to adapt to it.

There's so much that makes a mission in Kauai difficult, and I do believe that's why there's such a limited number of solid reform churches in Kauai because of that reason. It's actually very hard to plant a church here.

It's hard in other places too, but it's difficult here. It's not going down the street. It's not like you're coming to paradise, and it doesn't come with its difficulties and restraints. It comes with very, very difficult obstacles you have to find a way to overcome as a church.

Can God do it? Yes, He can, but the truth is, what Danny said, what we need to be ready for is the mundane, right? Here's the thing. You come to Kauai. God calls you here. You sit. You plant, and that's your home.

You're here, and you breathe deep, and you make breakfast for your kids, and you wash tissues. You make your bed, and you pay your house payment. You pay your bills, and you live life, and you go to the beach with your family, and you preach the gospel, and you suffer hardship, and you suffer loss, and you have great moments of joy, and you see conversions, and times where there's great resistance, and times where you think, is God even working?

But the point is, yes, you're going to face those days, and that's okay, because here's the thing. We're in it for the long run on this island. I mean, we're here to plant. We're here to preach the gospel, and I think it's important for us to at least hear this, that something I said in the very first day that I think all of us need to constantly be thinking about, coming here with the spirit of humility, and love, and saying, I recognize that I'm entering into your community.

This is your island. It's your culture. I'm a stranger here. I'm a stranger, but there's something else that needs to be understood about that. This is vitally important to get, that you could say, I'm coming to the island to preach the gospel of the King, to bring that whole island under the feet of Jesus, and someone could say this.

They could say, that is so arrogant. What do they say? Howley? Howley? Oh, that's, you know, you know it. You know, it's your way. You know it, and it might sound to somebody a bit arrogant to say, Jesus is the King.

He's putting this whole island under his feet, but the truth is, watch, it's not arrogant when you're sent by the King with the message of peace, and it's not arrogant when you're coming with a message from the King, who himself humbled himself, and lived among people, and sacrificed himself for others.

So what's, what is it? It's full authority. It's all boldness, but it's living like Jesus lived, among them, with them, eating with them, serving them, washing their feet. You keep that in mind, and there's no fear of, how do we balance evangelism here?

Someone might say, why Kauai? Why Kauai? Look at this. This is paradise. This is paradise. They might actually be tempted to say, I know the motivation. You want to go to Kauai because it's paradise, but the amazing thing is, when you come to this place, and you see the dramatic need for Jesus Christ on this island, and the gospel, all that goes away.

You recognize that the reason for coming to this island is because these people need the.

Gospel.

They're lost. They need Jesus. That's the truth.

But anyway, my name is Ben. Aloha, everybody. The question you said, I don't know. I've seen a lot of churches coming up. I've seen good ones. I've seen bad ones. The Hawaiians got all these false gods.

They were brought over when they came, the Asians came over, or so-called cousins, and they had one false god. And the Hawaiians that was settled here first, they felt a sense of only one god. They called it Iwo.

And that's like the one and only god. But, you know, into the missionaries came, and they found out what was the true god. That was that.

What was the name of the one god?

Iwo.

Iwo?

Yeah.

What they said, one god?

Yeah. Where was that place? One of the disciples went and got all the statues. Not statues, but all that. Yeah, and he came to this one altar saying, he asked, what is this? And he said, well, it's the one god.

The unknown god.

Yeah, the unknown god.

And there's such an open opportunity for a solid church to come in and bring the message of peace and reconciliation with God in an effective way, and to communicate it in a place where everybody is so interconnected.

We're not coming to Kauai to start a Bible study on a beach or in a basement in Kauai. We believe that when Jesus ascended, he said that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, and that we were therefore to go and disciple the nations, and to teach them to obey, to observe all that he had commanded us to do.

And so really, we believe that this is a perfect opportunity for the Christian church to come here to plant a solid reformed church that would clearly communicate the gospel and the biblical worldview in such a way that this island and a generation is brought under the feet of Jesus in every sphere, whether it be family, whether it be government, whether it be church, whatever it might be.

Businesses being done to the glory of God. Everything under the feet of Jesus. This is something that you can do here. It really can be done. So why isn't it? We feel called to do it. We have the people to do it.

We have the resources biblically to do it. What we need is God's power. We need his strength. We need to support prayers of people who love our ministry, support our ministry, and we need financial help.

That's, I think, the thing that restricts us. We're a small church. People don't realize that about Apologia Church. It's a very small church in Phoenix, Arizona, and God has used it to deliver a heavy blow to the kingdom of darkness worldwide.

But we're a small church with limited resources, and what we need is Christians around the world to join with us, honestly, to join with us in what we're doing, to be a part of what we're doing in this ministry to bring a solid gospel reformed witness to this island.

We need people to not only pray for us, but to give financially to this mission so that we can come out here and plant a church that's going to change dramatically, dramatically change this island for the glory of Jesus.

What's missing is courage, courage to take a risk, to fly across the ocean, to plant your family here, and to be willing to be bold and gentle and humble and loving and clearly communicate the gospel to this island and to stir up godly controversy and conversation so that people can hear about Christ and they can be called to repentance and faith.

And again, the mission of Apologia Kauai is not simply to have another church in Kauai. There are churches in Kauai, but it's to communicate the biblical worldview as it really is, that Jesus Christ is Lord of every single thing.

There isn't a nook or cranny or place or realm or family or business that's off limits.

To Jesus.

He controls and rules all things. And we want to be, by the grace of God and according to His power, we want to be that witness to this culture.