Why Plant a Church in West Oahu?

We love Harbor Church Honolulu. For many of us, it’s been our church home for years. Our keiki were born in it, some of us were saved and baptized in it, and we’ve all grown to be more like Jesus at that church. We love it so much that we’re willing to drive an hour to attend every Sunday! So why are we planting a church in West Oahu?

We Love Jesus
This fuels all that we do as a church. Because we love Jesus, we will follow him wherever he calls us to go, and it’s our love for Jesus that compels us to do difficult things. Thankfully, this isn’t something that we have to manufacture or create. We can love God and love others because he first loved us (1 John 4). We’ve experienced God’s love in life-changing ways, and now that love overflows out of us as we follow him.

West Oahu is Our Home
This is where we live. In Jeremiah 29 God tells his people to seek the welfare of the city that he has sent them to live in. We want to seek the welfare of this place. That’s not to say that we don’t care about Honolulu or the islands as a whole, but we believe that God has particularly placed our families in West Oahu to bless this place.

We Want to Obey Matthew 28
After Jesus defeated death and was resurrected back to life, he told his followers to go into all the world and make followers of him. We want to obey that command of Jesus. So we are planting a church so that more people will follow Jesus. He is the goal of our church plant. We aren’t planting a church so that we don’t have to drive as far on Sunday or because we believe we “do church” better than anyone else. We’re planting a church because we believe this is the best way to obey the command to make more followers of Jesus.

We Believe Acts 18
God told Paul in Acts 18 to keep on preaching in a city called Corinth. The reason he told Paul to keep preaching in this city was this: “I have many in this city who are my people.” God had a people in that city who were his, who he loved. Paul’s job was to tell everyone about Jesus who would listen in that city. Many of those people would believe in Jesus and their lives would be transformed. We believe that God has many people in West Oahu who are his. Like Paul, we want to tell everyone here about Jesus!

We believe that God has called us to plant this church, and Harbor Honolulu is joyfully sending us out to do so. The leaders and members of Harbor Honolulu have the same vision that the church at Antioch had with Barnabas and Saul in Acts 13. “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” We’ve been sent out to plant Harbor West because we love Jesus, we love West Oahu, and we want to obey God.