Hello—my name is John Endriss, and I have a confession to make…
I love change. This is your Hawaii Pacific Baptist Convention president writing with an update. In my second and final year of service as your president, your Executive Director, Chris Martin, and I have some big changes that we have developed and rolled out for 2017. In order to best communicate these changes to our churches, we decided to set up vision sharing sessions with HPBC ministry leaders, where we could also get feedback on what we presented. In March, we spent several days meeting with our Oahu church leaders in five different sessions.  In April, we had two sessions on the Big Island, and hope to have another in Maui soon. Chris and I were often surprised by the amount of people that came to the dialogues, and the excellent responses.

In April, we had two sessions on the Big Island, and hope to have another in Maui soon. Chris and I were often surprised by the amount of people that came to the dialogues, and the excellent responses we got. 

I know that some of you are not like me. I love new technology, new songs and new strategies. Some of you when you hear the word change, it makes you want to stick your fingers in your ears and shout “la la la la, I can’t hear you!” But change is not something we as Christians should be afraid of. If we are honest, we are meant to be change agents in the world. Working to bring about change from death to life in Christ, and redeeming a broken world with his message. The Jerusalem believers in Acts 15 we’re resisting change, but it took strong bold leadership to point the body in the way God was moving.  

Now, to be clear, we are not presenting any doctrinal changes to HPBC, but we do have new strategies that we see God using in the years to come. We don’t want HPBC to be seen as an organization that solely runs events that we email you about and expect you to come to. We want be known for taking the initiative to come to our churches asking, “What is God doing in your ministry?” and “How might we be able to assist, resource, support and pray for you?” Yes, we also presented changes that some staff that are retiring this summer at our sessions, but bigger than who or how we will replace them, are the changes you should expect from our current and future staff in how they interact with you. 

 We hope to have another round of session maybe in August or September.  So keep your ear up to listen for when those dates become firm, and be fearless agents of change for God’s kingdom wherever he places you.