On Sunday, March 8, 2020, the Honolulu Slavic Church (HSC), the most remote outpost of the Pacific Coast Slavic Baptist Association (PCSBA) located on the Hawaiian Islands, celebrated its 10-year anniversary.
The worship service began with the prayer and Scripture verse inscribed across the stage backdrop: “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12) Among many local visitors and out-of-state guests who took part in this joyful occasion, Nikolai Alekseyevich Bugriyev, Senior Pastor of the Rockland Baptist Church, Sacramento, California, also attended the event. There were also brother Leonid Bak, deacon of the Hayward church (he was originally ordained in our church for deacon’s ministry), Mikhail Ivanovich Chekalin, Chairman of the Moscow Evangelical Christian Baptist Association and Pastor of the Moscow Church “Blagaya Vest’ on Voykovskoy”, Moscow, Russia.
During the main service, Pastor Bugriyev spoke about the HSC’s humble beginnings in the early 2010, when a small group of three or four young families, who settled on the Oahu just a few months earlier, started gathering together for worship service and fellowship. With the help of Pastor Bugriyev, two young men, Pavel Marchenko and Vitaliy Bublik, were ordained as deacons to begin worship services on Sunday afternoons in a small classroom provided by a local American Christian church. Since 2017, the Lord allowed the church to move into a larger building at the new location on the island, which allowed the HSC begin adding and expanding such ministries as Sunday School, Russian School, Teen and Tween Ministry, and Worship Music Group. The HSC has changed its membership base a few times over the years, yet number of arriving families steadily grew and the church reached 20 members for the first time ever in the late 2018. That same year, the HSC had its first baptism, performed by a young pastor Pavel Marchenko in the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean, and since then a total of six brothers and sisters joined the church through this blessed testimony of good faith. The HSC currently has 26 active members and counting.
Following the worship service, the guests were invited to join the church for a celebratory potluck where Pastors Bugriyev and Chekalin among others shared devotionals and praised the Lord for His ability to sustain this young church for 10 years in such a remote area of the world. As celebration continued, the newly formed Honolulu Slavic YouTube channel featured a compilation video that reflected much of this church’s history, as presented through various motion and photographs (click on the link to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iojb-MXZbKU).
Anton Kovalev
