‘Still mighty’ after 150 years: Community invited to celebrate venerable Hilo church’s milestone

When the earliest members of First United Protestant Church first convened, they met in a thatched-roof building called “the Bethel” on Ululani Street.

It was circa 1857 and those early parishioners were mostly sailors who voyaged into Hilo Harbor on whaling ships.

“As sailors would come into the harbor, this group of (local community leaders and missionaries) wanted to have a place for those sailors to hang out,” Ron Kent, First United’s interim pastor, said Thursday. “So they’d come to shore and they’d have this space to gather.”

In 1868, the church was officially granted its charter by King Kamehameha V. Its name (which has since been changed) was First Foreign Church, geared especially for East Hawaii’s English-speaking residents.

This year, First United Protestant Church is celebrating its 150th anniversary.

Church leaders are hosting a special 10 a.m. anniversary worship service Jan. 14 and are inviting the community to attend. The church also plans to conduct an evening anniversary service in July, the month it was chartered, as well as a church-sponsored, communitywide concert in September.

Kent said First United Protestant Church probably is one of the oldest “non-Hawaiian churches” in Hilo. Most of the 14 founding charter members were “movers and shakers in East Hawaii,” he said, and included Charles Wetmore, a Protestant missionary doctor, Jane Shipman and missionaries David and Sarah Lyman.

“It started because there was an enormous Hawaiian church community and Haili (Street) was sort of the center of that,” Kent said. “There was no English-speaking congregation. The church was started as a place for English-speaking residents here.”

The church has changed facilities four times through the years. It’s remained at its current Waianuenue Avenue location, mauka of Hilo Medical Center, since 1969.

Pieces of the past still remain. Stained glass windows lining the sanctuary, a koa wood pulpit, several pews in the lobby area and a chain-link fence outside date back to 1897, when the church was in its third building.

Its 1,000 organ pipes are from the 1920s. Outside, a clock tower features lava stones carried over from each building since its first Bethel location.

Membership has fluctuated through the years — as many as 400 people attended in the 1920s and ’30s, Kent said. Between 40 and 70 people currently attend services each week. First United also is home to an active Kosraean congregation.

In 1954, it changed its name to better reflect its more diverse membership and culture.

Its liturgy remains traditional, however, and includes organ music and classic hymns.

“Of all the pipe organs in town, this one is by far, in my opinion, the best,” said Michael Springer, First United’s organist of 40 years. “So it’s a real pleasure for me to play here … And liturgically, I’m very old-fashioned, I’m that long-haired, classical musician at heart. This for me is a very comfortable place to be involved in the making of music and supporting of music in the traditional way.”

First United remains “an active campus,” Kent said.

Its building has been used for many years for Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon meetings. It also is home to the Kamehameha Schools’ Piihonua preschool program. Kent said the church hosted an interfaith Thanksgiving event several years ago which attracted more than 300 people.

Membership “has gone through feast and famine but through it all, we’ve sort of persisted,” Kent said. “People have been faithful and they are committed to what we stand for. Over the years, natural attrition has made it smaller than what it was, but we’re still mighty, still important and still powerful.”

Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.