wfn.org | Pastor to be installed as executive of UCC agency

["Barb Powell"<powellb@ucc.org>]

May 5, 1998
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ
In Cleveland, contact:  Laurie Bartels
(216) 736-2213
E-mail: bartelsl@ucc.org
In Honolulu, contact:  The Rev. David Hansen or the Rev. Joan
Ishibashi
(808) 537-9516
On the World Wide Web:
http://www.ucc.org

For immediate release

Former Nu'uanu pastor to be installed Friday as executive of
national church agency

HONOLULU -- A minister formerly of Honolulu will be installed
as a national executive of the United Church of Christ in a public
worship service at 7 p.m. Friday, May 8, at Nu'uanu Congregational
Church, 2651 Pali Hwy., where he was pastor for eight years.
     The installation of the Rev. Dr. Wallace Ryan Kuroiwa as
executive director of the UCC's Office for Church in Society will
come during a meeting that is bringing the national agency's staff
members and directors to Hawaii for three days.  The semi-annual
directorate meeting runs from Friday, May 8, through Sunday, May
10, and will be held, with the exception of the installation
ceremony, at the Church of the Crossroads, 1212 University Ave.,
Honolulu.
     Kuroiwa left Nu'uanu in 1997 to assume leadership of the Office
for Church in Society.  He heads a staff of 11 clergy and laypeople,
based in Cleveland and in Washington, D.C., plus six consultants,
with a mandate to coordinate social education and action in the
1.5-million-member denomination.  He and his family now live in
the Cleveland suburb of Berea, Ohio.
      While pastor of Nu'uanu, Kuroiwa chaired the Task Force on
Apology and Redress Committee for the Hawaii Conference -- one
of 39 regional bodies of the UCC.  The task force was instrumental
in the denomination's 1993 decision to make a formal apology to
Na Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiians) for the Church's complicity in
the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani's monarchy in 1893.
Kuroiwa also served as charter chairperson of the Oahu Interfaith
Community Organizing Project.  Now known as Faith in Action for
Community Equity, the group is an ecumenical community
working toward lasting solutions to social problems.
     Kuroiwa earned his Ph.D. from Emory University, Atlanta, in
1983; an M.Th. degree in ethical studies from Duke University
Divinity School, Durham, N.C., in 1976; an M.Div. degree from
Golden Gate Seminary, Mill Valley, Calif., in 1970; and a B.A.
degree in philosophy from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, in
1966.
     During their meeting this week, the directorate of the Office for
Church in Society --  composed of 18 clergy and laypeople from
throughout the United States  -- will tackle an agenda which
includes the issue of sovereignty for Native Hawaiians and a
resolution on abolishment of the death penalty.  The death penalty
resolution will be presented at the UCC's 22nd General
Synod -- the main deliberative body of the church -- in 1999.  They
also will participate in a presentation by Faith and Action for
Community Equity on contemporary life in Hawaii.   The
directorate's current chairperson is Dollie Burwell of Warrenton,
N.C.
     The United Church of Christ, with more than 6,000
congregations in the United States and Puerto Rico -- 125 of them
in Hawaii -- was formed in 1957 by the union of the
Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and
Reformed Church.
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