This podcast is personal in a very real way. John Honold has been a close friend for just under four decades.

I met him as a cocky, even arrogant, 20-year-old who informed me, “I hope you don’t mind, but I knock off your sermons each Thursday under a tree at Windward Community College.”

He was reteaching my Sunday messages in a microchurch he’d started on campus.

I responded, “Keep it up, and you’ll become our college pastor.”

He did. And he married Brenda Ching, one of the original 30 people to move from California to plant the church.

After serving as College Pastor, Youth Pastor and our Exec for over a decade, we launched him to plant a Hope Chapel in Oahu’s “Second City,” Kapolei.

It was a tossup as to which of us should plant the new church—me with a built-in audience from our daily radio broadcasts or John, who might reach a younger audience. He won the coin toss, and soon 700+ people met in various borrowed spaces.

They multiplied new congregations from that base in Hawaii, Okinawa, Thailand and The Philippines.

This episode is about church multiplication, an enduring friendship and how to follow the Holy Spirit in a way that parallels building sidewalks where people trample the grass on a college campus.

Today John leads a prevailing model church (which both shrunk and grew after COVID) that operates as a hub for twelve microchurches—and he’s paid a full-time salary to boot. Journey Church Network Hawaii has cracked the code for mixing what worked in the past with the future many envision.

Did I mention that they support ministries in Okinawa, Mainland Japan and across the African Continent? John is also consulting with the oldest, and perhaps most famous, church that started in the “Kingdom of Hawaii.” They’re bringing back the fire of the original vision to cover the islands with the gospel.

If you’re trying to understand the implications of microchurch on the congregation you lead, this will aid your quest. Besides, it gives good insight into the values that drive this podcast and have driven me for a long time.

You can connect with John at [email protected] or https://journeychurchhawaii.org.

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