By Darla Martin Tucker

For years after church politics shattered his perceptions, Kevin Kakazu faced doubts about his ministerial career, hindered further by an aversion to confrontation and authority. But a La Sierra University religion class transformed his thinking.

“The class I took from Dr. Haloviak in winter quarter was, in short, a life-changing experience,” Kakazu told a small audience of students and university leaders on June 3. They gathered in a classroom at the School of Religion for scholarship presentations and to hear graduate student research reports by Kakazu and Jared Wright.

Assistant Professor Kendra Haloviak’s initial reaction to the description of her class as “life-changing” was one of “gratitude,” she said, “to my profession, to the others in the class, to God. Each class is definitely a group effort.  Each person contributes to the experience we share.”

In teaching the course Contemporary Issues in New Testament Studies, Haloviak asked her students to each select a different chapter from the Gospel of John. Using study tools they were acquiring in class, they were to wrestle with the chapter for the winter quarter and write a research report.

Kakazu ultimately chose John Chapter 5. It tells the story in which Jesus heals a crippled man by the pool of Bethseda and stands up to angry Jewish leaders with His divine authority. The chapter was Kakazu’s third choice after other students picked the chapters he initially wanted to study. But it proved an important and perhaps Providential turn of events through which he learned that following Christ’s command involves acting with power and authority and purpose.

Kakazu had a happy upbringing in a traditional Seventh-day Adventist home, growing up in Hawaii, Loma Linda, Calif. and Walla Walla, Wash., he said. “[But] I grew up naïve to the politics and dissention, the things that go on in a church,” he said in a later interview.

Denominational controversy in the mid 1990s over the question of female ordination, the subsequent vote against ordination, and other controversial issues within the church revealed to Kakazu a world of politics and contention. The events rocked Kakazu’s perceptions. “…by the time I left college, my faith in the church and God had been tested,” he said in his presentation paper. 

Backed by encouragement from his Walla Walla College professors, Kakazu nonetheless pursued a career in ministry. He graduated from Walla Walla in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in theology. For eight years he pastored churches in Loma Linda, Sacramento, Otaki, Japan and Los Angeles. But his doubts lingered and he felt “ambivalent and torn,” he said. He got married in June 2006 and later enrolled in a Master’s of Divinity degree program at La Sierra University.  “I’d heard good things about the teachers at La Sierra,” he said.

He joined Haloviak’s 10-student class, a group whom Haloviak treated more like colleagues, Kakazu said. The group met for four hours each Thursday. “There was something about that class, the composition of the class, the material we were dealing with. It became very personal. It was quite an intense atmosphere of community and sharing,” Kakazu said.

“Given the way the Gospel of John is written, and its key themes, it seemed crucial for us to create a community of contemporary disciples as we attempted to read it faithfully and prayerfully,” Haloviak said.  “As a graduate-level class, we needed to dig deep and ask the tough questions. Doing so always causes even greater respect and appreciation for the wonders of Scripture.”

When Kakazu began to delve into John 5, he came face to face with the wounds of the past and with his deep disdain of authority and confrontation. In the chapter, Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, simply because he can. He “commands the man to act like a healthy man,” Kakazu said in his paper. Jesus proclaimed to the incensed Jewish leaders, “My father will show you greater things than these, so that you will be astonished.”

“Jesus just goes right ahead and gives it to them,” Kakazu said. “[He said], ‘I have the authority to do it. This is what I do.’ …That was sort of my moment of realizing this Jesus we talk about, He’s not the tame lion.”

Jesus also promised His disciples they would do greater things than He if they believed in Him, Kakazu pointed out. The statement “caught me by surprise. And I was afraid of it. I felt guilty,” he said. “…It goes back to the authority thing. I don’t want the power. I’m afraid of what I’ll become.”

Kakazu identified with the sick man, hindered for years by wounds and comfortable with the powerless, the beggars and cripples. “I’ve been hurt by authority, I’ve been hurt by my church,” he said. Through analyzing the chapter, Kakazu came to believe that Jesus not only offers healing, He offers a mission, authority and power, and He offers it repeatedly, Kakazu said.

“I guess there is nothing to do but take up my mat …and change the world, at least as much as Jesus did,” he said in his paper. “So at the end of this class, I shrugged my shoulders, muttered ‘oh bother,’ to take up my mat …and walk.”

Kakazu has always dreamed of teaching religion in a Seventh-day Adventist university or college, he said when asked about his future plans. “[But] God may call me to do things I’m not really comfortable doing, so I plan to immerse myself in God’s will and in serving others.”

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)