St. Timothy’s Welcomes New Vicar
The familiar peak-roofed St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church on Moanalua Road in ‘Aiea has a new vicar. The Rev. Peter Wallace recently started the position after many years assisting churches in Atlanta, Georgia.
For more than 20 years, Wallace was executive producer and host of Day1 (day1.org), a radio and online ministry for the pastors and flocks of mainline Protestant churches, now heard on more than 200 radio stations across America and overseas.
But Wallace is happily leaving the broadcast business and hubbub of Atlanta behind for the relative calm and a completely different life in ‘Aiea.
Wearing an unbuttoned aloha shirt over his black shirt and white clerical collar, speaking in the soft cadences of a son of the South, Wallace is happy to be here and to have his own church to lead for the first time.
“We are learning so much about the culture here,” Wallace says. “We are walking slower, appreciating who and what is around
A ‘ROARING’ GOOD TIME
Pearl City Lions Club celebrated its 59th Charter and Installation Banquet on May 4. Former Pearl City Lions Club president Tad Tsuruma (right) passes the gavel to president Gabriel Balais. See more on page 4. PHOTO COURTESY PEARL CITY LIONS CLUB
us … We have found people to be so friendly and helpful everywhere we go.”
Wallace’s father and grandfather were Methodist preachers, so it was perhaps “ordained” that he would become a pastor with a somewhat daunting family standard to live up to. He started life in journalism and advertising after graduating from Marshall University in West Virginia where he was born and raised.
Eventually he took his “calling to communication” and found a home in the Episcopal Church. He was confirmed a member in 1991 and ordained an Episcopal priest in 2014.
Wallace is the author and/ or editor of some 15 books. Where to begin? He recommends starting with his latest, A Generous Beckoning: Accepting God’s Invitation to a More Fulfilling Life, or an earlier one, The Passionate Jesus: What We Can Learn from Jesus about Love, Fear, Grief, Joy and Living Authentically.
But parishioners who want a peek into Wallace’s notso- reverent past might read
Comstock & Me: My Brief but Unforgettable Career with The West Virginia Hillbilly. The West Virgina Hillbilly called itself a “weaky” paper where Wallace was, for a time, the editor under founder and publisher James Comstock.
Comstock dubbed the
Hillbilly, “a newspaper for people who can’t read, edited by an editor who can’t write.” In fact, it was widely read as an iconoclastic, curmudgeonly collection of Appalachian folklore, heritage and humor, with the occasional practical joke to keep everyone paying attention.
Wallace says parishioners of St. Timothy’s are quite diverse, ethnically as one would expect in Hawai‘i, but in other ways, including recently arrived military families in addition to long-established local Episcopalians. The Episcopal of Anglican Church has a long and storied history here, beginning in 1862 when King Kamehameha IV and his wife, Queen Emma, invited the Church of England to Hawai‘i where it now has some 38 churches across the islands.
On its website St. Timothy’s promises, “Whoever you are, however God made you, wherever you are in your spiritual journey, you are welcome here … Come join us for worship!”
In addition to typical church activities, a half dozen community service organizations operate from the church campus, from a preschool to adult day care and much in between.
Wallace wants to grow his congregation and extend the community outreach of the church.
“Welcoming more people to come to the church for any reason allows us to see life from a lot of different vantage points,” he says, Visit sttimothysaiea.org for more info.
