Our Mission
Basic Christian Community of Hawaii is a lay movement of the Roman Catholic Church, operating with full approval of the Diocese of Honolulu. Our spiritual guides are Monsignor Gary Secor of the Diocese of Honolulu and Sister Meristella Umdor, Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians.
The Basic Christian Community of Hawaii was organized since 1985 and it has been growing ever since. It is modeled after a success-proven format that is some 2000 years old. After Jesus' death and resurrection, the disciples were the original basic Christian community. After they were banned from using the temples for their meeting place, they met in homes to continue the spreading of His Word. This format must have worked, because those original twelve disciples have now grown to some two billion Christians in the world. Now, that's a success story! BCC is nothing more than an attempt to recreate the closeness of such small communities, to recapture some of the fire of the apostles, and to spread the Good News, both through personal witnessing and lifestyle changes.
Although most new BCC members attend one of our retreats first, our weekly cell groups are open to all – open to all who wish to experience their faith more fully. BCC holds six retreats each year and we welcome anyone who wants to experience God’s love in a more powerful way. The presence if the Holy Spirit is truly felt and you can truly see Him in the face of others. We encourage new members to use these weekends as both an introduction and a jump start to their own BCC experience. Our weekly meetings then provide a continuation of the brotherhood experienced at the weekend as we give praise and thanks to God, share what He has done in our lives, and study His Word. Community is especially important to our relationships, too. We cannot separate how we relate to God from how we relate to one another, because the very things that keep us from closer relationship with our neighbor also separate us from God. The goal of Basic Christian Community of Hawaii is for us all to develop closer ties with both the Living God and His people
It is designed to bring together small groups of people to support one another (community), to study and know Jesus' Word (the message), and to live more fully the life of a believer (the mission). When you stop and think about it, community has always been an essential part of the Christian life, right from those wondrous days recounted in the New Testament. Just as fish swim together in schools for protection against their predators, we too need the strength of one another to shield us from worldly temptation and to help us continue on our own spiritual journeys.