By Brad Dupray
Roger Andruss has been a pharmacist, a captain in the Air Force, and commander of the Honor Guard at the U.S. Air Force Academy. All of this took place before his conversion to Christ and decision to spend three years at Ozark Christian College to prepare for ministry. After serving the Pablo Christian Church on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, Roger and his wife, Debbie, moved to Island Family Christian Church in Honolulu. Island Family has seen remarkable growth since they arrived three years ago.
After so many adventures in life, how did you eventually find Christ?
Deb and I began to experience significant marital problems. Friends had used a Christian counselor, a guy named Charlie Couch, who was the preacher at the church in Libby, Montana. Through him Deb and I realized what was missing. We gave our lives to Christ, got active in the church, and got involved in a small group.
It’s a long leap from the baptistery to Bible college. How did you decide to make such a drastic career change?
I think it was just looking at what I could do that was most valuable with my life. I knew there was a need for good Christian people in all vocations. But there was also a need for people in vocational ministry. Prescriptions were a good thing to dispense to help people in the short term, but this seemed like the answer for the long term.
What was your first ministry like?
After school we went to Pablo, Montana, on the Flathead Indian Reservation. We were reluctant to do so. Charlie Couch was head of the state evangelistic association, and he made the need known to me. As I visited with them I felt the church was ready to make the changes to be outward focused. We had about 30 when I came, and two years later we had about 170 people in the church. A lot of that was new conversions.
How did you end up in Hawaii?
Dick Williams, who had been on faculty at Ozark, said he knew of a church that would be a good fit for us. When he told me where it was, I just laughed at him. We weren’t really looking to go anywhere. But then it just kind of weighed on our hearts.
Montana to Hawaii is another long leap. How does one process such a huge move?
I called Chris Caminos, who was the chairman of the elders at Island Family, and to his credit he kept his word to pray this through for about six months. We talked about what we felt a Restoration church looked like and how that matched with the heartbeat of Island Family. Deb and I went to Canada for a long weekend of prayer and fasting before we came over here. Prayer was the foundation of everything we did, and now we have really focused here on prayer and fasting as a means of spiritual discipline.
Describe what has happened with Island Family since you arrived.
The church began to grow in our first year as a result of prayer and our focus on purpose. Two years ago we did “40 Days of Purpose” and it doubled the number of our “Ohana” groups. The year we did that we baptized over 100 people. We have more than 30 small groups now, compared with seven groups three years ago. God has blessed us with 550 to 600 in attendance now, too. When we came the church was running about 190.
To what would you attribute the growth?
This is such a hard question to answer. I guess a foundation of prayer. We really worked on that in the whole church, that everything we did was based in prayer. We’re just trying to be what we read about in Scripture, where hurting people can come and feel safe and allow God to bring change in their lives.
What did you do with all your cold weather clothes?
(laughs) We converted a lot of them into swimsuits!
Brad Dupray is director of public relations and advertising with Provision Ministry Group, Irvine, California.
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