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It seems like a lot of people are using grunge in the design of their websites for God. I don't think I really felt hawaiian from this at all. I think that big red star feels out of place and attracting a lot of attention. I think your main content area though looks pretty nice. I like the idea of having a gallery or video right there. I'm 22 and pictures and videos online are very attractive. I'm not sure if blogs are the next best thing to put. Maybe having an "Upcoming events" or "get involved" section or something might get people more active.
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I know it's kind of odd, I myself didn't want to design a church website in such a "messy" and grungy way, but that was the main request from the client so I had to follow. In fact, there were some palm trees popping in the header background before and for my mistake, they were gone when I applied the family picture. That was already fixed.
I totally agree with you regarding the red start. That was my idea actually, they never asked for anything like that. I just put that in there after researching the web for church's websites and I found out that it was a very common element. But most of them are just like that, they don't self-explain themselves and I created that more because it would look cool than for usability reasons (my mistake again!). For now, I'm thinking of replacing that star with some sort of player where users can listen to the sermons (a quick link to the podcast section).
Thanks!