Q & A
MINISTRY

CONTENTS

Was it hard to start a ministry in Japan? (2/11/99)

This is my 11th year in Japan, and Debbie's 10th. We started the church plant that we're working on now in March of 1997, almost 2 years ago. The hardest thing in the beginning was finding a place to have church. It took us almost a year of searching to finally find a place that we could use for services. Before we came here, we lived in Toyama Prefecture (about 12 hours drive from here). When we could get away from our work there, we would take off in the evening and drive all night long. We'd stay for about two weeks searching for a place before returning home. Since hotels and restaurants are so expensive in Japan, we camped out in our van at nights and brought most of our food from home. Each morning we'd go to a public bath to get cleaned up and then begin going from realtor to realtor looking for a suitable place to rent.

In order to start a church, at a bare minimum, we needed a house that had parking for 4 cars off the street, a room big enough to have meetings, and enough space for our family to live in. As you have probably heard, most houses in Japan are very small and rent is very high. (Residential land in this city costs 3 million dollars an acre and up!). To make matters even worse, almost none of the realtors were willing to help us when they learned that we were missionaries. We started our search in January of 1996, and finally, in December, we found the house we're renting. It's an old house and required a lot of work - painting, wall papering, fixing rotting floors, and cleaning moldy closets, but after 3 months of full-time carpentry work we were ready to have church.

The next problem was where to find people to come to church. Most Japanese have never been inside a church before in their lives. Even though they have no idea what Christianity is about, most Japanese are uninterested from the outset. The general feeling is that religion is for the old and weak. Another big obstacle is that there is very strong social pressure and even persecution against people for just visiting church or showing an interest in Christ. The only really effective way to reach Japanese people with the Gospel is through personal relationships. We expected to spend at least 2 years before having anyone regular in church, but God has really blessed us. We baptized our first convert in July of 1997, and the church has been growing ever since.

Have you found property yet for the church? (10/23/98)

No, not yet, but we're still looking. Yesterday we sent a letter to a man inquiring about some property he owns. He probably received the letter today, but we haven't heard an answer yet. The big problem we face is that we're looking for property that's not on the market. It may sound strange, but we want property that no one else can use (because it would be cheaper). Why would anyone ever want to put property up for sale that's not sellable though. According to Japanese law, we can build a church in an area that is zoned agricultural or forest. No one else could get a permit to build on that kind of land, so there's really no reason for anyone to want to buy it. That doesn't make the land cheap, but the potential is there for it to be cheaper than other land, if we can find someone who wants to sell.

On what days do you preach to the Japanese? (3/15/00)

We have services on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, Wednesday evenings, and Thursday mornings. We also have special youth meetings about once a month. We do visitation and home meetings as often as time allows.

Around how many Japanese come to your church? (2/11/99)

Last Sunday we had 21 people in church counting our family. Lately we've been having around 18 to 22 on Sunday mornings and around 10 to 12 on Wednesday nights.

How is the majority of your time in ministry spent?

If you had asked us this question a couple of years ago when we had just found a place to rent and start a church in Hachinohe, our answer would have been completely different. Then we were spending the majority of our time sheetrocking, painting, spreading gravel, building shelves, buying chairs, and cleaning so that our house/church was ready to start holding services.

Now our main focus in church planting is one-on-one personal evangelism, meeting people and becoming friends so that we can share the Gospel. We also stamp and distribute thousands of tracts each year. We do all of the work necessary to make a church function smoothly: cleaning, setting up chairs, preparing messages, taking care of children during the message time, typing up songs for overheads, playing the piano, preparing church lunch on Sundays (most churches in Japan have a meal and time of fellowship after the Sunday morning service), keeping financial records, visiting and counseling.

What methods are you using to reach the people?

The most effective method seems to be personal evangelism - making friends in all sorts of settings and sharing the Gospel with them as the Lord leads. We also distribute tens of thousands of tracts to try and reach people who would otherwise never have an opportunity to hear the Gospel.