MINISTRY

MINISTRY

MINISTRY OVERVIEW:

WHY CHURCH PLANTING IN JAPAN?

The field of Japan is one of the most unreached in the world. In many missions fields where there is already a strong, self-propagating national church, the major focus of missionary effort is on training national workers. The greatest need is for support of the national church in the form of Bible training. In Japan, on the other hand, the greatest need is for missionaries to do the foundation laying for new churches, often raising up one of their own converts to take over the pastorate of the new congregation once it is stable enough. This kind of work is a lot like what the Apostle Paul did when he made his missionary journeys through the Roman Empire.

Japan, population 125 million, is one of the most unreached countries in the world. Even when counting "Christians" of every sect and variety, they still make up less than 1% of the population. Church attendance for all Protestant churches combined is somewhere around 0.2% (2 for every 1000 people) for Japan as a whole. (We don't have the exact figures for Catholics, but their numbers are approximately the same--resulting in less than 1% if you count all sects of Christianity.) If you were to count only evangelical Protestants, the percent is about half that, or somewhere around 0.09%.

This percentage drops drastically the farther you get from the major metropolitan areas. If only those who attend Bible-believing, Gospel-preaching churches were counted, the percentage would be only a tiny fraction of this. The vast majority of Japanese (nearly everyone) are Buddhist and Shinto. Needless to say, most Japanese have never even met a Christian, much less attended a church service or heard the Gospel.

THE CITY OF HACHINOHE

The city of Hachinohe, where we are working, has a population of approximately 250,000. It is a hub and major port for this region of Japan.

Hachinohe is located in the southeastern part of Aomori Prefecture, the Northernmost point of Honshu, Japan's main island. It faces the Pacific Ocean and provides modern industrial, fishing and commercial port facilities, thus making it the representative industrial city in the Tohoku region and one of Japan's major marine industry cities.

CHRISTIANITY IN HACHINOHE

Before we came to Hachinohe there were 11 Protestant churches and 2 Catholic. Church attendance for all of these churches combined is less than 200. The largest church has a Sunday attendance of about 30. At least 3 of the churches average fewer than 10. Most of the churches do very little or no outreach. Their message is a social salvation of be kind to your neighbor rather than salvation from sin. Many of the churches have no problem with people practicing Buddhism and Shinto while calling themselves Christians (this is the official stance of the Catholic church in Japan).

Before we came, not only was there no Pentecostal church in Hachinohe, there wasn't a Pentecostal church within about a 2-hour drive with the exception of churches serving the American military on Misawa Air Force Base (about 40 minutes from Hachinohe). There are still no other missionaries of any denomination in the area. There are at least 30 towns within a two-hour drive of Hachinohe without a single church of any denomination.

OUR WORK

Needless to say, planting a church in Japan is very different from planting a church in many other parts of the world. Japanese are very suspicious of religion, and not at all open to our message. It took us almost a year before we could even find a house to rent where we could live and hold home meetings. When the real estate agencies learned that we were missionaries planning to hold Christian meetings in our home, most of them were not willing to help us. Because of the extremely high cost of living in Japan, we ended up renting a very old and run down house. Our first 4 months in Hachinohe were spent repairing rotting floors, painting, wallpapering, etc.

It often takes many months of developing a relationship with someone before they will even consider our message. It is extremely rare to have a visitor in church. Nearly all of our evangelism is one-on-one outside of the church. Unlike many places in the world, because of the extreme lack of Christian workers, and the high cost of living, we end up doing nearly all of the work ourselves. Even if there were "extra" Japanese pastors that we could call on to help us in our church planting efforts, we could never raise enough money to pay them a living allowance.

In March of 1997 we started with no one--not one Christian, not one contact, just us, a foreign family living in an old Japanese neighborhood. We started by meeting the neighbors, having people to dinner, giving gifts, being friendly, and distributing lots of tracts. As we got to know people we would share our faith with them as much as they were willing to listen. We invited them to join us for Bible studies and worship. First we met sitting on the floor around a coffee table. As the group grew we moved to sitting on chairs around larger tables, then in a circle around the room.

Missionary Mom: My Role as a Mother on the Mission Field

Note: This is in response to a church's question about the role of a missionary mom. (5/17/97)

(1) My church responsibilities include cleaning the church, playing the piano on Sundays, leading songs at the Midweek service, typing the bulletin, and keeping church financial records. After every Sunday service we have lunch for everybody, so I need to start preparing the meal on Saturday evenings or early Sunday morning. Sunday lunch is a great time of fellowship. Since most Japanese have never been in a church before, they have a lot of fears and anxieties. Getting together after the service gives us an opportunity to get to know each other better and makes the church a warm, inviting place.

(2) My family responsibilities include taking care of our 3 sons (Joseph, born in 1995; Samuel, born in 1997; Elijah, born in 1999), doing the laundry (In Japan, everything is dried outside on the line, even in the cold, snowy winter), changing diapers, making meals, grocery shopping (you wouldn't believe the high prices, for example, milk is about $8.00/gallon!), and cleaning house. We sleep on the floor Japanese style, so one of my jobs is to lay out the futon (thin, cotton-filled mattresses) and blankets every night, and put them away in the closet in the morning. I am also the family barber, not because I'm good but because a simple man's haircut costs around $40 at the barber shop!

(3) My evangelism responsibilities include more than just stamping and passing out thousands of tracts. I often take goodies (homemade cookies, pies, cakes, etc.) to the neighbors or people we are reaching out to. Sometimes I help "Grandma" next door with her garden. I often get together with neighbor ladies and young mothers like Mrs. Nanami Sasaki. Sometimes I visit their homes and take our boys so that the children can play together while we talk. I also invite the ladies to the church so we can visit and try new recipes. The other day I taught Mrs. Sasaki how to make snickerdoodles. I always have snacks and drinks on hand to serve unexpected visitors. This afternoon Makiko, a woman who visited church for the first time a couple of weeks ago, stopped by with her friend. I sent them away with a little package of brownies.

In the past two weeks we've had several people over for dinner at different times -the Obara family, the Yanagisawa family, Mrs. Takada, and the Kanaya family. It's a thousands times easier to get Japanese over for dinner and a visit than to get them to come to church. Unless we first become friends, most Japanese will never listen to the gospel message we bring. We've found having people to dinner to be one of our most effective forms of evangelism.

(4) My responsibilities to American supporters and DFM (Division of Foreign Missions) include answering letters, writing newsletters, filing receipts, sending a quarterly financial report to DFM, scheduling services for our furlough, and itinerating in American churches. Ron and I usually itinerate separately as much as possible in order to visit as many churches and pastors as possible. Although it's not the ideal situation (many churches want to see the whole family together), we don't really have a choice. Church planting in Japan requires that we stay in Hachinohe and take care of services and evangelism. We can't leave without someone who is fluent in Japanese to take our place. In 1998, we found a retired missionary couple to Japan (Donnel and Venda McLean) who were willing to come for 3 months. Without them, we wouldn't have been able to itinerate at all, even though we were due for a furlough in the States (we are supposed to be on the field for 4 years and spend the 5th year visiting churches). On the other hand, with just a few months to visit supporters, we would never have been able to raise our budget if we had traveled together.

Of course, I am not able to do all of these tasks alone. My husband, partner, and best friend, Ron, shares in all of these responsibilities, in addition to preaching and teaching. We also spent many long hours repairing and remodeling the old rental house we're living in so that it could be used as a church. We had a lot of work to do including sheetrocking, painting, wallpapering, laying carpet, hanging curtains, etc. The church dedication was on March 3, 1997, and we began holding services on March 9th.

I hope that you have a better idea of what my role as a missionary mom is. Please feel free to write back if you have more questions. We'd love to hear from you. And we'd love for you to join us in reaching the millions in Japan who have never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel.