Jesus, not me

Missions report from Japan

Dec 16

servantStories faith, Japan, missionary, praise No Comments

After 25 years of ministry as missionaries in Japan, my wife and are heading home. We have had 25 great years in Japan, and it has been a fulfilling ministry. 25 years is not as long as some missionaries stay on the field, but I was 39 when I arrived. It is HARD learning a difficult language like Japanese at middle age!

My wife and I had some ups and downs in the ministry here, but the downs were teaching experiences, as most people will say. Only for us, God took us in a way that our organization was headed before our organization headed in this direction. We learned beforehand how powerful the Holy Spirit is at teaching new believers, without the constant oversight of missionaries or pastors at the beginning. And lots of people (churches) did not like things that involved change from the ordinary, but we persevered with joy in our hearts.

Japan is listed in some circles as being basically “unresponsive” to the gospel – with approximately 1/2 of 1% as being believers. Evangelical missionaries and organizations have been in this country over 150 years.

We have not used conventional means, and going back 15 years, we found that the Japanese were, and are, capable of expanding the gospel among themselves. We have seen three different groups that we started expand into four and five generations of Christians, as in the 2 Timothy 2:2 principle. And one of the groups were among homeless — led by one that we were blessed to train. Part of our vision was that of viewing God’s greatest resources — not the missionary, or church support monies, or pastors, but the individual believers that God led to us. (A church’s greatest resource is not the pastor, not the money, not the building but the people in the pew. Use them, equip them, give them vision, send them out!)

We are leaving behind both nationals and GCCs who have found that they can witness, they can equip, they can train and they can have and lead bible studies and messages, as well as baptize. It doesn’t have to depend on the missionary or pastor to expand the Kingdom. We also have worked with a few missionaries who don’t mind stepping out of the box and trying something different. The one key that we find is that a person must have vision, passion and focus to expand the Kingdom. If you have those, people will want what you have.

I visited and talked with a young missionary two weeks ago who lives about two hours from me. He was disappointed in most missionaries and pastors who come to accept slow response in Japan as a matter of fact. I left him (and also my fellow workers) with these words: Don’t let the unresponsiveness determine your joy, passion or vision. Let your passion, vision and joy come from Jesus. When you do this, others will notice! The vast majority of the work that we have done, and the people that we have worked with and partnered with — came from people seeking us out by email, phone calls, coming to our house or where we happened to be going. When the joy of the Lord is your strength, people will notice. When your passion and vision are determined by Who you know, and not the circumstances you are in, people will notice . . . as was with Paul!

We have had a great time; we have seen many baptized, and we have seen many nationals equipped and prepared to advance the Kingdom. While we have been VERY joyful of those that we led to the Lord, the greatest joy has come from seeing them witness, train and equip those that they led to the Lord, and then they did the same, and so on. I once heard a sermon that had this in the message: The greatest success a parent can have is to raise their children to love someone else more than they (the children) love the parents. When your child loves his/her spouse as the most important person (over the parents) then the parents have been successful. My wife and I are not expecting new believers to look back at us, but out into the harvest and advance the Kingdom. That is the reward for us! That is what we are seeing. It is not a huge force yet, but is quite significant.