Ministry Schedule

Sept. 28, 29: Richland Center, Wisconsin
(BossTown Store, sponsored by Ledman Ministries)
Oct. 12: An Evangelistic Outreach in a home in Gainesville, Virginia (Pray for souls!)
Oct. 20:   Dea’s 1967 Class reunion luncheon
(Pray I can reach my classmates for Christ!)
Oct. 27:   Vale, Oregon Hope & Love Assembly of God (11 AM: 477 Oak St.)

(This Newsletter is dedicated to Nathan Warford, who flies to Japan about the end of October! Read his testimony below…)

My Call…
At around 12 years old, I was first introduced to the Japanese.  My family had university foreign exchange students stay with us.  I was amazed by them.  They were incredibly kind, intelligent, and masterful at playing Mario on Nintendo.  I wanted to know more about them.  Years later, God dramatically called me to ministry when he gave me a burden for my lost friends during high school.  Upon graduation, I went to Bible College and shortly afterward decided to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with YWAM.  In 2007, God opened the door for me to join a school that had a Japan focus. 

In 2013, another door opened for me to staff a DTS with YWAM.  This school was focused on Northeast Asia.  Once again, God brought me on Outreach to Japan, but this time was different. Not only did I participate in evangelism, but I also visited multiple churches across the nation.  What I saw broke my heart: churches with only a few members, no pastor, no worship team or basic materials, and no future vision.  I met missionaries who had little support or help reaching cities of tens of thousands by themselves.  From that point forward, I recognized what Japan needs is more churches and, ultimately, more Japanese leaders being raised up to reach their nation for Christ.  

In 2014-2016, I attended Biola University, where I received my Master’s in Intercultural Studies (Missiology). One of my focuses was church planting in Japan. As I researched, I discovered that one of the best ways to reach Japanese was through simple or house churches. A major cult, Sokka Gakkai, had grown exponentially through this process, and I began to wonder if the Christian church couldn’t do the same.  

Last summer of 2023, I went on a two-month outreach to Japan.  While there, my team did much street evangelism, and we saw incredible connections made with the Japanese.  So many people we invited to church came!  We saw the miraculous happen and were so united in our ministry together.  One night, we discussed the rising need and call and asked ourselves why we couldn’t stay in Japan longer term. The answer didn’t reveal itself immediately.  After my team left, I stayed a little longer and visited multiple ministries to discover more connections and what God was doing in Japan.  I learned through this time that YWAM does church planting worldwide and that the door would be open, yet I needed a team.  

One afternoon, I was with a Christian friend, and he had other friends who invited us to visit their work headquarters.  We obliged and found ourselves entering a large and beautiful building in the center of Tokyo.  I glanced at the sign out front and immediately felt the Lord highlight it.  It read “Sokka Gakkai” headquarters.  Ten years later, God brought me back to what I had studied with church planting at Biola! I knew this was a divine moment.  I heard God reestablishing that call and vision He gave me.  After witnessing and sharing the Gospel with this group, I went to another area to also evangelize.  During that time, our team leader called me and said that God was calling his family to church planting in Japan.  I said that at the exact same time, God was also calling me! This divine moment sealed the call to Japan. 

The Need of the Church in Japan…

But Why Japan? The real question is, “Why Not Japan”? Japan is a nation of contrasts, one of the most influential nations, and the number 1 tourist destination worldwide.  People in the West are obsessed with Japanese food, art and animation, music, and even religion.  Yet the Japanese people are the second-largest unreached people group.  “Unreached” means that they have little or no access to the Gospel, and the church is neither non-existent, fully established, or self-functioning.  Indeed, there is good reason for this as it is estimated there is only one missionary for every 65,000 Japanese, an impossible number for one person alone to reach. 

Where there are churches, the leadership is aging out and there are no plans for raising up the next generation as leaders.  Many churches have no pastor and may even share pastors with another church.  The Pastor frequently will have no way to sustain income from tithes, so oftentimes, they will need to work a full-time job and thus have little time to invest in the church and congregants outside of Sunday mornings.  Dozens of cities and hundreds of towns have no church whatsoever.  When asked if they know Jesus, many Japanese either have no concept of who He is or do not know much more than we would, by comparison, know about Confucius.

The Strongholds of the Culture…

Historically, Christianity is found in Japan’s past with the arrival of Francis Xavier and missionaries in the late 1500s. A great revival took place with hundreds of thousands of Japanese becoming Christian alongside many feudal lords.  However, years later, a severe time of persecution began, and many were martyred.  For the next several hundred years, Christianity was hidden and secretly continued.  You can learn more about these events from the movie “Silence.”  After the great revival and for much of Japan’s history Japan was an island nation both physically and ideologically.  Japan was closed to much of the outside world for hundreds of years from 1603-1868.  For a millennium, Japan believed that its Emperor was a deity, but after Japan was defeated in World War II, the Emperor declared that he was not divine.  This brought a great sense of moral disillusionment, and Japan has since been titled “a superpower without a moral compass”. 

Today, the Japanese are culturally both Buddhist and Shinto with Confucianist morality.  However, if you talk to many of them, they will claim to be non-religious.  They will attend temples for marriage and funeral ceremonies and pray for blessings or happiness.  Yet, happiness eludes them.  The prevailing cultural principle is “the nail that sticks up will be hammered down.”  This affects every facet of society as pressure mounts on people to be perfect and to fiercely follow their peers and societal norms.  If you deviate, you will be forced to fall in line or else become an outcast, which is extremely difficult to reverse.

Those who lose their jobs or fail in their duties are shamed by society and struggle to overcome their status.  This leads to, in the worst cases,” Hikikomori,” which describes social shut-ins who never leave their rooms for decades and number in the millions (2% of the population).  Others may choose suicide as the best way to atone for their shame. Tens of thousands committed suicide in 2023. Some went to the “suicide forest” to do so.  The mental health strains are intense, with 40% of Japanese feeling lonely, 11% questioning why they were born, and 85% of youth wondering why they even exist.  Loneliness is a pandemic where some will go so far as to rent friends or family members to feel like they have people who love and care for them.  Social conformity pressures are intense.  The Japanese need to feel loved, known, and given hope.  Only Jesus can bring them this desperate need.

Our Church Plant Vision

My team has personally witnessed the fruit of these challenges facing Japan.  We have met people who are suicidal, hopeless, and isolated.  We have served with pastors and churches that are struggling to survive.  We have discipled young Japanese Christians who are desperate to reach their family and friends for Christ. Now, in moving to Japan, we hope to establish a community house, “living room,”) where Japanese Christians can feel known, loved, and empowered to reach their nation for Christ. 

Our church name will be “Kuristobashi,” which in Japanese means Bridge of Christ.  We want to be a bridge for the Japanese to find Jesus, but we also want to bridge the gap between the church of the West and Japan.  Each week, we will not only host teams from outside Japan and lead them on outreach, but we will also be evangelizing on the streets of Tokyo daily, utilizing worship, hobbies, street preaching, and coffee house ministry to connect with people.  Our heart is for every one of the 11 members of our team to meet at least one Japanese and disciple them.  In time, we will empower them to participate in ministry and eventually give them leadership roles.  With the Spirit’s leading, we will eventually hand the reins over to them to become a fully Japanese church and then proceed to start another church.  Each church community will be a simple church seeking to be an open space to share, spend time together, and be a church family.  We want to participate in their daily lives and be available for them throughout the week. 

Our vision will expand beyond our own house church, however, as we will seek to reestablish and maintain relationships with existing churches in the region.  For this reason, our house church services will be on Saturday nights to allow our team members to attend another church on Sunday mornings.  One of our team members has a successful YouTube channel, so we plan to use this channel to expose the needs of the culture and local communities.  Through this YouTube Channel, we will encourage other believers to come to serve in Japan and join us in what God is doing.  Japan desperately needs more churches.  Japanese Christians need to be empowered to reach their cities with the Gospel. On our last trip, dozens of people came to church when we invited them.  They are hungry for Truth and for something real.  Pray for favor as we go.  Also, pray for open doors to preach the Gospel and to share it in new ways that will speak to the hearts of the Japanese.  Pray for miracles, healings, prophecies, and deliverance to be a witness of God’s power.  But also prayerfully consider giving.