The Japan that WEC entered 59 years ago is very different to today. We can look at the lives changed and churches established in that time, and rejoice. For those of us with experience working here, we know how big those achievements are! The evangelical population is widely quoted as 0.3% or 0.4%, with just 0.2% in church on any Sunday. For all that Japan has done in influencing and changing the world, the church in Japan has struggled to impact and influence the lives of ordinary Japanese people.
As we look forward, we have just reaffirmed our values and want to restate our passion to see God bring transformation to Japan. Our Vision is to:
Pioneer and Partner to establish Light Giving Churches in Japan.
Light Giving Churches – We don’t believe that churches are mere survival centres; rather they are the means that God wants to use to bring transformation to people and communities. This is what we want for churches we plant and churches we can influence. We can’t have an exit strategy until we see the churches being God’s means to blessing Japan and Japanese.
Pioneer – To achieve the above, we feel we are still at the beginning, still looking for new ways of how to do things and needing to adapt to reach new generations of Japanese. The old models are not enough.
Partner – We value the Japanese people that God has touched. We don’t want to walk away from them, rather, even if it sometimes feels difficult, we want to work with them and others that God brings to Japan for His purposes. Be it in being partners, mentors or those mentored, we want our relationships to show the Kingdom community of Light Giving Churches that we are working together to build.
What will this mean for us?
We want to recruit you to praying for this vision. We believe it will help our future new workers and yourselves, as well as ourselves, if we all know what we are aiming for.
We are also now starting to prayerfully developing tools to help us continually assess our activity and effectiveness in these three areas. In the next year we are likely to be launching another church planting team, as well as looking at how people can be involved in more than one location at a time. We desperately need to move beyond a group of churches struggling just to be refuse centres, and instead pioneer and partner for God’s kingdom here. This is how we believe we – and you too - can bring light to Japan.
Article written by Martin & Julie Crowhurst, WEC Japan field leaders