This article is about my experiences in going to 'AsiaCon', WEC's regional Asia conference in October 2009, and what God taught me there.
I have been working in Otsu city, a rural area of Japan, population 320,000, 25 minutes by train outside of Kyoto city the old capital of Japan. It is mainly residential, with most of the working population in our area travelling into the bigger cities of Kyoto and Osaka for their work.
We are involved in a church plant that was started 10 years ago by a five-person missionary team. We are involved in the community in different ways, like English classes, sports clubs, special events etc. I teach at the local primary school on Fridays. We presently have 3 official members f the church, 2 others who are regular but still retain membership of their own churches in other cities, and 3 couples with children who come randomly. So on a Sunday morning, we can have 2 adults one week and 10 the next.
My feelings regarding our church, as I went to Asiacon, WEC's bi-annual regional Asia conference, were very mixed. Some weeks we are greatly encouraged, then the next week everything seems to be collapsing around us. The last two years we had been encouraging and training the church members to lead the meetings. We were blessed and felt they were growing in this. Then suddenly one pulled out and the others pulled back too. Likewise on our field in the last 14 months we have had 8 new workers (4 in the last 2 months). In this we can rejoice, yet in the last two years we have seen a church plant close and have lost 3 workers (2 with 9yrs and 1 with 1.5 years experience). Actually in the last 5 years for a variety of reasons, one being retirement, we have lost 10 workers. Our field can seem to be a hard place to remain on.
Asiacon is a bi-annual gathering of workers (mainly leaders) from the Asian fields, maybe 2-5 representatives from each field. The purpose this year was “Believing God for Change, Renewal and Harvest”. Every second day the programme started at 7:00am (!) with half an hour in your assigned triplet, sharing, reflecting and praying together. The other days started at 7:30 with breakfast. Each day we were able to worship together from 8:30-10:00, focusing on God devotionally and what He was saying to us. After coffee/tea time the days were filled with seminars, presentations and training for us on a variety of subjects like vision strategy, prophetic ministry, contextualised church, emerging worship, church planting principles.The evenings centred on prayer for our represented countries and the wider world.
The Sunday before Asiacon I had been invited to speak at a small international church in Phuket, Thailand. I was going to turn down the invitation when a lady who had been a missionary in Japan 45 years ago visited the field. She challenged me through the story of Caleb, who did not give up on seeking God and all that God had promised him. 45 years later he was strong and undeterred in asking God, ”Give me my mountain!” As I began to prepare for this message God began to speak to me. How much was I taken up with my worries, what to pack, wear, what to do…instead of focusing on “What did He want me to do, and what had He planned during this time”. How much was I still worried about myself when He had given me a mouth, and He would speak if I would only be faithful to Him and go. I was encouraged, “God still wants to speak to me,” but my cry was “Please speak to me more as this life is so difficult”.
The greatest joy of the first day was meeting fellow workers in our company. What a variety, diversity of people we were, different backgrounds, experiences and areas of work (22 ethnic groups). It was so amazingly refreshing, fascinating, encouraging and challenging to just listen to their stories of what God has done until now and what He is doing. So many are facing difficult physical and emotional situations and yet seeing spiritual growth. I appreciated again how we are so blessed to be part of a really international group working internationally.
Each time two people met you could hear the same kind of repeated pattern of statements and questions. The name introduction, which field are you on? What do you do? The hard part was the inevitable question of “How long have you been working in Japan with WEC?” Most other people seemed to have been on the field for 5-7 years. My answer of “16 years working in Japan” was each time met with surprise, “16 years, wow!” and then looks of respect. Yet for me, each time it was a stab of pain. A stab of pain for each time I had to admit ”16 years”, and hearing the painful voice echoing in my mind, ”What can you show for all those years?” But this painful voice was not the voice of God, and instead God spoke using the words of various speakers and even using the very passages I had received before Asiacon.
I am so quick to look at myself and question what I have or haven’t done. We can be so I-centred that we are not looking to God. Moses was concerned about I, but to every “I” question that Moses asked God responded about Himself and who He was.
M: “Who am I?” God: “I am that I am.”
M: “What shall I say?” God: “I will give you the words.”
This story might have looked like the story of Moses, Moses’ mission, but it was God’s mission, Moses was just there. God said; “I have seen the misery...I have heard them crying… I am concerned…” (Exodus 3:7) God does know all about the situations in Japan that no one else knows about. He is concerned.
I too need to remember again that “God has called me not because of who I am but because of who He is.“ I needed to remember that the promises God gave 16 years ago are still His promises. Even after 45 years in the desert, Caleb was passionate about God’s promises. What kind of passion did he have? Convincing thoughts, enthusiasm, a loud voice? No, Caleb’s passion was based on thankfulness to God, the promises God had given and a belief that God could overcome all obstacles. As Caleb wholeheartedly looked to God, God gave Caleb his promises. So what do I need to make my ministry and the ministries on the field live? Basically, the answer is simply “God”. We need to hear the voice of God and see God’s divine power change the situations around us. As a team and a field our basic need remains to hear the voice of God. So what priority do we put on trying to hear the voice of God? How should I go out from here? When God was sending Moses out, Moses didn’t want an angel to be there to help him out. Moses said to God, “Unless you go with me, I won’t go”. In other words, “I don’t want just an angel I want you, God.”
As I return to Japan, I want this to be what I say…I don’t just want a method or plan but I want God to be with us. To go out having heard His voice, carrying His vision and only moving on when His presence is with me/us.
What about the things we have suffered, the losses we have had? Here too, I can again call out to God and “choose’ to believe in Him. When things have been given and taken away, still I can trust God, and choose to say, “Blessed be Your name.” I can “trade my sorrows for the joy of the Lord”. I may feel rejected, but “I am accepted because You were rejected, I’m forgiven…I’m alive, because You lived and died. Amazing love how can it be, that you My God should die for me.”
Is God at work in Asia? Yes, too many things are happening around Asia to mention here! However, a few interesting comments at the conference were:
“How much of what is happening in sensitive countries is because of what we did, or did what happened simply occur because we got out of God’s way?”
Thailand has been considered a hard country for so many years. In the last 4 years in Thailand their new church-planting initiative has led to the number of believers growing from one in 2005, to 166 today. A church-planting model was presented with different strategies and good ideas, how they have adapted them etc. As a team they feel they are reaping where others have sown. Also, some things they would do the same again, others they would try differently but in summary three points were given as having been effective.
1) Prayer 2) Consistent Evangelism 3) Room for the Holy Spirit to work.
They said they always used to meet once a week for prayer but now, 8:30-10:00 Tuesday – Friday the teams (and anyone else who wants to) will meet for prayer and this is something they would never do without or go back to not having.
I was so pleased to have the experience of learning from other people at AsiaCon, and most of all of learning from God.