Here we can hear from a past missionary to Japan why the Lord called him there.
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Why did I go to Japan? More importantly why did the Lord take me to Japan? About my fourth year in I was frustrated in almost everything. I was the pastor of the little church in Yoshino, Nara Prefecture. My language was limited. I was still struggling with the culture. I felt inadequately trained and equipped to handle the Yoshino Church. It had problems that limited its growth and usefulness to the Lord. Being in Japan seemed a waste of time. I told the Lord that I should be back in my own culture, with my native language, for there I could make a difference.
His reply turned my understanding of missionary work upside down. “I did not bring you here so that you could change things. I brought you here because this is the best place for me to work in you. If you allow me to do what I need to do in you, the overflow will be your ministry to others!”
Japan had what I needed. I was born into the Australian culture and raised on a farm in South Australia. I I was thus a loner, lacked social skills, an introvert who had to prove himself, and highly competitive. Thus I was strongly individualistic.
Japanese people puzzled me. In making general conversation I would ask a person what he or she did. Instead of giving their occupation the answer invariably was for example “I am Mitsubishi”. They did not think of themselves in terms of “Who am I?” rather “Whose am I?”
After initial language study I started reading the Japanese Bible and came across Ephesians 4:13, where instead of individual growth it stated “...until we all together be-come one mature man”. My reaction was, “Heresy?!” So I checked the Greek and found that it agreed with the Japanese. I was coming from an individualistic mindset and world view and so was misreading the Bible, and as a result misunderstanding Christianity. I needed a paradigm shift from individualism to community. Japan was the place to start the change for I was living among people who modeled community.
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Don Barns, the author of this article, was with WEC in Japan from 1960 to 1974; he was married to Fay and continues to teach the Bible in his local church in Australia.