Barriers to Becoming a Christian

What are some of the barriers for Japanese to become Christians?

Gordon Kaneda (Pastor of Lynnwood Japanese Church) has spoken concerning this at several of our RJC conferences.
1. The Barrier of Ignorance: What is Christianity?

2. The Barrier of Religion: Religion?? No Way!!

3. Barriers of Pressure: What are people going to say?

If you are interested in his workshop handout, I will be glad to send it to you?
don_wright@mac.com

What is DNJ?

DNJ is an important word to remember. It stands for Diaspora Network for Japanese.

DNJ has come out of the vision of the Japan Evangelical Association (JEA) to try to network the various organizations ministering to Japanese around the world. Since it is managed by JEA, you will have to know Japanese to follow this network. WWW.dnjonline.org is the address for their secured internet portal site. They are posting a variety of articles and information to help the comunication process, especially helping Japanese coming back to Japan.

The document that they published last year states, "DNJ and DNJ Online will be an impacting leverage to open local Japanese churches and coordinate with those churches for returnee and missionary support as an interdenominational gospel approach."

Even though you might not be able read their material, we English speakers need to be aware of the efforts by Japanese pastors and leaders in Japan and around the world. Please pray for them.

Memorial Day Weekend Event for Prayer

Please pray for our evangelism training conference for Japanese Christians, May 25th-28th (Memorial Day weekend) sponsored by Bridges International, Campus Crusade for Christ.

The purpose of the conference is to:
Develop Japanese in their walk with Christ;

Equip them with the know-how and confidence to share the gospel in Japan;

Expose many Japanese in Seattle to the gospel.

Please pray:
Many Japanese will come to our Thursday night event (Talk Time). Pray for a good time of befriending them this first night of the conference.

Pray they will join us for weekend activities and trust will be built.

Pray for openness and a willingness to hear and consider spiritual truths. Pray they will understand and have courage to respond.

Saturday night will find the Japanese Christians applying what they have learned from the training. After dinner, one of the conferees will share her testimony (Eri) followed by small groups led by the Japanese Christians, sensitively helping the non-Christians to understand. Please pray for this important evening.

Pray for good opportunities to share the gospel one-on-one as we are in Seattle or elsewhere.

Thanks for helping us impact these young lives for Christ!
Partners with you,
John & Barbara Whitehouse Campus Crusade for Christ

PS If you live in the Seattle area you are welcome to the Saturday night dinner followed by the outreach event. It is free.
You are, also, welcome to a special training for Christians ministering to Japanese/internationals. It will be held Friday and Saturday mornings during the conference - 9 am.
Please let us know if you plan to come to either of the above events.

DaVinci and Jesus

Japanese are also reading the novel and will be viewing the movie.

Campus Crusade now has a good website up and running in Japanese. You might want to share that with your friends. The address is www.davincijp.com.

As has often been pointed out, the word for danger is "kiki." The last kanji character is the first in "kikai" meaning opportunity.危機、機会.

The DaVinci Code perhaps is danger (kiki), but it is an amazing opportunity (kikai) to share Jesus.

Don Wright

When They Return Part Two

While serving in church planting in Japan, one day a young college student showed up in our church. He seemed to be very interested in the gospel. When we asked more, we were surprised that he already had an understanding of the gospel, and was trusting Christ.

After several weeks attending our church, he shared that he had first heard about Christianity as a high school exchange student in Northern California. His host family were believers, and he attended church quite regularly. After a very frightening experience he became serious about seeking God, and decided to trust Jesus.

He returned back to Japan, but no one helped him find a church, or prepared him for his return. It was about four years later that he "happened" to meet a Christian at school, and she brought him to our church.

We were very thankful, but sad to note that he had not been prepared. Theologically, I know that the Lord had not abandoned him, and lovingly gave him the opportunity to connect with us. And yet how much better would it have been if that family had done a better job in helping him.

I guess they should have read my blog posting from yesterday! :)

As They Go Back

We are thankful for the many Japanese who come in contact with Christ here in North America. The contact level ranges from attending a church or Bible study for the first time to becoming a believer and being baptized. This is exciting stuff!

However, a large percent of those returning to Japan leave their faith experience back in North America, and never continue their faith in their home country.

Since the Christian church in Japan is so small, this fact is a tragedy. The reasons why this happens are complex, but here are a few.

1. The actual "faith" of the Japanese is connected to American cultural Christianity, more than to Christ.

Things that we can do:

1] Talk about this problem. Explain that drums and a guitar in worship might not be New Testament based, but are cultural items. Help them to see that you can worship God in silence and in high-noise level situations; in large groups and in small gatherings.

2] Explain that the main point is following Jesus, and seek to nurture their relationship to Jesus.

3] If possible, connect them with a Japanese Christiawn or church so that they will be able to process their faith in Japanese.

2. Upon returning to Japan the pressure of the society sucks them back to becoming an "ordinary" person.

Things that we can do:

1] Talk about this problem. Ask them what problems they can expect if they will be serious about their faith, and then help them process these. Issues related to family, friends, work and church attendance should be handled.

2] Pray much for them and keep in contact with them as they return.

3] Make every effort to introduce your friend to a Japanese church in Japan, some other returnee, or missionary who can help the tranistion.

3. There is also the difficulty of finding a Japanese church which will be a good fit. It often seems like there isn't a convenient church, and if there is a church, it might not be too friendly to people coming back from a foreign country.
Things that we can do:

1] That is right, talk about the problem. Be sure to be positive and encouraging.

2] Be sure to be actively involved in helping the person find a good church or small group. There are a number of organizations that can help you. One of the best is JCFN (Japanese Christian Fellowship Network).

What do you think?

There are several very helpful study guides which help internationals prepare for their return. If you are interested, let me know.

And if you need help finding a Christian church or fellowship back in Japan, drop me a note at don_wright@mac.com.

God's Fingerprints in Japan

Are you familiar with "God's Fingerprints in Japan/" You can find out more about it at http://akaministries.tripod.com/aloha/index.html.

Bridges Conference May 25-28

This is a great opportunity for you. Please pray and think about who you might encourage to attend. Don Wright

-------------------
There will be a wonderful opprtunity for JAPANESE CHRISTIAN STUDENTS to gather in Seattle for the purpose of Outreach Training!!!

It is Bridges Memorial Day Weekend Outreach Conference which takes place in Edmonds, WA on May 25-28.
The program will be basically in Japanese, and is focused on Japanese Christian Students although there will be a track for non-believers as well.

Some of the features are:
1. Morning Worship & Bible Talk, followed by outreach training sessions.
2. Invite local Japanese students to Japanese Dinner.
3. Sports Day, BBQ, and Games.
4. Seattle Tour

Registration forms can be downloaded at www.bridgesinternational.com .

Please encourage Japanese Christian (or non Christian) students to register!!!

Thanks and God bless,
**************************

Pastor Gordon Kaneda
Lynnwood Japanese Church
17319 Larch Way
Lynnwood, WA 98037
425-273-1224
pastorgk@comcast.net
www.jcpn.org/ljc/english.htm

RJC Fantastic DVD

The RJC Conference DVD is now available.

Here is what it contains:
40 audio presentations of most of the plenary and workshop presentations from 2005 and 2006. Over 33 hours of vital information about reaching Japanese for Christ.
15 helpful handouts that can be used with the audio presentations.
Over 100 conference pictures from the 2006 sessions.

And all for amazingly low price of $15! Be the first one on your block to have this collector’s DVD! The cost includes shipping and handling.


Also, remember that if you are in need of “Operation Japan” prayer guides, I (Don Wright) have them available for the still amazing price of only $3 plus postage and handling!
Contact us at don_wright@mac.com

Helpful Websites

There are a number of good websites available related to ministering to Japanese.
For those who can handle Japanese, I think http://jpnews.org/pc/ is great. Besides information concerning the contents of the Christian Shinbun (Newspaper), there is a front page which is of common interest to Christians and non-Christians.
http://www.kirisuto.info/ also has a lot of information.

BBN carries Bible centered broadcasts in a number of languages including Japanese. http://www.bbnradio.org/

Two sites that I enjoy for English speakers are:
1. The Japan Net (http://www.japannet.typepad.com/) has many good resources for Japanese work.

2. http://reapmagazine.com/ has a good collection of Japan related articles.

3. The Hayama Conference This is a great source for excellent papers on Japan and Christian ministry there. The conference itself is no longer in existence, but the website has some good stuff. http://www.mupjapan.org/hayama/ (The Hayama Conference used to be Click the “Files for Download” and for the year 2000 you will be interested in the presentation of Lonny Dufty’s “The Returnee in Japanese Society.”)

If you have found helpful websites for working with Japanese, let us know.

Japanese around the world

Operation Japan, the comprehensive prayer guide for Japan, indicates that there were 911,000 Japanese living outside of Japan in 2003. This figure includes long-stay and permanent residents. the largest number is in the USA with over 330,000.

In our RJC vision statement we talk about 500,000 Japanese in North America who are here temporarily. Two years ago we tossed around the figure of 3,500,000 which included tourists. Then in February, 2006 someone reported that there were up to 5,000,000 coming each year to North America.

Thankfully the Lord does better in keeping track of the numbers than we do. He desires that all people would come to understand the Good News of Jesus. Since Japanese generally are more open to the gospel when they are here in North America, let us pray much for the 330,000 (?), 500,000(?), 3,000,000(?), 5,000,000(?) who have come this year to North America. And please pray for the many churches who are seeking to share Jesus' love.

If you are looking for an opportunity to reach out to Japanese, but don't know how to get started, drop me a note at don_wright@mac.com.

RJC Website

Reaching Japanese for Christ does have a website. Although it is under construction, you can find most of the audio recordings from the 2005 RJC Conference, http://www.rjcconference.org/

Picture

The First Posting

Reaching Japanese for Christ began in 2001 with the first conference held at Northshore Baptist Church. Consequently four other conferences were held that have brought people together from across North America.

We thank God for His leading.

“To glorify God by partnering together, to give the approximately half million Japanese who (temporarily) reside in North America an opportunity to hear the gospel and become disciples of Jesus Christ! “