First of all, we finally moved into our new residence two weeks ago. It is nice to finally have privacy and a “routine,” which we have not experienced in the past six months. We are starting to discover all the different parts of our new neighborhood, such as learning where to buy groceries. One advantage of living in Tokyo is that you can go shopping after midnight — most of the stores are still open. One disadvantage is that everything is very expensive (for example, 0.4 lbs of whole bean coffee is $9). However, we definitely feel called to be in this city, to bring the transformational message of God’s grace to our lost neighbors and friends. The small discomforts are nothing compared to the joy of being able to share the Gospel with the people of Tokyo.

When it comes to ministry, God has already accomplished so much through us already in just 4 weeks. We have:

1. Changed our church polity from a board-driven to an elder-driven system.
2. Added a new meeting on Sunday, which we call “Family Time,” before the main service. The purpose of this new meeting is to inform and educate people about what we will attempt to do and why we want to do these things in the next 10 years. In other words, we are vision-casting in order to unify our goals and priorities. This meeting will continue for another three months until we begin our biblical training school in April.
3. Added a new time for believers and first-time visitors to fellowship. We provide beverages and snacks to cater to these city people.
4. Met with all the key leaders in the church to assess our tangible and intangible assets (people, money, property, connections, etc.) so we can maximize our effectiveness.
5. Started a church-wide prayer meeting before the main service to pray for one another.
6. Met with key volunteers/servants and talked with them about the changes we will go through over the next months.
7. Been recruiting people we want to commit to disciple/mentor for the next two terms of our ministry.
8. Led two pre-marital counseling sessions per week.
9. Held baptism class for those who want to get baptized.
10. Wrote devotional material in Japanese.
11. Started our church Web site construction process.
12. Started to look for a new building to meet in.
13. Discussed the strategy for our ministry for the next 12 months.
14. Worked on new church publications.

A few other notable things have happened, but we will write about them in another post. As a whole, the church is excited about our presence and the new direction that we are proposing (which is a very good thing). We are also grateful to God that, since we have arrived, our church members are bringing new people to our services. Before our arrival, the average attendance was somewhere around 40 (which is still above average in Tokyo). Now we are enjoying somewhere around 60 people weekly since our arrival. We thank God for stirring the hearts of the members and motivating them to bring those who never heard or experienced the Gospel to our grace-driven community.

Please continue to be involved with our ministry. Here are some of the major projects we want to complete within the next three months. If you or your church can to increase the effectiveness of Gospel’s work in Tokyo by financially contributing, we would appreciate it, as our small community is already giving as much as it can at this time.

I will list our projects according to the priority/urgency:

1.       Church Web Site Construction. Cost:  $6,500

This is a two-month project. We are convinced that in order to reach the people in the city, we need to use the tool of technology in a way that it has not been used before in Tokyo. Our Web site will have two versions: a home PC version and mobile device version. It will provide info about our church and also distribute first–rate, original Christian resources in Japanese to those who may not live close to Tokyo. It will also be used as an evangelistic tool to introduce Christianity, Christ, Church, and the Gospel to non-believers in an attractive manner. Christians can also use the site to connect to others living in the city, enabling them to be held accountable and pray for one another. We really need to start this project as soon as possible, but we need the funds to hire someone full-time to make the project all it needs to be.

2.       Christian Resources from the US. Cost:  $4,500

We want to import books and media resources to increase the quality of training in our community. We are currently negotiating with New Growth Press to see if we can get discounted pricing on its resources. We want to make sure we are continually equipping our believers in order to help them to trust in God’s grace in a city where it is difficult to sense God’s presence.

3.       A new sign to promote our church in our neighborhood. Cost:  $600

Our church is currently not well-advertised. We had two new families over the last 4 weeks that almost missed the service because they could not locate our church. Now that we are officially moving forward as a growing community, we would like to be more visible.

4.       Simultaneous Translation Kit (Transmitter x1/Receivers x40) Cost: $4,500

We have been having multiple guests from the US who want to become members at our church. However, the current simultaneous translation kit we have are dated and are not functioning properly. Obviously, having a loud continuous hissing noise and poor reception bring great frustration to our first time visitors. As God is blessing us to become an inner city church that Tokyo needs, we must be able to accommodate believers who are not fluent in Japanese. If you know how to get professional translation kit at an affordable price or could donate used but still decent ones, that would be another way to help us out.

5.       New foldable tables for our fellowship meetings. Cost:  $1,500

We need 10 compact tables that can be easily stored, but these are not cheaply made. Each table costs $120 plus shipping. Acquiring these tables will not only increase the quality of believers’ fellowship, but they will also be used for welcoming new visitors and equipping believers during training classes.

Please also pray that God will provide competent co-workers with similar values and vision. We need people who understand city culture and love Japanese people the way Christ loves them.

Pray for Amy as she makes her adjustments. It can be lonely when she cannot share her thoughts clearly with others who may not understand English well. Pray that God will provide her with a close female friend who will serve the Lord with her. Also, her first Japanese conversational class begins on January 7. Pray that God will use her there to share the Gospel through her testimony.

Pray that God will continue to use His people to support our effort in Tokyo. Since we left the U.S., the value of the dollar hit 14-year low against Japanese Yen. That means the value of our support went down significantly since our arrival. That is very discouraging when you live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Please pray that we will continue to rely on God’s provision and His grace and not lose our focus as we serve Him.

Thanks for your continuous prayer and support. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Serving the Lord together by His grace,

Kazu & Amy Kato

We made it! We made it TOGETHER! We are finally in Tokyo and we are ready to begin our ministry. Last week we spent most of our time taking care of government papers for Amy and finding affordable furniture. We are SO excited to finally be in the city which we love and which we want to see God transform with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What we are trying to accomplish here in Tokyo requires spiritual empowerment and God’s grace. When we reflect on the immediate spiritual needs of the people and the need for the culture to be transformed by the Gospel, it can become quite overwhelming. But we are very confident of the fact that the God who provided our needs and who has called us to this place according to His will is going to meet our daily needs continually so that more people in Tokyo can turn to Christ. Please keep us in your prayers as we expect the next three months to pass us by very quickly.

Here are some prayer requests.

• Pray that God will provide new workers who can work along side of us.
• Pray that God will protect us from Satan’s attempt to discourage us and prevent us from reaching our target group.
• Pray that we will be consumed with God’s holy passion to see the lost people in Tokyo be added to His body so that we don’t lose our perspective.
• Pray that God’s grace would transform our community so that we would be able to be different in our city.
• Pray that God would allow us to demonstrate wisdom as we seek elect and disciple future leaders of our community.
• Pray that we will be able to raise more special project funds in order to expand our ministry influence.

We are grateful to God for you as He has chosen you to be our co-laborers. Please continue to visit our site to be informed of what we are doing and how we are doing. God bless!!

Kazu & Amy

Since I returned from Japan in mid-August, we have visited 14 churches. We traveled across 11 states and tasted pizza and fast food from every town we’ve visited. Needless to say, traveling from one place to another constantly was physically and mentally taxing, not to mention the unpleasantness of a lifestyle of eating and sitting in the car all day long. However, making new friends in Christ and being able to share our passion and vision to a different audience every time we moved has certainly made our tour worthwhile.

As most of you know, last month we needed close to an additional $3,900/month support in order for us to be in Tokyo by November 12th. It looked very unrealistic and discouraging at the time. But God has once again proved Himself to be faithful by bringing the right people in our lives at the right moments.

Let me give you an example of how God has been confirming our ministry by meeting our needs. During the first week of this month, we visited a church in New York City led by Pastor Tim Keller. We both acknowledge that no one can impact the city alone, and therefore a need for partnership with other like-minded people who are Gospel-driven is needed. This church has been very effective in reaching the young professionals in Manhattan, more than any other church that I know today (about 4,000 members and attendees). Since they were interested in reaching Tokyo with a strategically sound ministry, we agreed to meet with one another and share our thoughts. After a few meetings with the leaders of their church-plant team, we recognized that we shared much in common (e.g., the strategic focus on the city, the need to “do church” differently from traditional methods so that the Gospel is communicated not only faithfully but also relevantly into the Japanese urban context and culture, etc). While our new partnership with them is immensely valuable, the best blessing came from God allowing us to meet a family that we’ve never met before.

During the week of our visit in NYC, we had an opportunity to share our ministry at one of the small group meetings sponsored by the aforementioned church. After our presentation, we started to talk to the hosts of the small group. Providentially, the husband, David, is married to a wife, Asako, from Japan. His wife was from Tokyo, and they both understood the challenges we were up against. They were sincere and were able to add insights to our discussion that can only come from those who knew what it is like to live in Tokyo as Christians. While meeting a mature Christian from Tokyo was surprising enough, the greatest surprise came after the meeting, when they offered to allow us to live in their house in Tokyo, which is not being occupied by anyone at this time. The house is located about 30 minutes away from our church by bicycle and is far bigger in size than what we could have afforded. Also, the house is fully furnished, which will help us to postpone our spending until we need to move to a new location. The obvious benefit of this is that it helps us to keep out outgoing expense under control. It is so encouraging to see God affirming our ministry by providing our needs so extraordinarily.

Over the last two months, we experienced God’s work in our lives again and again. We continuously experienced Him taking away our confidence in our own ability yet providing sufficiently in order to remind us that our true source of security and success is solely Him. By God’s goodness, now we can joyously announce that our monthly need is down to $889. That means just 36 friends and family committing to partner with us by pledging $25/month will get us to our goal! We still hope to leave on November 12 (less than three weeks from now), and we are confident that God is going to bring in the rest of our support before we leave to Japan.

It is our aim to be financially independent by 2017. Will you support us in the meantime to make this essential ministry in Tokyo possible? If you are willing and capable to become our partners, please let us know by e-mail.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support. We are so excited to see what God is going to accomplish through our service in the near future in Tokyo. Please continue to keep us in your prayers and keep in touch with us.

Kazu & Amy

We have an urgent request as the end of this calendar year is approaching. This is the time we need to really ask you to consider partnering with us financially so that we can fulfill the Great Commission together in the least evangelized and un-churched city in the world.

The 38 days I (Kazu) spent in Tokyo this summer encouraged me in the ministry God has given us.  In Tokyo, I had many opportunities to make positive changes at the church where we will be starting our ministry. I spent most of my time there preaching, sharing the Gospel, networking with other workers, counseling, planning, and praying. I individually met with struggling church members to encourage them, and rebuked some who were causing issues within the church. I carefully, yet openly, challenged the currently practiced culture of our church, providing them with new values from God’s Word and casting a new vision of what we could become by God’s grace.

After returning to the States, I have received many e-mails of encouragement from our church people in Tokyo, including news of people being reconciled to one another, people reading the Bible more consistently, and people repenting from their personal sins. We could not be happier than this — being used by God in a full-time capacity to reach and train fellow believers living in Tokyo, for these are the results of God’s grace at work

However, not all news is encouraging.   For the past 6 weeks or so since I (Kazu) returned from Japan, we have been traveling extensively, covering six different states (NY, NJ, PA, OH, IN, MI), raising our support.  Yet many churches are unable to support us since they are struggling to fulfill their commitment to their current missionaries.  We also had two major contributing churches drop our support due to a lack of resources.

Can you be a part of God’s work in Tokyo through us?

Our target date is still November 12, 2009, as my current visa expires two days later. Yet, due to our setback, we still need $3,940 in additional monthly commitments.  That sounds like a big amount, and it is a big amount if you ask one person or few churches to provide it.  We cannot foresee the five churches we will be visiting over the next two months will be able to commit $750 each.  But we are looking for 158 people who can give $25 per month (fewer people if some can give more generously). Your monthly commitment of $25 will get us to Japan before Thanksgiving Day so that we can effectively reach the lost in Tokyo with the Gospel of Christ and train the believers unto spiritual maturity and leadership. You can confidently partner with us because many of you have witnessed our faith, life, and ability while we were with you.

Mark Twain once wrote: “Simple rules for saving money. To save half: When you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count to forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.” However, I dare you to count three hundred and consider the importance of a lost soul turning to Christ by faith from God’s perspective. Just imagine how God can use your openhanded giving and allow you to effectively share the Gospel to the lost and train the younger generation to become future leaders in Tokyo through us. Allow God to let you glimpse that the spiritual compensations are so real and lasting that you come to see that giving up for His cause is inevitably receiving.

Please share the many blessings you are enjoying as God continues to bless you beyond your needs. Help us get to Japan for the work of the Gospel by making a monthly commitment today. We need enough pledges, not the actual money, before the end of October in order for us to leave on time.

To support us, all you need is:

• A voided blank check (for a checking account) or a deposit slip (for a savings account)
• An envelope and a first-class stamp (44 cents)
• A completed Authorization Agreement Form
• An email indicating that you are capable and willing to support us regularly for our organization’s record (VERY IMPORTANT),

Thank you so much for being willing to help us. Your support will allow us to effectively serve and build up the body of Christ in Japan. Please don’t hesitate to ask us questions.

Please accept our sincere thanks,

Kazu and Amy Kato

P.S.  If $25 is too much for you to pledge at this time, would you consider pledging $10 or $15 instead?

I cannot believe my time in Tokyo is almost over. It was one of the shortest summers that I have spent (being busy with setting up our ministry and spending time with key people) and simultaneously one of the longest ones (being away from my wife, Amy). Let me give you a final update before I leave Tokyo this coming Sunday.

Two Sundays ago, I spoke from Romans 12, addressing how God builds His Body. The first verse encourages believers to present their bodies (plural) as a living sacrifice (singular), holy and acceptable to God, which is our most reasonable and spiritual response to God’s saving grace. Paul’s emphasis is not “doing” something for God but rather “being” something for God. According to Paul, what God considers to be holy and acceptable is not individuals independently dedicating their lives to God. While our personal dedication to God is good, this passage does not teach that concept. Rather, it teaches that we are to be a collective offering – believers coming together and being built up as one sacrifice offered to God.

But how can we become a collective living sacrifice when that is not natural to our regular way to thinking? Paul says God never intended us to do it with our own effort. If we rely on our own effort, the best we can do is to allow the world to change us. The biblical answer is to let God do the job of transforming us by renewing our collective mind. If we try to accomplish God’s supernatural work with our own effort, we cease to be holy, or set apart, from the world. But God’s transforming grace allows the body of Christ to be able to discern and approve God’s will. This chapter teaches that God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will is for us to live a connected life to the Body of Christ, using our gifts to increase its effectiveness, and to demonstrate our unity by practicing unconditional love and acceptance toward all men, being committed to one another for the long haul. Again, in this passage, the idea of “being” the church is emphasized, not simply “doing” it.

Last week I spoke from Colossians 3. In this chapter, Paul teaches about what it looks like to have a Heaven-focused community life based on Christ’s accomplishments. Skipping to v. 12 and the following, Paul encourages his readers to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and Christ-like forgiveness. Some might notice that these virtues do not need to be shown to God but only to other people who are imperfect. Paul caps this by saying, “And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful” (vv. 14-15). Paul does not teach that our goal is to be one body. He says we were called in one body in order to experience the ruling peace of Christ within the Body. In order to achieve this peace and unity in spite of our diversity, we must recognize that our ultimate motivation must be love, which is the only virtue mentioned in this section that can be shown both to God and men.

But how can we demonstrate these virtues and allow Christ’s peace to rule in our hearts? Once again, it can happen by allowing God to do it for us. Paul previously prayed for the Colossians to “be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might,” so that they may have “all endurance and patience with joy” in spite of the mess that people may cause within the Body (Col 1:11).

I have been very thrilled and satisfied as many of the members at our church are positively responding to these truths, wanting to be changed to make a difference collectively in Tokyo.

Besides preaching, I have been spending at least three days a week meeting with key people in the church and outside of the church to solidify our commitment to be a value-driven church that can effectively and attractively reach the people in the city. I have also been sharing the Gospel with three different unsaved individuals. While each case started out with casual conversations, we ended up spending hours talking about the cross and the worldview that the Bible teaches. One of them, Mr. Sato, asked me to spend another evening with him to share more about the Gospel.

They are being stirred by the truths they heard from the Bible, and I promised to continue our conversations when Amy and I return to Tokyo (hopefully very soon). The more I share the Gospel with Japanese people, the more I understand how to do it more effectively. Maybe I will share some of my thoughts on how do it in one of my future posts, but for now it is encouraging to know that I am speaking their “language,” which is something many missionaries and pastors have not been able to figure out yet.

I have also attended different cultural centers and events, trying to see how to be the church to those who live in Tokyo. For example, I attended a huge block party in the Shibuya district last week, where I enjoyed meeting new unsaved people (most of them being somewhere between the age of 18-40) and thinking how to reach them effectively with the Gospel of Christ. I have also spent a lot of time with internationally accomplished artists that are committed believers, asking them to partner with us in our future ministries. Instead of waiting for people to come to church, I am going out to where the lost people are and actively seeking forms that would be relevant. I’ll share more about these ideas later.

Additionally, I have been prayerfully approaching several members in the church asking them to consider being discipled by me for the next 7 years. I am committed to impart everything that I was entrusted with by those who discipled me to these capable young men. I would also train them to be able to take spiritual leadership within the church so that eventually we can start multiple sister churches in the city as God permits.

Please continue to pray for us. We are very passionate about sharing the Gospel with the lost in Tokyo and providing them with excellently made resources to help them grow in the city. Also, we covet your prayers for my mother, who is moving to the final stage of her battle with cancer. Now her pain prevents her from walking to the closest grocery store. It causes us great pain as we see her health deteriorate rapidly before our eyes, especially because we remember her as someone who tirelessly served the Lord over the years. She is still spiritually focused and constantly looking for new ways for us to raise our full support. We thank God for His work in her life, and we would like to be back in Tokyo with full support before she passes away.

After spending this summer here, I can finally visualize how Amy and I may be able to realistically impact the city with the Gospel of Christ. It has given us a clear understanding on what needs to be done in order to keep the movement of Jesus alive for the next 20 years (reminder: the average age of pastors in Japan today is 70).

Therefore, partner with us through regular giving today and be part of this great ministry that is changing people’s lives daily. Please pray to God and ask Him to give you a renewed passion for the lost. If you are personally incapable to partner with us financially, let’s be creative and share about us to your friends or small group that might be able to assist us. We need additional $4,000 monthly commitment before we can return to Japan. Our target date is sometime during the second week of November, which is also the time my visa runs out to be in the US. Over 600 people visit our website weekly. If each person can contribute $7 per month towards this cause starting this month, we can be in Tokyo before November. One person cannot do everything. But everybody can do something, and that small something can change the world we live in. Our next update will most likely be from the state of Ohio. If you are in the area, please let us know. Thanks again for reading.

For the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? (1 Cor. 12:14-17)

This week’s sermon was rather simple: God desires us to learn to accept people with different personalities. God purposes to build unity out of diversity. God never intended the body to conform and all become the same. He purposely made each member different with different functions to fill. We need to recognize that the result of our life together with all our differences is something better than if we isolated ourselves or associated with only those who are the same as us.

Differences can lead to a better understanding of God and His ways. We can challenge and stimulate one another rather than judge and conflict with one another. We can learn from one another. Rather than question who is right, we must learn to ask how we can learn together what is right. The ultimate key to biblical unity is to see one another as God sees us. No one is greater than others. We are all sinners saved by grace. When we despise another believer because of his or her differences, you are despising someone for whom Christ died for.

Yet, the reality is that everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices – just recognize them. An American playwright, George Aiken, once said “If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.” If so, then how can we learn to accept people who are different? The only permanent solution is to be transformed by God’s grace that is effectively working among us as we continue to fellowship with one another. We need to richly and intentionally allow God’s Word to dwell within the community. Then we need to allow the mature believers to teach and encourage the younger ones to believe in God’s Word and together fulfill God’s purpose for His glory. This is precisely what Japan’s churches need.

Yet, this process does not happen overnight. It happens slowly as we continue to grow in the knowledge of God’s Word as His Spirit moves among us. It requires patience and longsuffering. Moreover, it requires committed people to tirelessly preach the Word correctly and effectively in season and out of season in order to insure that God’s values are being recognized and practiced by His people. We believe that God has sovereignty equipped us to be able to do this task effectively in Tokyo. After the Sunday sermon, one of our church members, Miss Makiko Sumi, tearfully prayed that we would be able to live out this reality together as we continue to fellowship with one another as the Body of Christ. We could sense God’s Spirit moving among us and there was a new desire among the congregation to change to fulfill God’s purpose in Japan. The last thing we want to do is to kill this momentum which God is causing in our church.

So, we prayerfully ask you to consider partnering with us financially through regular giving, if you have not yet, so that we can continue this much needed ministry in Japan that could possibly change the spiritual climate of Tokyo. In less than three weeks, I will be returning to the US in order to continue our support discovery trip. We still need over $3,500 monthly commitment above what we have already raised. We believe that we can raise this amount easily with God’s people’s involvement who want to see God’s glory being manifested in one of the most spiritually neglected cities in the world.

This is one of those situations in which we cannot accomplish the task unless we work together. Amy and I are committed to give all so that we can be used by God to make a lasting change in the lives of those who live in Tokyo. All we need is 1% of the efforts of 100 people who are willing to accomplish the task together for the sake of God’s glory. It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference. But if you prayerfully choose to join us today through prayer and regular giving, you can make a lasting difference in the lives of Japanese people every day through us. Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” I think he is right.

While those suggested answers mentioned above are not necessarily false, they are only a small part of the bigger picture. God did not merely save us from sin so that so that we can independently experience forgiveness and renewal; God did not save us so that we can live victorious Christian lives on our own without other believers; rather He made us alive with Christ so that we as a community of believers can collectively, and not independently, become more like Christ as we are transformed by His grace.

The community emphasis is rather obvious when we pay attention to the immediate context. Paul writes, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (v. 10). Paul tells us that “we” (plural) are His workmanship (singular). When we who were once disjointed and alienated from God and one another are saved by grace, we become part of God’s temple collectively which is His workmanship.  According to the context, God made us alive in Christ so that we would grow together as one community where God’s presence is witnessed by others. “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” (vv. 19-22).

As far as I can tell, Paul does not teach the mindset of “me and my salvation” in these verses. Rather, he focuses on “God and God’s purposes”, which are much wider than just my salvation. I used these verses to encourage our people in Tokyo to recognize God’s purpose for saving us. After our salvation, our next step is not simply going to heaven. It is being made into a one-of-a-kind community on earth that incarnationally demonstrates His existence and grace to those around us in Tokyo. If we understand God and His purposes for believers’ lives according to these verses, we have no choice but to commit ourselves to live by grace and be built up as God’s temple together in love. We need to invest our money, time, and ability to create more locations throughout Tokyo where these values are communally embraced, encouraged, and practiced by authentic believers.

However, the more we minister to people, the more we realize how inadequate we are to fulfill the vision that God has given us in Tokyo on our own. Yet, simultaneously, God’s Spirit through His Word gently reminds us that God is not limited by our evident lack of ability or resources (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:9). If He desires to use us to change the city of Tokyo for His glory, all He has to do is say so. Our adequacy is found in God’s willingness and His divine power with which He strengthens us. We need to clearly recognize our entrusted task and define our expectations accordingly. We are not called to Tokyo to change people. We are simply called to proclaim the One who is capable and willing to change people in the city. We are nothing more than His ambassadors trying to effectively and attractively communicate His message of hope to those who are blinded by the world, the flesh, and the devil (cf. 2 Corinthians 3). Please pray that we will continue to serve Him one day at a time by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ and the difference it makes to those we encounter in deed and truth. We appreciate all of you for partnering with us through prayer.

I spoke about the urgent need for us as a church to reconsider our current state and be willing to change in order to fulfill the function of the church more effectively in the city. I spent a decent amount of time emphasizing the differences between “doing” the church and “being” the church in our city. In other words, when a church simply “does” the church, it is more interested in maintaining the forms it came to love, although those forms may no longer fulfill the functions of the church in today’s culture. I emphasized that if we are married to traditional forms that no longer fulfill the true functions of the church in our surrounding community, all of our effort is wasted.

Jesus emphasized this same mindset when He spoke against the Pharisees, saying, “And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN’” (Matt 15:6-9). The Pharisees thought they were worshipping God and doing Him a favor, but since they were more interested in maintaining the cherished traditions, they were no longer fulfilling the function of true worship.

On the other hand, “being” the church has to do with understanding and living out the values that God demands within the Body of Christ so that His grace can be manifested through it to the unreached. It is this cause that Amy and I are unwaveringly committed to in Tokyo. Thankfully, many older believers responded positively and many younger people showed interest in changing.

This month, one of my main purposes is to work with different people who are influencers in our church and persuade them that we need to be more value-driven, and not form-driven. While this sounds reasonable, and even biblical, many churches sadly fail to make it their core value.

This week I have already met with two potential future part-time helpers, spent some time reassessing the current church condition, enduring – regrettably – hours of sharp and unwarranted criticisms and discouragements from those within the church who are not interested in my leadership. Currently, I’m writing an article for the church publication, trying to recover as much data as possible from my crashed hard-drive, and attending our church board meeting on Saturday (7/18).

Next week, I am going to try to get connected with those who stopped attending our church while we have been gone and encourage them not to give up on what God’s doing and going to do in our church. I am also solidifying our relationships with other capable believers outside of our church who were previously interested in assisting our endeavors. My goal is to hear them reaffirm their commitment to work with us in the near future. This week we also began our plan to develop our church website, which we hope will become one of the most comprehensive and useful Christian resources online in Japanese.

More I commit to developing an authentic community of believers in Tokyo, more I realize how much more financial resources and full time workers we need to do our job with excellence. While we are grateful for all the part-time lay people who are willing to help, we need other committed believers who are willing to work with us and contribute their creativity and expertise to reach souls for Christ in the city.

It is very easy to feel satisfied for the progress God is making through us, and yet be discouraged by various expected, yet still undesirable, challenges the next minute. We definitely need your vocal support through prayer and encouragement as we face realistic challenges of being in ministry overseas.

Please don’t stop praying for us. This month, pray that God will allow me to continually demonstrate His love and patience to everyone as well as show wisdom and humility beyond my age and experience, and unquenchable passion to glorify Him through my service. I also desire to demonstrate a teachable heart that is quick to hear and slow to speak as I deal with many people with distinct opinions. Please pray for Amy also as she is down in Alabama with her family. I will ask her to write an article so that you can also find out what God is doing in her life.

Friends and family, this is our ministry in action – what we need to be doing every week to make a lasting change in Tokyo. However, as you know, we cannot be in Tokyo without your generous help. We have been listing the need for regular giving, but we still need people who love God and us to put their faith into action by partnering with us. Please take some time today and fill out the form to partner with us financially so that we can continue to effectively build up the body of Christ in Tokyo.

Let me pick up where we left off since the last update. Originally, after the final meeting we had in June, we were planning on returning to New York. However, some of the locals convinced us that we needed to stay for their July 4th celebration. They mentioned that there would be a lot of food and the world’s fastest lobster fishing boat race, and, shameless to say, we were sold.

On June 28th, we visited the Head of the River Baptist Church in Cutler, Maine. It was our joy to share our passion with the people who were attending this small church. Among the attendees was Dr. Greg Beale from Wheaton Graduate School, who used to be the president of the Evangelical Theological Society a few years ago. It was refreshing to talk to him since I miss being around people who are active in the field of theological education. Amy and I enjoyed getting to know Head of the River’s Pastor Scott and his family. We would love to continue to keep in touch with their church.

That evening, we visited Beals Christian Advent Church on Beals Island, Maine. We spoke to the congregation there, and some of them made pledges to support us through regular giving. It was our joy to get to know their pastor, Josh, and his family, who were very excited about our ministry. We will be praying for their ministry as well.

After that Sunday, we were done with our planned meetings but wanted to meet more people and inform them of the spiritual need in Tokyo. On Thursday, I arranged a meeting with one of the members of Maine Coast Baptist Church, Dr. Allen Gregory, who has started his own unique ministry with a local investor to specifically aim to reach the lost in his local community with the Gospel. Over an outstanding lobster lunch, we discussed how Amy and I can increase our ministry effectiveness. Right before I left, he suggested that I should call Pastor Jerry Mick, senior pastor of Bangor Baptist Church, in Bangor, Maine.

Although I didn’t know anything about this church prior to our meeting, right after I left Dr. Gregory’s office I quickly prayed and called Pastor Jerry’s number, not knowing what to expect. We only had two days left in Maine, and once we left the state we knew that we could not return for a long time due to its distance from where we would be.

After talking to Pastor Jerry on the phone for three minutes or so, he invited me to share our ministry to him on Friday morning. I was so grateful to the Lord, as I was not expecting to be able to meet him in person. In spite of his church office being closed that day due to the weekend and, as I later found out, being the pastor of one of the biggest churches in Maine, he was willing to meet with me.

When I arrived at the church, I did not know what to expect since our conversation was somewhat brief the day before. I was anticipating anything from a 15-minute meeting where he would just tell me to leave our information with him, to a meaningful 45-minute meeting where I could share who we are more in-depth. After we started to share, our meeting ended up being close to two hours, where I was able to share about our ministry and our strategy pretty thoroughly.

To make the long story short, he invited us back to his church for their month-long missions conference, with all of our traveling expense being covered by the church. Again, this would not have happened if we did not decide to stay one week longer and actively pursue new and exciting places to share our commitment to serve the Lord in Tokyo.

We thank God once again for orchestrating these events to allow us to experience something far greater than what we could have hoped for. Praise the Lord for going before us to pave the way so that His truth can triumph in Tokyo through our ministry.

We miss everyone back in Maine, and we would stay there longer if we could. But we want to continue to move forward with our calling so that their prayers and support can bear fruits in Tokyo, where we need to be for the sake of the Gospel.

We stayed in Maine until July 5th. Due to bad weather, the lobster boat race which was our original reason to stay was canceled. But it didn’t matter because we were able to meet new people that we would not have been able to if we didn’t stay longer, and we got to spend the weekend with our friends that we came to love.

Please continue to pray for us, that God will continue to stir the hearts of those who were exposed to the spiritual needs of those who live in Tokyo, and that they will do something about it through us.

Also pray for us during the next forty days as Amy and I will be separated for that duration to accomplish the different aspects of our ministry. I am flying back to Japan today (7/10) to “admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone” (1 Thess. 5:14) in our church community in Tokyo. It will be challenging as I would be laying down the foundation for the changes that we will bring about in the near future. It is human nature to react in one way or another whenever new and sizable changes are introduced. It is a process that requires utmost carefulness, wisdom, and moreover, unwavering God-given conviction to do what is right in His sight with excellence. I will be speaking over ten times during this time. We also covet your prayers for Amy as she drives down to Alabama to be with her family for the duration. She will update our sending church with our progress. Anyway, it is a very long time for us to be apart, and we would appreciate your encouragement during this time.

We will continue to update you with what we will be doing during this period so that you can pray for us effectively. Please continue to pray for us but also consider financially partnering with us as God leads through regular giving. We cannot leave the country until God raises enough people to pledge 100% of our support. We still need $4,000 monthly pledges. Every dollar counts. Please ask God to make you into one of those men or women who will give generously so that through your giving more Japanese souls will be saved.

Again, it is not too late to bless us with financial assistance as I fly to Tokyo by clicking the “donate” button to the left. A roundtrip flight to Japan costs somewhere around $1,000. You giving can make a big difference.

One final thing. I have noticed that many of you have visited this site but have not subscribed to it. Please take a minute to subscribe to our site today because it is free and it will notify you whenever we update our blog so you don’t miss a thing!

Thanks so much for visiting our website again. We cannot wait to tell you what God is doing in our next update.

First, we are praising God because one of the churches that we have been visiting, Faith Bible Church in Vineland, NJ, decided to take us up as their missionaries. Not only do we feel so privileged to be able to represent such an exemplary church in their commitment to know God’s Word and live it out, but we are also utterly humbled by how they are going to provide 8% of our entire support. Praise the Lord. But more than their financial support, which is incredible, we are excited to partner with them because of the relational support which they provide for us. Over the months we have been able to develop great friendships with the people from the church, and we are excited to be able to keep in touch because of the new relationship we have with them.

Another demonstration of God’s faithfulness can be witnessed in how God chose to use our friends, Eric and Jill Holmes, as His choice instruments to minister to us by taking care of our problem-ridden vehicle. Perhaps some of you know that our main car, which we originally wanted to use for our support discovery trip, unexpectedly gave up the ghost suddenly last month. So, at the last minute we had to change our plan and use our backup vehicle, which we were planning on selling because of all the problems it had. When it comes to cars, after growing up for most of my life in cities, I simply don’t know enough to be able to talk about them intelligently. I said, partly joking, in the past that, “I know a lot about cars. I can usually look at a car’s headlights and tell you exactly which way it’s coming.” It is very ironic that I am married to a mechanic’s daughter.

Anyway, before we left Schroon Lake we set apart $2,000 to repair the major vehicle problems once we got to Maine. Before we went, I at least knew that the timing belt had to be changed, and I’ve heard of people taking about how expensive they are to replace. Well, to make the long story short, Eric, Jill, and their son, Timmy, who run their family-owned auto body shop, prayerfully decided that they would pay the whole expense to fix our car. We were aware of their financial situation to some extent, so we were definitely not counting on them to work on our car for free. Yet, in spite of their own needs, they decided to work on our car for us as a service to the Lord. We were simply overwhelmed by gratitude for God’s grace, which moved them to meet our needs in such a critical way.

Our experience reminded us that we are not commanded to give generously when we have enough for ourselves, but as God allows us to see the various needs of others that He brings into our lives. We were definitely joyous to see God’s people living out the faith and being part of God’s mission. Please pray that God would continuously meet their needs as they serve Him sacrificially.

Let me share a few more because there are so many things that God is doing that are astonishing. On the 14th, we were supposed to visit Machias Christian Fellowship (Machias, ME)  to share about our passion. However, on the night of the 13th, we were told that we had to reschedule our visit. Understandably, we were disappointed because we wanted to fill every Sunday with a meeting or two. We tried to get into other churches, but being so last–minute, nothing worked out for us. When the morning came, we decided to go to Faith Bible Fellowship, a church we had tried to get into before we came up to Maine but with which we could not schedule a meeting.

Once we entered the building, the pastor came up to me and asked me, “Are you ready to speak?” While I wasn’t expecting that, I responded affirmatively. I got to share my testimony, our ministry, and our passion. The people responded very positively, and Amy is addressing the youths of that church tonight . It is amazing how God postponed our original meeting so we could speak at a church that we were not able to get into originally. Our God is amazing.

That same night we went to Maine Coast Baptist Church to share. When we got there, we only saw a few cars in the parking lot, so we were somewhat discouraged, almost forgetting the goodness of God that we experienced earlier that morning. When I went in, we saw our friend from WOLBI, Ruth Siles, standing in the sound booth! What’s the chance of seeing someone we knew in such a random church in Maine? While the crowd as not as big as we expected, we gave everything we had. At the end, it doesn’t matter whether it is a crowd of 600 or 12. We still give all we’ve got regardless of the size of the audience because we believe it is our responsibility to minister to those whom God brings into our lives. After our presentation, we felt God’s work in people’s lives as we fellowshiped with one another. At the end, they took a love offering for us and on our way home we discovered that its amount was over $1,100. Again, how can one not see God’s amazing work in our experience?

Finally, this past Sunday (6/21), we visited Machias Christian Fellowship in the morning and Larrabee Baptist Church in the evening. The evening service was interesting because many believers from Machias Christian Fellowship came to join us to hear our fuller ministry presentation. People were friendly and very attentive to what we had to share. After the service, the pastor emphasized the effectiveness of sending “native” missionaries back to their country. We are returning to Machias Christian Fellowship tomorrow night to fellowship with those who are specifically interested in our ministry in Tokyo.

Overall, we are blessed to be in Maine and meet all of these people who are committed to live out their faith in these rural communities. Again, we were reminded that it is not the amount of people or wealth that makes a lasting difference in missions. What makes the difference is the same grace of God which is at work in His people, whether you’re in Tokyo or a rural town in ME which you never heard of. It is God graciously orchestrating people who are committed to serve God as missionaries with those who want to see God’s glory being manifested in places where the Gospel is not effectively preached.

Sorry that this post is rather long, but God has been doing so much in our lives, and we wanted to share everything that He has been doing. Please continue to partner with us through prayer, because you get to experience God’s faithfulness being actualized through us. It is exciting to be part of a ministry where God is unmistakably active.

By the way, this post will be incomplete without encouraging you to also partner with us through regular giving. While it is exciting to see God perform these works in the States, we need to get to Japan eventually. It will not be possible without the support of people who are interested in our ministry and who believe in our ability to make a difference through God’s grace. One of the great American writers, Gertrude Stein, once said, “Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone.” In similar ways, silent support isn’t very much use to missionaries who are going out “for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles” (3 John 1:7).  If God has blessed you, and you are witnessing God’s work through us, please prayerfully partner with us. Thank you again for reading. By the way, subscribe to our website so you can be informed whenever we update our main content so never miss our ministry updates. God bless.

By His grace,
Kazu & Amy