Journey to Japan

Citizens of Tokyo evacuate the city on train tracks, after a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011

Hello,

Many people have been concerned and praying for our family and safety so I would like to give you a brief update on what is going on with us in Tokyo. Firstly, my mother passed away on March 4th and we had a funeral service for her on the 6th. I was able to present the Gospel message to those who attended it. God is using her death to cause many people to think about their own faith and their standing before God, for which we are grateful. I would like to elaborate on this more on our next major update but I want to thank everyone who encouraged us and prayed for us at one point or another.

Secondly, and more urgently, as many of you know, we have been hit by one of the largest recorded earthquakes in the world. The magnitude for the devastating quake was revised upward the same day from 8.8 to 9.0 according to the Japan Meteorological Agency . When the first earthquake hit us, Amy and I were both in our home. It began as a light tremor, something that one becomes oddly accustomed to when living in Japan. But then the deceptively gentle tremor kept going… and going… and going. Until the entire house shook violently and things started to fall off the shelves like it was a scene from an old Poltergeist movie. The quake lasted a very, very long time. Not unlike an animal’s howl, the quake went from a deep rumble and gradually built up to a thunderous and sustained wave of rhythmic, humming and physical chaos. It lasted about five minutes by my guess. And if you’ve ever experienced an earthquake, you know that five minutes is an eternity compared to the run-of-the-mill quake. It was scary. Currently, I am very glad that the earthquake happened after my mother passing away, for otherwise, it could have killed her instead.

While we only had to pick up broken items off the floor and endure one day without heat, the rest of Japan was not as fortunate as we were, as you can read it here.

Furthermore, as we are trying to cope with the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami, a nuclear power plant was crippled, forcing thousands to be scanned for radiation exposure. 140,000 people have been evacuated already but it is not looking any good as another reactor at Fukushima nuke plant (150 miles North of Tokyo) lost cooling functions today.

We will try whatever we can to bring the hope of the Gospel to these devastated people who have both physical and spiritual needs. You can also be involved by donating generously to some of the trusted relief efforts.

Meiji Shrine, Tokyo Japan with the Newbys

Hello, this is Amy and Kazu!

During the third week of November, we celebrated our first year since we have begun our new ministry in Tokyo. It is hard to believe that it has been this long since we began our work here but we can definitely look back and see many wonderful things He has done through our effort to share the hope of the Gospel and to train the next generation of leaders to reach one of the least evangelized people groups with the Gospel.

A few weeks ago, we finished our Christmas related services and outreach and we were able to take a few days off for the first time in months. Perhaps some of you already know that my mother has been fighting cancer for a while. Back in September, she was hospitalized due to a fractured femur bone. The cancer in her leg made her bone so brittle, it broke into pieces. During this period, we took turns taking care of her. During the same time, my father was hospitalized in the same hospital from having acute gastrospasm, which resulted from stress and exhaustion. As a result, we had to spend about 25 hours a week to take care of them, on top of the 45 hours which we were already pouring into maintaining our ministry. By God’s grace, we were sustained physically during that time period, and a month later she was released to return to home.

But by this time, her cancer advanced so aggressively, we were doubling the amount of her morphine every week for about a month in order to control her pain. What started out as breast cancer, is now in her neck, lungs, spine, humerus, thighs, and her tail bone. Her arm bone was fractured during this time for the same reason above, which did not make the situation any more desirable. For that reason, the month of October was a very emotionally and physically draining month.

During the month of November, my aunt came to take care of her so that we could slow down a little and focus on our work, which was a huge blessing. But by this time, she was in so much pain, she was not able to eat or sleep which caused her to get even weaker day by day. It was during this time when my sister and her husband flew back from the States to see her for the last time. Also, Pastor Paul Barreca from Faith Bible Church (Vineland, NJ) visited us and was able to pray with her. He also brought many letters from the church members there which encouraged her significantly.

The month of December came and she started to sleep through most of her day. The throbbing and burning pain suddenly disappeared to the point that we were no longer using additional liquid morphine to control her pain. According to the doctor, the cancer in her neck most likely damaged her nerves so she is no longer feeling the pain as much as she used to. But now she is completely unmovable because her cervical spine is also being made brittle from her cancer and there is a high possibility of her getting paralyzed if it continues in the wrong way.

Obviously, taking care of a family member who is dying and keeping your ministry vibrant simultaneously is very difficult and physically draining to say the least. But now that her pain is lessened and she sleeps a lot throughout the day, so we have been able to plan for next year and see how God continues to move forward His vision for Tokyo through our intentional ministry.

Before we give a brief update on what we have been doing and how God has been using us to change the city, I want to thank God for all of you for praying for us, because if it wasn’t for your involvement and encouragements, it would’ve been so much easier to focus on the immediate issues instead of focusing on God’s grace and His bigger plan for us. So far, we are marching forward with our faith strengthened in His promises and our hope fixed on Christ. Also by observing the simple, but unshakable, faith of my mother during these months has taught me more about faith than my previous years combined together.

Since September, we have been working very hard with our church community to lay the foundation for our next step of growth as we move forward to having a membership program. We spent the entire month preaching and teaching the importance of loving one another as Christ has loved us, and learning to admonish and rebuke those who may have fallen away from loving God. We naturally talked about the biblical importance of church discipline and what it means for us to be serious about being holy in order to fulfill the purpose of the church. Every week, someone during the service publicly prays to God that He would grant us His grace so that we may “be” the church, and not simply be a group of people who “do” church. Being the church, and doing church are two different things, and we taught that it is impossible to “be” the church, if we don’t love God and one another enough to be willing to confront those who are being misled by their sinfulness and allow others to confront us when we have become blinded by our spiritual short-sightedness. During this series, we had many first time visitors, and a few of them committed to join our community based on our commitment to love one another enough to confront each other. It was during this time that several non-official small groups started based on the desires of our members to invest in the lives of others.

When we discussed the issue of church discipline, the example of my mother’s cancer was used to communicate its necessity. Most doctors agree that cancer can be prevented if we are more careful with our lifestyle. Don’t smoke, reduce the intake of junk food, eat more vegetables, work out more routinely, and the list goes on. Many people try to maintain a healthy and disciplined lifestyle because they value their health and they don’t want to get crippled by cancer or other forms of diseases. Churches also must maintain a certain lifestyle in order to maintain their spiritual health. We call the spiritual health of Christ’s body, holiness, and we need to cherish it more than we cherish our physical health. If we don’t want our community to get crippled by a cancerous evil called sin, we need to do our best to prevent it as much as possible. For us, we can prevent cancerous sin from hurting the body by “encouraging one another.” The author of Hebrews has many things to say about maintaining our holiness by encouraging one another. He says, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (3:12-13). Later on, he revisits the same topic, and says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (10:24-25). According to God’s Word, we can prevent sin from wreaking havoc within the Body by simply maintaining a biblical lifestyle of encouraging one another to keep our eyes on the things above.

Yet, sometimes, even if we invest many hours and dollars on prevention, by God’s plan, people get cancer. However, if we discover it in its earlier stage, we can isolate it from the rest of the body and treat it separately. When doctors find cancers in their earlier stage, they don’t jump to performing a surgery. That is the last resort. They try to kill with radiation and other methods that are painful but not fatal. Spiritually speaking, we call this process “rebuking.” If prevention did not work entirely, we need to treat it separately, hoping to save the rest of the body from its negative influence (1Tim 5:20). Rebuking someone is not delightful, just as chemotherapy is not delightful. But we know that it is necessary in order to regain one’s health and protect the body from a greater pain.

However, sometimes, cancers cannot be stopped by treatment, either. When all attempts fail, we only have the option of removing the organs (or a large part of it) to save the life of the patient. This is not done lightly because even in the hands of the best doctors, the scars will remain and the recovery will be long. Spiritually speaking, we call the same process of removing an unrepentant sinner from the body of Christ, church discipline, hoping to save the holiness of the community (1Cor 5:2,12-13).

Physically speaking, why do we go through these stages when we know that they are inconvenient and often times extremely painful? The answer is simple: We value health because it keeps us alive. We go through these steps because we want to live and not die. Similarly, we are committed to make “encouraging”, “rebuking”, and “disciplining” willful-sinners part of our community lifestyle because we value holiness and we want to be made alive and be used by God for His glory.

Soon after a month long series, we had an opportunity to practice it lovingly, which sobered up many people within our community, but by seeing the love behind our action, many believers grew spiritually through its difficulties. We are sent here to build authentic Christ centered communities, and we would not be able to do that if we ignored willful disobedience through intentional unbelief in God’s word and His design.

Also another thing we did was we rented a government facility to have a Christmas concert to attract people to our church activities. We are committed to generate a movement of the Gospel that spreads throughout Tokyo, not only through our growing community. In order to work toward that goal, we partnered with six other churches in the area to co-sponsor a concert and let people know how the Gospel can change our lives. While we were able to attract more than 350 people, we want to do it better next time so that we can create a bigger impact in Tokyo through the unity of Christian churches in the city. Working with other churches also made our community members see how different and special (in a good way) we are compared to other churches, which stirred up a new sense of commitment to embrace our values and our vision for the city. We also had Christmas services, a service partners (volunteers) appreciation party, and other end of the year events that kept us very busy until now.

Our community continues to grow both spiritually and numerically but we are nowhere close to being satisfied. We believe that the Gospel must continue to reach more people in Tokyo and God’s grace must claim more lives in this city. For that reason, we want you to continue to partner with us by spiritual and physical contribution to continue the work which He has started through us. We are certain that if we continue to stick to our values and vision, God can use our community to do things unheard of in the history of Japan for His glory.

Let me list some praises and prayer requests for our friends.

First, we have been praying for additional helpers who are culturally and biblically competent to assist us in our ministry. While we are still looking for those people, God may have given us new people to our community who are committed Japanese believers who have been trained in the US and are eager to get involved in our community. These people came to our church during our church discipline series, and they were astonished at how we were willing to demonstrate our love for God by taking sin seriously. One thing led to another and they have indicated that they are willing to commit to our community while they continue to get to know us. One of the two, Kei Kubota, has a firm background in theology and he loves to teach the Bible. I would like to observe how well he can teach and see if this will lead to extending our ministry influence by having other teachers. Please continue to pray for Kei, and his friend Tomoko, as God works in their lives, so that they may be able to find ways to serve Christ most effectively through our community.

Also, our church community website was launched last month. We are thrilled to see what God is going to do through it because it not only introduces our church to others, it provides many valuable resources in Japanese to those who want to grow as believers in Christ. While what we provide currently is somewhat limited compared to what we are planning on having, we provide access and subscription to daily devotionals for city people in Japanese, a brief intro to the Christian worldview, digital viewing of all of our Sunday services, handouts, etc. Please visit it and tell us what you think.

Also pray for our financial needs. If you have been thinking about supporting our ministry, or contributing to any ministry that is committed to reaching the unreached effectively with the Gospel of Christ, this is the time to do it. Starting next month, our rent is going to be raised by an additional $1,000. I know that sounds like a lot but God is still providing us with an excellent deal to continue our ministry. I can honestly say that what is being asked for is reasonably less than its value and we are grateful for God’s provision. We are committing to our current location for at least another 18 months and we would appreciate your contribution to help our work move forward.

Also, we witnessed a handful of people come to know Christ directly or indirectly this year, but we want to train more people to be able to share the Gospel to their network of people so that we can see more people being attracted to the life which only God can provide. Please continue to pray for God grace to transform the minds of our community members so that they will delight in sharing the Gospel boldly to their family and co-workers and fellow classmates in 2011.

And, finally, we want to start three new ministry endeavors next year. First, we want to introduce a membership program to our community so that we can function more effectively as a body. Second, we want to start small groups. We have been growing but now we are at a point where we cannot meet with everyone and take care of their spiritual needs. We need to train more leaders so that they can pastor more people on behalf of us. We need to be very careful and wise in how we establish this ministry so your prayers, advice and resources are appreciated. Third, we want to begin our Christian-Worldview/Bible Training Program next year which we were planning on starting this year. While it was our original plan to begin it three months ago, due to my mother’s situation which I had to tend to, we had to push it back. We are definitely ready to start it when things line up for us. Please pray that we will be able to establish these three important projects in 2011, which in my mind are totally necessary for our future growth.

Well, that is what we have been doing during the past months and what we are planning on doing next year. Feel free to contact us via Facebook or our website to get a personal update or give us an encouragement.

Also, we have a small request to any person who might be able to help us out. One thing, among many other things that we need (or want strongly), is Amazon’s Kindle 3G . I have left many, many boxes of books back in the States and all I have with me here are Hebrew and Greek Bibles, a handful of general resources, and some Bible related software. I have done the math and I have found out that re-purchasing most of those books via Kindle would be much cheaper than having all of the boxes shipped over here. Furthermore, I am realizing that I don’t have space to keep all of those books in Japan. So, if you have an extra Kindle laying around, or are willing to invest in purchasing one for our ministry, we would appreciate it. The spiritual benefit of having a device like that cannot be measured. If you are willing and able, please contact me before you send it to us. Thank you.

Please don’t forget to visit our website , and consider supporting us if you have not committed to it, yet. Thank you so much again for reading our update. I hope you are excited about what God is doing through our ministry as much as we are. God bless.

–UPDATE–

One of our faithful supporters have offered to purchase a Kindle device for us. It has been ordered and it is being shipped to us as we speak. We truly thank God for His gracious provision through His servants.

If you were planning on blessing us with buying or sending us the device, you still can help us by purchasing Amazon Kindle Store Gift Cards. Purchasing those cards for us will allow us to purchase e-books and other resources that we need. It is tax free and it will directly help us prepare new resources and aids to train Japanese people with God’s Word. Please continue to partner with us through your generous giving. Thank you in advance.

Hello,

This is Amy and Kazu. This is our mega update for our summer. Wow, we can’t believe our summer is already coming to an end. Time does really fly by quickly when you try to take advantage of every opportunity God brings you to share the hope of the Gospel to those who are totally unaware of it or to those who need to be reminded of it! We take this opportunity to thank you who have prayed for our ministry and our life, and made it what it is today with His grace. Your support and encouragements are greatly appreciated.

As we toil to spread the living hope of the Gospel in one of the most affluent cities in the world, we are reminded that God has called us to preach the Gospel to one of the toughest people groups in the world, namely the rich.

Jesus once said, “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matt 19:24).

Yet, by His grace, God is doing the impossible through us once again. We boldly proclaim the complete picture of the Gospel to our community whenever God gathers us together. Many believers are slowly, but clearly, starting to realize that they have been called to a higher life in Christ. As a result, they are starting to live out that calling by sacrificing their money and their time to love one another as they were called to. Also a number of non-believers are being attracted to the Gospel lifestyle that we preach and demonstrate through our community. About 10% of those who attended our service last week were non-believers who came because they were attracted to their friends’ lifestyle. Instead of being ashamed of the Gospel, we boldly and uncompromisingly proclaim how it changes who we are so we can belong to a body united by love, which God uses to reconcile all things back to Himself.

While God is using our community positively in many ways, not everything is sanitized and shimmering. For every demonstration of God’s grace we witness in our community, we deal with numerous acts of sin, and their devastating consequences, behind the scenes. This summer, we have been serving partially as spiritual fire fighters, running around to extinguish destructive flames people are starting as we get serious about our commitment to share our lives with one another. Unresolved conflicts, jealousy, pride, selfishness, bitterness, apathy; you name it, we are dealing with it. Our community is finally growing enough that we are starting to look like one of the churches that the apostle Paul was dealing with during his time. There are other issues that we face that are giving me more white hair than I care to have, but I will mention them in our next update since it is going to take many paragraphs to explain.

Let me also take a moment and mention some of the programs we started this summer. As one way to reach out to those outside of our community, we started a small outreach/discipleship ministry, called, “Choi Maji,” which simply means a place where we talk about something a little (choi) serious (maji). We encouraged our church members to invite their high school and college friends to talk about issues they see in the world or problems they see in Christianity or in other religions. Then, I used those topics to share what the Bible has to say about them, and, ultimately, to share that the biblical worldview is the only adequate system that provides a realistic solution to what they are frustrated with. However, I do not share the Gospel in these meetings for two reasons. First, I want people to come back monthly to discuss new issues without saying we are trying to brainwash them to join our “religion,” and, second, we use it to disciple our own young believers so that they can personally share the Gospel to them using the topics we discussed. This ministry has a great deal of potential, and we are having a special cookout with the regular attendees tomorrow (Aug 19th). You can pray for us as I will be sharing something from the Bible to these students.

We also had an internship program this summer that kept us incredibly busy. We had two interns, Adam Yoder, and Paul Mackey, both from the U.S., who came to observe our ministry. They lived with us for two months, and intimately experienced what missions work really looks like in Tokyo. We took them to different districts of Tokyo, and made them think about how to effectively share the Gospel with various kinds of Japanese people. We made them observe the differences between the community we are building and the churches they see in the U.S. We sent them to an English Bible school for Japanese people in Karuizawa, Nagano for 10 days so they could teach and encourage those students studying there. We also planned an English outreach in Tokyo to see what we might be able to do in the future as we expand the regular programs that we do. With the internship now over, we believe that they will be able to use this opportunity to aid them in making wise decisions as they continue to seek their future direction in life and the possibility of working alongside of us in the future.

One thing that running all of the programs we are currently running taught us is how we need other full-time and part-time partners to increase our influence in the city. It is almost impossible for us to oversee our worship services, publication ministry, leadership training, counseling, outreaches, and the few other critical things we do every week. Please pray that God would give us teammates who are passionate about working with Japanese people who are socially and professionally competent. We specifically need people who can oversee our worship and community growth.

Please pray for my mother also, who is fighting the last stage of her cancer. She will start taking morphine this week as she has been battling with unbearable pain for months. She still remains one of our biggest supporters and she still gives me ministry advice while she lies on her bed. Please pray that we will be able to be a blessing to her during her last days, and that we can continue to encourage her with the living hope we have in Christ.

Let me close this update by sharing some of the thoughts we have been reciting as we continue to move forward with the message of the Gospel in Tokyo.

One of the many lessons our community is learning is the necessity to be united as the body of Christ.

We live in a world where people are rewarded for being competitive, independent, and self-assured. We love and adore people who are successful, beautiful, and talented. While these people make great CEOs and Hollywood stars, they make poor members of the Body of Christ.

Maintaining true unity within the Body of Christ looks much easier on paper than in an actual community of sinners where most of us thoughtlessly submit to consumerism, individualism, materialism, existentialism, and countless other -isms taught by the world. One thing that unites all of these -isms is that they propagate us to live with our eyes fixed on this fallen world as though there is nothing more to our existence after this life.

As long as we let the world teach us (wrong) theology, and we thoughtlessly submit to it, it is impossible for us to achieve the level of unity which Christ desires to see in His body, because a life that is worthy of our calling is not one of personal success/happiness and self-expression, but of “humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

If you take a moment and think about these descriptions of what a worthy life looks like in Christ, you will realize that all of these virtues are relational in nature, presupposing that we are already sharing our lives intimately with other believers, which is an assumption Paul would not have made, in all likelihood, if he foresaw today’s Western Christian culture. We as Christians cannot demonstrate humility, gentleness, or patience without allowing others to be close enough to offend us with their sinfulness, or to keep from also offending them with our own sinfulness. True Christianity is not pretty, and it was never meant to be. Christ didn’t die so we could live a sanitized and fashionable religious life that accommodates our own individualistic lifestyle. He died for our sins, so that, with all of our differences and personal baggage, we can be made into one holy people, who share the same life in order to teach the world that Christ was sent by the Father.

This truth is most vividly expressed in Christ’s prayer before He died on the cross. Prior to entering the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed for those who would eventually believe in the Gospel, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:21).

The new life to which Christ has made us alive demands that we not be overly impressed by a sense of our own self-importance. Its basic demand is totally the opposite of what our modern culture encourages us to do and to be. Yet, it is for this unity Christ gave His life, so that we may die to ourselves and live for God and others who share the same life in Christ.

This reminder is more important to the church today, because it reminds us of the reason for our salvation. It makes us re-realize that it is not about us after all, but that it is about God’s glory and redemptive plan moving forward through our unity. In the end, everything we do as the body of Christ must push us in the direction of allowing the Gospel message to become the reality of the lives of those who believe and of those who are exposed to its grace. If we are united, we are being the church. If we are divided, we are playing the church.

Paul teaches the Colossians a perspective they must obtain in order to live as this Christ-honoring community. “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.” The peace which is spoken of here does not refer to an emotional sense of serenity or calmness. Instead it refers to the harmony or unity which Christ brought to the members of the Body through His blood. Also, the word translated “rule” does not mean to prevail over, but to be the judge or the decisive factor in how we conduct ourselves before others. We must allow the harmony of believers to be the most important, decisive factor in the way we shape our community, for it was, in fact, as one body, that we were called to this peace. The second part of this passage emphasizes the manner in which the believers were called, rather than the goal of their calling, and it focuses upon their unity.

As long as we remain earthly-minded, then talking about living worthily of the calling with which we have been called is nothing more than a utopian ideal. We must repent and allow the Gospel to renew our thinking and worldview. We must get down on our knees and pray for God’s grace to transform our values and desires. We need to be in the Word to be reminded of our Savior and His vision for His children.

God tells us that we have died to this world and that our life is now hidden with Christ in God who is in heaven (Col 3:3). This world and everything in it are destined to be destroyed in due time. God tells us that this world is sinking and we need to abandon ship. Heaven is where our true hope is. It is where our Judge is waiting to evaluate our lives according to our labor of faith and love. It is where our Redeemer is waiting for those who have fought the good fight. It is where our heart and life belong.

Thank you for your continual support. We are glad that we get to make a difference in the lives of those living in Tokyo together.

Kazu & Amy Kato

Friends and supporters,

Next Sunday (April 18th) is a big Sunday for us. We are taking some major steps in our strategic community development. Here are some of the changes we are making next week.

1) We are increasing the number of our service from one to two.

We have two reasons for making this change. One thing that we have decided some months ago was our need to become more family friendly as a church. One of our strengths we possess is the number of younger people we have. Even today, 75% of our members are 35 and younger. However, that also became our disadvantage as most attendees do not have kids. So, until we took over the ministry, we did not have intentional programs to attract regular families since we did not provide programs for kids during the regular service. Now, things are changing. We are intentionally changing our culture in order to accommodate families with children so that parents and kids can grow together in our grace-driven community. In order to make this happen, we had to recruit a number of people (about 7% of our members) who are excellent with kids. However, pulling that many members from our regular service on a regular basis proposed new challenges. So, we decided to have a shorter, but equally intimate and meaningful service for the workers before the regular service.

Another reason has to do with our building capacity. Since we have began our ministry, 90% of our seats have been occupied with worshippers. While we are rejoicing that people are joining us weekly, we are struggling with having more space for new people. So, by adding another service, we can make more room for new guests in the future. We are still looking for a new gathering place but we are going to move forward with our temporal solution for now.

2) We are changing our worship philosophy and programs.

When we decided to make our church more family friendly, we also decided to evaluate our philosophy and practice of worship. When I say we evaluated our worship philosophy, I don’t mean, traditional music vs. contemporary music, modern vs. emerging, or any other kind of western philosophical/stylistic conflict.

The aim of our evaluation was rather simple and practical. We discussed what the Bible had to say about worship and we evaluated how we can practice it most authentically and naturally as a metropolitan community in Tokyo. Our discussion involved critical topics like the history of Japanese church culture, current Christian cultural issues, Christian aesthetics, biblical theology of worship, and assessment of spiritually mature people within our own congregation.

Please continue to pray that God will provide the right people to lead and revolutionize how we worship God in Tokyo so true worshippers can worship the Father in spirit and truth.

3) We are officially starting a nursery.

Well, as we are becoming more family-friendly, this was a given. We just had three couples giving birth within the last few months, and we need to prepare for the changes that are already happening within our community. We welcome any donation of childcare items (diaper station, books, toys, equipments, etc) or financial gift at this time.

4) We are starting our brand new Sunday school program for all members.

Finally we are starting our Christian education program for the church which we have planned over the years. Every member of our church would go through this program which will last for 7 years and 6 months. It covers most of the basic things that believers must understand in order to be well equipped for every good work. Please pray as this much needed project adds us another weekly responsibility for much of the next decade.

5) We are starting a new leadership training program for core-members of our church.

We will start a new program to help people become mentors to others. For the next six months, we will be teaching our core-members what it means to be a Christ-centered community and how to be used by God to build up His church. Relationships can be messy. Especially most city people spend many hours and many Yen/dollars to learn how to avoid relationships that are difficult. But as a Christ-centered community, we are convinced that it is worth investing in people’s lives and the results of going through the messiness of relationships can be far greater than people being isolated from one another in the Body of Christ

We truly desire you to partner with us in prayer because as we make these constructive moves, Satan is also at work to discourage and distract us from our effort.

As we planned to move forward with our new worship program, we lost two thirds of our initial musicians at once for different personal reasons. And the last person who played a key role in our music ministry hurt her hand severely. However, God is greater than our adversary. As we went through a program crisis, God added two new members to our community who have led worship at other churches before. Furthermore, as I shared some of the difficulties with our current situation, many younger people showed great enthusiasm to participate and help us make our worship and praise more glorious before God. We cannot stop thanking God for being faithful and providing every need we have in order to serve Him.

Finally, we are still raising money for our website project. Now that your taxes are done and some of you might receive something back from the government, please prayerfully partner with us financially so that God’s amazing work through us can grow in its effectiveness and reach more people with the transforming Gospel of God’s grace.  Here is a link to our donation page.

We are thankful to God that you are showing interest in what God is doing through us in Tokyo and have been praying for us regularly and providing monetary gifts to help us with our work. Thanks for reading once again.

Kazu and Amy

It’s already March, and we’re asking ourselves where the month of February went. When Amy and I used to work for the Word of Life Bible Institute (WOLBI), we felt like each year passed very quickly. Time in Tokyo, however, is passing us even quicker, it seems.

We are thanking God that in spite of its quickness, He has worked through us to reshape the church culture in Tokyo and to make visible contributions to the community of believers in the city.

Before I share some of the things that we have accomplished or planned, I want to share some praises.

First of all, Amy applied to get a spousal visa in order to stay in Japan longer than three months, which is the period allotted to visitors with tourist visa status. We have known many missionaries who have raised full support yet could not serve in their country of calling due to not being able to attain a visa. Amy and I went to the Immigration Bureau of Japan on Tuesday, and we were told that we would receive a response within the next three months indicating whether she can attain this status or not. However, two days later, we received a letter from them with her new visa. We were thrilled to see God work in a way that was unheard of, and we’re encouraged to see God pave the way for us to stay in the country and continue the work of the Gospel.

We are also grateful that through the ministry God has given us, He is motivating different people to move to the center city area of Tokyo so that they can work with us closely to spread the word of the Gospel and establish growing Christian communities around the city. One of these people is Nohara Tomizawa, who attended WOLBI when I used to teach there. She lives in Gunma Prefecture, but she is moving to Tokyo this month so that she can assist our ministry and meet the spiritual needs of our community. Please pray for her as she looks for a new part-time job and a place to live since we cannot afford to pay her with our financial situation. We also have few more members and friends who are contemplating moving closer to our church so that they can help us build community. Some of them commute two hours each way to attend our church weekly. They are truly committed to the values and vision of our ministry, and we would like to see them find a job closer to us.

We are also thankful to God for providing Adam Yoder and Paul Mackey as interns for us during this summer. They are both currently studying at WOLBI and interested in working with us in the future in one capacity or another. It would be a blessing to be reconnected to them and to serve together for the spiritual growth of God’s kingdom in Japan. If you are interested in supporting them, please let us know.

Now, let me share some of the things that we have been doing over the last month and a half.

So far, we have:

1. Started publishing daily mobile devotionals in Japanese for people in the city. Currently we have over 50 subscribers, and we are planning on promoting it more publicly in the near future. The purpose of this project is to introduce a foundational biblical worldview from the Scriptures, so that the subscribers can reflect on God’s reality and live according to that reality by faith. We are receiving a lot of positive feedback from various Japanese-speaking people around the world, so we are excited about how it is being used by God. Our goal is to keep editing it so that by 2012 we can publish it in a printed edition.

2. Reorganized the entire ministry structure and leadership of our church. We did this to make the organization more structured but also to create a better environment to train the next generation of leaders and mentors. Now, as we are moving forward with our new structure, people are held more accountable to others. This structure also allows me to delegate more responsibilities to other trustworthy men and women. Starting next month, we will be training all the leaders with our values and vision so that people can understand how their ministry to going to influence the body of Christ in order to bring greater glory to God.

3. Moved our church to start a new nursery and a kids program in order to attract new families. Our church is very unique in a sense that we don’t have a lot of older people. Most of the people are in the 20s-30s without kids. So, naturally, the church never invested money or people to start programs for children. Since Amy and I have started to work with our current community, we knew from the beginning that we need to change this so that we can become a place where families can come and grow in God’s grace. We are currently recruiting new workers who would be willing to be in charge of these programs, and I am trying to introduce a new budget plan to meet the needs of the children.

4. Started working on our church Web site. We still don’t have all the money to complete the entire project, but we cannot wait too long, so we decided to divide the project into several phases and at least work on the main page. My brother, Shin Kato, who used to work for Yahoo in Japan, is setting aside his regular job for two months in order to help us with this major project (check the previous post for details). He and his wife just had a baby last year so his willingness to rely on God’s provision through people’s support was a huge spiritual decision for them. If you can financially contribute to assist our project, please get in touch with us. I know it will bless my brother and his wife (and their baby), and bring more seekers and believers to our community. Having a fund-raising event for our ministry might also be a great way to revitalize missions in your church or your family.

5. Amy started to attend a short-term Japanese class three times a week. She has made many friends so far and even ended up becoming a paid English tutor to one of the fellow students, who is from is Pakistan.

6. We are starting a new Bible study for seekers next month. We need to be more intelligent in how we explain the truth with love to those who commonly reject the idea of a personal and moral God. So by all means, we are going to engage with a person’s intellectual questions (what we might call rational apologetics). But we equally recognize the need for relational apologetics. We need to show people that it’s good to live under God’s reign who is personal and moral (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). As Blaise Pascal put it, we need to make people want to believe our message before we can persuade them that our message is true.

7. Accomplished many other obligatory behind-the-scene type things that were time consuming but too tedious to mention here.

It is truly astonishing how much work is required to run a growing church community by ourselves. Every week, I am investing somewhere around 20 hours to write my sermons, starting with translating the texts directly from the original languages to Japanese, and another 20 hours on the content of the mobile devotionals. Once you start adding other meetings with different group leaders, administrative staffs, editors and spiritual seekers and more, it is somewhat understandable how the time flew by so quickly.

Please pray for us as we are stretched thin physically and mentally for the ministry of the Gospel, so that the life that Christ gives may be displayed clearly to those we serve. We love what we are doing because as we spread the knowledge of God, His grace is being experienced by more Japanese people, causing thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God. Spiritually, we are encouraged and far from being burnt out. But physically and mentally it feels overwhelming at times.

Currently I am preaching through the book of 2 Corinthians. And as I prepare my sermons, I am totally blown away by how committed Paul was to the glory of God. Paul was not interested in promoting himself or his ministry (3:1, 4; 4:5). He was often misunderstood and attacked by those whom he loved (2:4-11). Yet he willingly became like their slave (4:5). As result, he was constantly in danger of physically dying like Christ (4:10). He was pressed on every side by troubles; he was persecuted and knocked down at times (4:8-9). One might wonder what kept this man going? He endured all of those things for their sake, so that they may experience the grace and life that God provides through their faith in the Gospel. He endured all things for their sake, so that the grace that was including more and more people might cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God (4:15). What we experience as missionaries is nothing close to what Paul endured for the sake of the Corinthians. Yet we resonate with his ministry because we are willing to endure hardship and stress so that the life of Jesus may be visible in our body for the sake of Japanese believers. That is what keeps us going.

Please pray for the following requests as we continue to work with you to bring more people from Tokyo into the Body of Christ.

1. I personally need a secretary who can take care of editing, printing, communicating, and scheduling for me. Currently I am doing most of the work that anyone (who can natively read and speak Japanese) can do. It really prevents me from corresponding with key partners more frequently and taking care of other important tasks.

2. Pray that God will provide other like-minded full-time workers who are culturally relevant and professionally competent.

3. Please keep Amy in prayer as she will start working twice a week at a local Japanese nursery next month in order to build up her credentials and also to make more contacts with non-Christian people. Amy will be playing a huge role in one of the new ministries we are planning, which involves teaching English to unchurched pre-schoolers and their mothers. She will continue her language training during this time.

4. Please continue to pray for our financial needs. The value of our support from the U.S. still remains low. God is using this time of financial stress to grow our dependence on Him, but it would be nice to be able to solely focus on our ministry and not be forced to make difficult financial choices due to a lack of funding. If you are not yet a regular giver and would like to join the team, please fill in the regular giving form and become our quality ministry partner!

5. Please pray for workers with media/graphic designing skills. As we are starting to publish more resources, we need to package them professionally to make them appealing to those living in Tokyo. We need creative people who can design and promote our resources professionally in order to increase the effectiveness of our work. We are also looking for someone who can host a mirror site of our website in the US. That will definitely speed up the loading time of this site for those who live in the US.

Thanks for reading our rather lengthy update. I will try to update more frequently in the future, as originally planned.

One of my favorite authors from my childhood, Robert Louis Stevenson, once said, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.” With this mentality that echoes the spirit of the Bible, and through your prayers and support, we will continue to strive to spread the knowledge of God effectively in Tokyo as God wills. Thank you so much for your involvement. We wish all of you could come and see what God is doing through your generosity and prayer support. If you ever get a chance to visit Tokyo, please come and visit us. God bless.

P.S. We are still raising funds for the special projects mentioned on the last post. If you can help us out with any of them, please let us know by email.

Thanks for the long wait. This is our first major update since we have arrived in Tokyo. We are excited to share how our first month went since we left the States.

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

Hello from the world of tomorrow (We are 14 hours ahead of EST)!

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

Yes, we know. We have not updated our site in a while. But I can assure you that it is not due to negligence or busyness. We have had a lot of uncertain circumstances that have prevented us from making certain information public. But now the timing is right, and we can let you know what God has been doing in our lives.

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

Dear friends,

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.