Asian Access develops training model for new Asian Christians

Asia (MNN) ― Recently, Asia has seen unprecedented church growth. A chief model is a Buddhist country, whose number of believers has increased from 50,000 to 1.5 million in the last decade.

Asian Access is in that country as well as others across Asia. Joe Handley of Asian Access said these unfounded numbers stem from people's dissatisfaction with the current systems they are under, as well as the movement of God within their hearts.

"There's a spiritual hunger in many of the countries throughout Asia ... and they realize that the religious value systems and cultural value systems that they hold are not providing the kinds of answers they're looking for," Handley said.

With such growth, however, danger arises, as congregations lack proper leadership, and the leadership they do have can be corrupt for lack of guidance.

That's why Asian Access has developed a training model for new believers, Handley said, focusing on a person's deep commitment to Christ and their character before they begin to disciple others: "We are focusing on four key outcomes:

1. Living in a love relationship with God,
2. Growing as Christ-like leaders,
3. Reproducing disciple-making leaders, and...
4. Planting and multiplying churches."

This training is a two-year process whereby 12 leaders are mentored, just like Jesus and his 12 disciples.

"The more you can focus on abiding in Christ and Christ-like character, the more you strengthen the church," Handley said, strengthening it enough to withstand such rapid growth and allow for even more rejoicing when more individuals find Christ.

Pray for Asian Access as they continue this endeavor. Would you be interested in partnering with Asian Access as they mentor these future leaders? Visit the Asian Access Web site where you can also find out more about other aspects of their ministry.

This article was first published by Mission Network News and can be read here:
http://www.mnnonline.org/article/14212

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Should missionaries encourage Japanese Christians to be more culturally independent than their non-Christian counterparts.  Is it appropriate to promote a shift away from collectivism within the Japanese Church for the sake of the individual believer in Japan.  I do not have answers for these questions yet but I would like to share a little about how I got to the point of asking them. 

Group Conversion in Japan

One of the projects I was part of this spring was a small study on the effectiveness of group evangelism and conversion strategies in Japan.  This project consisted of interviews with Japanese Christians and reviewing relevant literature on the subject.  This was to determine both if group strategies are more appropriate in a collective society like Japan as well as to determine how to practically do group evangelism. Entering the project we had high hopes to find that the key to seeing revival in Japan was changing our paradigm for evangelism from a focus on the individual to a focus on the group. 

Many of our initial assumptions were confirmed throughout our interviews.  Participants stated that most methods of evangelism they had experienced felt very western to them.  They affirmed the role of the family in making decisions such as marriage, job, and religious conversion.  There was a consistent longing for a contextualized Japanese expression of the gospel.  All in all our project seemed to be going in the direction we initially expected.   The Japanese Christians believed that a collective approach to sharing the gospel was needed in their country.

They Must Be More Independent

Our third interview was with a fellow graduate student at Wheaton.  He is a young Japanese man in his late 20's who has ministered both in the US and Japan.  He had an unexpected but revealing insight during our conversation.  When discussing the need for practitioners in Japan to use methods such as group evangelism to be more culturally effective he expressed the sentiment that to become a mature Christian in Japan you must be an independent person.  His rationale was that Japanese people are conditioned to do what everyone else around them is doing.  This has both advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation.  But in a country where less that 1% of the population is Christian he felt a person without a strong independent streak wouldl give in to the external pressure of society and not mature in their faith. 

If this statement is true how does it effect the way we share the gospel in Japan?  Do we only approach people who are already independent in some way?  Do we encourage personal independence within the church to help the members grow?  I am stuck in the tension between a desire to proclaim the gospel without my western cultural baggage and an apparent need to teach something equivalent to western independence.  So I am still stuck with the question: "Should we encourage Japanese Christians to be culturally independent?"

What do you think?  I have started a thread to discuss this and am very interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions as we wrestle through this issue.

Robert