Long-Term Church Planting Missionaries

As CM Team missionaries (both spouses), you will be living and ministering in a Japanese language-based environment. Your "ministry team" will consist of a Japanese-speaking pastor and church members. Other missionaries will likely be in the same region, but not be in your immediate area. There will be three or four meetings (small group, ministry meetings) that will gather the missionaries together each month. English education for your children will be limited and may involve some sort of collective home schooling.

You will be encouraged to learn a beginning level Japanese before arriving in Japan. After arriving, you will minister for a year or so in a Japanese church while intensively studying Japanese. Then, you will partner with an existing Japanese church by joining a Japanese team to start a new church. The church-planting process to make the church firmly established should take 3-5 years, at which time you would be assigned to another church multiplication project. You will take a 3-5 month home assignment every 2-1/2 to 3 years.

Short-Term Church Planting Missionaries (Church Planting Associates)

Church Planting Associates will have a similar ministry setting as their long-term colleagues outlined above. Expectations for Japanese ability may not be as high. At the end of your term, you would not have a home assignment unless you decided to extend for another term or another church multiplication project.