What does this assignment involve? Learning a new culture. Teaming with other believers. Worshiping with them. Serving under a Japanese pastor. Making new friends in the community. Sharing Christ with them. Linking them to the church. Using your gifts, abilities and interests. Making disciples. Trusting God to build His church...
It's About LifeThe objective of the Great Commission is to share the life of Christ. But in Japan, 99% of the population is unreached by the Life of Jesus Christ. The best way to do this is by multiplying churches, which can reach more Japanese.
So how do you begin to bring new churches into being?...
You begin with the churches that already exist. Small and few as they are, these churches have the will, the faith and the determination to reach their own people with the living message of Jesus Christ.
Asian Access' church multiplication strategy is built on over 55 years of relational evangelism and leadership training in partnership with Japanese Churches and the leaders who are making them strong.
Asian Access has established a strategic network of Japanese churches that are prepared to grow and multiply. Right now these churches and their leaders are teaming with Asian Access and with missionary co-workers like you to get the job done.
Instead of starting churches from scratch, Asian Access believes God has given existing Japanese churches the means to multiply. Asian Access is partnering with these churches to develop in these strategic areas. The result: the Japanese church is ready to grow in new explosive ways.
As a member of one of Asian Access' Missional Partners program, you become part of a Japanese church. You live among the Japanese. You learn to speak Japanese. You embrace the church and the Japanese culture. Out of this unity your mission begins.
You — along with your Japanese teammates — begin to intentionally multiply opportunities for sharing the gospel by developing relationships with unbelievers. You make and cultivate friends in every aspect of your daily life. What could be more natural?
90% of Japanese who become Christians do so because they heard the Gospel through a trusted friend or relative. Everything in the process of multiplying churches begins and ends with relationships that show forth the love and truth of Jesus Christ.
When churches multiply, the Gospel will penetrate the Japanese culture with multiplied power in countless lives.
Your friendships will mature and grow. You'll have the chance to work through tough questions about God and morality, life and death. In time, many of your new friends will become believers. Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed it will bear fruit. The Word of God never returns void. It always accomplishes its purpose.
Together with your Japanese teammates, you help gather new friends into small groups. In small groups the ministry of God's Word, prayer and spiritual training is multiplied. In your small group the message of Jesus Christ is freely shared. Unbelievers see and hear the Gospel lived out. New believers are taught in God's word, nurtured in their faith and built up into the stature of Christ.
A church begins to multiply when new Christians within the church are raised up to become leaders through strong Biblical instruction and encouragement provided in small groups. You will guide each member of your group to grow in their spiritual life as you develop many long-term discipling relationships.
Your challenge is to build new believers into students of God's word; they in turn grow into leaders capable of teaming with you in the broader vision of the church. With new leaders stepping forward, the strength and ability of the Church to reproduce itself multiplies.
At last, the leaders you helped equip are sent out to join in the work — ready and capable of carrying out the challenge of church multiplication. They become a new generation of messengers who will go on to multiply opportunities for the gospel by developing relationships with unbelievers. They will gather their harvest into small groups, and then build new believers into new leaders.
A harvest of believers leads to
a harvest of leaders which leads to
a harvest of new churches.
The mission of the church is multiplied again and again as the Life-giving cycle repeats through the power of the Holy Spirit.
As new believers become new leaders actively sharing the message and gathering their harvest, the number of small groups will multiply to become a new church teeming with Life.
Because one church had the courage to multiply, a new church is started, rooted in the multiplication of trained leaders. This new church will one day multiply in the same way.
God willing, one hundred Church Multiplication Teams during the next twenty years will bring into existence one thousand new Japanese churches which will reach one million Japanese for Christ. The Japanese church, empowered by the Spirit of God, in partnership with Asian Access and teaming with you, will start to see its nation reached for Jesus Christ.
Feel free to review the additional information provided about the Missional Partner program and philosophy below. If you're still interested after reading, fill out a Next Steps survey and someone will contact you.
Here is a map of some of the church planting networks in Japan...
As Missional Partners (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...
To make and build evangelistic relationships, linking church members with these friends, while at the same time participating as a small group member and growing in language and understanding of the church and this ministry.
Long-termers (3-5 yrs. in one location) and First-termers (1-3 years); you will be in the same church for up to three years. There will be a new church assignment with each term, which may or may not necessitate a move. Some missionaries will work with the same mother church to plant a second daughter church. Others may work with the new daughter church to plant another church from the new church.
Asian Access never starts its own churches in Japan. We always work in partnership with a Japanese pastor and an existing local church. Asian Access is absolutely committed to national leadership. From day one, there is a Japanese pastor or lay person in charge of the church planting team. The missionary, who is never the primary pastor, is there to support the Japanese-led church planting effort.
Rev. Jiro Chida, leader of the Church Multiplication project Asian Access initiated in Yamagata, Japan was in a network with four other Japanese pastors. Each pastor intended to multiply his own congregation. Midway through the three-year project, he pronounced to his fellow colleagues:
"Mitsu no kyokai ga areba, kantan ni dekiru!
In English...
The Lord desires that Japan be evangelized. We are called to witness and to plant as many churches as possible. A healthy church is one that establishes itself while starting other churches.
Many churches in Japan have been involved in church planting, but the results have not always been encouraging. There is, of course, no one method for planting churches, but we must strive to develop the most effective strategy possible.
Let me introduce a strategy that we have been using in cooperation with Asian Access' Japan Church Growth Institute, testing it in Yamagata Prefecture since 1996. It is called "Church Planting by Networking."
go2japan is proudly sponsored by a missional partnership for Japan . . .
