When I first came to Seattle, it was the RJC Network website that helped me find my church home, Faith Bible Church. What is RJC Network, you ask? Reaching Japanese for Christ Network came about in 2001. Don Wright spearheaded the movement based of his conversations with missionaries in Tokyo. It came to their attention that thousands of Japanese live abroad in Canada and the United States. Its purpose is to facilitate networking between people who have a heart for the Japanese.
For the past nine years, RJC has hosted a conference at Northshore Baptist Church in Bothell, opening their doors to the local missionaries in the greater northwest. This year it was the location for the international conference, and we had missionaries and workers from all over the place, even as far as Brazil. The theme was “Good News for the Japanese Heart” and Pastor Hiroshi Ikeda from Hongodai Christ Church and his youth worship band shared with us their vision for bringing the Gospel seed to the Japanese people through sports ministry and friendship evangelism.
What was new this year was the amount of Christians who were thinking about creative ways to reach Japanese, not just here in the States, but when they return to Japan. There’s a movement of American Christians who are starting a cell-phone based website to introduce the younger generation to Christianity. Missionaries from Asian Access, SEND, OMF, and Torchbearers, and Global 30 engaged the group to discuss ideas for “creative access”.
What struck me most was a short film called “Jitensha”, which means “Bicycle”. It told the story of a Japanese businessman who resigned from work because of a bad relationship with his coworker (who was the aggressor). Instead of facing his problem, he hid in his room. Then someone, who called themselves “God”, started stealing his bike, piece by piece. In the end, he had reclaimed every piece of his bike through various meetings and experiences, but the film finished, in his dark apartment, with his bike finally re-assembled: “There, you’re whole again.”
Instead of forcing the Japanese into a traditional Christian worldview, redemption is introduced through this very Japanese experience. It’s the little “seeds” like these that Pastor Hiroshi talked about. This is where the Gospel starts to take hold and someday we can be workers for that harvest!
To close the conference Seattle-style, the core JxJ members lead the whole group in a mini-JxJ event. Faith and Aya did a great job of organizing the order of events so that we could also join Ray Sydney in some black Gospel worship! Most of the attendees were impressed that young Japanese students wanted to reach their own people. It demonstrated how simple relationships we build here are part of tilling soil to prepare the word of God to act in the lives of students.
“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” 1 Corinthians 3:7 ESV
