My wife and I have recently returned from a week’s trip in Japan. For my wife it was a pleasure trip, but for me it was a busman’s holiday since I was invited there to deliver some lectures at the fortieth anniversary of the Japanese Evangelical Free Church (my denomination’s “mission to Japan”). Of course, it was also a delight for me to minister in that way.
God has wonderfully prospered this nation of 120 million sitting on the rim of the Pacific. Japan is located on four major islands with a total area considerably less than that of Montana. Steep mountains, agriculturally unproductive, make up a large part of that area; the population is crowded together in great cities spread out over wide valleys.
Amazingly, though, Japan imports very little food. It gets protein from raw fish accented by octopus, whale, and other delicacies from the surrounding ocean. I confess I ate enough raw fish during that week to satisfy my appetite for life. Meals are beautiful, and I am certain that beauty is weighed far more heavily than taste, though my Japanese friends, who are food connoisseurs, say they prize beauty and taste equally.
Less than 1 percent of the Japanese people profess to be Christian, and about half of these are evangelical, with the evangelical wing growing faster by far than any other. As in the United States, liberalism and liberal churches are on the decline.
Japanese Christians are warm and friendly. My wife has almost always been among the last to leave church. Invariably, she has one more friend to whom she has something very important to say. In Japan, she found her equals. Nobody seems to want to hurry home after church. And women dominate the church in roughly the same proportion as they do in America.
The church also shares our greatest problem—how to hold onto the children in a land where a compulsory educational system excludes Christian teaching through the schools and often is subtly antagonistic to it.
This was my fourth trip to Japan; the first occurred over 30 years ago. The contrast between the Japan of my first visit and Japan of today was obvious. Then, the Japanese were recovering from a devastating war—the people were poor, depressed in spirit, and uncertain about the future. Today, Japan is rich, proud, and sitting on top of the world.
Back then, the evangelical churches were small, and they often met on the ground floor of a private home. Ministers were poorly supported and often were American missionaries. Today, the evangelical churches meet in excellent church buildings.
Pastors are much better paid (comparable to their American counterparts) and often better educated. They have more, and better, books in their libraries than American ministers. They are also thinner, play less golf (too expensive and no time), and work harder than American ministers or than their fellow citizens (just as most evangelical ministers in America work harder than many parishioners).
Japan is not the most spectacularly successful mission field of the last generation. In number of converts, it cannot compare with the recent growth of the church in sub-Saharan Africa, or China, or South America. Yet, in quality, who can tell?
The evangelical churches in Japan are growing steadily and solidly.
They are establishing colleges and, especially, high-quality seminaries.
They are intelligently committed to biblical faith and determined to maintain a biblical lifestyle (in the face of a worldly prosperity around them that is like our own).
And they are assuming—as few daughter churches have—a burden for the lost not only in Japan but around the world. They have become truly mission churches.
In the generation ahead of us, the Japanese church cannot be discounted. In spite of its size, it will be looked up to for intellectual and spiritual leadership as we approach the third millennium of the Christian church.
