A Different Flavor of Mission

Church members begin cleaning moments after Zach finished his sermon at the Funabashi Reformed Church in preparation for an evangelistic service later in the week.  You won’t see that in Haiti!

Zach greeted the 73rd General Assembly of the Reformed Church of Japan in October and preached in one of its churches.

After  having spent most of our first two decades of ministry in Latin America and Africa, I (Zach) really had little idea of what mission looked like in the developed countries of East Asia.  In October, I got my first taste.  I visited two countries that are outwardly very similar—Japan and South Korea.  Both of these countries have had a significant missionary presence.  One of these countries has a large Protestant Christian population and sends out one of the highest numbers of missionaries of any country in the world.  The other celebrates Christmas and often uses churches for marriage ceremonies but only counts 2% of its population as believers.  The first country is South Korea and the second is Japan!  While the Christian Reformed Church doesn’t have a large missionary presence in Korea, 10% of the CRC is ethnically Korean.  In Japan, Resonate has had a long presence and has helped the Reformed Church of Japan plant 50 churches.  The passion of Japanese believers for Christ comes out not in the loud music and long sermons of Africa and Latin America.  It rather comes out in meticulously organized, harmonious worship services and the difficult life that Japanese Christians lead as a small minority in their