Japan Gears up for Missions

“There’s a readiness to see Japan step up a gear into missions,” reports Linda, Kairos International Course Coordinator who oversees running the Kairos course in Japan.

This is Linda’s assessment after seeing the response of Kairos participants and other recent mission-related developments in the country.

According to Linda, a hundred percent of the Kairos participants of the course in 2006 and this year have declared their interest to run the course in their churches and Bible colleges. The participants included influential pastors from a range of cities and two Bible schools.

The readiness she sensed is also tied up with Graeme and Lucy’s vision to see hundreds of churches invest among a certain Least Reached People Group (LRPG). Graeme is currently involved in facilitating Kairos. Linda also reports that the Japanese themselves are now starting to reach out other LRPGS in their midst.

For next year, a course will be run in a Bible college in Osaka, with Graeme as Head Facilitator. Two churches in Nagoya and one church in Tokyo are also planning to host the course. Another two churches in Fukuoka and a Bible college in Hokkaido have also expressed interest to do the same.

The challenge now is to train more facilitators to meet this increasing demand for Kairos courses. Another challenge is for participants to make a commitment with their time to come to these courses because of the distances in terms of travel and the full schedules of church leaders.

Linda says that an "embryonic” Kairos National Team has also been formed and functioning well which includes Robert (an American) and Hirao. Hosomi of Jesus Family Church, also a trained facilitator, is also helping the team.