This last weekend Tomo and I went to a conference put on by Reaching Japanese for Christ, an organization whose primary mission is to reach out to Japanese while they are in the U.S. and sending them back to be a witness for Christ in their native country.
My favorite speaker was Pastor Nakagawa, a pastor from Tokyo who has a fairly large television ministry. In his opening talk he gave some up very up to date information and statistics about the current state of Christianity in Japan, and also hinted at some encouraging trends that may indicate that Japan may finally be able to open up to Christ. I love stats, so here are some of the ones he gave. There are 7,987 protestant churches in Japan, with an average membership of 64.3 people, and an average weekly attendance of 40.9 people. Recent surveys have found that over 20% of the Japanese say they have a favorable opinion of Christianity, while 4% actually claimed to be Christian.
Some quick math shows a fairly large discrepancy with the statistics of Christians vs. the people actually going to Church. We find that 0.4% of the Japanese population is members of churches, while on a given Sunday 0.2% actually attend a church. This is more in line with the statistics that most missionaries and pastors that I know in Japan still hold up as accurate. It’s encouraging that 4% of the population identifies themselves as Christians, but they aren’t in church… so where are they? Pastor Nakagawa also acknowledged that the actual percentage of believers is much lower than 4%.
His opening statement really caught my attention, because he stated out loud something I had long suspected. To paraphrase, he stated that he did not believe anyone knows exactly why the gospel has not penetrated very deeply into Japan. I think that is something that is very important to keep in mind, because it means that we haven’t figured out the best way to reach the Japanese with the Gospel. Protestants have been in Japan for 150 years, and Catholics even longer, yet the percentage of Christians has never really changed in that time. For whatever reason, the strategies for reaching people for Christ that work in other parts of the world don’t work in Japan.
This leads to one other thing that I really took away from this conference, and that is how radically different the Japanese culture is from our own. To most of us, Japanese people might seem a little formal, maybe a little shy or awkward sometimes, very driven and intelligent, and to a degree these stereotypes are all true, however this only scratches the surface. The world view and culture of the Japanese is so different from our own that I think it would be most helpful to assume that we were from not merely different continents, but different planets. It’s as if Japans philosophy, culture and ideals developed without any knowledge or influence from our own, and vice versa, and historically this isn’t far from he truth.
I could go on for quite a bit longer, but for the sake of time I’ll stop here, and invite any comments or discussion. I’ve said some things that I didn’t have time to contextualize, so it’s possible I might sound a little heretical. Call me on it; I’m just itching for a chance to clarify.
All in all it was a really encouraging and beneficial conference, and only increased my desire to get over there and begin ministering to the Japanese.