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So how exactly do you raise support?

Often I’m asked for the specifics of what we do to raise support. The simplest and truest answer is probably “stumble around trying things and pray God does a miracle.” Support raising is not something I’m naturally gifted in. But that’s fine, even sometimes glorious, because when it works I know it’s not me, but God. It’s a wonderful feeling to succeed in something you know you’re terrible at. I imagine Peter really had a good a time walking on water because he’d never had much of a talent for it till Christ told him to come out and join Him.

The standard support raising strategy we have is to call people up and ask if we can meet with them. If they’re willing we go to their house (or have them come to ours), we talk with them for about an hour, sharing what God’s calling us to do in Japan, and how they can partner with us to do it, and then invite them to support us. We also call churches for about the same reason, except in addition to asking the church to support us we ask if we can speak at a Bible Study, or even the main service. And we’re always trying to meet new people, and ask for referrals.

We’ve got two new things we’re trying. The first is this video that we made into a DVD. It’s a ten minute presentation and our contact information. We’re in the process of sending out about 200 of them. Our hope is that people will watch the DVD, and that God will move them to join us in reaching the Japanese for Christ. We also hope that people will give the DVD away to a friend to watch. Ideally each of the 200 DVDs will be passed around to many people, so that potentially thousands might get a chance to hear about what we’re doing.

The second new idea we have is to hand deliver the DVD and our latest newsletter to people living close by. The reason we came up with this was to save on postage, as it would be expensive to mail 200 DVDs out, we thought it would be good to hand out as many as we could. We’re hoping to spend a few days driving around and delivering them to people ourselves, both to save money, and to say hi. Many of the people on our mailing list are old friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, and many have never met Tomo, so it seemed like a great opportunity to reconnect. If we show up on your door step, now you’ll know why.

Please be praying that God uses this DVD project to call more Christians into a deeper involvement in missions, and ultimately to take the Gospel to Japan and that God will call more Japanese to salvation through Christ.

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Four churches, one Church.

This month we visited  a Free Methodist church, a Lutheran church, a Baptist church and a non-denominational church. Each one was unique, with it’s own atmosphere, traditions, and doctrinal emphasis. From what I’ve read and heard, the church today is getting more liberal, and straying away from the truth of the Word of God. As a general trend I suspect this to be true, however I did not sense this to be the case in any of these churches we had the great privileged of visiting. All were faithful churches, and all had their own distinct flavor.

The Free Methodists were a particularly friendly group. This was very noticeable in the Japanese language service which we attend once a month. My experience with Japanese people is that they are somewhat reserved. But as soon as the time came to greet each other everyone was out of their seats, walking around trying to shake hands with every last person in the place. Coming from a non-denominational church I was impressed by the strong support lent by the denomination to the church. The English speaking service had needed a new Pastor, so the denomination arranged for an interim to come and fill the void, and after a time of careful searching found a perfect match and sent him as a permanent replacement. The transition seems to be going really well.

The Lutheran service we attended was also in Japanese, it was the church my grandma attended before she passed away in February. Their service followed a rich Christian tradition rooted in doctrines cherished since the Reformation. There was much participation by the congregation; responsive readings and prayers, culminating with sharing communion. Communion was probably my favorite part of the service (granted it was again all in Japanese, so I had trouble following the rest of it). Everyone gathered around in a circle, kneeling at the alter while the Pastor brought the bread and the cup to each of us. It was a very intimate moment, kneeling there in a circle with all these believers as we shared in remembering Christ’s sacrifice for us.

The Baptists were perhaps the most conservative  of the churches we visited, and in hindsight I probably should have worn a tie. Yet despite being slightly under dressed, we were immediately welcomed and accepted. What struck me most about this church was their passion to be faithful to God and the truth of His Word. They were painfully aware of the previously noted trend of Churches falling away from the truth and authority of scripture, and determined not to follow suit. Furthermore, missions was something that got these people excited, and we had a great time talking with many of them after the service.

The non-denominational church was more the style I’m used to, except that it was a church probably ten or twenty times larger than my own. The feeling of being lost in the crowd was offset by small groups. We spent the first service in a Bible Study that one of the small groups had. I observed the same closeness and friendship that my small church had among its members in among the members of the small group. And when we all migrated into the main service with hundreds of others, there were lots of people waving, and seeing other friends and mingling on the expansive patio afterwards. And the worship band was pretty amazing.

I went into each of these churches with a sense of apprehension, and left feeling like I had just visited long lost relatives. Despite the differences in styles of worship and traditions and customs, the distinguishing marks of Christians  were present. These people had a love for God, a love for His word and a love for each other, a love which they almost immediately extended towards us. We were, as Paul said, members of one body, connected and drawn together by Christ, who is Lord of us all.

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Support Raising!

The last month has been the most active and intense period of support raising I’ve been in yet. We’ve been meeting with individuals, pastors and soon speaking at churches as well. God’s been gracious thus far and we’ve seen a lot of our needed support come in. As always I’m excited about going to Japan, but for the first time I feel like I can see it coming up on the horizon.

Our goal is to leave for Japan next summer, in 2011. In order to do that we’ve got to find enough churches and individuals to partner with us by committing to give on a monthly basis and supply our total budget set by SEND which will enable us to live and minister full time in Tokyo.  We also have an outgoing amount that needs to be raised up front to cover moving expenses, the cost of getting set up in Japan and to pay for 2 years of language school for me. Normally however the outgoing amount is largely supplied by the generosity of our monthly financial partners, most of them have already begun supporting us and the money that they send in each month goes straight into our outgoing fund.

We have about 20% of our monthly support committed right now. Our goal is to reach 60% by January. This will allow us to start receiving a salary from SEND so that we can spend the final 6 months doing nothing but support raising and preparing to leave for Japan, in anticipation of being fully supported by July 31 2011.

Right now our strategy is focused almost exclusively on finding the people that God is leading to partner with us in prayer and monthly giving. We’re meeting with individuals and couples, sharing our vision and inviting them to be a part of something spectacular that God is doing. We’re also looking to meet new people, asking for the names of people’s friends that might be interested in hearing from us, and looking to speak at churches and Bible Studies for 5-10 minutes to see if anyone would be interested in meeting with us one on one. Next Sunday, the 25th we’ll be speaking at two Churches, so please keep us in your prayers.

I’m excited that God has called us to be a part of full fulling the great commission, by being a part of His plan to take the gospel to the people of Japan. You can share in this endeavor as well. This is not something that we’re doing on our own. Already dozens of people have partnered with us, and together we are seeking God’s glory, committing our time, our finances, our prayers and our lives to the spread of the gospel.

Reading update

Just finished “What is Reformed Theology?” by R.C. Sproul. Call it Calvanism or Reformed theology,  whatever, my theological understanding has been bent in that direction for awhile now, but I never took the time to actually read a book outlining all it’s beliefs. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% there yet, but I don’t think I know of a better explanation of what the Gospel is all about. Charles Spurgeon once said:

“I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.“

Probably sounds shocking, but I think he’s got it right, because Calvanism (or Reformed Theology) is simply an explanation of God’s plan to bring about the sure and certain salvation of His people.

In my year through the Bible reading program, I’m in Leviticus, Psalms and Proverbs, and up to 1 Timothy in the New Testament. Also I’ve still been spending time in Jeremiah in my devotions, but haven’t been nearly as consistent with that as I need to be.

For fun I’ve been reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, and Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

On the horizon I think I’m going to tackle a biography of Hudson Taylor, and to keep up on the latest heresies, I picked up a copy of Rob Bell’s “Velvet Elvis” for 50 cents at the friends of the library book store. I definitely don’t agree with the beliefs of the “Emerging Church” but I try not to be too critical of something till I’ve examined it first  hand. Once through Jeremiah I’ve got this ambitious (and from what I’ve read so far of Mr. Bell’s book, foolish) idea to try to understand every single verse of one book of the Bible. I think I’ll start smallish with something like Philippians.