Business as missions is a vehicle for missionaries to bring the gospel to unreached peoples. Seeing as how even the word “business” is such a broad term, it makes sense that business as missions has several different definitions as well, depending on who you talk to. For some, business as mission means starting a Kingdom-minded operation in a foreign country to reach employees and communities with the Gospel. For others, it means simply going into an unreached nation and becoming a Christian member of their workforce. This specific trip would focus on providing conferences and consulting services to businessmen and local businesses as a way of sharing the Gospel, as well as encouraging Christian businessmen and business owners to approach their careers and workplaces as personal areas of ministry.
However, the group I was traveling with, Global Advance, had never been to Japan before. Thus this trip was exploratory in nature and its purpose was to establish relationships and coordinate with groups on the ground who could continue to do the sowing and reaping once we left. As a short-term focused missions organization, Global Advance needs partners on the ground who can maintain relationships and pursue any spiritual leads that arise once the missionaries leave.
Upon arriving in Japan, you’re immediately aware that you’re in a foreign nation. Since I’m Korean, it wasn’t as alien to me as 2 of my 3 other traveling companions (50 year old from Texas and a college senior who had never been outside Washington state).
On our first full day in Tokyo (a Sunday), we were invited to meet with Andrew Ichimura and Bob Holmes, the founders of a 20-year old organization called International VIP Club, a group for Japanese Christian businessmen that has over 200 branches internationally. Though there are a lot of branches, each one only has a handful of members, much like the Church in Tokyo, which boasts several hundred churches but with congregations averaging only 20-30 people. This is indicative of the difficulty in unifying the Japanese church.
Before I left for Japan, a few people who had gone on missions trips to Japan before warned me about a feeling of spiritual oppression they felt almost immediately upon landing. When I arrived, I braced myself but didn’t feel that way. In fact, as we were walking to meet Andrew and Bob at a hotel where they held a Sunday chapel service in the hotel’s rock garden, I caught a glimpse of a cross hanging off a building. A church in downtown Tokyo? I thought this was an unreached nation! Seems just like any American city!
However, as we continued down the street, a simple piece of street graffiti caught my eye:
You never know my painYou never know where I wasYou just know only your world…Honjee
The message was haunting and jarred me out of my sense of complacency and ease. The Japanese people are an intensely private and inward-focused people. The nation boasts 100% literacy, high education levels, virtually no poverty, and yet suicide runs rampant throughout the nation, especially in Tokyo where the favored method is throwing oneself in front of a subway train, causing delays that the citizens of Tokyo have become accustomed to as just another part of their daily commute. This message from Honjee reminded me that though things on the outside might seem nice and pretty (Japan really is a lovely country and Tokyo is a beautiful, clean and modern city), underneath, there is true darkness and lostness. I was here to fight a spiritual battle. There is a war going on for the souls of the Japanese people.
We finally arrived at the hotel rock garden just before service was starting. Bob Holmes, a septuagenarian retired United Airlines employee, serves as the pastor for this small congregational gathering of ~15 people, and his message that Sunday was fittingly on the Great Commission. He implored his congregation (all native Japanese) to preach the Gospel to their families, friends, co-workers. He exhorted them to continue in the Great Commission that Christ calls us to. I thought to myself, “What a great message for this Japanese church. They are essentially all missionaries since their people are so unchurched and Christianity is so non-existent in Japan. Unlike us in Americ—oh yeah… that’s right.” God really is a funny guy.
The next day, we traveled to Sendai on our way to Ishinomaki, a fishing city that was paralyzed structurally and economically by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck the area on March 11, 2011. When we first got to Ishinomaki and the local missionary, Rimpei Kozawa, picked us up and drove us to the base camp, I thought things didn’t seem so bad. Besides the occasional boarded up building, it looked like the area has mostly recovered.
However, once we started doing mud work, I saw firsthand the actual destruction of people’s homes, businesses, and lives. One of the homes we worked in, the elderly fisherman who owned it was sitting on his tatami mat when the tsunami struck, which lifted him up to the 2nd floor
allowing him to survive. His wife and mother were not as fortunate; the former got swept away while the latter drowned when she got stuck in another part of the house as the torrential waters rose to the ceiling in a matter of seconds. Another home we worked at still had piles and piles of “recovered” articles and houseware: mostly dirty blankets, clothing, and some keepsakes. The owner of the home was now the daughter, as both parents had passed away in the tsunami, but she couldn’t decide what to do with the refuse.
This made our job all the more difficult as we had to move all the objects from one side of the room to the other in order for us to do our cleaning, spraying, bleaching, and scrubbing. While I
resented having to do this extra work for no reason, God showed me a picture of the daughter’s heart – how could she just throw away all that was left of her parents’ memory? When we were moving the items to another area of the floor in order to clean, I caught a glimpse of a birthday card for her father with several different handwritten notes all over it. It brought home the reality of the pain and hurt caused by this natural disaster. This had been an actual person. He was a husband, a father, a fisherman. Perhaps he had met Christ, perhaps he hadn’t. But he was no longer here anymore. Isn’t there some urgency in that?
God is certainly doing something in the lives of the people of Ishinomaki. Despite their suffering, many retain a positive outlook and always greeted us with smiles. They are also much more open to discussions on faith and the Gospel, progression that in a normally functioning Japanese society would take years to develop. And the humanitarian work being done in Ishinomaki truly shows the impact of being a Good Samaritan; a local city councilman was baptized by Rimpei a week before we arrived when he saw how Christians came flocking in to do all the dirty work with thanksgiving. He wanted to know what kind of God we served. I pray he found the answer he was seeking!
However, the devastation of the earthquake and tsunami impacted more than just the houses. Economically, Ishinomaki is struggling to survive, and the people who have left the city are not being drawn back, either due to painful memories, fear, or simple lack of economic opportunity. As a fishing-centered economy, a warehouse such as the one below should have been filled with product, buyers and sellers. And there should have been literally hundreds of these in operation at one time. But one of the only few open, and its lackluster activity, is pictured below.
Local fishermen also have to measure and test the radiation levels of the fish they catch, in order to ensure that they are safe to eat. And despite normal levels and encouragement from the Japanese government, people still are uneasy about purchasing fish from this region of Japan, further exacerbating the economic difficulties in the area.
To be honest, my team and I felt a great deal of burden during this portion of our trip. What could we say or do for these fishermen in order to improve their financial position? Could we change buying habits of an entire nation? Could we inject billions of dollars into a beaten-down infrastructure? Could we provide job opportunities in areas attractive to young people in order to migrate back to this area?
Not really. All we could do was pray and offer what services we had. And in the end, that’s what we did. Through several meetings with Rimpei, we came up with plans and brainstormed ideas in order to engage the fishermen of the area. We came up with solutions for providing supplies to the fishermen without simply giving irresponsibly or trying to buy their faith. We also encouraged Rimpei with his plans for building a community center that would also provide low-rent facilities for entrepreneurs. We prompted Rimpei to establish a partnership with a nearby technical college that might provide an opportunity for Global Advance to return in the future and do conferences with college students and recent graduates. We also established a connection with the VIP Club through Andrew and Bob, as well as Grace City Church Tokyo, a plant of Redeemer NYC, that might lead to conferences in Tokyo for young urban professionals as well as the older, established C-level executives.
God showed me so much about Japan, and really, His heart for all the suffering people in this world. Because the truth is, there is so much pain and suffering all over the place, not just in areas hit by natural disasters, but even in places where the worst pain and suffering is simply caused by the proximity of broken people all around us. I didn’t need to go to Japan to help people who were hurting – I could have walked down the street to a neighbor’s house.
But God is sovereign in his plan and I believe that the purpose for me going to Japan was fulfilled. There’s still a need there and God will use His church to bring His kingdom to Japan. With that I have no doubt. The fact that He used a simple idiot like me to do that is grace in full effect, is it not? To use the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; to use the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God, for You, I will be as foolish and weak as much as You want.
For all of you who supported me in prayer and financially, I truly thank you. The overwhelming encouragement I received prior to leaving for Japan was just another confirming sign from God about my decision, as well as a wonderful affirmation of how I am blessed with so many loving partners. I hope that this blog helped give you a picture of what God is doing in Japan, and will spur you on to pray and continue to sow into His Kingdom come.
