Serving Japan together

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the annual meeting for the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA), the organisation that publishes the magazine that I manage. I've not heard of another country that has a group quite like this, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. It is a voluntary fellowship of missionary groups and independent missionaries who join together to network, support, and encourage one another in their work in Japan. They represent around 1,000 missionaries. I wrote a little bit about this group back here. The group is about 50 years old and does remarkable things. 

In a country as hard as Japan is for missionary work, I'm sure that JEMA has helped more than a few people remain serving in Japan. I'm glad to be a part of that effort by publishing Japan Harvest magazine as well as attending many of the women's fellowship times that they organise.

I mostly go to get a feel for how the organisation is working and also for networking, it is one of the few times I get to meet some of the people who write for the magazine. I'm not someone who enjoys meetings, but I find this one surprisingly encouraging.

The most memorable thing I learned was that a group of Japanese churches (Japanese Evangelical Association) has done an estimate of the number of foreign Christians in Japan: it is similar to the number of Japanese Christians who live here! Imagine that? 

International churches are quite a thing here, but I know that there are a number of "ethnic" churches too. I also know that OMF is starting to think about how that impacts the Japanese church. It is one of the prayer points in the OMF International February prayer focus on Japan: 

"Lord, as you bring more non-Japanese people to live and work in Japan, may the church be one which welcomes those who are already Christians and may these Christians bring encouragement and blessing to the churches." (From here.)

But today I'm back to the nitty gritty of putting a magazine together, creating social media content, writing a prayer letter, uploading omf.org/japan website content, and editing articles. Oh, not to mention managing the food-side of our household (grocery shopping, bread making, and cooking dinner).