The Work of the Church in Japan

The Work of the Church in Japan THE WORK OF THE CHURCH IN JAPAN
Harry Robert Fox, Jr. This is the first time I have even had the pleasure of attending- a lectureship at Abilene Christian College, and I am truly thankful for the opportunity now afforded me. For many years I have noted the emphasis you have placed on world-wide evangelism and the featured place you have given it on your lectureships. Therefore, I count it a special privilege to be here. If it were not for Christian schools such as this and other similar to it I do not believe that we should be seeing anything like the wide-spread evangelism we are witnessing today. For it takes a far bigger than average experience of Christianity to tear a man loose from the world’s most favored country,. America, and drive him out into the destitute places, sustaining him all the while. A man has to have received a lot before he can give very much. And the place where young Christians today are receiving the most is in our Christian colleges. For it is in these schools that they are learning what Christianity is, seven days a week and are getting their deepest insights into its meaning. Only an experience of this depth and duration is big enough to break the vicious circle of a man’s self-centeredness and lead him to any real concern for the millions of earth who are lost. May each of us become so filled with the grace of God in Christ that we shall never rest content until all men now living shall at least have had the opportunity of tasting even a little of that grace also.

Before telling you of the work of the church in Japan as it is today I really ought to tell you something about the fifty years of work done over there before the war. But due to a lack of time I will not be able to give you so much as an outline of that history. For any of you who may wish to read of it I might refer you to Brother J. M. Mc- Caleb’s book, Once Travelled Roads or to an article by the same author in The Harvest Field.

Also for lack of time I will not be able to describe all of the work being done in Japan, but will have to limit myself in the main to what is being done in the state of Ibaraki. However, since two of the families now in Japan but not in Ibaraki are Abilene Christian College graduates I thought you might be especially interested in hearing a firsthand, though brief report concerning them. I refer to the Ed Brown and Bill Carrell families. They are located in the state of Yamanashi seventy miles due west of Tokyo. This puts them 160 miles southwest of us who are in Ibaraki (90 miles northeast of Tokyo), and in some ways that seems as far to us in Japan as 500 miles would seem in America. Therefore, we do not get to see each other very often—^perhaps not more than nine or ten times a year. Nevertheless, we are well acquainted with the work they are doing in Yamanashi and are very favorably impressed. I personally feel that they are doing the most outstanding piece of “located work” of any in Japan. Unlike us in Ibaraki who are spreading ourselves thin in an effort to reach as many as possible, the brethren in Yamanashi are concentrating on a limited number of places and building up some fine local congregations. Not only have they established these fine churches, but in the town of Otsuki they have built the finest church house' among us: a building large enough to seat 250 people, and all for the small cost of $3,000.00. But now to move on up to Ibaraki which I just said was ninety miles northeast of Tokyo. Ibaraki is the name of a state just as Texas is the name of a state here in America. But whereas all of the Japanese islands put together would comprise an area less than that of California there are more states in Japan than in America. Therefore a Japanese “state” more nearly resembles a county in an American state. And when I tell you that the eight of us who are working in Ibaraki are covering no more than about half of so small an area as that little state you can understand me better when I say that we have not hardly begun to make so much as a small dent on Japan. Even when all of the eighteen workers (not counting wives) are taken into consideration not much more can be said, for all of us are located within a radius of 120 miles of Tokyo. Yet within that small area there are probably not less than 20,000,000 people. So even if we never spread out any more than we are nov/ we will still have plenty to keep us busy for the next fifty years. (The total population of Japan is 81,000,000). Our post-war efforts in Ibaraki may be described under three headings: (1) Evangelism, (2) Located work, and (3) Ibaraki Christian College.

Evangelism.
Our primary purnose for being in Japan is, of course, evangelism. In fact, everything we do is motivated by that purpose. Therefore, in one sense it might be said that everything we are doing in evangelistic. Yet part of our wTork is more directly evangelistic than other parts. I refer to our practice of roving evangelism. There is never a week but that each of us travels many miles through numerous villages, towns and cities preaching the gospel to hundreds of people. During the summer months we hold a great many protracted meetings. Most of this preaching is done in private homes, but much of it is done in rented jftyip and public school auditoriums. And there >s never a week passes but that we do not get more, calls to have the gospel preached than we can answer. What a heartbreaking experience to have to turn down people, who have never before had one chance to hear the gospel! At first we tried to answer all the calls, but it wasn’t long until most of us had broken down physically and had to place a limit on howT much we could attempt doing. Never have I seen or heard of any other place that offers the golden opportunity for preaching the gospel than is to be found iij Japan in these post-war years. To most of the people who hear it the gospel means exactly what the word implies: good news. And it is such surpassingly good news that they are not willing to settle for just thirty minutes of it. Nor are they willing in most cases to settle for less than two hours. In many places they ask for three and five hours, and in some places as much as seven hours. One village I preached in last summer kept me going (off and on) for twelve hours.

Therefore, with all due respect to every other field 1 am inclined to believe that Japan offers the greatest opportunity for evangelism of any place in the world. It may even be true that the church has never been presented with a greater opportunity than this since the first century. Here is a whole nation of people temporarily in confusion looking for a new way to go. Up- until the past war they had believed themselves to be a divine nation specially created by certain gods to rule the world—and the proof of this was supposed to be in the Japanese never having lost a war in all their more than two thousand years of history. Therefore when they did actually lose a war and have their divine Emperor tell them that he was not a god the people were given serious cause for reflection. If you want to put yourself somewhat in their place try to imagine our having lost this last war and Jesus apoearmg to all of us in person telling us that he was not the divine Son of God we had believed him to be these nearly two thousand years; that all we had believed and depended upon was nothing more than an empty lie. Is it any wonder that a lot of people over there have become sceptical of all religion and doubt the possibility of knowing any truth? Nevertheless there are a great many other people who are ready to make another try at a new start. And for most such people there are only two alternatives: Christianity and Communism.

It is too bad that the church has not responded to this challenge any more than it has. I am firmly convinced that if we had sent a thousand preachers over there immediately after the war there would now be (five years later) no less than 3000 congregations with a total membership of at least 100,000. I base this estimate on the experience, the handful of us have had who did go to Japan after the war. Take Ibaraki for instance. From the fall of 1946 to the fall of 1950 no more than eight American evangelists have worked in that area. Yet in those four years, six pre-war congregations have been revived and more than twenty new congregations have been established with a total membership of more than 1500. Such response to the gospel is phenomenal, and is especially so when compared with the pre-war response. Back in those days if an evangelist could baptize as many as five in one year he thought he had headline news. There were times when a worker might not baptize even one person in several years. Yet today I do not know of a single town, village or city in all of Japan where an evangelist might not go and, after a year or so of preaching, baptize many people and establish a congregation. Thus is removed one of the chief objections against sending workers to Japan which was raised back in pre-war days: that the results achieved over there were hot worth the dollars invested.

Located work.
The past several years of evangelism have produced so many responses to the gospel that baptisms have outrun our ability to care adequately for all those baptized. We do not have enough preachers to go around for all the congregations which have come into existence. But until such time as enough native preachers and elders can be trained and developed to serve in the various local churches we American evangelists are going to have to spend about a third of our time serving in the capacity of located preachers. Each of the eight of us in Ibaraki has selected a church to serve in this way, and there are several native preachers who have done likewise.

One of the greatest opportunities connected with local work in the Japanese churches is the Sunday school. Take for example the church in Ota where I was located with a membership of some two hundred. There are so many boys and girls who attend Sunday school there that we have to hold classes in two sections of town every Sunday morning. And how many pupils do you suppose are enrolled in these classes? Nearly one thousand. And most of these are present every Sunday. A similar proportion prevails between the church membership and Sunday school 
enrollment in the majority of other congregations in Japan. No one can estimate the great amount of good which must surely come from such teaching programs.

Another similar teaching opportunity on week days exists in inany of the communities where churches are located. That is the opportunity of using the church building for conducting a kindergarten for pre-school children. By means of this the church is able to reach hundreds of little children with the gospel for two years, five days a week just at a time when the. deepest impression can be made on them. And just to give you some idea as to how effective this type of work is I should like to call your attention to the' fact that about fifty per cent of all the young people we have baptized in Ota since the war were pupils m the church kindergarten we operated 15 to 20 years ago. There Is no comparison between the kindergarten and Sunday school educated Japanese, and those not so educated in their ability to understand the gospel when it is presented to them and to obey it. Their early experience of Christianity provides them with a capacity for believing m God which is entirely lacking in most of those who have never had such an experience.

Ibaraki Christian College.
I am well aware that the estab-lishment and operation of a “Christian College” is not the work of the church in the same sense that ’is true of the “evangelism” and “located work” wluch I have just described to you. Nevertheless since such work is not entirely unrelated to the church I do not think that it will be out of place for me to discuss Ibarak' Christian College in connection with “the work of the church in’Japan.” Inasmuch as about ninety per cent of all the people we are baptizing in Ibarak:1 are between the ages of 17 and 25 we are confronted with a particularly acute problem. These young people are of high school and college age and most of them are going to school just as long as they possibly can. But young m the faith as they are, they are certain to find it extremely difficult if not impossible to maintain their faith against the infidelity, Communism and other isms with which their own schools are filled. The two or three hours of Christian teaching- which they receive on Sundays simply cannot compete with the overwhelming impact of what they get five or six days a week in the schools. But we are interested not only in seeing these young people negatively preserved from losing their faith, but also in seeing them positively grounded and strengthened in a full knowledge of the word of God. This cannot be accomplished in the few hours a week we have them on Sunday and Wednesday nights. Nor can we go into their schools and teach. Therefore we are firmly convinced that the situation demands the establishment of a Christian college after the pattern of the ones we have found so helpful here in the states.

Consequently in April of 1948 the first unit of Ibaraki Christian College was set up, and since then the school has grown to where it has three years of high school and two years of college located on a thirty acre campus and fully accredited. More than three hundred students are enrolled this year, and the results achieved so far have more than demonstrated the advisability of establishing the school. As far as I am personally concerned it is the fulfillment of a dream which dates back to the day in 1932 when I first saw and then attended one of our Christian colleges here in America. Never until then had it ever entered my imagination that there was anywhere on earth where so much of heaven could be experienced. And because it was largely the fulness of that experience which had enabled me to return to Japan in 1947 I hoped that it might be possible that such a school should be reproduced in Japan. Nor was I the only one who hoped for a school like that. All the others who went over felt the same way, not to mention several Japanese brethren. As a result, hundreds of Japanese young people are now able to en-joy what so many of you know who have attended one or the other of our Christian colleges in the states. The daily chapel hour itself 'is worth the price of the school, and it is to you who know what this means from experience that I should like to appeal for help in completing the develop-ment of Ibaraki Christian College.

Now just a word concerning what we stand for—as well as what we stand against. We stand for the whole of God’s word: nothing more, nothing less. This naturally puts us in opposition to all that is contrary to that word. Among the many isms which we believe to be out of harmony with the teaching of the Bible are Sectarianism, Modernism, Naturalism, Legalism and Premillennialism. We are opposed to all of- these and any other teachings which we find to be untrue when measured by the Bible. Whenever and wherever any of these false doctrines raises its head we may be counted on to expose it and teach the truth that opposes it.

Needs and Opportunities.
Our most promising need at the moment is for money with which to complete the construction of buildings on the campus of Ibaraki Christian College. Already thirty acres of land have been bought and paid for with your generous help. Also a high school building large enough to accommodate 200 students; a junior college building big enough to house an auditorium seating more than 300 people, five administrative offices, classrooms enough to care for 100 college students and a library; a home economics building; a science laboratory building; a quonset hut for laboratory; a small gymnasium and two American faculty homes have been built and paid for. With $100,000.00 more we can build two badly needed dormitories, an administration building, two more classrooms, an adequate gymnasium and a few other small buildings. This will bring the total cost of the entire school to only $150,000.00—which is less than the cost of one dormitory on the campuses of our Christian colleges in America. Think of it: fourteen buildings on a thirty acre campus for less than the cost of one in America. And the thing that must'be kept in mind is that the students who go out from this school are going out as preachers, school teachers, carpenters, farmers and' fishermen to spread the knowledge of God wherever they go. What a small investment for such large results. (One hundred and fifty individuals contributing a hundred dollars apiece will make possible the girl’s dormitory which we need so urgently right now). A second need closely related to the first one just described is a student aid fund. We charge our students only two dollars a month tuition and eight dollars a month room and board. But very few Japanese can afford to pay that much. (The average salaried worker earns between $15 to $25 a month). Therefore if very many young people are ever to go through Ibaraki Christian College they are going to have to have financial assistance. We do not favor giving them their room, board and tuition outright. Rather we should like to be able to lend them enough to make it possible for them to finish their schooling. Then after they have graduated and have a job, they can pay back the loan into the revolving student aid fund, and the money can be used to help some others through. Already a number of individuals are contributing to this fund, and many others should be able to do so without any trouble at all. Even as little as two dollars a month—or even one dollar 'a month, for that matter—will mean a lot in providing a Christian education for many worthy Japanese young people. A third need is for church buildings for the many congregations which have been established. The Japanese members are too poor to pay for the size buildings needed. Yet if we wait until such time as they may eventually be able to pay for them the work of the church will be seriously hampered in the meantime. As long as the churches continue to meet in private homes the average Japanese is going to get the impression that the church is a temporary thing—perhaps nothing more than a part of the American occupation and is sure to go when it leaves the country. But in every town and village the roof of the local Buddhist temple or the top of the Shinto shrine can be seen reminding the people that there are two religions that have been here a long time and with which they are going to have to deal for a long time to come. Now if we can put up church houses in those same towns and villages the church will also be saying to the people that it, too, means business and intends to be there for a long- time and does not intend to be ignored. And what do you think it will cost us to put up such buddings m the average town or village? They will be large enough to seat from 100 to 150 people and will be built on concrete foundations; also they will be built of sturdy and good lumber and covered with a hard tile roof; they will have lots of glass windows and will be wired for electric lighting; in front they will have a large vestibule and in the rear will have rest rooms. And the cost for such buildings will not be $10,000.00. Nor would it be $5,000.00—or even $3,000.00. It will be only $1,000.00. For the $50,000.00 it is costing us to build the average church house here in America we can put up 50 buildings in Japan, and these are not houses that will fall to pieces tomorrow. They will still be here fifty years from now and by the time they may be worn out the Japanese brethren should be able to build what they need at that time. A fourth need is for a limited amount of support for native evangelists. If the church is ever to become, firmly rooted in Japan it is going to have to be done by the Janan- ese themselves. We are training men as rapidly as possible and at present have a number of men wTho could give full time to preaching if they had support. The Japanese churches are too poor to support evangelists full time right now. But the golden opportunity for evangelism is now, and we ought to use every man full time who is available. The cost is so small from the American standpoint that there is no reason why it cannot be done. A single man can be supported for as little as $15.00 a month; a married man without children for as little as $25.00 and a married man with children for between $30.00 and $40.00 depending upon how many children he has. A fifth need is for money with which to publish gospel literature. The Japanese are voracious readers and will read all the material we can furnish them. No church teaching program can be complete or lastingly effective that does not include the printed word.

Finally there is need for more American workers to go to Japan. And in order that the church may be inspired not only to send more workers to Japan but to all the nations of each I should like to tell you the following. During this past war I had more than one experience of having Americans come to me and complain, “Why, oh why, are the Japanese behaving so atrociously? How can anyone in this enlightened twentieth century do the things they are doing?” And they appeared shocked. But in reply I showed no surprise at all, and said, “What more can you expect? Surely you do not expect pagans to act like Christians.” And that is the whole point exactly. Even though we had won many a debate with those who hold the false idea that men can be converted by the direct opera-tion of the Holy Snirit independently of the written and preached word of God, we were daily practicing a denial of our very contention. For we were acting as though we believed that the Japanese as well as most other people would just naturally become “Christianized” and “civilized.” No, there is no way for men to act like Christians except to. become Christians first. But there is no way for men to become Christians other than to hear and obey the gospel of Christ. We all seem to be agreed that as far as Americans are concerned “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Why should not the same be true of the Japanese and everybody else? Until we are willing to dig in and work hard to make Christians of all men everywhere the only way Christians can be made, let us quit complaining when they do not behave themselves. For this past war should have demonstrated once and for all the falsity of the idea that “it doesn’t make any difference what a man believes just so he is sincere.” What difference - did it make that the Japanese believed themselves to be a divine nation and their Emperor a god? The answer to this was written unmistakably at Pearl Harbor. Or what difference did it make that the Germans believed themselves to be the superior race? The answer to this has also been written in the blood of millions of men.Let us therefore be about our Father’s business of preaching- the gospel in season and out of season.
Omika, Ibaraki Ken, Japan.