God's Songbook for the Land of the Rising Sun

Over Memorial Day weekend, the Lord enabled me to go on a trip to Chicago to participate in and serve at a 3-day Japanese Christian Conference called "Central Conference" (CC). This conference has been going on for decades and its main objective is for the growth, encouragement, and networking of Japanese-speaking Christians in the Midwest. This year was the first in-person conference since 2018, and many people came in from all over the country. Some attendees even flew in from Japan!

For years I have felt a burden to reach the lost people of Japan with the Gospel. Being such a materialistically prosperous country, its bleak spiritual state is often overlooked by most Christians in the West. However, with less than 1% professing Evangelicals within their population of 120+ million, the Japanese remain the second largest unreached people group in the world. Knowing this, I began meeting Japanese Christians throughout Michigan soon after I graduated high school and sought out opportunities to serve them and for ways to reach Japanese unbelievers. Southeast Michigan has a fairly large Japanese population since many businessmen, along with their families, come here to work for a few years at a time. Whether it be serving at summer camps, doing childcare, or teaching English-Second-Language classes, I have been working as the Lord would see fit to equip me.

One opportunity was the leading of CC’s Kids Program. I was eager to participate in-person this year. After registering, I was offered the opportunity to become the Kids Program leader as there was not yet a program in place for the children. I eagerly accepted the opportunity and, over the course of the month, I constructed a lesson plan that would take the children through a broad overview of the content and importance of the Psalms, as well as introduce the concept of Psalm singing to them. Many Japanese Christians are, lamentably, unfamiliar with the wonderful ordinance of Psalm singing, and so I decided to take full advantage of this opportunity to introduce it to the rising generation. With the help of my Congregational Missions Advocate, I was able to receive a generous donation of multiple Japanese Psalters from the Covenanter Book Room in Kobe, Japan to give to the children. Originally, I had only intended to give each household/group of siblings one psalter, but I was actually able to give each child their own personal psalter.

Initially, I was unsure about how the children would react to my teaching style and the unfamiliar concept of psalmody but, to my surprise, I was met with an overwhelmingly positive response. The children all fell in love with singing from God's songbook, and often asked to do so throughout the entirety of the conference. This also provided me with the opportunity to introduce the concept of psalm singing to the rest of the conference participants, as I led the children in the singing of Psalm 100 (half in Japanese and half in English), along with the entire group of attendees. I was met with much thankfulness from the parents, and the children all gave wonderful reports about their enjoyment of the Kid's Program.

To teach and guide the children of Japanese Christians was an encouragement to me and I am grateful for all the help that many in my congregation, and those in our Japanese congregations, provided. To see so many Japanese Christians gathering for the glory of our God, showed that the prayers of many saints were not left unheard, and that the Lord's longsuffering and kindness towards the Japanese people remains. I only ask that you would please join me in continuing to pray that the Holy Spirit would cause the banner of Truth to fly high over the nation of Japan, so that the Land of the Rising Sun may become known as the Land of the Risen Son. May the glory of our King Jesus be known throughout the nations, world without end. Amen.