As I wrote this morning, we had our second Maibara Revive meeting today. I arrived at church this morning to listen to a litany of people who couldn't make it. Takahashi-sensei said, "Well, it could be just the four of us..."
In the event, it was pretty much standing room only - last month's nine had grown to fifteen, mainly Nagahama church people although there was a couple I had not seen at all before. I felt I was able to share my vision for the group a bit more freely, and I think that although people aren't 100% convinced, they're prepared to play along with me and see where it goes.
I kind of want to lay out that vision here as well, because it's kind of where I'm up to with how we should be doing mission in Japan, and it would be good to get some feedback on that; it's obviously incredibly early days I know but I'm hoping that Maibara could be a model for what I call "light" church planting. Now there is nothing new in any of this, it's all mashed up bits of house church and church planting movements and traditional models, and I've taken out the bits I don't agree with and stirred the rest together. It's not revolutionary at all. The only important bit is - we're actually trying it. And as I said, this is where I'm up to now. If I still believe this in a few years time, that will mean I haven't learnt anything in the interim.
Also it may sound like I know what I'm doing here. I don't. I'm completely making this up as I go along. And it might not work at all. But it sounds good, and it's good to have a plan, and the plan goes like this:
I've come to believe that mission should be centrifugal, not centipedal and that church is a place for getting people ready to go out into mission. (Acts 1:4,8)
I've also seen a few things in traditional Japanese church planting which have made me want to do the exact opposite: first, how traditional churches have an unmobilized laity and a strong dependence on the missionary or pastor to do any and all ministry; second, setting up a church consumes a huge amount of time and other missionary resources. One of our church plants (well, to be honest and to avoid calling anyone out, a composite of several of our church plants into one fictitious example) has consumed 15 missionary-years and I have no idea how much money to establish a congregation of five. I'm not at all saying we have to do the most efficient thing and measure our church planting in terms of manhours per soul - not just no, but hell no - but on the other hand, I don't want to be wasting my and everyone else's time with stuff that's just not happening.
See, the real problem with a "heavy" church like that is that we feel compelled to "protect our investment". (The concept of a sunk cost being a tricky one for people to get hold of, and pride being sadly a factor too.) Heavy churches must not be allowed to fail, because think of all we've done for them. Because heavy churches can't be allowed to fail, we get all protective and controlling over what happens in them. I want to see "light" churches, that can be set up by one or two people in an afternoon, and which we also hold lightly. If they fail, that's OK, because we haven't invested a great deal in them and it's easy enough to try again with another one. (If you see shades of Agile Methods in this idea, that's probably not coincidental. And the current Maibara Revive, which kind of has to be up and running within the next six months, could well be the "one to throw away")
So a light church is outward-focussed, low reliance, high reproducability and simple and easy to set up. This comes pretty much from the Church Planting Movements concept of church.
How practically am I going about planting a "light" church in Maibara? First I trained up a small group of believers from Nagahama church. They are not Maibara residents. I trained them in the Ten-Gai-Nai meeting method that I'll outline below, going through a few meetings in this style to get them used to it, before withdrawing (actually going back to the UK) to allow them to lead one themselves. Now I have a core of five or six believers who (a) are comfortable with what's going to happen next, and (b) are fired up about evangelism. Working with a core from the existing church is critical even in pioneer situations because it's the only way that current Christians will learn about taking on hands-on ministry themselves. You can't just teach them about it - you've got to do it with them.
Next we found somewhere to meet. The community centre was not my first choice, but now we're there it fits so well. The early church met in Solomon's Portico of the Temple not because it was a religious building in which to segregate themselves from society, but because it was right at the very heart of Jewish society. Our meetings are being held at the social and cultural heart of Maibara, and that's how it should be. It also allows us to do centrifugal evangelism by getting involved in the existing social groups meeting at the community centre, which is a heck of a lot easier than having to spend a lot of time and effort reproducing those same groups in a church setting. (Which I believe is the main weakness in Dan Iverson's otherwise brilliant "side-door evangelism" strategy; the other weakness being that it is fundamentally centripetal not centrifugal.)
Then we chose a name. Names are important. I chose "Maibara Revive" because it's exciting, inspiring and it doesn't contain the word "church". It's also an "umbrella name" we can use not just for our monthly meeting but also as the "sponsoring organisation" for our outreach programmes.
Now we have a meeting place and a core of fired-up believers, we call in the current Maibara residents from the church. They don't have to know about Ten-Gai-Nai because we already have a team who can do it and demonstrate it. They just come to the meetings, and we do Ten-Gai-Nai with them.
Ten-Gai-Nai is a "simple theology" by Mitsuo Fukuda; I wrote a bit about it here. Applying the Ten-Gai-Nai schema to a church meeting, you get a programme like this:
There are many nice features about this. Firstly, it's fairly complete. Think about these three relationships, and do them in community, and I don't think you're going to go too far wrong. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's more complete than most traditional church meetings, which often have a Ten and a Nai but no Gai.
Second, the "leader" of this kind of meeting is merely a faciliator. The true leader and teacher is God. This means that anyone, if trained up and given trust and reassurance, can "lead" the meeting. No dependence on a pastor, big win!
Third, everyone participates and everyone hears from God. No hangers on. Ministry becomes something for the masses, not the professionals. And if you start with a mature and fired-up group of believers, other believers will look at them and say "if they can do it - and they're not clergy and they haven't been to Bible college - then so can I." And they do. It's fanastic.
So now we have a Christian group meeting regularly to do worship and teaching and intercession. Hey presto, instant church! But don't call it a church, because then people will have unhelpful expectations about what it should become. They'll want their own building and pastor, and it will get all heavy again. So just call it a "meeting" or whatever.
This is the stage we have got to so far at Maibara, after two meetings. The next stage is broadening the community. Our members are all of a similar age and generation, and have been Christians for so long they don't have much in the way of social networks outside of the church. This is so often the way. So we persuade them to get more involved in the community and their workplaces and spread the Gospel there. We also bring in missionaries to help reach communities outside of the current age range.
My plan for doing this in Maibara involves using short-term missionaries to work with the community center to put on evangelistic programmes. We're astonishingly privileged to have a completely open door there, and I checked in today saying I was thinking of starting up some children's English classes and is that something they would like us to do? Yes, they would. So we are serving the community, which is important for a church to do, and another reason not to segregate oneself off in one's own church building.
I've always hesitated about English teaching, again because it can suck up missionary resources for ever and ever without actually achieving anything, and when you start something like that, it's hard to stop. So the plan is to put on a fixed-term of "English club" meetings for high schoolers, which also provide opportunities for personal testimony (with translation) and discussion of pastoral topics which are live issues in Japan, such as family life, school, bullying, etc. It's important that we can come before the kids and show our weaknesses to them, as hopefully that will help them open up and share their own concerns with us, and also it gives us a chance to show how God has been active in real this-worldly terms in our own lives. Additionally, doing all this in English will hopefully provide a "level of abstraction" away from their ordinary lives which should also help them to open up. We're again fortunate that Maibara high school has the best English programme in the county, and those kids should be able to speak pretty well about personal stuff if they want to.
After the term - maybe ten weeks - ends, we will do a short programme, again in English, for those interested in learning more about Christianity. I'm writing a course similar to the Alpha Course but designed specifically for Japan - dealing with issues like "What is real love?", "How can I love myself?" and so on.
We'll also use our short-termers to do various international-style events as a way of contact-making. Oh, and I should probably do some work myself as well. But not too much. That's another thing I'm trying to model.
Like I said, making it up as I go along. But hopefully we can demonstrate something in Maibara that can inspire our other churches as well. Maybe even our other missionaries...
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