Where Everybody's Crazy

I'm finding myself getting very busy and very tired these days; I have a lot of things I want to write about but I'm finding it hard to catch up. This entry has been sitting in my editor window for four days. Let's see if I can finish it today...

Saturday was fantastic. I mean, fantastic. In the morning we headed into Kyoto's Tofukuji, to join a meeting of a Kyoto deaf church. Henrietta and I both independently had an interest in deaf evangelism for a while now, and we've both come across more deaf people in the past year than one would expect. H took a course in sign language while she was at university; I always wanted to but never got to it. And last week, at the house church conference, we met an American couple who are working as evangelists to the deaf here in Japan, and they gave us an introduction to a church in Kyoto, and volunteered kindly to interpret for us.

After worrying that we might be a bit of a nuisance, we were incredibly warmly welcomed by the church there, and gave testimonies and received prayer. And it was a strange and very moving experience to be in a silent church service; even the worship was done purely by signing, and somehow it gave it an added meaning. It was also interesting to contrast deaf Japanese culture and hearing culture - they told us that deaf Japanese were a lot more "straight talking" than hearing ones!

I don't know whether we will be involved in deaf ministry in the future - I know I am someone who has many plans and projects and only a few of them come to pass - but I sure hope so.

In the afternoon we went on to a gospel concert; H is in a couple of gospel choirs and one of them was giving a concert in one of the Kyoto underground stations - supported by Kyoto City Transport Department. There were about forty or fifty people there, and between the songs the leader explained the Christian message behind them.

This really, really, impressed on me the difference between what I will call centripetal evangelism and centrifugal evangelism. As those with better elementary physics than I will remember, centrifugal force flings things outwards; centripetal force tries to pull things inwards. Most of our evangelism is centripetal. At our missionary conference this year we had a great talk by a pastor in Tokyo whose church runs all kind of small groups and activities. And people come along! But his basic model is that the church puts on activities which people come to. Come to the church! Come to the church! And people come.

But there are a couple of problems with this. First, surely we don't want the church to be an inward-pulling organisation which plucks people from the surrounding society so that they can join the sacred communion of the saved, but rather to be an outward-pushing body which gets people into the highways and byways and get the message out there where it belongs. Church surely has to be outward focused, not inward focused; centrifugal not centripedal. Second, pragmatically, putting on loads of small groups and activities and events takes a whole load of time and effort.

You try putting on an event in your church in Japan and getting forty or fifty non-Christians to hear the gospel. I'm sure you can do it, but it'll take you a year of planning and probably quite a lot of money. And yet we've got this gospel choir, made up of both non-Christians and Christians, and when they want to spread the Gospel, they get the city council to provide a prime location, lay out the seating, do the advertising, put the banners up and bring in the punters. All the choir needed to do was just go out and share the Gospel, which is what it's supposed to be about, isn't it? Surely being a missionary is about just going out and sharing the Gospel, not working on providing venues and preparing events and organising the damn seating.

On Monday I spent the day at our mission camp site, getting ready for the summer camps we host. In other words, me and a bunch of others in our mission spent a whole day as missionaries providing venues and preparing events and organising the damn seating. Maybe, just maybe, we've missed the point of what this is all about. Still, it was good exercise.

Tuesday didn't get any better. The morning's prayer meeting was worthwhile, and in a sense the afternoon's Shiga county pastors' meeting was a good opportunity for fellowship and cross-denominational unity. We watched a very interesting video about the Gospel in Bunraku, a presentation of the Gospel using traditional Japanese puppet theatre. And then, unfortunately, we tried to do something together, and that's where it all fell apart.

Next year is the 150th anniversary of Protestant mission in Japan. So it would seem like a good opportunity for all the Protestants to get together and do something. Maybe put on various consciousness-raising events throughout the year. But oh, no, that might actually achieve something. And besides, we're not Protestants, we're Evangelicals and none of our denominations have a 150 year history, so why should we care about the 150th anniversary of Protestant mission in Japan? Obviously working with the non-Evangelical churches is impossible - obviously! - and if we did something without them it would look like we're in disunity and be a bad witness. (Even though we actually are in disunity and it's a bad witness, and this would be a good way to get over that. But that would be impossible. Obviously.)

In a consensus-based society like Japan, a group proceeds at the pace of its least-imaginative member. (Incidentally, WEC International is a concensus-based society.) So we're doing nothing.

This works for me. After all, the hallmark of Protestantism is to subdivide into innumerable tiny factions, close yourself off from everyone who doesn't completely agree with you, and make enemies out of people who really ought to be your friends. So our way of celebrating 150 years of Protestant mission seems strangely appropriate.

So that was Tuesday.

Today I spent the whole day writing my sermon for Sunday, because it needed doing.

I haven't spoken to a non-Christian this week. I haven't had the time.